BY ANDREW BAILEY
BG Independent News Correspondent
It’s a home away from home at the Connection Center.
The safe haven for Wood County residents struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues is located on 309 S. Main St., in the same building as the Everyday People Cafe.
As part of Harbor, an Ohio-based mental health and substance abuse treatment provider, the Connection Center opens its doors to anyone living in Wood County over 18 years old with a provider like Harbor.
Walking in the doors and becoming a member means becoming a part of a family. One that dates back to the center’s beginnings about 20 years ago in downtown Bowling Green.
The center provides members with activities to have fun and strengthen friendships and group sessions to learn about everything from coping with grief to astronomy.
Despite having over 100 members, there are 20,000 people in Wood County with a serious mental health condition, according to Connection Center member Leslie Miller
She said it shouldn’t be this way.
“We should be seeing a lot more people every day than we are now. This is a safe place for anyone struggling with their mental health or substance abuse and we’re here with open arms,” Miller said.
It’s all about taking that first step, Connection Center Manager Verna Mullins said.
For Miller, she couldn’t be happier taking that step.
As a person living with mental health disorders, Miller said she was isolating at home before she decided to come to the Connection Center.
“I was dealing with depression because I was just isolating myself at my house all the time. But now I’m here and it’s therapeutic for me to be around all my friends,” she said. “We all support each other here.”
When a member is having a bad day, they aren’t disrespected or judged like some are at home.
“When we have a bad day, we just have a bad day. We’ve all had them, and we all know how it feels. We just encourage each other and let each other know that it’ll be better tomorrow,” member Stacie said.
It’s the community support they have for each other that keeps the members coming back.
Stacie has been a member for 10 years and said the Connection Center has been her “home away from home” since she first joined.
“We are a community here. I can’t say enough about how much everyone cares about each other. They’ve given so much to me, and we all give so much to each other,” she said.
And since they moved into their current location almost three years ago, the attendance has grown even more.
At their previous location next to H&R Block, member Cathi Arcuri struggled to get up a ramp to enter the building due to being in a wheelchair. And when she got inside, the small rooms made her feel claustrophobic.
Now, their building is almost twice as big, with open space for members to sit and chat in the café, use conference rooms, and have fun in the creative room, where they host art events, have movie nights, and play games.
The members and staff are there to lift each other up, but Mullins said they are still working to destigmatize mental illness, and deal with people who talk down to the members.
“Everyone here is a person, just like anyone else. We treat them just like we’d treat anyone else and we’re here to watch them grow,” Mullins said.
“I don’t have to explain myself here. We get encouraged,” Stacie said.
Mullins described the members as proactive, since the majority of events are member-led. “The members here can do almost anything the staff can do here,” she said.
“Our members are actively involved in making things happen,” Miller said.
Stacie, who leads a weekly sign language group, said members are learning a valuable skill and helping normalize interacting with people who have hearing or speaking problems.
Stacie, who is deaf in her right ear, said she loves “showing that there are other forms of communication.”
“It’s my passion,” she said. “I’ve signed songs for parties and taught others how to interact in ways others don’t know how.”
Over quarantine, the center was closed for a period of time, until they partially reopened to host the group sessions. They fully reopened on June 1, and Miller said the feeling of walking in again and seeing the makeshift family was rejuvenating.
“We realized during the pandemic how important our family was,” she said. “But now we’re all back and we’re ready to keep growing. I’m pushing for more people to come here because it’s such a resource.”
The café isn’t open for serving food in-house yet, and Mullins said they still have to navigate around health and safety guidelines, but they’re “more excited than ever to bring in new people to their family.”
“We want to spread the word and let Wood County residents know who we are, and what we do,” she said. “This is a home for anyone struggling with mental health or substance abuse to find their place.”
Updates from the Connection Center can be found on their Facebook page.
