Caring for Carers Event

News from St John, Events - 5 Nov 2021

A QMHW event from St John Qld

On Thursday October 14, to coincide with Queensland Mental Health Week, we hosted a “Caring for Carers’ event at the Superdream office in South Brisbane. The purpose of the event was to bring together people who are carers and give them a day for themselves, to relax, unwind and to learn new skills.

We were fortunate to have Frie from ARAFMI join us for the day and to find out more about what ARAFMI do in the community. ARAFMI provide quality support, education and advocacy services to people with mental illness, their families and carers. This is a vital service to our community and we were so excited that Frie gave up her time to be with us. Thank you so much!

One of the truly special parts of the day was having the opportunity to do traditional basket weaving with Kim Ah Sam, a proud Kalkadoon-KukYalanji woman. This was such wonderful engaging activity as we all learnt how to incorporate parts of nature, including emu feathers, into our creations. Kim, along with her sister Tracey, taught us a simple weave and there were some great creations completed (some better than others hehehe!).

We shared a really lovely lunch before ending the day with meditation with Venerable Tenzin Drolkar. Drolkar talked about the benefits of meditation and the various methods that can be used to incorporate meditation into your everyday life. It was the perfect way to wind up the day and at the end of it, no one wanted to get up… it was truly relaxing.

Big thanks goes to everyone who was involved in the event, special mention to Kirsty and the Superdream team who gave up their office for the day, and to QMHW for the grant that allowed us to be able to spend this time together in the community.

“Carers are often the people in our community who feel isolated and alone. They are the true heroes in our communities. It was important to us to be able to give them somewhere to go, even for just one day, to have time for them”. – Rachael Mussig – St John Qld