CIF Project Summary

Purpose & Pillows

Purpose & Pillows offers a unique approach to peers sharing their lived experience in substance use recovery. This crafty project teaches people in recovery how to shed maladaptive coping tools and find refuge through the beauty of creativity and the art of sewing. It is open to women, and those who identify as women, in residence at the Heartwood Centre for Women.

Each participant will learn to sew a pillow of purpose to keep with them through their recovery journey. The pillow represents a soft, gentle, and comforting approach to recovery.

This project inspires participants to get creative, explore new skills, and show themselves that they can create caring purpose in their lives. Through shared storytelling, participants create strong communal bonds and learn they are not alone. Together we stitch, sew, and grow.

Throughout project activities, we hope participants will:

• Learn creative skills like sewing, stitch work, and embroidery
• Discover a deeper connection with themselves, find power in honoring their truth
• Form supportive community bonds through shared stories
• Build hope, inspiration, and faith – we can recover!

Purpose & Pillows is a community project led by Amber, who is both a peer and a graduate of Heartwood Centre for Women. During her stay at Heartwood, Amber found solace in the art room. She discovered there had once been a tradition of sewing heart pillows for each graduate. Sharing her skill of sewing, Amber renewed the tradition and has adapted it into this project.

The Heartwood Centre for Women offers care for adult women and those who identify as women, including Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people, who face serious substance use and mental health challenges. They provide trauma-informed treatment, focusing first on safety and symptom relief. Heartwood supports people build on their strengths and works with them as active partners in their recovery.

For more info about the services Heartwood provides, visit https://www.bcmhsus.ca/mental-health-substance-use-services/heartwood-centre-women

• Open to residents of Heartwood Centre for Women with lived/living experience of mental health and/or substance use challenges
• Participation is free
• No previous experience needed