Annual Recovery Walk & Picnic spreads hope, celebrates people in recovery
The third annual Butler County Recovery Walk and Picnic saw its largest turnout this year, Donna Jenereski, director of Butler County’s Drug and Alcohol Programs, said.
Community members and their families, treatment providers and staff came together on Saturday, Sept. 23 at Butler Memorial Park to celebrate people in addiction recovery.
More than 140 people registered in advance, Jenereski said, though many more came out that day for family-friendly activities, entertainment and fellowship.
“This is a day for people in recovery, their friends and family members to just have fun and enjoy themselves,” Jenereski said. “But a little piece of it is also to raise awareness, hopefully around the stigma that exists out there.”
“We have a strong recovery community,” she said. “We need to celebrate people in recovery. We need the community to come together, because what they’ve accomplished. It needs to be recognized.”
Earlier that morning, four speakers in long-term recovery addressed the crowd. Their stories — and stories of other people in recovery — are essential for people in the community to hear, Jenereski said, and critical to spreading hope to people in active addiction.
Jenereski also said the Drug & Alcohol program encouraged people to bring their children to the picnic, ensuring that the event would be family-friendly with activities such as face painting, tie-dying, balloon artistry, dancing and arts and crafts.
The event represents something meaningful not only to people in recovery, but also to the loved ones in their lives.
“Addiction is not a personal problem, it’s not an individual problem. It impacts the family, the community, everyone,” Jenereski said.
“Addiction reaches beyond individuals,” she said. “It affects and impacts families, children. It’s really a problem, and a lot of these children have lived through the experience of having their parents actively in addiction, and then watch them get into recovery. And for others, you know, they’re blessed; the children never had that experience and all they know is, ‘Mom is in recovery.’”
Autumn Sicilia, a patient at the Ellen O’Brien Gaiser Center,, said community events like the Recovery Walk and Picnic are important because they bring people in recovery together.
Being able to mingle with people who share similar life experiences is meaningful, Sicilia said.
She sat on a pavilion bench with her daughter, Miya Sicilia, both of their faces colorfully painted.
Sitting on a pavilion bench on the other side of the Rotary Shelter, Paul Rychorcewicz Jr., a house manager in a recovery home in downtown Butler, said he hopes people in addiction can look to him and other community members at the event as living examples of how recovery is possible.
“I’m here to support overdose awareness and to help people realize how bad addiction really is, and that it shouldn’t be taken lightly,” Rychorcewicz Jr. said. “I believe we all deserve a chance to redeem ourselves and get better and everything. Me coming out here with a smile on my face because I get to interact with people, I get to share that … there is a way out of addiction.”
Rychorcewicz Jr., who is coming up on 24 months sober on Sept. 30, said community events like the picnic show people who are struggling with addiction that people around them care.
