Tickets are available through March 28. A reception will begin activities at 5:30 with social time, live music, cocktails and appetizers, followed by a brief program highlighting CHF’s work in the community over the past year and future plans.
“I talk about remembering your own power. We really do have it, it’s right between our ears,” Dee said.
Dee has had her own heroic journey, having to learn a different life by moving to Norway and starting a successful business before moving back to the U.S. where she wanted a new career, deciding between law school and nursing, with the latter winning out.
The odds were against her as a 43-year-old single parent, but that’s where she found her own power in striving to become a psychiatric nurse.
“It was actually much easier than if I had done it at 20,” said Dee. “It was a good experience and I would recommend it to anybody.
Her eventual career meant working with people with schizophrenia and a lot of overwhelming stress and depression and she helped give them tools to deal with their problems and she learned from them.
“It gave me an understanding there’s so much more we could do when you change the way you think. As humans, we see only a small fraction of what happens in life,” she said. “All situations, even those we hate, we can say what can I learn.”
A lot of her story will be about the brain and its job, which is to keep us safe. Part of this is recognizing what you can and cannot change anyway. A key is finding commonality, talking to and respecting each other.
“We’ll laugh, learn and have fun and maybe improve lives. We want to be better and there are so many little things we can do,” Dee said.
CHF is a is a local voice for health care needs in our community, providing funding to non-profit organizations focused on health and wellness, community health resource information, reproductive health services and health and wellness programs.
Executive director Joy Rogers said CHF had a great 2024, helping provide around $550,000 to support the community including healthy eating, oral health, supplying Springfield City Schools with 3,500 toothbrushes, offering community resource guides and other services.
“This is our chance to celebrate with the community,” she said. “It’s for everyone to attend, a fun, easy, low-pressure evening to laugh with friends and learn about what the foundation is up to. You can take several different things away from it.”
For all its efforts, the needs in the Springfield community are not lessening according to Rogers. Health improvement, stable housing, chronic disease prevention, maternal health and basic needs will be among what CHF will work toward in 2025 and into the future.
HOW TO GO
Tickets for CHF Celebrates cost $35 each and registrations must be turned in by March 28. Reservations can be made by emailing BSutter@mercy.com, calling 937-523-7002 or going to www.community-health-foundation.org/.
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