The concept of ‘OCD Gamechangers’ was born out of the grief I experienced upon leaving San Francisco after the International OCD Foundation Annual Conference in 2017. On the plane back home to Denver, Colorado, I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing my advocate friends nor being around the OCD community for a full year until the next conference.
Doing advocacy work can feel very lonely and at times exhausting. Many advocates are putting time and effort into projects on top of working full time jobs. It’s our passion that drives us, but sometimes our tanks get empty and we lack the support we need to keep doing the work. I had talked with many advocates feeling inspired to do the work, but also feeling isolated and without support. Our community doesn’t have a hub for support for advocates or a platform for our work to all come together and spread awareness and hope, and I knew it was a niche needing to be filled. I thought the concept of bringing people together to create a network of support as well as inspiring others to pursue advocacy would be totally possible if it were the right platform.
I had attended a ‘business mastermind’ group the previous year which brought like-minded entrepreneurs together for a weekend. It had been life-changing for me. So while on the plane somewhere between California and Colorado, I had an idea. Why not host a weekend for advocates in Denver sometime this year?
My vision was becoming clearer. I could host a mastermind group for a day where advocates come together and share their obstacles or hopes for their projects, while the group helped brainstorm solutions, ideas, and networking opportunities. This would not only give each of us support, but also make us feel less alone in our advocacy projects. We would then all speak ‘Ted-Talk Style’ at an advocacy event to raise awareness and hopefully inspire audience members to become their own advocates or launch other advocacy projects.
I had zero idea if I could make it work and zero idea if anyone would even say ‘Yes’ to coming out. But I thought, why not take the risk and live with the uncertainty! I set the date, made a list of advocates I thought were doing advocacy work that was game-changing in our community, and decided to send out feelers to see if anyone would be interested. My fear was that no one would say yes. Why would anyone fly out on their own dime for an event I couldn’t even pay them to speak at?
To my surprise, every person I asked said yes. As soon as Stuart Ralph of ‘The OCD Stories’ agreed to come over from the UK, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I definitely have to do it now!!’
9 Advocates flew into Denver, CO to spend the weekend together talking about advocacy, their journey with OCD, and building relationships and a network of support. That energy flowed over into the awareness event, making the evening feel like it was filled with magic. It was an amazing success, and we continued to hear from attendees long after the event concluded in their hope of getting better and their motivation to become advocates themselves.
The following year, I felt inspired to include OCD therapists who are also advocates and innovators in how they reach and treat individuals with OCD. I reached out to a handful of therapists who were doing game-changing projects and they all agreed to join us and be part of the event. We made it a half day event with two panel chats for therapists and the ‘Ted-Talk Style’ presentation for advocates. By doing the mastermind group the day before , the bond and supportive energy our group experienced again flowed over into the tone of the event.
I knew this idea was something special.
Shortly after, we organized as the nonprofit ‘OCD Gamechangers Inc’. And since then, we have hosted an OCD Gamechangers event internationally in London, England with Stuart Ralph of ‘The OCD Stories’. This year, we will not only be doing our big March event in Denver, but we will go international again in October in the UK as well as another country (TBA). We are also hosting ‘OCD Gamechangers Pop Up Events’ in different states throughout the year to support individuals wanting to create communities in their towns.
So what was once a small idea born out of the grief of missing my friends, has now turned into endless opportunities to bring people together to create community, inspire other advocacy projects, and overall to inspire hope that you are not alone!
We hope you will be attending our 3rd Annual OCD Gamechangers Event in Denver, CO on March 7th, 2020. It will be like no other event you have attended!!
Click HERE to purchase tickets!
