LYNN — The Recovery Exchange has placed purple ribbons throughout Central Square to celebrate the lives of members of the city’s community that were lost to overdose.
The ribbons, each of which contains a card with the name of a member of the community who died of an overdose, will remain until the end of September.
Recovery Exchange Executive Director Kim Patterson said they were hung up in preparation for International Overdose Awareness Day on Aug. 31.
International Overdose Awareness Day was established in 2001 to raise awareness of and reduce the stigma surrounding drug-related deaths. Purple is the color of National Recovery Awareness Month, which is September.
Patterson said members of the Recovery Exchange held a candlelight vigil during the weekend in honor of the loved ones whose names are written on the cards on the ribbons.
“We want to honor them and make sure that their lives count and that they’re not forgotten,” Patterson added.
After the vigil, members of the Recovery Exchange split up and started placing the ribbons on as many lampposts as possible, Patterson said.
After the ribbons were hung, members of the exchange had the opportunity to regroup and share the names of the loved ones aloud, she added.
“We don’t want to forget those people that are lost,” Patterson said. “We want to remember that they were somebody’s sons, somebody’s fathers, somebody’s grandsons, somebody’s friends, and all of them were good people who got caught up in substance use and weren’t able to find a way out.”
She added there is an important difference between Overdose Awareness Day and the beginning of Recovery Awareness Month, as Overdose Awareness Day is an occasion to give people the space to grieve, while Recovery Awareness Month is more celebratory.
During Recovery Awareness Month, Patterson said the exchange will host a Family Fun Day at Clark Park on Sept. 7 from 12 to 4 p.m. It is currently collecting donations of backpacks for a back-to-school backpack giveaway it will host.
“It’s our way of giving back to a community that maybe we didn’t give to for so many years, or maybe even took from. But it’s also a way for us to change the stigma,” Patterson said.
She added another event the exchange will host is voter-registration tabling, at which it will encourage people in recovery to vote.
“Our local councilmen and all those people are the ones that help us to get the funding that we need. So we need to be part of the voice, and our voices need to be heard,” Patterson said.
