Serving Cinamon this holiday season

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The paint your own pottery studio, The Happy Pot, is reminding the community once again that Cinamon can be sweet, as the owner teachers her recovery art classes lessons in community service and the good of serving others.

Owner Cinamon Wellington teaches a weekly class to her Counseling Center clients, where she instructs therapeutic art lessons on a variety of topics geared towards personal development.

“We meet weekly and we do some sort of art project to tie in a life lesson with it. It can be, for example, talking about our emotions and how, if we don’t get away from past traumas, they can keep building and building until we explode. They could end up back on the street and making bad choices, but I show that through paint,” Wellington explained. “We then talk about forgiveness and how to talk to people using good language. We talk about what happens when we just throw our cigarette butts down. We talk about how to engage with people not in addiction, because we are all products of our environments and, sometimes, you may feel like you don’t have a lot in common with someone, but, when you bring those walls down and build those skills, people can feel equal and learn how to build relationships.”

Service work is important to Cinamon, not only for herself, but in her passion of teaching it to others.

The group began their Thanksgiving give back by cleaning Second Street. They picked up and removed leaves from trees all over the 500 block. They also purchased nine bags of mulch and filled tree wells with freshly colored mulch as far as the mulch would stretch.

“I think it is easy for people to be negative about addiction, because we’ve all been touched by it in some way that is very negative. What we don’t often talk about is what happens when someone decides to get sober and go into recovery. We are changing lives and teaching forgiveness, not only for other people, but for ourselves,” Wellington explained. “We get people vested in our community by getting them clean and engaged in community service projects, because most people in recovery realize they are lucky to be alive, to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. It is important that we teach them they can be forgiven, and they have self-worth. Community Service projects are one of their favorite, favorite things. They’re already talking about what they want to do in the spring and what we should do next November.”

The biggest give back project Cinamon led was a hygiene bag program that she is passionate about when it comes to serving the locals in most need. Wellington and her students prepared 700 bags to be given to different locations serving those in need and the homeless.

The hygiene bags were accomplished through a partnership with the Happy Pot and the participants included The Counseling Center, Pure Country Car Dealership, Kings Daughters Medical Center, Jobs and Family Services, Scioto Smiles, and Livingston and Co., LLC.

“The hygiene bags fill a very, very important need in our community as of now. You know, I see churches all the time doing Operation Christmas Child, where you get little toys and you put them in a box and spend $15 to ship them overseas,” Wellington explained. “Well, I’m not the only one who sees the huge amount of homeless in the area and I think I’ve realized no one is coming to save us and we, as a community, have to be part of the solution and not the problem. So, why not start doing things for people here who need our help?”

The hygiene bags were distributed between Cornerstone Church, the Salvation Army, the Homeless Shelter, the Crisis Center, and under bridges.

“We, the Counseling Center and the Happy Pot, are very thankful for our community and all people, no matter what their situation is, and we hope that whoever reads this chooses to make a difference in our community,” Wellington said.

Reach Joseph Pratt at (740) 353-3101, by email at [email protected], © 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved

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