COOL SOLUTIONS OFFERS WARM SUPPORT FOR FAMILIES IN CRISIS
COOL SOLUTIONS OFFERS WARM SUPPORT FOR FAMILIES IN CRISIS
Mona Cooley is a chatty person. Warm, open and inviting, she’ll happily take time out of her day to talk to you. But her most prized skill isn’t talk – it’s listening. It was a hard-won ability; one she didn’t always have in her repertoire.
In 1995, Mona’s daughter was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The lead up to the diagnosis came after chaos. Mona’s relationship with her daughter was souring at a rapid pace and it was tearing her family apart.
“At the time when she was diagnosed, our family was falling apart,” recalls Mona. “It was starting to hit me pretty hard, because I didn’t want that.”
Mona is a fixer and she looks for solutions. She began taking courses through CoachU and she contacted her daughter’s professors at nursing school. Those conversations served as the catalyst for what would become Mona’s life’s work.
“I remember saying to the professor, is there anything for the families? She told me, there is nothing. I dumped everything on this lady and she said to take care of yourself, you need to call the Canadian Mental Health Association,” recounts Mona. “I phoned immediately.”
That phone call sparked a chain of events that led Mona down the path she’s still on today – the path of helping families in painful situations. With the help of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Mona created a 10-week program that supports the entire family as a unit.
Whether her clients are struggling with conflicts surrounding mood-related disorders or substance abuse issues, her company, Cool Solutions offers a safe and supportive, online space for families to learn new skills when it comes to how they interact. Her resiliency methods are supported by the research of Dr. Hammond of Flourishing Life, who has been collaborating with CFS.
“I was a fixer, I had to figure out how to approach things differently instead of moving to fix, I thought I was listening but I was jumping in to fix,” says Mona.
Through the skills she gained at Coach U and much trial and error over a period of seven years, Mona and her family grew in communication and understanding. Today, she enjoys a great relationship with her daughter, who is planning on joining the family business Mona created.
“The family piece is the missing piece and the gap in the system,” says Mona. “It’s not that families aren’t trying to do something but it’s digging a deeper hole because they don’t know what to do different.”
Mona’s process is all about love, or LUV: Listen, Understand and Validate. The 10-week program through Cool Solutions teaches each adult family member to listen and be present, reflect and be curious. It teaches every member of the family how to support one another and how to understand their loved one who is going through a tough time.
“The thing I do mostly is hear them, listen and figure out where they’re at,” explains Mona. “What they need is just somebody on the other end to hear them and understand.”
The best part of the program is it’s all online. Mona uses Zoom to get families all in one spot, because as she says, they aren’t always going to be in the same city, let alone the same province.
It helps Mona has walked the same road as her clients. She knows every bend, every tree and landmark, every steep section and where to take a break. It’s not an easy road.
Mona offers a gift to struggling families – a gift of a friendly ear and the tools necessary to work as a team and travel the road before them, together.
“I’m fortunate our family was willing to stick together and work through this, to figure this out.”
On Wednesday, December 13, join AgKnow and Mona Cooley of Cool Family Solutions as she discusses their “Families Helping Families” course.
Families Helping Families is a 10-week accredited course delivered virtually with proven success for families coping with mood-related disorders or substance-related challenges.
Mona has been delivering this course since 2018 and she will share some of the background on why it was started and how the Cool Family Solutions team is helping families get help now.
To learn more about the webinar, please click here.
