There’s No Casserole for That: Mental Health, Loneliness, and the Courage to Show Up

There might be more public language for mental health than ever before — awareness months, workplace posters, crisis lines, wellness apps, and hashtags. But when someone’s real life falls apart, many of us still don’t know what to say, what to do, or how to show up.

In a deeply personal essay recently published in The Columbus Dispatch, CMC President and CEO Sophia Fifner wrote about grief, depression, coming out, divorce, trauma, and the loneliness that can hide behind leadership and practiced smiles. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Bill Butler, now president of Columbus’ National Veterans Memorial and Museum, described himself as a “hot mess” struggling with nightmares and guilt following the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021. Their stories raise a larger civic question: What happens when the hardest parts of human experience don’t fit neatly into the rituals we already know, like births, deaths, weddings, funerals, casseroles, cards, and meal trains?

Join us for a special forum that looks at mental health not only as a medical issue, but as a community issue. How do loneliness, grief, trauma, and isolation shape our ability to live well? What can veterans, parents, nonprofit leaders, and our friends and neighbors teach us about resilience? What are the limits of resilience when people are left to carry too much alone? Can Central Ohio build a stronger culture of care, where people are not expected to disappear politely behind the mask of being “fine”?

Featuring Sophia Fifner, President and CEO of the Columbus Metropolitan Club, Bill Butler, President of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum and Colonel, U.S. Army Retired, Dr. John Ackerman, Suicide Prevention Clinical Manager with Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and moderator WBNS 10TV news anchor Stacia Naquin, this conversation invites us to rethink wellness as something much deeper than self-care. Does mental health begin not only with treatment, but with connection? Can belonging be part of every community’s infrastructure?

If you would like to dive more deeply into this topic, our friends at the Columbus Metropolitan Library suggest checking out A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection, by Nicholas Epley, 2026.