We had the good fortune of connecting with Debra Hopkins and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Debra, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
For Breaking The Chains Foundation (BTCF), we think of art as a community meaning we share what we do with others so they can do it too, be a part of it, and create with us. For example, we have an amazing youth arts and wellness day called How To Love Yourselfie Camp happening on September 22nd, 2024 in Burbank, California. This is a day serving youth and teens, where each one can engage and embrace all their unique qualities through self-awareness, self-love, self-enrichment, creativity, empowerment, and fun! Our activities are designed to empower those qualities about themselves and tap into their unlimited potential. We hope that each one of them enjoys this day to the fullest, leaving each with an enriched sense of self, cherished memories of sharing time with others, and a toolbox of positive experiences that bring them joy and can strengthen their everyday communities!

Other areas of our programming and services that engage the community are highlighted in the below:

The How To Love Yourselfie (HTLYS) online social media literacy program with interactive videos and workbook is available nationwide and has been utilized in a variety of facilities, organizations, and studios. This is a program that is geared toward ages 15 – 22. HTLYS is developed as a prevention program to provide additional support to those who are looking for support and education around positive body image, self-esteem, and social media literacy. This program is intended to support and aid in cultivating positive and reflective conversations around body image.

We have an amazing in-person national program, called Big C New Me serving cancer survivors and caregivers. We help women, men, and teens deal with the challenges of living with -and overcoming the side effects of- cancer and treatment by providing confidence-building, educational, and support resources. Within this program is The Power Crew, a very popular one-day event with the crew focusing on image and confidence. We include hair/wig cut, and style, professional makeup application, and professional portraits for those we serve to keep. Other benefits include lunch, swag bags, outfits from participating retail partners (when available), and connections to support resources in each local community market.

Other dance and movement workshops such as The 7 Chairs Experience, engage in this real-time interpersonal storytelling experience, where participants will leave with more understanding, compassion, and creative strategies for healing. The goal is to explore what our unique hearts and minds want to communicate through the art of dance and movement. For 11 – 18 years of age both dancers and non-dancers.

Our live dance performance, 7 Chairs which has been performed in many communities, cities, and growing is such a powerfully vulnerable, revealing, and freeing experience. It breaks the silence about inner struggles often underpinning negative body-image relationships, disordered eating, and other challenges. Through the art of dance, seven performers come together in an anonymous meeting to share their stories and listen to others in real-time, thereby generating solidarity, honesty, and hope for all involved. This illuminating process is both captivating and transformative; it also highlights the fact that the willingness to see and hear, as well as to be seen and heard, is the foundation for all healing. As an audience member, you will be reminded that “I, You, We…Are Not Alone.

Many of our virtuals have tool kits we send out to all attendees. It becomes a resource for them to share with others and in turn build bigger communities. So art as a social piece building communal resources. Presently, we are sharing monthly Health and Wellness Conversations highlighting the stories of BTCF team members and how these stories can help to inspire others and enrich our lives. Our annual Elements of Expression Artist Series brings a variety of artists together sharing videos of their work throughout an entire week via various social media platforms broadening our community. Using social media as a vessel is important to all of us these days to create positive, enriching, and educational social impact.

For more information, please visit our website. Stay tuned for new and upcoming programming, events, and services!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Whether you are a creator, artist, business person, teacher, coach, non-profit leader, organization advocate, treatment provider, or any other type of professional in your field, each one of us has unique strengths, passion, compassion, hopes, goals, and dreams to focus on and bring to fruition. I absolutely love it when an individual discovers their passion, explores it, tests it out, enriches it, builds a support system around it, has awareness, is mindful and grateful of their progress, yet listens to others when it comes to endless possibilities. I recently listened to an important person in my life speak about “the power of persuasion” to bring about change in positive ways that curate a strong foundation built on integrity, grace, love, faith, acceptance, and emotional intelligence. I always like to see the best in people, including myself, even when I make mistakes. I truly believe that all chains are breakable. That anything that once held us down can rise to something more powerful in good spirit and service to ourselves and others. It is not always easy, because there are always things that happen out of our control, but it is possible and can even be sustainable.

With that said, I am the president and founder of the non-profit Breaking The Chains Foundation (BTCF). “Breaking The Chains” is a deep internal piece to my recovery. What motivated me to create a non-profit stemmed from my life experience which included having an eating disorder when I was younger and my love for the arts. I was very involved in the arts from an early age, received a full-ride scholarship to college for dance, and continued in the field for some years to follow. Dancing was my healing place. I felt everything when I was dancing. I could think, breathe, transcend, my space whether on stage or in the studio was “my space” and I owned it, I owned my body, my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. There is something to this. It was internal, not external. There is something very healing and I had a deep desire to heal.

Now recovery is different for everyone – so without going into the depths of my journey to recovery – I became recovered. My life would progressively change through the years – love, marriage, children, writing, films, performances, and a long career as a health and fitness professional.

But that “idea” that was planted a long time ago and kept pulling me toward it in a multitude of ways would not go away and that’s how I felt leading up to my nonprofit Breaking The Chains Foundation (BTCF) becoming a reality. When conceptually building it, I began to work backward a bit – I was at a place in my life where I could. I went back to my healing place – dance and the healing elements it brought me. Through my recovery, I knew that if I felt my pain so internally, then others who are suffering must feel the same way. I flipped the switch, ‘the picture’, ‘the perception’. Eating disorders are not what they look like on the outside, it’s what is going on in the inside. I began to share my story with people in my life which resonated with them, and they shared theirs, and we gave our time, energy, and talents to one another.

I began with exploring self-awareness, self-esteem, body-image relationships, and confronting addiction. Then it progressed into campaigns, scripts, videos, and bigger photo shoots. The amount of support was so God-given to what now has come to fruition, my nonprofit, BTCF. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, I really believe that all things are possible if you believe, and all chains are breakable. I needed to give it a try – I owed that much to my young self and hopefully to many others who needed a voice but just couldn’t talk about it – maybe we could “show” it and be really creative about it – we could tap into the humanness that each one of us has and explore it in ways that give permission to bring eating disorders to light.

I started BTCF with the slogan, “I want to change the face of eating disorders – I want to change the conversation”. It’s not what it looks like on the outside, it’s what’s going on in the inside. You can talk about it. Let’s change the conversation by not making it this shameful, guilt-ridden, lonely, and hidden disease. So “change the conversation” became through artistic expression. Let’s build hope, healing, and community, personal story, hug, laugh, cry – let’s do that – how your form of art is healing for you – for others. So we can prompt and inspire recovery – transformative, intrinsic, primal. I know I could have really connected to this back when, I think many of the people in my life who were struggling could have too. I think we just needed permission to do so – we needed to give ourselves permission not to live in this isolation that was felt. We are not alone in the journey – whether one may be struggling with an eating disorder, disordered eating, body image, or body dysmorphia, in the healing process, in a recovery journey, or recovered, you are not alone, we are not alone. For those who some someone going through any of these things or more and have been their support system – please know you are not alone and are so very needed.

We continued to instill organizational growth and 10 years later, BTCF has branched out much more. We now have a chapter in Virginia and looking forward to serving the folks on the East Coast! We are committed to the prevention of body-focused and mental well-being stigmas while working with people in pursuit of overall wellness. Our mission is to use the power of art and expression to foster creativity, build connections, and create a community in which individuals can thrive. Throughout our work and programming, we delve into the healing properties of artistic expression and personal narrative.

We offer creative workshops, live performances, online programs, in-person events, youth arts and wellness camps, music live-streams, virtuals, campaigns, featured artist blogs, videos, films, books, guest speakers, information, and resources. Our programs engage, instill hope, and encourage creativity. BTCF thinks “outside the box. We are a creative and artistic grassroots movement! BTCF offers positive, well-rounded art-based nurturing impact with a desire for healing – to be impactful and create change.

There are always challenges when building something that you are passionate about. I think that is very normal and sometimes it can be difficult to navigate. Having passion for what you do is so super important, and one may find from time to time that passion is challenged by things that are out of your control but really have greater purpose and can most certainly lead to open windows and doors that you would have never entered. Passion keeps hope alive because having passion is personal – it’s all you.

I think during times when one may feel defeated and like giving up, please know you are not alone. In those challenging times or even moments, I encourage you to get trusted support and avoid making big decisions and comparing yourself to others. Sometimes it takes digging deeper within yourself than you ever did before to find the answers and meaning to your own uniqueness on a path that you were always meant to journey upon. We may find times that we need to gather as much grace as we can during trials and heartaches when building and even flourishing in life and a business, only to find that as we do our own character becomes strengthened and enlightened. It’s okay to ask for help and it’s okay to have a voice!

With BTCF we say – with your help we can continue to create pathways to channel healing and well-being through the process of artistic expression in all its forms. I think more than promoting, a deep understanding of the healing properties all forms of art promote within ourselves – an enriched purposeful meaning that we as individuals can be intentional about and communicate within ourselves through all our senses, puts us in the knowing of our own feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Being an advocate for ourselves so that we can live with intention and purpose – that we can expand our horizons so to speak by tapping into our hurts, our pain, our happiness, our struggles, our worries, our joys, victories, past, present, and even for the future. How we see ourselves through our own eyes, make any changes we need, and grow from there. To be magnets to our own hearts and create new wiring in our brains. When we do this, in our communities, in our world – we create bridges for others – we inspire compassion and passion, inclusivity because we have those things for ourselves. To break the chains that hold us in places and spaces that no longer serve us, but rather the path we are intended to venture upon.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
These are some favorites –

Breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien either in Encino or Studio City. Recommend their Hot Honey Lemon Ginger or a Hot Oak milk Latte. Any one of their omelets, muffins, salads, and their homemade variety bread basket with their different jams

Hiking at Towsley Canyon Loop Trail in Santa Clarita

Getty Museum

Grammy Museum

Warner Brothers Studio Tours (I taught fitness classes for many years on the WB Lot, so I got spend time all over the lot and also go to the WB Museum, which is amazing – so highly recommend this!)

Griffith Observatory

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Downtown Burbank

Check out the Malibu Beaches

Moonshadows Seafood Restaurant in Malibu

Santa Monica Pier

Electric EBike bicycle Tour Santa Monica and Venice

Disneyland and California Adventure

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Absolutely! There are many people I would like to thank who have been “those special people”! My parents and family have and continue to be instrumental in my life on so many levels. My husband Gerald, and our two sons Gerad and Jacob are my everything that continues to support and encourage me. I’ve had great mentors in my life – my college dance professor, Carol Halstead, voice coach Jan Albright, and health and fitness educator, Joan Wenson who at different stages of my young life were instrumental to my growth as a person, performer, teacher, and a professional in my field.

Each member of my board, Jillian Rose Reed, Alex Little, Courtney Hope, Krysta Stryker, Amy Hart, and Chef Gason that steady the work and the joy I have experienced learning who each of them are, their stories, their perseverance, their willingness and intention to create change and help others. These kind-hearted, compassionate, professionals, storytellers, and creators each with their willingness to volunteer their time, talents, and energy. They have each walked a walk. The selfless support they give to me and BTCF amazes me on a daily basis.

Additionally, we have an amazing Advisory Board, ambassadors, volunteers, partners, and featured artists who individually have deep rich stories to share, their unique talents, areas of expertise, strengths, and their kindness to want to serve and create community for others to grow and learn from is very inspiring!

Overall, I am blessed to have a team of devoted, creative, and value-driven professionals who represent the fields of mental health, physical health and wellness, business, and the arts, our programs are uniquely grounded in research-based psychology and artistic expression. We strive to reach people, change unhealthy conversations, inspire healing, and be a bridge to recovery.

Website: https://breakingthechainsfoundation.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakingthechainsfdn/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/breaking-the-chains-foundation

Twitter: https://twitter.com/4BreakingChains

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IamBreakingTheChains/

Other: https://breakingthechainsfoundation.org/event/how-to-love-yourselfie-camp/ https://onfire.substack.com/p/breaking-the-chains https://tedxsantabarbara.com/2023/debra-hopkins-breaking-the-chains-empowering-creativity-and-community-through-art-and-connection/ https://www.facebook.com/debra.hopkins.37/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/debra-hopkins-64b97a12/

Image Credits
Birdie Thompson Edward Tovmassian James Wirth Dance Excellence

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