Twenty-five years after the September 11th terrorist attacks, a San Diego nonprofit is preparing to travel across the country with more than 1,000 weighted therapeutic teddy bears and a message for the families who lost loved ones that day: They have not been forgotten.
The Comfort Cub is making a donation worth tens of thousands of dollars to surviving 9/11 family members in New York City as the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks – all thanks to generous donations from the community.
The nonprofit’s founder, Marcella Johnson, joined KUSI to talk about the massive donation and why she believes acknowledging the grief carried by these families remains just as meaningful a quarter-century later.
“Grief has no expiration date,” Johnson said.
Whether someone loses a partner, parent, child or other loved one today or decades ago, Johnson says that grief can remain with them for a lifetime.
“It doesn’t matter if you lost your partner today or 50 years ago — grief stays with you,” Johnson explained. “Especially after it’s been a long time, when someone hands you a healing gift like this and remembers your loved one, that means so much to people who are always hurting.”
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the September 11th attacks, including 403 firefighters, police officers and other first responders.
Johnson and a small team of volunteers will travel from San Diego to New York City to personally distribute the 1,000 Comfort Cubs to 9/11 family members during anniversary events with VOICES Center for Resilience.
For Johnson, an important part of the mission is simply showing up.
“We’re coming from San Diego to say, ‘We have not forgotten,'” Johnson said. “We’ll be there to hear the names of each person, and we’ll be there to comfort their families.”
The team will personally place the Comfort Cubs into the hands of family members and explain why the weighted bears were created and how they are intended to provide comfort during grief.
More than a teddy bear, it’s a weighted therapeutic essential mental health support tool
While a Comfort Cub may look like a traditional teddy bear, Johnson emphasizes that it is a weighted therapeutic tool designed to provide deep-touch pressure when held against the body.
That pressure is intended to create a calming sensation during periods of intense emotional distress.
Johnson also points to the connection between profound emotional trauma and the physical heart. Severe emotional stress can trigger stress-induced cardiomyopathy, commonly known as Broken Heart Syndrome, a temporary heart condition that can mimic a heart attack and, in some cases, cause serious complications even death.
The Comfort Cub was born from Johnson’s own experience with devastating loss. She created the weighted bear after losing her infant son, George Gabriel Johnson on April 11, 1999, as a way to provide something weighted and tangible to hold during the physical and emotional pain of grief. She says, when she held a weighted object to her chest, that was similar to the weight of a newborn bay, her heart stopped hurting. The relief was undeniable. She knew other women suffering from the ;loss of a child would also benefit from this weighted support to their own chests. Then over the years the weighted bears started being used to help is every kind of grief and loss imaginable. From loss of a parents, loss of a grandparents, sibling, sibling, pet, even from divorce, loss of your home due to natural disasters. The Comfort Cub has donated thousands of Comfort Cubs to schools after mass shootings, communities after a fire destroyed homes and schools, and many more countless tragedies in the world.
Now, 25 years after one of the darkest days in American history, something born from one San Diego mother’s grief will be placed into the arms of families who have carried their own loss for more than two decades.
San Diegans can send a personal message to a 9/11 family
The Comfort Cub is also giving San Diegans an opportunity to send something personal to New York along with the 1,000 weighted therapeutic bears.
Each Comfort Cub will be accompanied by a handwritten message on a heart-shaped card from someone in the San Diego community.
Local firefighters, firefighter spouses, parents, children and anyone who wants to participate can write a message to a surviving 9/11 family member — whether it is as simple as, “I have not forgotten the sacrifice your loved one made,” or anything else they would like that family to know.
Anyone who would like to write a note can attend the San Diego 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb on Saturday, Sept. 5, at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. The Comfort Cub team will be there collecting the heart-shaped messages and will personally bring them to New York, where each note will be given to a 9/11 family member along with a Comfort Cub.
The annual Stair Climb honors the first responders who lost their lives on September 11th, with participants climbing in their memory.
Some climbers this year have also agreed to carry a weighted Comfort Cub up the stairs with them in honor of the fallen heroes who never made it back down — while also raising awareness about the nonprofit’s upcoming 1,000-Cub donation to their surviving family members.
The Stair Climb is also a fundraiser benefiting FirefighterAid.org, with money raised supporting firefighters and their families.
For San Diegans who cannot travel to New York for the 25th anniversary, the handwritten heart-shaped notes offer a simple way to send a personal message nearly 3,000 miles across the country: We remember.
Johnson and The Comfort Cub team will then carry those messages — and 1,000 Comfort Cubs — from San Diego to New York to personally place them into the hands of 9/11 family members.
To donate to The Comfort Cub or purchase a cub, please go to their website.
Watch KUSI’s full interview with The Comfort Cub founder Marcella Johnson in the video above.
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