If you (or someone you love) has been labeled "mentally ill", odds are one or more of the following is true:
1. You aren't getting what you need or are getting
a hell of a lot of what you *don't* need (be it emotional, physical, mental, social, environmental, sensory, spiritual, etc.).
2. Something big and painful has happened to you-- or slowly, over
time, a series of seemingly small "somethings" have accumulated to such a
degree that you've crossed the tipping point.
3. 'Boxes',
'labels', 'definition', 'rules', 'authority', 'convention',
'compliance', and 'normal' are all words that make you cringe. You find
yourself wanting to shout out "NO!" pretty much every day.
4.
You are trapped in a life situation or circumstance that doesn't feel
authentic, meaningful, or purposeful to you, or aligned with who you
really are.
5. You don't know who you really are, and feel hopelessly lost.
6(a). You are awake to the reality of the current social, economic, and
political order, but it seems like everyone else around you is fast
asleep.
6(b). You see or feel unjust, corrupt, greedy power in
seemingly every direction you turn, and don't know how the hell you can
possibly survive participating in it, or where else you could go.
7. You feel lonely, disconnected, or alienated from your fellows.
8. You feel-- fuckin' FEEL-- the world and everything in it and it is
so much, so big, so overwhelmingly, acutely raw all or much of the time
that you don't know what to do with the experience...
Far from
signs of "sickness", these are manifestations of being fully alive and
in touch with oneself and with the state of the world.
It's time
we reclaim our pain and struggle and anger and alienation and fear and
loss and despair, and transform the society we live in.
Who's with me?
