An experience

A journey
a pioneered pathway of self
My story a pathway of it’s own discovery without tertiary education. My history and it's
experience with the mental health system. Going through a process whereby there was no
hope - and certainly no discussion around Recovery, I clung to my inner-sense of knowing
that this-life-time had to have some type of purpose I just had to understand and accept
self-acknowledgement of existence without falteration & become my own advocate.

After hospitalization I stayed a recluse for some time - leaving the house only to take my
children to school and collect them once again. To find my purpose I knew I had to
challenge myself, which I continue to do and make adjustments to understand this way of
being is who I am as the process of my life, my decisions as a resultant of now.

I am at a point now where I am thinking. If people have an understanding that Recovery

can exist - then what is beyond Recovery?

I no longer take any medication, smoke or take drugs. I cannot say I am recovered as it
appears incongruent with the word itself which infers Recovery as something one gets over
when actually Recovery is something one goes through as an ongoing process human’s have
to understand as a awareness transference named - life.

How do we expect people to recover? What does acknowledgement look like in that which
has been reached? and why should this be the perception limit when I am evidence to
suggest difference?

Hope for individuals in hospitals is slim because there is little to suggest that there is
anything beyond Recovery & much less to suggest academics have belief - the word itself
seems dead-ending. I have aimed to be my own evidence; if I am recovered what am I
now? and if there would be a term what other motivating adverb in self-development can
be aspired too - so that others (like me) can have re-staged self-development that goes
beyond Recovery - or; is it just called "beyond Recovery"?

Does one ever Recover from mental illness? I have uncovered a word to discover that
means little less than nothing more than determination, will-power to continually activate
sustainable mind-power to service both. Will I become unwell again? no - why? because I
have learned that life is a process of mindful negotiated adjustments. Capabilities to
negotiate moments are the ability to be; the student the teacher and the master; or the
Consumer the Carer and the Advocate.

I am assisting the facilitation of others to explore their experience - however, to be

transparent with my peers in a sector that pays very little value on experiencial knowledge;
what have I become? A fraud in a system that pawns the validity of human ascension as a
past formed mind that doesn’t want to accept any different?

I am interested to explore opinions because it's about time society and it’s citizens had a
benchmark to build their self-maturement on.

Identifying as a Consumer gives me the right to work in the workforce of wherever that
maybe; however, Peer Development in the Mental Health Sector needs input but now
makes me feel as though I have outgrown rights to identify as that and I share my being as
unlimited by definition.
I am a Consumer as a Carer in balance as one. The past has come through me - Now
what?

Sharon Stocker – 20 November 2010