Mourning, loss and vision

Does the mourning ever end? Of course not silly, one loses more and more before the end of life. Mourning and loss are the natural order of things.

I suffered from delusional optimism for many years in order to survive. There is no shame in that and I did it elegantly at times.  Now as it becomes clear my body will remain a crippled mess I need to come to terms with that. One does need to mourn fantasy too. Perhaps in the end fantasy is all people are ever really mourning.

We never know the future and so everyone with dreams and goals that have distinct endings are in some way delusional. Clinging to ideas about the future is problematic. Human beings operate “successfully” largely in delusion in our current society. We are killing our planet and all manner of chaos is happening and most of us operate as though none of it is happening. It’s a coping skill. It may kill us but in the short run it’s helpful.  It’s just the way it is among human beings at this time. We can continue to work on becoming aware so that this out of control train doesn’t go off the rails and we also have to deal with the fact that it is out of control and going off the rails. We can work on becoming the eye of the storm. Calmness in the madness.

After clinging to the hope that I would get physically better…with good reason really, for a long while, now it makes no sense to continue with that frame for myself.

And it’s true, that optimism helped others with similar injuries get healing and thrive again…it worked…it also helped me keep going and again, all in all, that strikes me as a good thing. And, again, for better or worse, it’s the way human beings function. That it wasn’t ultimately true for me is how it worked out for me. It was what I did and it was highly functional. It wasn’t really wrong or right. It was what it was.

” Mourning is the emotional labor of acceptance.”   Those are words from a friend on twitter (@shrinkthinks) . And yes, it is. So now my job is to go deeper into surrender and acceptance because there is only that. In the end we all lose more and more and more until our lives too are gone. Poof! All over.  This, again, is the natural order of things.

What I have advocated for largely doesn’t exist yet. There are no truly humane systems of care for those labeled by psychiatry.   Not for me and not for many whom I’ve advocated for…it’s better to get care elsewhere for many of us. Anywhere else. In bits and pieces some of us put things together for ourselves but mostly we are seeding consciousness that what is really needed might be created.  That anyone regardless of social standing, economic position or diagnosis might get what they need.  And to be clear, we often know what is needed for ourselves and simply are not be able to find it now because there is no infrastructure to make what we need materialize in our lives. My work has been largely vision based that it might eventually be created. That people might, one day, no longer be gravely harmed by psychiatry. We can bring it into being but when or if that might happen is not in any single individuals hands.

Now, too, there are others who are in a better position to continue the work I and many others like me have started. There are many wonderful young people finding their way (and often avoiding the drugging and harm that I and others of previous generations were not able to avoid)  I know that I and others doing this work have contributed to making that possible. We have held a vision of what might one day be and there is evidence that the seeds of those visions are growing.

This will aways be in my heart: that people will be offered meaningful options to toxic psychiatry and that a kaleidoscopic infrastructure of care will rise up as a result of our holding this vision and passing it on. Multiple options are offered that change as people grow and change. Healing is not stagnant…what we need changes daily and by the minute. That the system will be fluid and alive, growing and changing just like those who need healing within it. That the “system” will actually be the village. Real egalitarian community…a world in which every human being is equal to every other human being.

I don’t know what the future will bring but I am here now writing what is arising for me just as I’ve done for the last decade. That we might heal even as we perhaps are not well. That’s the way it is.

and a truth remains:

Life is crazy good even when it’s horribly awful. I’ve been gravely ill for over a decade. I’m not gonna gloss that over anymore. My life is insanely difficult and that difficulty is mostly invisible to pretty much everyone but my partner. That is hard to deal with quite often…it never lets up and I thought, for a long time, that someday I’d be better and it wouldn’t matter anymore. That hasn’t happened so I’m changing gears. Mourning is my practice now. Mourning everything, facing death and seeing what’s next. The one thing that is guaranteed is that everything changes and so this will to. This is only now in this moment. I do not know what the next moment will bring. Ever.

***

Like splinters in one’s soul – other people’s beliefs, feelings, emotions and trauma…Healing is the cleansing off all of the collective scum to pure awareness. Wash off the samsara….drop the stories…  (healing happens even if your body is disabled … healing happens regardless of the condition of our bodies … healing happens until we die)

***

Psych drugs cause disability (Iatrogenic Injury) — more here and here and here

And also see book Anatomy of an Epidemic

• Professional denial is a form of retraumatization
  When Psychiatry Retraumatizes
  Retaining agency is not resistance to treatment…it is in fact a sign of health
• Healing as opposed to curing
•  that mourning and acceptance is the way of life.  See: What if grief is the natural order of things?
• Everything Matters

***

about Comments: Sharing your experience is welcome. Advice, on the other hand, is not. If you have some burning advice to give please share it somewhere else. In the circles I engage and flow in we exchange our experience because we never know what is right for someone else. In this way we learn from one another and can, without pressure, take or leave whatever we hear while listening and loving and respecting the complexity and differences of others and ourselves.  I will shut them down when I get tired which may or may not have anything to do with their content. I have a lot of things to tend to in my life and I’m practicing balance.***

For a multitude of ideas about how to create a life filled with safe alternatives to psychiatric drugs visit the drop-down menus at the top of this page or scroll down the homepage for more recent postings. 

Support Everything Matters: Beyond Meds. Make a donation with PayPal or Enter Amazon via a link from this blog and do the shopping you’d be doing anyway. No need to purchase the book the link takes you to. Thank you!