The music of my youth. I kinda went crazy with Prince. For a brief while I thought I was going to marry him…yeah. He’s remained a favorite artist and all these years later I listen to his music to access the crazy that was emerging in my youth. The emerging crazy that wasn’t met by anyone who could help me find my way through. Still, all these years later, I have found my way through the crazy and I celebrate this man, Prince, today for having been an intricate and important part of my journey. His work continues to inspire me and, like I said, helps give access to those parts of the psyche that were emerging all those years ago but were violently shut down with drugs and institutionalization. I never gave up on the good that was emerging in all that confusion that was labeled and pathologized by psychiatry. I was trying to emerge from the ugly conditioned toxicity of our society. And yeah, that’s hard work, especially for traumatized sensitives which, if we’ve been labeled, drugged and institutionalized by psychiatry, we likely are. Crazy is a necessity if one is to become free. We need to provide safe places for folks to move through it. It is not what psychiatry tells us it is. Not at all.
I celebrate the crazy within me because it’s been in embracing that — that I have been able to come to a place of knowing my own mind and being. It’s been a long hard journey. I advocate for new ways of supporting those of us who are trying to emerge and become ourselves…that no one need go through what I’ve had to go through ever again. (too many still are these days…but we’re finding one another and helping one another heal…)
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Thank you– wonderful to hear about the peer respite.
I loved, loved, loved Prince and “Let’s Go Crazy” too; snuck out of school to see “Purple Rain.” fyi, a person who got off psychodrugs (although still dealing with residuals) has spearheaded and succeeded in getting King Co Washington (Seattle) to allot a budget for Community Peer Respite (people who are having a mental emergency can go to a safe house with peers/counselors but NO DRUGS). Very inspired that this is being organized and funded. Thanks for what you do, Monica.