Please note: Although this story is very personal to me, I am also using it as a way to introduce the Western Mass Recovery Learning Community to the readership of the Foundation for Excellence website, so please be sure to read to the end to learn more about our efforts and need for support!
I am someone who has been given at least six psychiatric diagnoses. (And, that’s just while I was still listening! Perhaps I’ve been given more in absentia, as seems prone to happen at times…) In the Western Mass Recovery Learning Community (RLC) – of which I have been a part since its conception in 2007 – sometimes that seems like an embarrassingly low number; Like I haven’t done quite enough to earn my ‘street cred.’ So many people have far more intense stories of human suffering, trauma and resultant psychiatric interventions than I. Alas, for better or worse, in the broader world, my six are certainly enough to qualify me as ‘other.’
Fortunately for my psyche, my spirit, my children and my community: Of the six, I claim none.
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