Bari Tessler quotes Jack Kornfield in her book The Art of Money. A gem like this justifies buying her book. I installed in on my iPad.

This quote sums up a great way to think about recovery:

“The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness: it is here in the present. It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents to us with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart.”

Jack Kornfield

Thinking of recovery in this way is a way to take back our power over our circumstances. Our pain doesn’t have to last forever.

Our lives can be hard not because we have an illness–they can be hard simply because they’re not easy. This often has nothing to do with the illness.

I will go to my grave crediting my mother’s one quick action to get me the right help within 24 hours as the number-one reason I recovered. Today more than ever when a person gets the right help right away there can be an ed after the word recover.

Thinking about recovery as a process and a way of living our lives that we can honor precisely with a “wise, respectful, and kindly heart” is the way to go now if you ask me.

I’m skeptical when I see links in my Google Alerts for schizophrenia information when the tag line is “Rachel (or whoever it is) talks about what it’s like to have schizophrenia.”

That is totally misleading. The tag line should read: “Rachel talks about what it’s like FOR HER to have schizophrenia.”

It would be unhelpful and disingenuous for me to claim that my experience is the mirror of what everyone’s experience is like.

Instead I’m pulled to talk about my experiences as a springboard for showing readers that with their own kind of creativity and resourcefulness they can come up with their own path in their wellness journey.

That’s the contention that I make that is revolutionary: stating it thus: that recovery is a wellness journey. At least it has been for me and I think too that others can achieve their own version of well.

This is why I keep the blog: because for the last 12 years I’ve so strongly believed in my vision that people can recover and flourish and live life well and whole after they have a breakdown.

Your version of well is not going to be the same as mine and mine is not going to be the same as another person’s. That’s what’s beautiful about living here on earth: we’re like snowflakes – no two of us is totally alike.

We share things in common yes we do. Yet I’m always interested in the uniqueness of each person I meet or interact with. That is a precious gift: the gift of the spirit of a person that each of us was given when we were born.

I’ll end here by saying it’s high time to think about recovery as yes a spiritual practice as well as a lifestyle.

There’s no shame in living life in recovery.