I’m an Author Advocate and Visionary.

I believe in my vision of “Recovery for Everyone.”

Recovery is not and cannot be a one-size-fits-all proposition.

Today I realized the dilemma I face in championing recovery for everyone:

Not everyone WANTS to recover. I found this out on Monday.

It seems hard to believe – yet I have met a person who doesn’t want to recover.

If you’re basing “recovery” on becoming a CEO like a friend of mine did you’re setting yourself up for an impossible standard.

The point of recovery is not to achieve status in the world with a traditionally accepted job or relationship or lifestyle.

Rather the goal if you ask me is: “To Thine Own Self Be True.”

Recovery is possible when you first like yourself and are willing to go down your own path to get to where you want to be.

If you ask me it’s a realistic not just noble goal to want to do a little better and be a little better every day.

I will always get flak. It’s because I’m a Visionary who dares think recovery is possible.

What I know to be true–that having your own version of a full and robust life in recovery is possible–is often not accepted in the mainstream. My critics don’t accept this view of what’s possible.

Wanting or expecting to become a CEO isn’t in the cards for every one of us.

Yet whatever our individual limitations are we can and should develop “work-arounds” to make our lives as happy and healthy as they can be.

I will go to my grave championing that getting the right treatment right away results in a better outcome.

Getting the right treatment right away has the potential to halt or totally stop disability in its trajectory.

Need I say more?

Yet regardless of the degree of disability that any of us face:

I say giving up hope is a mistake.

I’ll talk more about getting the right treatment right away in the next blog entry.