Grateful I was that a person paid for my costly ticket to a mental health non-profit’s Gala. Maurice Bernard was the keynote speaker and Courageous Voice award recipient. He is the actor who plays Sonny on General Hospital TV show.
Bernard told attendees that he had 3 mental breakdowns. That you recover by taking medication and using therapy. The actor hosts the podcast State of Mind. He wrote the best-selling book Nothing General About It.
Bernard said to us that fans would write letters to him telling him they not longer felt like they were alone in what they were going through. Being vocal about taking medication and achieving the pinnacle of success in show business gives peers ammunition for shooting for recovery.
The fact is not everyone who takes pills is going to become famous on TV. Even if you and I didn’t scale the heights in a career or otherwise in society this doesn’t matter. We are gorgeous simply because we exist.
Hearing Maurice Bernard talk about his recovery in honest detail inspired and encouraged me to keep championing recovery for everyone in whatever guise recovery comes to a person as.
Bake cakes. Sing in a choir. Ride a skateboard. It’s all good.
Our diagnosis does not define us. Nor should our job title salary or relationship status with a partner.
Traditional markers of success aren’t what counts. What matters more is that we can find one thing each day to do that gives us joy. That we can be happy and healthy living our lives.
And healthy doesn’t mean a fit illness-free 105 pound body. Healthy is having what I call “functional fitness”:
Being able to cope with whatever stress comes into our lives. The ability to function in the world. Reaching out for help when you can’t go it alone anymore.
It takes a Village. It really does.
The mental health world is the real world. The world outside I don’t know what that world is where people hate judge and stereotype each other.
In that world an ex-Marine ends the lift of a person like Jordan Neely who is not a subdued White person.
We cannot be afraid to live our lives going about our recovery. We’re doing the best we can with what we were given.
Bernard ended his acceptance speech with this: “Your suffering makes you interesting.”
Oh how society would be different if it were fashionable to be living in recovery.
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