‘For a long time, I believed that Psychiatry or Death were the only solutions to my life.
As I sit here in this coffee shop, the sun’s light coming in to touch my cheek through the vines of the hanging plant in the window, Andrew Bird in my ears, and a glass jar of bright flowers in front of me, I know this:
My life is not a problem to be solved, even in its darkest moments. My struggles and suffering cannot be reduced to a label, or “treated” with a bottle of pills — they are evidence of my humanness, of my connection to the world around me. I was always whole — I was never broken — and the peace I sought in psychiatrists’ gazes and psychiatric evaluations and the sound of double doors locking me away from myself was all a carefully constructed illusion that I, in desperation, bought into, believing it was my Truth.
This, to me, is psychiatric liberation: the reclaiming of what it means to be human, madness and struggle and fear and joy and all, and the letting go of the story that one’s life is a broken thing to be fixed, a problem to be solved, or anything other than whole and beautifully human.’
Laura Delano
We want to thank Laura for her permission to share this post here.
Laura has a great Facebook page with lots of useful and interesting ‘public’ posts, links and resource material on it:-
She is a writer, editor and consultant for ‘Mad in America’, which brings what we see as person-centred and holistic viewpoints to its work in the fields of science, psychiatry and community:-
and here is another useful site:-
Palace Gate Counselling Service, Exeter
Palace Gate Counselling Service Blog 