ABSTRACT
Recovery has become the ‘in’ word of psychiatric practice. As a long-time user of the mental health system I find the word ambiguous in its resonance and meaning. The importance of understanding that ‘nothing ever stays the same’ is, I believe, a given. We who are service users can rebuild our lives, defined by us in terms of quality. More so, you (the reader) and I (the service user) are, from birth to death, in a constant process of ‘recovery’. The complexity of early relationships provides in itself much for some of us to recover from. Add to that the difficult adolescent voyage towards selfidentity and the uncertainty of adult life and it could be asked of anyone reading this chapter, has she recovered? Recovery is not a destination, but the journeying task of making sense of life itself, and I ask the reader to accept the universality of the task. We are all in recovery. There are no patients to seek recovery for, no nurses to map the waterways and guide the boats on the voyage. We are all fellow wayfarers, who can share experiences and
insights from our own lives, thereby facilitating each other’s progress.
