'The Power of Procovery in Healing Mental Illness: Just Start Anywhere'
From a book by Kathleen Crowley

Procovery: attaining a productive and fulfilling life regardless of the level of health assumed attainable; versus recovery, returning to a prior state of health.


Sometimes healing has little to do with health; sometimes recovery in the traditional sense is not an option; and often we need to rewrite the scripts of our lives and reach forward to the largely unknown rather than backward to the familiar.

The fundamental focus of procovery is one of moving forward when you can no longer move back, of letting go of what was and rebuilding new dreams. Of accepting the realities of illness while focusing on life. Procovery offers individuals diagnosed with serious or chronic disorders an approach to attaining a productive and fulfilling life, regardless of the level of health assumed attainable.

Being able to effect your procovery doesn’t mean you caused your illness. It doesn’t mean that you were never ill in the first place. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re symptom free.

While procovery may result in the elimination of illness, this is not the focus. The focus of procovery is instead on the broader and more critical process of healing, of building life. That is, to master symptoms without necessarily eliminating them, and overcome illness without necessarily curing it.

There is a great deal of talk about stigma, meaning negative judgments and discrimination by others. But the most powerful and destructive stigma of all is inner stigma. People diagnosed with severe or chronic illness often come to see themselves as damaged merchandise, not as strong, or deserving, or likely to succeed as others. Individuals can significantly move toward procovery by addressing inner stigma first. It is often easier to have an impact on yourself than on others, and helping yourself strengthens you to impact others.

Illness can loom so deadening, so debilitating, so destructive that we assume it requires something strong, powerful, and exceptional to beat it. Self-care may seem too anecdotal, too incidental to have an impact. But in fact self-care makes use of the most powerful medicine of all the active participation of the individual.

Read more on the subject

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"One cannot get through life without pain. . . . What we can do is choose how
to use the pain life presents to us."
(Bernie Siegel, M.D.)



"We can do more with less by doing differently."
(Kathleen Crowley)



"It is hopelessness, even more than pain, that crushes the soul."
(William Styron)



"There are things which must cause you to lose your reason, or you have
none to lose."
(Gotthold Ephraim Lessing)



"My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon."
(Taoist saying)



Cherishing Being Alive


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