Thanks for reading and commenting. This is a draft of a book I am working on regarding Special Messages. I have thirteen such posts under a category of this blog. Thank you for the advice regarding the title. The titles of these draft excerpts aren’t always as descriptive and carefully thought out as the essays and blog I write. These, I consider drafts.

My experiences were almost always negative too, though I heard few voices. I once thought that oranges were a gang symbol that were being used to threaten my life. I was on my bike in Fresno, and everywhere I turned there was an orange on the ground, leading me to believe I was being followed by a huge power. It wasn’t until I talked about it in group and had a person suggest that in Asia, oranges are a symbol of life, that I realized I could change my relationship with the oranges and learn to shoulder that which used to be a threat. Since, I have started to think of them more as a spiritual sign, whether they are used against me (which believe it or not, they have been by people savvy in the game) or whether they are used to support me by offering me vitamin C and life. I never intended to be a snitch and I honor that when I see an orange and I am no longer threatened. Sometimes an orange is just an orange and recovery has given me the freedom to view it spiritually.

As per the quote on stigma, I agree with it for the most part, but I still use the stigma word. For example, I have been experiment with using the “s” word “schizophrenia” in my titles. This was once a bad word for me that was all about discrimination and oppression. Now that I am temporarily safe, I use it on myself to make an effort to get at stigma in a backhanded way. I don’t think stigma has to be so damaging if we don’t let ourselves be victimized by it. I tend to promote more balanced ways of looking at things at this time in my life. With rhetorical issues like this I personally opt for balanced, non-extreme, non-victimized stances.

I also don’t think we should make recovery culture an elite thing that is encapsulated that you have to be in with. I think we should welcome all groups and work on inclusion rather than particularizing language or ideas. I think that gets into ego battles when what it’s really about is working together to include as may people as possible.

Unfortunately though I couldn’t view the article, though because I don’t have an app or something.

Thanks again Don

I experienced whispers. I never knew what they were saying, but intuited it was bad things about me. I do not consider a connection with anything spiritual in the sense that you describe.

I wonder what you think of this quote from Sera Davidow, founder of the W.Mass. Recovery Learning Community, about stigma?
“I don’t use language like ‘stigma.’ I talk about prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, because that’s really what it is in the end.”
From an interview by The Sun.
http://thesun.uberflip.com/t/49818-digital-edition.

Also, could you please tell me from what book this excerpt of Chapter 17 was?
Could it be your memoir? The article reads very differently from what I remember reading in tone and content.
Have you published some other book?
You might want to make this more clear in this article, too.

Thanks, Clyde