Hope Is Real!

Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives.  (Matthew 3:8) Last Tuesday, I spent the day in Macon taking a continuing education workshop on certified peer support ethics. The presenters kept reminding us of the Hippocratic oath, which begins with the famous phrase, “First, do no harm” and I kept wondering to myself, “Why doesn’t this apply to mental hospitals?”  It seemed to me that the staff at the last hospital I was in thought that as long as they weren’t hitting us, then they were being ethical, but there are other kinds of abuse other than simply physical.  Ignoring, gaslighting, coercion, calling people names, condescending tones, raised voices can all be a part of emotional abuse.  I consider chronic understaffing, poor training, and no deescalation skills as the breeding grounds for emotional, spiritual abuse and neglect. Now, not all hospitals are the same - a few mistakes everywhere is expected, but the last hospital I was in stood out - the c

They were so absorbed in their “God projects” that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling.  (The Message Bible, 325) The two writings below feel very special, almost sacred, to me.  They helped me and they helped my peers.   The first piece was when I was in a super angry, emotional state and the second piece was written when I was still partly sedated from the night before.  I’m amazed that my writing was still pretty good considering I wasn’t “in reality:” “I already am the person I want to be.  Just because there are areas for me to work on doesn’t mean that I am not already the person I want to be.  I am proud of myself because I am taking care of myself. I have been responsible with letting my work know where I am.  I resent the idea that I am not already a success in my own way.  My emotional outbursts may be extreme but they are a normal traumatic response to an abnor