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Do not waste time thinking about what you could have done differently. Keep your eyes on the road ahead and do it differently now.       - Karen Salmansohn Daniel & Hannah Snipes / Pexels I can’t change the fact that I went off my medication twice, which led to two of my psychotic breaks. I had my reasons, including an intrusive side effect and a lack of initial evidence if I needed the medication. Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like without my psychotic breaks. I would have never had to be cognitively damaged and heal. I would have never had to go through terrifying delusions complete with auditory and visual hallucinations that made them a hundred times worse. I think about all the pain I went through but also how it impacted those around me. I think about all the embarrassment I went through too, where I wasn’t even sure what my future would look like, and I felt utterly hopeless. However, I did learn from my mistakes and have decided to use medication for life. Emotional and cognitive recovery are gradual processes that take infinite patience, and while I have reached where I think I always wanted to go in life, I haven’t forgotten my life lessons based on mistakes. Every night when I take my medicine, it is an affirmation that I don’t have to suffer like I did ever again. It feels like an act of empowerment. I don’t have to focus on the past because I love where I currently am. It’s much easier to focus on the present and not dwell in what-ifs if you embrace your current life. While my life would have been so much easier and less painful had I never gone off my antipsychotic, I have to realize that had not everything happened, exactly how it happened down to the day, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. And where I am right now, I dare say, makes everything I went through start to make sense somehow.

True navigation begins in the human heart. It’s the most important map of all. Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey, National Geographic Fellow   Finding Yourself in the Darkness. Cottonbro / Pexels My experiences with psychosis left me in an emotional and spiritual wilderness. A wilderness where I was lost and had no idea how to find my way out. Like I have said in a webinar with NAMI North Carolina, when my mind failed me, my heart had to grow. Just like a blind person can acquire sharper hearing, I had to feel my way through things instead of thinking my way through things. I learned how to listen to my heart more and understand what really matters in life. I learned to follow my heart to find my way out of pain, hopelessness, and shame, where my strengthened heart afforded me the patience to hold out for a better day.   I had always rehashed analytical thinking in my life that got me nowhere, but my psychotic breaks forced me in a new direction that was ultimately for my benefit. When I was reduced to so little, the one thing I could always choose is love as my guiding light. I could always choose to love myself in a way that was not measured by external markers of success. I could always appreciate my own humanity. I could choose to love me even when I didn’t know if I had a future or not, and I realized that I could always choose goodwill towards others instead of bitterness and jealousy.   The only way my heart could navigate me out of my situation is to hear what my heart told me it wants, and that was meaning. My heart told me that I wanted to help others, and so I obeyed. I also realized through listening to my heart that positive thoughts and attitudes are more powerful than anger, unforgiveness, shame, blame, and a negative attitude. I had thought if I stayed angry, I was telling the universe it was not okay what I have gone through, but I realized the ultimate defiance to what I went through is to choose positivity.   Positivity stems from the heart, and the only way out of darkness is to ignite a flame. The ultimate way to start your navigation out of emotional pain, hopelessness, and uncertainty is to choose compassion and unlimited acceptance for yourself in your current condition and situation, which are manifestations of love. No matter where you are in your journey, your human existence and the love inside of you is immeasurably and uniquely valuable.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. - Emily Dickinson Living a Life with True Meaning. Photo credit: David Reche / Pexels The one thing that kept me alive during my darkest times was prayer. I prayed because I still recognized my authentic voice and words when I did so, more so than in everyday interactions with other people. I could hear my true self. My most common prayer was, “Lord, if I make it through this, I just pray that everything I have been through will not be in vain.” I had to have a meaning to want to live and keep going. No money, no status, no achievement was worth fighting for enough, other than having meaning assigned to what I went through. I just couldn’t bear to go through everything I did randomly and for no good reason. Aside from the fact that I did heal, I did go on to have the things in life that were important to me (marriage, parenthood, and professional life) that still did not satisfy the prayer that kept me alive and sustained me in my deepest times of pain. I realize my meaning is to do what I can so others who go through what I did will have more resources than I did on emotional recovery from psychosis. I want to make others’ journeys better than my own, and then it is all worth it to me. And to echo Emily Dickinson, I’ve always said that if I can just make one person’s life better than mine was, that is my goal. With my blog and speaking opportunities, I really focus on the individual, even if I just change one person’s mindset or help with one person’s wellbeing through every endeavor.