Long Time, addition

Also:

One more thing I forgot to add! I presented about the Many Faces One Voice project in June at the 1st Annual Peer Specialist Conference "Recovery Hope & Healing: Living Longer - Living Stronger." The presentation was very well received. As part of this, I developed a resource list which added some links about Storytelling and Recovery:

• “I think that my recovery began the moment I dared look back on my life. Until then, there had been only one official story. An essential part of recovery is to look back at what has happened to you and to make your own story about it. In fact, you rewrite your history such that it suits you. You claim right of ownership over your own expe­riences. What is important is that you and no one else, give meaning to what has happened.” -http://akmhcweb.org/recovery/LifeAfterPsychiatry.htm\


• "…everyone has a victim narrative, and you need to tell it and know you’ve been heard before you can move on to becoming a survivor or hero. Victim narratives are not helpful if you never move on from narrating them; if you remain permanently stuck in the victim’s role.”-From the blog A Storied Career http://tinyurl.com/storycareer


• Northern CMH Photobiography Project – DVD: To See What I See: The Stigma of Mental Illness http://tinyurl.com/toseewhatIsee


• Confessions of a non-compliant patient - By Judi Chamberlin http://www.power2u.org/articles/recovery/confessions.html


• Recovery Stories from the National Empowerment Center: http://tinyurl.com/power2ustories


• The Potential Role of Life-Writing Therapy in Facilitating ‘Recovery’ for Those with Mental Illness -http://tinyurl.com/n2ve8c


• Nonprofit storytelling—beware of impact stories that don’t link to public policy - http://tinyurl.com/nonprofitstorytelling

Long Time!

I realize good intentions aside, this is the first update in a quite a while! Not too much going on but the project is still happening, slower without the grant funding. Here's just a quick summary of recent activity:

• Melinda Haus Johnson, Theresa Squires, Laura Hall and I presented at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit this July. The title was "Our Pride, Your Pity" and was about changing how people with disabilities are portrayed the media. Both Melinda and Laura showed their stories as part of this presentation.
• I started a class at Community Connections in Benton Harbor this summer. It looks like we'll be finishing at least 3 stories over the next few weeks.
• We've been providing some consultation and technical assistance to staff at SAIL in Marquette as part of their mini grant from the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council to the Alger Marquette RICC. I am returning in the next month or so to help them get videos posted on the web and talk about ways to help people use their videos in advocacy efforts.
  
• We had some discussions with a group in the Traverse City area about helping with a class for people to tell stories about recovery from mental illness but the funding was a barrier here (so far).
  

So a quick update, hope to get more videos posted soon!