Radical Mental Health for Liberation and Love: UU Sunday service January 30, 2022
Channel: Laura-Marie Strawberry Nopales
Date: 13/02/2022

Radical mental health is about being unconditionally valid.  Crazy is a normal variation of people.  We all belong at the table of humanity.  Anyone can have big feelings and needs, and that's an ok way to be.

Radical mental health is also about compassion, seeing a person as a person, and respecting the Mystery.  It's joyful to have choices.  We're pro-choice about medication, and there's a spectrum of engagement with mainstream medicine, from complete compliance to complete avoidance.

Radical mental health is also about personal empowerment, not just doing what doctor says.  I’m in charge of my body and life.

It's about community.  Friends make the best medicine.  We create pockets of happiness, and the happiness reverberates out.  We build skills together, then bring those skills with us wherever we go.

It's about building long-term well-being, not being saved at last minute dramatically.  It's one tool in my well-being toolbox.  I'm safer with 20 tools rather than two.  

There's a DIY, anarchist motivation, not waiting for someone else, but seeing a need to love one another and doing that.

We're all the experts of ourselves.  The power dynamic in radical mental health is happier and safer than in a doctor's office or hospital.  The power is shared, and there are no mandated reporters, so we can tell the truth without fear of imprisonment.

Radical mental health as we do in here in Las Vegas is free, no red tape, and much easier than layers of requirements, forms, money, or proving anything.

Together we resist the myth of needing experts for suicide prevention.  We’re all helping each other all the time.  A psychiatrist never saved me, but love has saved me.

I don't consider myself disabled by schizoaffective disorder: I'm disabled by capitalism, norms, and psychiatry.  Society failed to protect me and nurture me into a functional paid worker.  I’m not wrong that I can’t work--the world is wrong to require unreasonable consistency from me, after not caring for me.

I gave this sermon on radical mental health for liberation and love.  Thank you for helping to create a culture where we’re unconditionally valid and love is more important than money.  Let's respect one another as brilliant miracles who can make choices.  Let's use our dangerous gifts for learning and connection.  
--Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales