TANGIBLE INTANGIBILITIES
Sera Davidow is a mother, an advocate, an activist and a filmmaker. She devotes much of her time to the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community (www.westernmassrlc.org), which includes Afiya (www.afiyahouse.org), the 13th Peer Respite in the United States. She is also an active part of Hearing Voices USA (www.hearingvoicesusa.org) and Occupy the Judge Rotenberg Center (www.occupyjrc.org), amongst a variety of other projects.
Sera herself entered the mental health system as a teenager and cites “non-compliance” as a part of what saved her from a very different path through life that surely would not have included the freedom she now enjoys from all psychiatric labels and medications. Here, she writes to share her thoughts on how the language we choose and our apparent need to concretize the inherently complex is leading to violations of rights and humanity on a daily basis.