Below is a little explanatory poster about our Pride Day, which is traditionally held to coincide with Bastille Day, the French celebration.

For us it is our day of celebration and remembrance, a day we reflect on our joint struggle, our history and those who came before us.

July 14th, Bastille Day, was a day the walls of a fortified political prison came down.
Did you know that among those liberated were people with mental illness labels?

That’s one reason, for decades Bastille Day has been celebrated as our Pride Day, symbolising the beginning of the move out of institutional care into lives of our own.

What’s to feel proud about? People Don’t say they are proud of illnesses, do they!
I was once asked tearfully by a young person whose daily life and immediate future was going in a way very different from what they had expected and different than other young people, ‘What am I going to do?”
They’d heard all about recovery, treatment, peer support, their rights but nothing seemed to help, it seemed like their life just wasn’t theirs anymore.
All I had left was to explain an American term for people like us. They call us ‘Survivors.’ Because that’s what people like us do; survive.

And this young person, whose life felt completely out of their control, took a breath, composed themself, gave a firm nod and said ‘Yes.’
That’s one of the things that makes me proud, to be in the same mob as brave, strong, wild people like that, to count them as my ‘brothers and sisters, even those I’ve never met before’ as a veteran Consumer Consultant put it to me once.
What makes you Proud?

Happy Pride Day comrades*

Bill

*Anyone fighting the same fight, on the same side, in the same foxhole as me is my comrade, so Stay Strong all.