here is something I wrote for someone from the mental health system who asked me to write about dignity:

On Dignity

Dignity to me rests on two pillars: risk and connection.  Without being allowed the dignity to risk everything I hold dear to grow, growth will be impossible and, because of this, my inevitable death, meaningless, except for as a statistic of that which was consumed by the disease of others’ expectations.  Risk, as well as individuals, do not exist in a vacuum, however, as our economic system would want us to believe, and so a community and its land is necessary for risk to not only exist as safely as possible, but also for the exercise of it to be meaningful.  Dignified connection (some would use the term support) does not force or coerce.  It validates, encourages, discusses and respects autonomy and diversity.  It is there to help heal the wounds when we fall and asks the same of us.  In a community of this kind, individuals are not afraid to express their truth, the return home to truth once lost becomes shorter and hazardous risk is minimized.  Dignity of this sort cannot exist in our present economic and political environment and neither, therefore, can a widespread phenomenon of “mental health”.  Reform and replacement of the system as well as a reclaiming of what is and has been ours since birth---our right and desire to love and be loved---are the three strategies needed to move towards a model of true dignity.

Whatever strategies we employ to create a better world for one another, I believe that as long as we are moving away from administrative and majority rule to consensus, away from fee for service and charity to shared resources and work, away from professional-consumer notions of knowledge disbursement and ownership towards information sharing and transparency, away from quick fixes towards prevention and away from segregation towards strength in diversity, we are moving towards a society that can provide and validate dignity for the individual and keep all of us connected with a sustainable natural world in which we can take risks with a sound mind and body and connect with our neighbors without risking our sanity so easily.  Nature remains a space of connection and risk, growth and death, always together; respecting this will help us to believe that embracing the dignity of risk and connection for ourselves works because we remain natural beings.  We cannot connect with one another and our natural environment without risking pain and death and we cannot truly risk if there is not a connection to lose.

Amy Upham

August 1, 2007