Procovery Certificate of Empowerment

By: Kathleen Crowley*

As bearer of this certificate you are no longer required to depend on the advice of experts. You may step back and view the entire world—not just your home, neighborhood or town, but the whole Earth—as a Procovery-oriented learning experience, a laboratory containing medicines, therapies, strategies, sources of support, ways to heal and to grow, and ideas without end. Although collections of these treasures have been located in hospitals and clinics for your convenience, they are to be found in prayer, bubble baths, animals, sunsets, snowfall, romance, music, art, mathematics, physics, engineering, foods, and everywhere else, too.

This authorizes you to experiment; to make mistakes; to try new things and to “backslide”; to passionately embrace that which energizes, inspires and heals you, no matter how “outside” of the medical model it may be; and to accept that you are the world’s greatest authority on you.

You are entitled to build and create new dreams, and view them as a force as powerful as medicine.

This authorizes you to trust that the path to healing is possible for all individuals; that healing a life can heal an illness; that there are infinite ways to initiate and promote healing no matter how grave the illness and no matter how serious the limitations of systems and symptoms; and that hope is a life force in and of itself. To trust that there are as many paths to wellness as there are to illness and that supporting individual paths to healing will ultimately result in mass and lasting change not only in individuals but also in health care systems.
You have leave to Just Start Anywhere. Today.

Each person who reads and understands this is authorized to extend these privileges to others. Those who don't feel the need to obtain approval in order to experiment, to move toward healing, to think, or to do things they've never seen others do are exempt, as they didn't need permission in the first place.

* Adapted with gratitude from “Certificate of Empowerment” by Sandra Dodd
© Procovery Institute 1996-2007. Procovery and Just Start Anywhere are trademarks of Procovery Institute.