Citizen Michael, the Five Rs, and Belonging*
Claire Bien
Responsibility was key to the very first act,
Of the rest of my life, and that is a fact.
When I was a tender thirty-seven,
I knew, no way, I’d get to heaven,
If I left my son on this planet earth,
With only his dad, when I’d given him birth.
I had a responsibility, to be Paul’s mom,
To clothe him, and feed him, and keep him from harm,
So I claimed my right to take care of my son,
By fighting those voices, and by golly I won!
And thanks to my family, to which I belong,
And the resources they gave me all along,
Of love and respect and patience for me,
I learned my true place, and role in family.
Those relationships built on love and respect,
They taught me when the voices were cruelly suspect
That I had a right to be fully myself,
So, I stood up to those voices, rejecting power and pelf.
Michael, you were key to the second act,
Of my coming out as a voice-hearing cat,
The writer in you saw the writer in me,
And suggested a new role for the whole world to see,
Of claiming my own voice as a woman full-grown,
Whose life and whose story deserve to be known,
To help other people see that they can,
With will and support, take a firm stand
‘Gainst all those cruel voices they hear in their heads,
That belong to the living, and sometimes the dead.
So you read, and you commented, and encouraged, “Keep on.”
And I wrote, and rewrote, and eventually it was done,
And published and launched at PRCH and elsewhere,
That book that has brought a soft spotlight’s glare,
On me, and my story, and the rest of my life.
And that’s where I’m now, and I’m truly most grateful,
For how you helped make sense of a life sometimes hateful,
Through writing, and reading, and more freely sharing,
To instill within me a clear path for caring,
By learning to love myself, and most folks in this world,
It is the true work of Citizenship unfurled.
Claire Bien, June 2023
*For Dr. Michael Rowe, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, on his retirement as Co-Director of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health
This poem was written for Dr. Michael Rowe, Co-Director of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, and developer of the Citizenship Framework, informed by his work as director of the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team in New Haven. The Five R’s of citizenship: rights, responsibilities, roles, resources, and relationships, form the foundation of life in a healthy society where the Five R’s are freely available to all citizens via public and social institutions and through people’s interactions with each other. ISPS-US was introduced to the Citizenship framework at the 2019 conference held in New Haven, with the theme: Psychosis, Citizenship, and Belonging: Forging Pathways toward Inclusion and Healing. You can learn more about the Citizenship framework by watching the video of the plenary panel on Citizenship. Plenary Panel: Citizenship and Psychosis: The 5 Rs, Belonging, and Advocacy
