When you are diagnosed with a mental illness it can feel like your entire life has collapsed. You fight to pick up the pieces only to have them slip from your hands.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of putting my mental health recovery first? "Just Do It!" Yes, that horrible Nike campaign.

I am twenty-seven years old as I write these words. I own my own home and I have a dog I adore. I cook and I clean and I talk to my family on a regular basis.

I try not to ask myself "Will I stay well?" too often. But it sort of lurks in the back of my psyche until, finally, I am confronted with it. That's part of living with a mental illness--whether it is chronic or in passing--and it's tough. Really tough. But what about before you were properly diagnosed?

I  have an appointment with My Psychiatrist today. In exactly six hours and forty minutes. Well, six hours and forty-two minutes to be exact. I know things like this. I have not seen her in a month. She was on vacation. She told me she would be riding camel's--I'm  serious--on her vacation.

I sincerely hope you have not ever considered this. But you probably have. At some point, in our journey to recovery, we have probably felt like we need to apologize for our behavior.

Confidence and mental illness? Confidence and mental illness...confidence and, you got it, mental illness. I'm trying the phrase on. It feels a little weird.

I'm not sure, are you? Ask yourself the loaded question: "I have a mental illness. Am I really sick?" When I ask myself this question my mind conjures up this: "No, sometimes life just gets a bit tough, but doesn't it for us all?" And then my inner psyche rambles on about how the disease of mental illness, the 'sick' part of it, is nothing like, say, a broken leg or bout of pneumonia. But that's not the point.

This is not, in any way, a political statement but--YES, we can! Of course we can accomplish goals when living with a mental illness! Why not? We have brains that work and bodies that move. But accomplishing, or even setting goals when you live with a mental illness can be difficult. It can be difficult when we don't feel great. But we can turn this difficulty into a positive--yes--a positive experience!

That might seem like an oxymoron, and maybe it is, on some level. I'm going to use the example of depression because it is something everyone experiences. Whether you have a mental illness or not, depression is part of the human condition.