I used to think recovery was this process where you followed the rules laid out by medical books, people like Freud or well-researched assessments. However, I have since come to realise that, like this spinning hoop, recovery is not straightforward; it's not a set of clear-cut approaches, and there is no one-size-fits-all.

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This piece reminds me of the cake decoration ‘hundreds and thousands’. It symbolises how I have come to understand recovery as multifaceted. This has enabled me to become more compassionate with myself and, with it, open to being curious, testing different spaces where I can be encouraged to become comfortably uncomfortable.

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I now try lots of different roads, wondering what lessons I can learn rather than pining over a destination even the Dalai Lama probably couldn't reach.