Reprinted from the The Ongoing Journey of Recovery: Recovery across the lifespan issue of Visions Journal, 2025, 20 (3), p. 4
As Managing Editor, this issue has been an exceptionally cathartic experience for me. From selecting our Guest Advisors to meeting with the editorial board and working with contributors, my understanding and definition of recovery was continuously challenged and its horizons broadened. The more that I reflected on my own experiences, listened to the stories of the ones around me and read academic literature, I’ve realized that recovery is ever-changing and ongoing. Recovery isn’t a well-defined endpoint or goalpost that can be marked against a standardized checklist in order to declare it as a success or something that has been achieved. It is a journey that once we embark on it, we know best on how to remain on it for ourselves.
Our Guest Advisors for the issue, Emily Jenkins and Theodore Cosco, discuss recovery through a strengths-based approach whereby recovery shouldn’t be measured in terms of external standards of success but by centring the individual, their experiences and their own self-determination regarding their well-being. When intersectional identities including age, gender and lived experience are considered, the definition of recovery becomes even more vibrant and dynamic. Adding a culturally responsive lens can help further ensure that we move away from a one-size-fits-all recovery model and towards one that considers each unique individual and their specific contexts. The contributors for this issue reflect on their own lived experience as it relates to recovery and explore topics like terminal uniqueness, eating disorders and accepting the process of recovery.
It is my hope that this issue will expand readers' understanding of recovery, as it did for me, or perhaps reaffirm what readers already hold true. Either way, I trust there's something in these pages for everyone. Finally, I want to draw attention to a new feedback form we have created for our readers to submit their comments and letters to the editor which can be found at: heretohelp.bc.ca/visions-feedback.
I look forward to reading your submissions
About the author
Bakht Anwar is Visions Editor-in-Chief and Leader of Health Promotion and Education at the Canadian Mental Health Association’s BC Division
