🎧You Learn About Peer Support | Chapter 39

🎧 Listen to Sarah read this chapter above or on Spotify:

---

Voices come from the hallway outside my office. I sit at my desk, staring at my laptop screen, my mic in front of me, waiting for my portion of the Zoom conference to begin. Onscreen is the name of my talk—Pathological: What 25 Years of Living with Mental Illness Taught Me About Self-Stigma and How to Eradicate It—and the conference title—On Our Own of Maryland: Celebrating 30 Years of Peer Empowerment.

The phrase On Our Own should mean a lot to me, but it doesn’t. It’s emblematic of the recovery movement, which I still haven’t heard of. On Our Own is the title of Judi Chamberlin’s memoir. Chamberlin is one of the movement’s most pivotal figures. Her book was one of the first to call for patient-centered mental health services.

When the organization asked me to be one of the conference’s keynote speakers, I had no idea that On Our Own of Maryland (OOMD) is the oldest and most respected recovery-oriented, peer-run organization in the country. It defines itself as “a statewide peer-operated behavioral health advocacy and education organization which promotes equality, justice, autonomy and choice about life decisions for individuals with mental health and substance abuse needs.” But it’s so much more than that. It’s the epicenter of the future of mental health: recovery and peer support.

The afternoon session begins. Two hundred people are on Zoom. I think I understand the meaning of the word peer in the field of mental health—but I don’t. Peer, I think, means friend. Or maybe more like colleague. Either way, I think I get the gist of it.

Onscreen is Rowan, a recovery peer support specialist, who’s there to introduce me and be in conversation with me after my talk. She has a round, sweet face. I presume to know what a recovery peer support specialist is. Supporter. Good person.

Rowan begins the introductions. “For many folks in our community,” she says, her voice deep and genuine, “our first experience of a behavioral health challenge or crisis resulted in a diagnosis.”

Our community—something about how she says it, with such warmth and ease, strikes me. She uses the pronoun we in the same way. It’s clear she’s not just talking about the organization and the people it serves.

Rowan continues: “That diagnostic label might have been a relief, a scar, or a fundamental shift in our identity. We may have taken those labels at face value, or we may have wondered where they came from.”

As Rowan talks, I become deeply embarrassed for not knowing more about the organization. How could I not have done my homework? I prep for all appearances.

I give my talk, complete with a PowerPoint presentation, briefly telling my story and how over-identifying with a diagnosis ultimately caused me to stigmatize myself to such a degree that I limited myself and my life.

My presentation doesn’t mention recovery—or that adopting a diagnosis at face value almost prevented me from doing so. Recovery still seems like a secret, something I can have but have to hide.

No one recovers from mental illness. Everyone knows that.

As Rowan and I talk, on the right side of the screen, in the chat, come reactions: virtual hands—of all skin tones—clapping, smiley faces, thumbs upses, streamer-streaming tada’s. I only see them because Rowan mentions them to alert me to how those in attendance are relating to what I’m saying.

Psychiatry has welcomed Pathological and my message, but some members of the public and the media have been wary, shying away or raising concerns that people won’t get help if they know the truth about diagnoses. This fascinates me. Why do we want people to get treatment, which often entails potentially harmful medications, without having the information they need to get better?

This community is different. These people are aware of what psychiatric diagnoses are and what they aren’t, and they’re empowered by that knowledge. They’ve been through some version of what I have—though many had it much, much worse than I did—and they recovered.

Recovered.

Peer Support.

Recovered.

It takes a second, but I realize I’m with hundreds of people who’ve recovered from mental illness and substance abuse. Soon, I’m talking about how I healed. In the chat appear clapping hands and tada’s and thumbs upses—one after another.

If you haven’t already purchased access to Cured for $30—about the price of a hardcover book—you can do so here:

» Continue to Chapter 40.

Find resources for mental health recovery.

Enjoying ‘Cured’? Read the prequel, ‘Pathological’ (HarperCollins):