🎧 Listen to Sarah read this installment of Cured⤴
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.
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