A collage poem over an autumn gold field. Text reads: Blooming good times. Honoring listening, respect, care, and dignity. You make me feel ecstatic resistance.

Peer support honors us as our own best healers, visionaries, and organizers.

What Is Peer Support?

Peer support is using our lived experiences in collaboration and care. We come together to provide empathetic listening, support, knowledge, and resources. Together we can create care plans, explore our access needs and relational goals, cultivate a deeper sense of safety and connection to our bodyminds, and discover the gifts we hold that can benefit not just ourselves but our communities as well.

Peer support sees us as our own best healers, visionaries, and organizers. It is rooted in self-determination and mutuality. Peer support is not a replacement for other mental health care. Peer support is intentionally non-clinical and operates outside of the mental health system.

I am not a mandated reporter, which means the police or emergency services will NOT be called on you even if you are suicidal. Calling the police or emergency services puts BIPOC folks, especially Black folks, at risk to further harm.

To learn more about the Alternatives to Suicide approach visit: Wildflower Alliance.

My

Approach

My approach to peer support strives to be rooted in abolition, transformative justice, disability justice, mad liberation, and trauma aware care. I have been deeply influenced by Internal Family Systems as a framework, and follow the idea that there are “no bad parts” to our experiences and emotions. There are simply experiences and emotions which deserve to be understood and valued.

My peers are: queer, disabled, trans, non-binary, neurodiverse, (complex) trauma survivors, childhood abuse survivors, sexual and relationship abuse survivors (including incest), kinky, polyamorous/relationship anarchists, anti-capitalists, heathens/spiritualists, and fellow white settlers who are working on exploring attachment to lineage & land while acknowledging and detangling from white supremacy.

I want to help other multiply marginalized people have deeper, more fulfilling, authentic relationships with themselves, their lovers, and their communities without bypassing the impact of cultures of domination on our lives. Our care systems are inherently political, and our access to care is shaped by our identities and lived experiences in relation to these larger power structures.

  • One on one peer support using art as a tool to help transform our lives. You will receive one writing or art-based prompt per week for four weeks that are based around anything you would like to work on. At the end of the four weeks, we come together through Zoom where you share all four weeks of creations and receive supportive feedback. You can do this for one month, or many months.

    Offered on a sliding scale per month, two options:

    One Month Of Support:

    Pay What You Can: $40-$49

    Sustainer: $50-$59

    Pay it Forward: $60-$69

    Wealth Redistributor: $70

    Three Months of Support (paid per month or all at once):

    Pay What You Can: $30-$39

    Sustainer: $40-$49

    Pay It Forward: $50-$59

    Wealth Redistributor: $60

  • Support groups are writing and/or art based, offered on Zoom and/or in person. All groups are gender inclusive. Support groups are multi-week offerings, from six to twelve weeks in length.

    If you are interested in offering a support group at your location please use my contact form and I will be in touch about pricing and options that best fit your organization.

What types of peer support do I offer?

Visit my website store to sign up for an individual peer support offering.

A portrait of Lachlan, a white nonbinary person, in front of a large monstera plant.

My Experience

While peer support is primarily based upon our lived experience as a source of expertise, I recognize that it can be helpful to hear about other supportive training and education of those you are receiving care from.

I received my Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College in 2020 concentrating in Education, Sociology, and Applied Art & Design. At Hampshire, I was inspired to delve into exploring what it means to use art and facilitation for cultivating community and building systems of care. My thesis project at Hampshire culminated in facilitating an 8-week long peer support group with the support of Survivor Arts Collective and also creating a personal art exhibition exploring my own healing journey. In my time at Hampshire, I received numerous awards from Ethics & The Common Good for ethical leadership and change making.

Continuing my education and training is extremely important to me. In 2019, I went through Restorative Justice Facilitator Training through Resolve Center for Dispute Resolution and Restorative Justice. In June of 2022, I also completed the Somatic Attachment Therapy Certificate through The Embody Lab. In November of 2022, I completed Internal Family Systems, Eating Disorders, and Body Liberation training through Sayftee located in Boston.

Aside from my education and training, I have years of hands-on experience facilitating peer support offerings. I am entering my fourth year of work with Survivor Arts Collective where I have regularly facilitated individual and peer support groups for survivors of sexual and relationship violence; co-facilitated trauma aware care trainings for bodyworkers in my community; and curated peer art exhibitions.