Gifts from Anna - How peer support can tackle stigma, prejudice and discrimination

Reflections on the impact of my first connection to peer support 30 years on.

"Dare to be a tall poppy" is what I call this gift from Anna. It was given to me when I finished some work at the NZPC Christchurch branch.

A dear friend of mine, Anna Freed, recently celebrated her 80th birthday. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend her fabulous garden party. Anna is well renowned for her garden and the parties held within it. Her house and garden are wedded to my memories of discovering who I am and pathways out of our mental health and addiction care/treatment/response system. 

During her party, Anna’s friend asked several people how they had met Anna. Hearing the rich tapestry, she thought how wonderful it would be to gather a collection into a book for Anna. And so, with Anna’s permission, she invited us to share how we met. 

When I received the invitation, I was keen to participate, but I struggled to imagine how I could convey such a significant moment in a way that honoured my friend. The following is my wee contribution. 

I am sharing this here on my I am not a robot blog as it is also an example of the power of peer support—not just in terms of the support we give in the moment, but the seeds that have the potential to grow and produce all kinds of magic fruit. 

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Old school "zipper zapper" credit card machine. I can't believe how grown up 17 year old me felt carrying this around in her canvas bag!

"Anna is in the top five when I think of people who have significantly shaped who I am. I first met Anna as a 17-year-old sex worker. I walked through the doors at the NZPC to get one of those old-school zipper-zapper credit card machines. I walked out of there holding so much more than a credit card device. I carried a vital seed of hope and possibility planted within me. 

You see, before I walked in, I held a belief about who I was as a prostitute based on the dominant social narrative. I thought that we all lived and were destined for a particular

lifestyle and social position in society, one that could be summarised as marginalised and undervalued (which doesn’t convey the picture of what it meant to be or have been a sex worker in the 80s or 90s). And I lived my life based on that story. 

But as I crossed the threshold at the NZPC, I found new stories. I heard we deserved rights, that we could set limits and boundaries, and that sex work was work. I was a human who had human rights. I encountered a group of people with strength and held their heads high. Anna was the welcoming face there. 

These new stories planted seeds of possibility. The possibility that there were new ways of seeing myself.  The seed sowers were Anna and the team; their peer support planted these gently through their education, wisdom, and the language they used.   Their very existence was a powerful message in itself.  I only went to the NZPC in Christchurch a few times, all brief interactions with credit card machines, condoms, Ugly Mug books, and picking up gear for my friends.  Small moments, but in their simplicity, the seeds were planted.  

Over the next few years, the seed went through a period of dormancy. This season was bitterly cold, with real heartache and rough consequences from my choices. But like a bulb that needs the winter to facilitate the sprouting in spring, bringing forth signs of the hope of warmer weather ahead, this time that the bulb or seed appears dormant may well be a vital part of the germination process. 

I didn't reconnect with Anna until four years later. I had been doing a sexual violence survivors’ group. As I worked on the trauma across my life, I came to question whether the violence I experienced as a sex worker was not just the responsibility of those who harmed me but that society as a whole had a role due to the ongoing positioning of sex workers as acceptable victims. The seed planted had started to sprout, and this group’s care and acceptance of me was the nurturing warmth and sunlight needed to call the fledging sprout on.  The group encouraged me to reconnect with the NZPC. 

I still remember picking up the white pages and trying to find the number and address.  It was still the exact location as I had gone at 17.  So down I went and met with Anna. On listening to my question about society’s role in facilitating violence towards sex workers, Anna said to me, "Exactly." She then loaned me a book to read, Working Girls: women in the New Zealand sex industry talk to Jan Jordan. I devoured the book. This treasured collection by Jan Jordon enabled me to hear many stories of people with journeys similar to my own. The loaning of this book facilitated an awakening in my being. The seed was well and truly growing and wanted to press into the air above ground. 

I returned to Anna, returned the book, and asked to volunteer. She said they were looking for people currently working, but she would consider it. She called me later the next day and told me to come in and chat more. I had no idea what an incredible journey would unfold. As a volunteer, then an employee, and most definitely as a friend, Anna allowed me to see, grow, and experiment with who I could be outside of who the world had told me I could be.  Stories from the media, psychiatry, and the people of my early childhood all placed stories of limitation, brokenness and a story of being fundamentally flawed.  I was Mad, Bad, and just not worthy.  Practically not human.  I can see now my connection with Anna was a vital component of my rewriting, not just the story of who I am as a young person who worked as a sex worker, but as a mad woman, a survivor of a raft of things. 

Over time, She nicknamed me her NZPC treasure. I have had many names, but this is the nickname I am most proud of. It made me feel proud of ME and see I had value and ability.  And, what society told me was shameful, a thing to be ashamed of; I learnt through Anna my time as a sex worker held value, too. Anna allowed me to be creative, make mistakes, and learn from them. We have celebrated together, and we have grieved together. I have learnt about stigma, self-stigma, and that social change happens through relationships. That bravery and love are intertwined, and that shame requires one to consent to being shamed. 

I am 47 and now work as the Programme Director for Lived Experience at the Ministry of Health. Thirty years ago, I walked through that door. As I write, sitting on the plane flying for work, I have a new profound appreciation for what that first interaction gave me. My ability and commitment to amplify the voices of people with lived experience are some of the many fruits planted during those first visits to the NZPC office. 

I am forever grateful that Anna chose to be who she is, how she is, how she loves people, and how she fights for change in her unique way. The most humble way I can express my gratitude is to try to do the same, planting seeds as she had planted in me, one connection at a time. 

Very warmest of love, Hannah."

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So often, when I hear people talk about peer support, I hear them speak of the ‘skills’ we pass on to others.  But as I wrote this piece, I realised that the legacy of my first interactions with peer support workers isn’t just the skills or the credit card machine I could obtain through connecting to the peers at the NZPC.  And it wasn’t just a role modelling of a story of ‘hope and recovery’, that a bright future was possible.  

Their presence and how they held themselves was a fundamental challenge to the societal story told about prostitution.  That shift to sex work destabilised the tale I had absorbed from the world around me as someone who had been a prostitute.  I mean, I am guessing you can hear and feel it when you hear the language of prostitute vs sex worker.   

I am not sure sometimes how conscious we are of this component within the story of ‘hope and recovery’ within our mental health and substance and gambling harm peer and lived experience work.  Do we consciously challenge not just the prejudice and discrimination that people experience but also the core, the stigma, or the societal story/explanation of our experience?  Are we consciously aware of how our ways of working, speaking, and interacting also provide a shift in the range of stories a person may have about themselves with a shared identity label as ourselves?  Or do we perpetuate the stigma - the societal tale attached to the labels attributed to our experiences?  

For me, some examples of challenging the stigma associated with my experiences are through shifts in language.  I don’t speak of symptoms, preferring to use threat responses (thank you, Power Threat Meaning Framework), and therefore, I also don’t speak of ‘early warning signs’. I speak of ‘indicators for care’.  These shifts name my experiences as purposeful and useful, communications from within asking for a response of care, not of danger. These shifts in understanding my experience, traditionally referred to as disorders, which I have learnt are, in fact, very ordered, may help shift some of the prejudice and subsequent discriminatory actions people take when they hear of my psychiatric diagnosis. Still, the focus and point are much more fundamental than that. It is to shift the explanation and subsequent story of my experience, not just the prejudice that occurs on understanding the psychiatric ‘diagnosis’ ascribed to my experience as a human.  

To me, this is to challenge the core—the central story that all prejudice and discrimination manifest from—the explanation—which manifests the othering—or, in Erving Goffman’s words, the stigma. To challenge the story that is causing society to see those of a particular group - which it has marked (in this case through psychiatric diagnosis) as other, as less than, is to truly put a spanner in the mechanisms that sustain prejudice and discrimination.  

I believe we don’t just want to teach people to be nice to us. That will just continue to perpetuate paternalistic care or, at worst, add further gaslighting elements to some of the interventions provided for those of us considered bad. We want people to understand our experiences in ways that value us, not position us as dangerous, unpredictable, untrustworthy, vulnerable, or weak. To do that, we need to challenge the core, not just what results from it.

As people working in peer support and lived experience roles, we can convey this different story with every interaction through our language, our actions, our stories, and how we hold ourselves in spaces alongside those who are responsible for upholding the pathologising stories of our experiences.  

The team at the NZPC didn’t just want people to learn to be nice to prostitutes by challenging the prejudice and discrimination we experienced. That would not have changed laws, enabled the self-determination of sex workers, or protected sex workers' employment rights.  They demanded and activated a change in the story - they shifted the stigma.  Those moments when I connected to people who lived that shift out in their lives and their peer support and education planted seeds that changed my life. As peers or lived experience practitioners in a range of experiential areas can do the same.  

And, as with Anna and the team who met 17-year-old me, we may not see the outcomes of our interaction at the time. But we can hold hope for all that they may be able to grow into the future.  

Again, I will repeat: I love you, Anna.  I will do my best to give others all you gave me. 

References and links

Goffman E. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster; 1963.

The Power Threat Meaning Framework https://www.bps.org.uk/member-networks/division-clinical-psychology/power-threat-meaning-framework

Working Girls: Woman in the New Zealand Sex Industry talk to Jan Jordan. https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Working_Girls.html?id=cBLaAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y