I wanted to share my certifications with you, but before I do, I want to share what they mean to me.
Over the years, I’ve completed many trainings and certifications related to peer support, coaching, trauma, mental health, and personal growth. I genuinely love learning. I love exploring new ideas, hearing different perspectives, and deepening my understanding of people and the experiences we go through.
At the same time, I want to be honest that certificates are not what brought me to this work.
What brought me to this work was lived experience.
What brought me to this work were the experiences that changed me, the people who supported me, and the realization that human connection can be incredibly powerful.
Peer support has always been at the center of everything I do. It is not simply one training among many. It is the foundation that everything else rests upon.
Today, I continue to work as a Peer Support Specialist at a Warm Line, and it is some of the most meaningful work I have ever done. Every day I get to witness people showing up for one another, sharing their stories, offering support, and reminding each other that they are not alone. That is something I never take for granted.
I am proud of the trainings and certifications I have completed because I worked hard for them. They represent years of learning, curiosity, and dedication. They have helped me understand trauma, mental health, communication, coaching, and the many ways people make sense of their experiences.
At the same time, my values do not come from a certificate.
I identify as an abolitionist Peer Support Specialist. For me, that means I believe support should be rooted in consent, autonomy, dignity, and human connection. I believe people deserve choices about their own lives. I believe people deserve spaces where they can be honest without fear of coercion or punishment. I believe community care, mutual aid, and peer support have an important role to play in helping people through difficult moments.
Many of the systems I learned about through my trainings are systems that I have also spent a great deal of time questioning. Learning about them did not strengthen my belief in them. In many ways, it strengthened my understanding of why I want to help create something different.
The certifications below are not here to convince you that I am an expert on your life. No one is.
They are simply a reflection of the time I have invested in learning, growing, and developing skills that allow me to better support others.
More important to me than any certificate is the relationship we build, the conversations we have, and the values that guide my work.
I share these certifications not because they define me, but because they are one part of the story of how I arrived here and how I continue learning along the way.
Certified Peer Support Specialist
This certification represents my foundational training as a peer support specialist, where I learned essential principles such as:
- Building relationships based on mutuality and trust
- Honoring lived experience as expertise
- Practicing trauma-informed support
- Promoting empowerment and recovery on each person’s own terms
Additional Coaching Certifications:
- Trauma-Informed Somatic Life Coach and Healing Practitioner
- Mental Health Counseling Practitioner
- Advanced Transformational Life Coach
- Trauma-Informed Coach
- Mental Wellness Coach
- Mindfulness Coaching Practitioner
- Inner Child Healing Coach
- Holistic Wellness Practitioner
Peer Support & Mental Health Certifications
- Certified Peer Support Specialist
- Trauma-Informed Support
- SeekHealing Listening Training
- Hearing Voices Network Facilitator
- Mental Health First Aid
- Youth Mental Health First Aid
- Confidentiality, Ethics, and Boundaries
- Motivational Interviewing Certification
- Be There Certification
- QPR Suicide Prevention
- Non-Violent Communication
- Non-Violent Crisis Intervention
- NAMI Peer-to-Peer