At the Center for Leadership of Afrikan Women’s Wellness (CLAWW), we know that healing from trauma doesn’t happen in isolation — it happens in connection. One of the most powerful forms of connection is peer support, and it lies at the heart of our healing work.
What Is Peer Support?
Peer support is a unique and effective approach to emotional and mental wellness that involves individuals who have lived through trauma providing support to others navigating similar experiences. These individuals are not therapists — they are healers by experience, women who have walked through the fire and are now reaching back to guide others through their own healing journey.
Why Lived Experience Matters
There is something deeply affirming about being supported by someone who gets it. Someone who won’t flinch when you share your truth. Someone who has sat with sorrow, faced fear, and rebuilt themselves — and is now willing to sit with you in your pain without judgment.
Lived experience is powerful because it:
• Builds trust faster than clinical relationships alone
• Reduces shame and stigma
• Promotes mutual empowerment and dignity
• Provides real-life strategies for resilience
• Encourages consistent engagement in healing work
How CLAWW Trains and Supports Peer Specialists
Our Peer Support Specialists are more than just survivors — they are trained professionals certified in peer support services. At CLAWW, we ensure that they receive ongoing training, supervision, and emotional support as they carry out this sacred work.
We prepare our peer workers to:
• Hold space for grief, anger, confusion, and hope
• Practice active listening and trauma-informed care
• Offer support while maintaining healthy boundaries
• Connect participants to additional resources and services
• Walk alongside women, not in front of or behind, but beside them
Real Support for Real Lives
Through peer support, CLAWW offers women the opportunity to feel seen, heard, and validated — often for the first time. Whether someone is grieving the loss of a child, escaping an abusive relationship, battling depression, or simply trying to hold themselves together, our peer specialists are there to remind them: You are not alone.
One peer specialist recently shared: “When I sit with another sister in pain, I’m not just giving her comfort. I’m honoring her courage — and mine. We heal together.”
That’s the power of peer support. It’s not charity — it’s solidarity.