Peer Support Is Queer Liberation: A Legacy of Care and Resistance

When we say “peer support,” we’re not talking about surface-level solidarity. We’re talking about something deeper: something radical. Something rooted in presence, trust, and shared experience. At A Haven for Us, peer support isn’t a side note. It’s a core pillar of our care; one that echoes a long, powerful legacy in LGBTQIA+ history.

Peer support has always been there — not as charity, but as survival. As resistance. As family when the world refused to see us. From the frontlines of the Stonewall Uprising to the mutual aid networks that cared for each other during the HIV/AIDS crisis, peer support has been our queer sanctuary and our strategy. When systems weren't built for us, queer individuals showed up for each other and built our own.

So, what is peer support, really?

Peer support is what happens when people with lived experience come together — not as professionals or experts, but as equals — to hold space, witness each other’s truths, and offer care that is raw, real, and rooted in community.

It looks like:

• Saying “I’ve been there” and meaning it.

• Making room for someone to speak their truth without fear of being fixed or pathologized.

• Sitting beside someone in their grief, rage, joy, or uncertainty and letting them be fully seen, as they are.

  
  

This isn’t just “support.” This is a lineage.

A history we carry forward

When Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), they weren’t waiting for institutions to show up. They were building their own. They housed, fed, and supported queer youth cast out by families and systems. That was peer support: fierce, grassroots, and unapologetically queer.

During the height of the AIDS epidemic, when governments looked the other way, queer people became each other’s nurses, caretakers, and advocates. ACT UP meetings, kitchen-table caregiving, and buddy systems; these weren’t formal programs, but they were lifelines. They were love in action. Peer support isn’t new. It’s a tradition that queer communities have always relied on.

What makes peer support powerful

Peer support is based on the truth that everyone brings something vital to the table — not just in spite of their struggles, but because of them. Whether it's resilience, grief, joy, confidence, perspective, or just the courage to show up, it all matters. It’s not about fixing. It’s about feeling. It’s about someone saying “me too” when it matters most, and someone else holding quiet space when words fall short. You don’t need a diagnosis to be believed. You don’t need a perfect story to be welcomed. In our spaces, your existence is enough. You are enough.

Why it matters — especially for queer people

Queer folks have often been left out, shut out, or forced to shrink ourselves to fit systems that were never made with us in mind. Medical models asked us to prove our pain, to sanitize our truth. Mainstream mental health spaces didn’t always understand what it means to be marginalized and surviving. But in peer support, your identity isn’t something to overcome — it’s part of your power.

Your voice is valid, even if it’s shaky. Your pain is seen, and your joy is too. This isn’t about “helping” from above. It’s about healing together.

What to expect in our groups

• Compassion over correction

• Validation over advice

• Boundaries that protect, not restrict

• Facilitators who hold space, not power

  
  

You don’t have to be in crisis to come. You don’t have to justify your presence. If you’re navigating the in-between — that space where you just need someone to say “I get it” — you belong here.

Peer support is queer care.

It’s resistance and resilience braided together. It’s the legacy of Stonewall, of Marsha, of every chosen family who kept each other alive. It’s the kind of haven we wish we’d had — and the kind we’re building now, together.

Come as you are. We’ll be here.

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Want to learn more about our groups? Learn how to get support with A Haven for Us.