Reinvigorated

I’ve been working as a peer specialist for several months now–without actually being certified.

This month, I am finally getting the certification training.

I was already excited about that–finally getting the training–but this afternoon, that excitement just ratcheted up a notch. Because this afternoon, I found this: Mental Health Recovery.

It is module 2 of the peer specialist training curriculum by Recovery Innovations (formerly META).

Recovery Innovations was only recently approved to be an official training vendor for peer specialists in Pennsylvania. There are now two approved vendors: Mental Health Association of Southeastern PA (MHAPA), and Recovery Innovations. And to be honest… I was feeling slightly sorry for myself, that I wouldn’t be going through MHAPA’s training. After all, everyone else I know who’s been through the training went to an MHAPA training. And all those people LOVED it, thought it was great, learned so much, had a wonderful time… et cetera, et cetera.

So now, a training comes along–one I’m at last able to get into–and… it’s not MHAPA. It’s Recovery Innovations.

Hmph.

It felt anticlimactic.

There was this little tiny piece of my brain saying, “This better be good.”

How judgmental. Really.

So then today, I was Googling terms like “peer support marketing” and “peer specialist tools” and so on. And I stumbled across that article linked above–Mental Health Recovery–which is not an article, but a piece of Recovery Innovations’ training manual. And I was blown away.

It’s good. Really, really good.

So now I’m excited (even more so), and the little judgmental voice in my head has shut its trap.

Go read it if you haven’t already. Really. It’s long (16 pages), but it is GOOD. And it was exactly what I needed to hear today, too… exactly the reminder I needed about what peer support work really is.