Video Transcript: Welcome to the Lived Experience Network

[Acknowledgement of Country: We acknowledge that our work takes place on lands that are under colonial occupation and that sovereignty has never been ceded. We hope to pay our deepest respects to Boon Wurrung Elders, past and present, and wish to extend this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People across this Country we know as Australia.]

[Title sequence - Switchboard’s Victoria’s National LGBTIQA+ Lived Experience Network: Welcome to the Lived Experience Network]

Anna (Switchboard): When you come into the Network, you meet other LGBTIQA+ people and at the heart of it is peer connection.

June (Switchboard): There’s something about lacking that hierarchy that I feel like so many other support services have that feels really special and that allows for people to bond in a different kind of way.

Anna (Switchboard): From 2021 to today, the Lived Experience Network has changed and evolved and that change has been created by people who are actually in the Network. One of the beautiful things about this space is that as the program evolves over time, it’s the people who are participating in the Network who get to decide and see how the Network is going to be and it’s actually this living, evolving space that you, as a member, get to co-create…

June (Switchboard): and your presence in that space will only enrich it.

LEN Member 3: There are two parts to this: the first in lived experience is an individual experience, where individuals can work with each other; and LEN itself is a group experience.

Mia (Switchboard): A big part of the LEN is not just sharing your own experience, but being part of a collective movement that creates space for difference and other people’s stories as well.

LEN Member 2: It actually does mean a lot to me, more than I thought it would and, that’s more of a personal thing, and because I’ve had places where I’ve felt alone, I haven’t felt safe, I haven’t felt understood, I haven’t felt that people actually get it and I can be myself there. Part of this community does give me a sense of people just understand. You don’t have to hide any parts of yourself. You can do different things in different ways to support each other, but also support broader community wherever you’re comfortable with.

LEN Member 1: I’ve felt support, so much support. It means so much to me, to feel that. Through time, I’ve become truer to myself, I don’t bow or swing to anyone’s favours, I do what’s good for me, and joining the Lived Experience Network was something that I had to do.

LEN Member 5: When there are times I am struggling again, I know there are others out there. It means that hard times are not as isolating. It has meant that I feel supported in a silent way, sometimes in a loud way [laughs], but it has also meant that I have thought about the folks that I have met and the times that I have shared when it does feel shit.

[End Titles:

The National LGBTQIA+ Lived Experience Network is a community of LGBTQIA+ people with lived experience of suicide, working to share their story and experiences to help advocate and shape LGBTIQA+ suicide prevention work.

We are so excited to have you join us.

Visit charlee.org.au or email livedexperience@switchboard.org.au to learn more.

Filmed and edited by May as Well Productions]

End transcript.