Tag: writing

The Pivot of 2025 and guided storytelling: Delta Peers will rest as ACoJB takes peer support to a whole other level.

On By #CupOfJoBrunoIn #CupOfJoBruno, Action Plan, Antioch, contra costa county, Delta Peers, Ethics, healing, Health Housing and Homelessness, Homelessness, Housing Action Plan, Housing Insecurity, Lived Experience, Peer Support, Peer Support Specialist, recovery of homelessness, Service Provider, Transitions, trauma, trauma informed, Wellness Recovery Action Plan, WriterLeave a comment

#CupOfJoBruno (ACoJB) style rant: The topic of discussion is peer support, lived-experience, system change, and business management. When I became homeless in 2019, I took my wisdom of peer support and my wellness action plan to stay well while in crisis. It worked for me. It worked so well, I created a Housing Action Plan specifically for people who were homeless, receiving systemic assistance, and ready to find their own wellness. In so doing, I created Delta Peers; a potential nonprofit that would become the network for peer specialists throughout the Bay Area; we want to be unionized so we are properly paid for our work. The system and nonprofit sectors ate it up and kept using my story and my wisdom to better their systemic process; meanwhile, it left me still without housing and in financial insecurity. It was five years of using my story and my advice, but never received stability from my work.

What I call The Pivot of 2025, I decided to leave the nonprofit sector and focus my intention on business management so I can promote the guided-storytelling side of system change and public policy. Nothing About Us Without Us! If someone is writing policy about a specific group of people, the voice of The People needs to be spoken and given respect to policy change. Those of us with lived-experience are The People. Delta Peers was specifically for that purpose; to give those with experience the voice for system change. It didn’t work so well for me. I needed to change direction and in so doing, I found that my own lived-experience and expertise of the systemic process can be utilized for The People instead of the system.

The ACoJB Consulting Services are a peer support model of guided-storytelling.

Using the ACoJB Wellness Toolkit, self-published by ACoJB, participants can utilize one-on-one or group facilitation where I provide an opportunity for people to gather their story in a specific, peer support way and use it for system change. Not only can I guide someone through their story and pull out the essential pieces to use for system change, I can guide them through grief, sorrow, regret, and even goal setting, vision boards, and a wellness toolkit that can help them stay well like mine did when I was homeless. ACoJB can guide participants to whatever governing board they’re experienced in and we will work close together to show step-by-step ways they can change public policy with their story.

The ACoJB Wellness Cafe is the end game for my intention of turning my brand into a place of business. It’s how I will use my lived-experience and guide others through their story. It’s where I will provide massage and other metaphorical practices. It’s where I will provide internship opportunities for upcoming students in peer support and massage. It’s where I will provide community needs like a food bank, clothing closet, and a pool table for building youth community. The Wellness Cafe is where people can come and fill up their cup by drinking from mine. A Cup of Jo Bruno is a bitter-sweet blend of Bay Area grit, an education, and a passion for policy change.

This current brew is focused on business marketing and management

I’ve enrolled in school again. I have an AA in journalism, BS in anthropology, over 900 hours of massage therapy training, and I was valedictorian of the peer support program I graduated from. The best kind of support I ever received was when I was a student, so I’m going for my certificate in business management so I can get the proper education on how to run a successful business. I’m exhausted from survival tactics, ups and downs in finances, and the constant need to fight my way through life. I want stability. I want consistent income. I want true friendship and support. Being in recovery for just over 20 years has taught me more about myself and what I want out of life that I cannot, I will not, give up on my dreams. And my biggest dream, outside of personal stability, is to help others tell their story. So, here I go again!

Delta Peers has been dormant for two years and ACoJB Consulting is 20+ years in the making. Let’s roll!

Celebrating International Women’s Day, Loving my Wolf Pack, and Surviving PTSD

On By #CupOfJoBrunoIn #AmWriting, #CupOfJoBruno, healing, International Women's Day, Peer Support Specialist, ptsd, trauma, Uncategorized1 Comment

It’s International Women’s Day

So, it saddens me I am writing this! How do I write about destructive masculine energies on a day we are supposed to celebrate women? How do I write about the struggle I am experiencing when I encounter men who trigger something inside of me that awakens the reactionary survival attitude without sounding like a bitch?

Ah, fuck it! I’ma be a bitch

I am sick of constantly feeling that overwhelming tingling sensation of survival mode when a man speaks to me in a way that triggers abusive memories. PTSD is a son-of-a-bitch, and I’m a host for their family dysfunctions. Mental health, addiction, and sexual and childhood trauma are all associated with my automatic fight or flight reactions.

Most the time, I fight. I want to destroy whatever is harming me and my psyche. I want to end the stinging sensations penetrating my aura. I want to tap into that beautiful, bad bitch Wolf Pack that scurries in my Spiritual Planes. I want to create a bloody carnage of the evil that lurks.

I want to hunt it down, destroy it, and devour it. I want to feel the flesh of this evil in my teeth and its warm life source drip from my lips. The smell. The taste. The satisfaction it would bring.

Oh wait?! There she is

That super bad bitch who’s seen and done some shit

She reminds me to simmer the fuck down! Take a moment. Calm the flame that burns. I can whine, whimper, growl, and even snap my Wolf teeth at this negative energy source. But, I cannot physically harm another.

I cannot physically harm another

She’s strong. My Higher Self. My Higher Power. She sits, resting under an orange tree, next to that bad bitch Wolf Pack Leader. They’re companions. She pets my Wolf Spirit. Strokes Her ego. Grooms Her fur. Studies Her hunting patterns. Watches over Her young.

I felt the rage of wanting to destroy the very thing that was trying to destroy us. It tries to destroy all women. Except this time, I could stand strong in my Queendom. I protected myself without creating carnage. I destroyed the energy force that seemed stronger than me before. I overcame the triggers and used the PTSD body memories to strengthen my life purpose. Something’s changed!

It can stab, slash, poke, cut, prod, and sting my very existence, but my Power within isn’t afraid of it anymore. The darkness doesn’t consume me, it guides me. The Wolf Pack doesn’t destroy, it protects. The triggers don’t control me, they strengthen me. The memories take me back, but the bitch brings me forward.

It’s International Women’s Day

Today, All Women move forward

So Mote It Be!

#CupOfJoBruno

Moving on!

Peer Support Specialist

On By #CupOfJoBrunoIn #AmWriting, healing, Peer Support Specialist, ptsd, trauma, Uncategorized4 Comments

What is a peer support specialist? How is one considered a peer? Does the trauma need to be the same? Does the healing need to be the same? Does any of it truly need to be the same for it to be considered peer support? There’s a sense of understanding when one considers themselves a peer. There’s a sense of validation, compassion, and empathy. There’s an unspoken trust between people who are healing from trauma and those who identify as their peer. It’s lived experience that makes us peers.

Healing through the trauma I experienced was never met with peer support. Nobody identified with me or validated my feelings through my journey of self-awareness, self-healing, and self-expression. I didn’t have peer support. I started, struggled with, and finished the healing process by myself. It’s given me strength in my adult life. It’s powerful to identify the healing that’s come from my trauma; it’s empowering really. Because of that, I consider myself a peer. I consider myself a specialist.

Being a peer specialist doesn’t necessarily mean we are the same age, have the same ethnic background, or even the same sexual preference, political views, or religious practices. What it means to me is that I have experienced and healed from situations in my life that caused mental illnesses, which eventually turned into physical illnesses. When I say I am a peer specialist, it doesn’t mean I have a certificate either. What it means is that I have visited the darkest caverns of my soul and I shinned a light in them.

I had to work on motivating myself out of depression hundreds of times. I held myself as I cried myself to sleep. I caused physical harm to myself to release the sense of uncontrollable anger I felt. I resorted to over eating, cutting, suicide attempts, and prostitution just to feel something. Therefore, when I consider myself a peer support specialist, I am telling myself that I have identified and accepted my childhood trauma. I am reminding myself that I have healed and overcame what others are experiencing or have experienced. I am now pursuing my dreams, accomplishing goals, and becoming the best person I can.

Writing The Wench’s Cocktale: A Bay Area Memoir allowed me to express things I experienced. I was sexually traumatized at a very young age and it haunted me throughout my life. Of course, healing is a never-ending process, and I still have moments of negative thoughts, anxiety, depression, and the inability to accomplish things. I still struggle. But, that’s also what makes me a peer, right? A peer isn’t only someone who has healed their pain, it’s someone who is still healing.

As I heal, I am motivated to mentor our youth, I am passionate about women in the sex industry, and I am grateful to have the strength to uplift others who are struggling through their trauma. It’s what I love about being a peer specialist. It’s what I love about life. It’s what I love about myself.