Video Transcript: Why should you join the 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.]

LEN Member 1: I was at a point in my life where I needed to reach out.

LEN Member 2: I was kind of angry for community. I was angry for the stigma that we face.

Mia (Switchboard): I wanted to turn some pretty painful and difficult experiences into something positive, both for myself and for others.

LEN Member 3: It’s often really difficult for anyone to speak about these issues.

[Title sequence - Switchboard’s Victoria’s National LGBTIQA+ Lived Experience Network: Why should you join the Network?]

LEN Member 2: I specifically wanted to join an LGBTIQ+ lived experience network, because I know the discrimination we can face when we’re trying to seek help.

June (Switchboard): I think we navigate the world in a way where we have to censor ourselves a lot of the time, whether that’s our suicidal thoughts, or our experience with bereavement, or our LGBTQ+ identity and I there’s something about the Lived Experience Network bringing people who have to self-censor a lot of the time together in a space where they’re encouraged to do the complete opposite. Where they’re encouraged to bring themselves in full, in a very holistic way. Where they’re encouraged to really lean into all parts of their identities and for those parts of themselves to be seen as an asset.

Anna (Switchboard): I think the benefit of participating in the Network is that you get to connect with other LGBTIQA+ people who want to work together and share collective experiences that are going to help change our system so that LGBTIQA+ people who have a lived experience around suicide are going to have a better experience.

LEN Member 4: I was looking for some community and I just feel like it was a place that was very receptive, and I think it was kind of in an initiative stage, so it felt like a really good opportunity to come and join with people that had perhaps similar aspects of life experiences and some similar values.

LEN Member 3: I think it’s a truly remarkable experience for people not to divide ourselves into two groups, workers and clients, I think that’s one of the really supportive things I’ve found, and that many of us have a shared experience of being on both sides.

June (Switchboard): I guess that sense of empowerment can then allow people to face the outside world and also to push the outside world as well and really push that narrative surrounding acceptance, surrounding suicidality... or queerness.

Mia (Switchboard): That has felt so powerful and beautiful.

Anna (Switchboard): I would say to someone that joining the Network could change their life.

[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 would love 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.