Ruth Norman Mason

It’s been a pet project of mine across the last ten years to start writing and testing the “script” that sits underneath the provision of women’s sector service provision. I’ve been really interested in how the core messages of an organisation get promoted and instilled in the workforce and how that creates workplace cultures that can become calcified.

One of these messages is the relationship between an individual’s lived experience and the work. It’s not just in the women’s sector, I’ve been at a number of events in the last two weeks where I’ve seen that this is a more general phenomenon . I keep seeing this week how the identification of people lived experience with the provision being provided can leave people feeling like they have fewer choices. This lack of choice can impact their well-being and sense of empowerment.

I went to the Bowlby Centre’s launch of Darren McGarvey’s book “the Trauma Industrial Complex” Trauma Industrial Complex on Wednesday last week. Darren raised really interesting questions about how we ‘use’ and commodify our lived experience and as a result can get trapped in it.

He talks about “becoming trapped in his own painting”, which felt really illustrative to me. Helping people know when they want to move out of particular lived experience roles and move into something else is a sensitive piece of work but one that must be held by the organisation making use of the lived experience.

When I was at AVA to make use of any case studies or material in training or reports, we asked women every two years if they still consented for us to use their material in that way. Structurally we created the possibility that there would be a time when you wouldn’t want to share your story in this way.

Darren’s book highlights how it becomes more complex when you are the individual making use of your own lived experience. When there is significant financial reward for doing so, and that you might not be able to make in other spaces in other ways.

This week I’ve spent a lot of time in spaces where it’s lived experience that drives engagement, work and passion to make change. I’ve felt really aware of how deep people’s commitment to change making and supporting others is when it’s driven by first-hand experience. It’s partly that ‘meaning making’ that Herman talks about so eloquently but that’s not quite all of it. In it’s shadow though is a sense that something ‘has’ to be done, and you can see what has to be done because of your lived experience of when it’s not there. That pressure to make amends for future people is a really powerful motivator and hard to think through.

I’d encourage everyone supporting lived experience groups or operating in an environment close to their own lived experience to watch out for ‘need’ and ‘must’ in their daily language. If you find yourself repeatedly thinking or saying to others that you ‘need to do xxx’ catch yourself and ask yourself if you truly ‘want’ to do it. Take time to reflect on what the benefits are of doing it and what the downsides are. If you’re working with a lived experience group build annual, or more often, reflection into your processes where people can make active choices about whether they must or whether they choose to undertake pieces of work.

Consent is moment to moment, but when we care so deeply about the community we serve, it can be hard to step back. We have to create choice for ourselves, and for those we work with to opt out, take a break, put down the needs and must’s and create empowered communities of people who want to do the work that they are doing. I just read a beautiful quote that said how we feel about what we’re doing is as important as what we are doing. If we don’t feel good about the work that we’re doing we’ll be undermining it in subtle but important ways. As with everything – consent is key.