How to Sit With Someone is an intimate guide to offering peer support and explores active listening, stigma, self-compassion, boundaries, mutual power, and recovery. Why was this an important book for you to write?

Peer support changed my life, and I believe it has the power to change other people’s lives too.

The book places a strong emphasis on boundaries alongside compassion. Why do you believe healthy boundaries are essential for both the supporter and the person receiving support?

We share more in relationships once trust is developed. It’s important in life to maintain a balance between expanding our boundaries as we engage in relationships and keeping ourselves safe by sharing at the appropriate times and with the right people.

You explore difficult topics like addiction, psychosis, and stigma with remarkable nuance. How did you balance honesty about these experiences while still offering hope?

I think hope matters because I believe people can respond to what they’re going through, even when they can’t control everything about their situation. That doesn’t mean change is simple or that everyone has the same choices available to them. But I do believe people can grow, recover, and find new ways of living. This optimism is a part of peer support, that we aren’t irredeemable.

Addiction, psychosis, and stigma are real, and they can be incredibly difficult. I don’t think it helps to cover that over with blind positivity. Hope is only meaningful when it stays connected to what people are actually facing. There are some big obstacles with these sorts of things, but determining what is feasible to change and what isn’t is up to the person living it.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from How to Sit With Someone?

I hope readers take away that mental health struggles are often made worse by disconnection from other people, from community, and sometimes from ourselves. Some of the most meaningful healing happens in relationship, when someone feels seen, heard, and less alone. This book is about learning how to come alongside people with more care, humility, and presence. You don’t have to say the right thing, or fix the person. Just be present with them human to human.

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