In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a time to elevate survivor voices, confront stigma, and highlight pathways to healing. At Give an Hour, one of those pathways is peer support. Not as a substitute for therapy, but as something uniquely powerful alongside it. Something human, reciprocal, and often life-changing.
Aliza Nichols, a Give an Hour peer support facilitator and survivor herself, understands that power intimately. Her group, centered on survivors of interpersonal violence, has grown into a space where people don’t just process trauma. They reconnect with themselves, with each other.
Aliza didn’t come to this work by accident. Her path into peer support was both personal and intentional.
“I’ve been doing peer support for eight years when it comes to violence. I’m a domestic violence survivor myself, and I also have complex PTSD.”
She describes a landscape many survivors recognize. Inconsistent support. Programs that start strong, then fade. Spaces that don’t always hold.
“What we see is the lack of consistency… there will be a group that comes and people start attending and it does well and then it’s kind of like… so you got to keep that effort going.”
That consistency became part of her mission. Not just to create a group, but to sustain one. And at the core of it all is a simple belief:
“Whatever you’re going through, if you can help someone else with it, that’s the best form of relation.”
This is the foundation of peer support. Not hierarchy. Shared understanding. In Aliza’s group, the dynamic is not one-directional. It’s mutual.
“I tell the group every week that they help me as much as I help them. I look forward to the group, I feel like, just as much as they do.”
This reciprocity matters. Especially in the context of trauma, where survivors often feel isolated, misunderstood, or alone in their experiences.
Peer support interrupts that isolation.
It replaces “no one gets it” with “we do.”
When asked about moments that capture the impact of peer support, Aliza doesn’t hesitate.
“Most recently we had someone… she had been coming for 7 or 8 months, but she was nervous… she did leave… she got her own apartment… and to see her come to the group the first time after that was just like, she was like back to life.”
“It’s anytime that these members can start to come back to life a little and start to love themselves again… it’s the most beautiful thing ever.”
That’s what peer support holds space for. Not just survival. But re-emergence. One of the clearest themes in Aliza’s perspective is the unique value of shared lived experience.
“We say in the group all the time that if you haven’t been through it, you can’t understand.”
This is not a dismissal of clinical care. In fact, many participants engage in both. But something shifts when people sit in a room, even a virtual one, with others who don’t need translation.
“We’ve had quite a few members who came to us in their worst times… one-on-one therapy was OK, but getting into a group where we understood what they were going through… that’s what made a huge difference.”
Psychological safety is not something that can be assumed. It has to be built. Protected and consistently reinforced over time. In Aliza’s group, that safety becomes tangible.
“I’m really glad that I came to this group… I’m really glad that I can speak so freely… I’m so glad that I don’t get judged here.”
And importantly, this isn’t just messaging. It’s lived experience. “We’ve heard from a lot of members that they’ve done online groups that say they don’t judge… and they haven’t had the same experience.” That difference is everything. Because for survivors, especially those navigating sexual violence or interpersonal trauma, judgment is often the barrier that keeps them silent. Peer support lowers that barrier.
There is a distinct quality to peer support that sets it apart from traditional clinical environments.
“That’s the fun part is it’s not therapy. So we can be a little bit more open… we can get that anger out and really talk about how we’re feeling.”
This openness allows for forms of expression that might not always fit neatly into structured sessions.
“We’ve done some intense stuff where… we’ll write little things we want to get rid of and burn them… for us it’s like a very healing thing.”
Meaning-making doesn’t always follow clinical frameworks. Sometimes it’s shared, symbolic, even unconventional. For many survivors, one of the hardest realities is that their experiences don’t fit easily into everyday conversation.
“I’m an attempted murder survivor. There’s not an appropriate time to talk about that… there’s not the right people to talk about it with. Peer support is the most appropriate place where we can.”
It creates a container where nothing is “too much.” Where stories don’t have to be softened or edited for comfort. Facilitating these spaces is not without its challenges. Aliza is candid about the emotional weight.
“The people in that group have been through some of the most horrible things I have ever heard of in my life.”
And yet, she remains grounded in purpose.
“I try to stay very emotionally tied to their progress… like this is the worst part and we can go up from here.”
She also models something critical in peer support leadership. The use of support systems.
“If you need extra support, we’ve got to utilize that… especially if it’s feeling a little more heavy than normal.”
At Give an Hour, peer supporters are not alone in holding this work. Clinical oversight and team support ensure sustainability, not just for participants, but for facilitators too. The connection doesn’t end when the session does.
“I leave my cell phone number in the chat… if something’s going on and you need someone who can relate, you can call or text me anytime.”
Participants reach out. They share updates. They check in.
“They’ll text updates sometimes… like, ‘court went good.’”
This continuity matters. Especially for individuals who may not have consistent support elsewhere. At its core, Aliza’s hope is simple.
“I want for everyone to feel they have a safe place to talk about these things… I want them to come back.”
Not because they are stuck. But because they’ve found something worth returning to.
Connection. Safety. Understanding.
A voice among many
As Give an Hour marks two decades of impact, Aliza’s story stands alongside others in a powerful collective narrative. She is featured as one of Give an Hour’s twenty voices in the organization’s 20th anniversary edition of the annual report. A recognition not just of her work, but of the community she has helped build.
A community where people come as they are.
And, over time, come back to life.
Because awareness is a starting point.
Being heard is what changes things.
Stories like this don’t stand alone. They’re part of a larger movement toward more integrated, human-centered care.
Explore Twenty Years, Twenty Voices to see how this work is taking shape across communities. silence no longer serves you.
Visit GiveAnHour.org for more information & sign up for our newsletter at GiveAnHour.org/Newsletter. To sign up for Peer Support Groups, visit GiveAnHour.Org/ContactUs.
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