My Path to be a Certified Peer Wellness Counselor

This is a new field in my career and I’ll explain my journey in this story.

During the 2020 pandemic, I didn’t even have the interest in finding a new job after being laid off from the City of Portland, specifically Portland Parks and Recreation. I was told to return to working for the family business, which is a Wholesale Food Distribution company called Chin’s Import Export and it’s located in St. John’s, Oregon. I was tasked to implement my creativity for the customers of the company with mock print jobs, i.e. paper bags, napkins, chopstick sleeves, bubble tea cups and designs for customer’s businesses/restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. A lot of the customers were fascinated with the print jobs and they started purchasing and implementing my designs for their restaurants/ businesses after the COVID pandemic. I was able to increase the sales during the past few years and there were a ton of customers mentioning they really enjoy my designs. I’m tasked to work in the office and also the warehouse to assist my coworkers, including loading pickup orders into the customer’s trucks/cars. While I’m working for Chin’s Import Export, I was experiencing barriers of employment and I chose it upon myself to have a meeting with a career counselor from the Career Services Center at Portland State University. During the meeting, I explained everything about my childhood trauma, educational career, years of bullying, discrimination, sexual harassment and systemic racism. I was also proud during my times in elementary school and how a few teachers were appreciative of me in their class, i.e. Mr. Carlson, Mrs. Lindsey Kopacek and Mr. Wong. The career counselor told me that I’m experiencing barriers of employment and he wanted me to contact Vocational Rehabilitation Center in Milwaukie, Oregon.

When I got into contact with VR, they wanted me to participate in a neurological evaluation. During the evaluation, it reminded me of when I was tested by the government when I was very little and it was like a Deja Vu event. They tested me on reading, math, memory games and puzzles. After the evaluation was completed, they had to review the results and compose a report about my performance and come to terms with a diagnosis for me. A couple weeks later, they sent me a report about the neurological evaluation and they confirmed that I have a late diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. I was masking my true identity of being Autistic for several months until I had to realize that it’s part of my true identity. During this process of trying to find a job, it was a difficult time and I conducted some research on Peer Wellness Specialist training. I realized that I needed to do a career change in my life since my method of job hunting was going nowhere. When I was enrolled into a PWS Training with Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon, I was able to meet a ton of new people and make some friends during the entire month of August. I learned a lot about the fundamentals of Peer Support, i.e. laws, standards of conduct when working with a peer, health and medical information, how to interact and communicate with a peer and other important information like life goals. There were some required assignments associated with the class and I had to compose my own recovery story. Once the training was completed, I had to pass a background check through the State of Oregon and other mental health companies. Then I was given a certificate after I passed the background check. After the training was completed, I wanted to do more research about what it means to be Autistic, have symptoms of ADHD and neurodivergent in this dominant neurotypical world.