Lived Experience: A Starting Point

Listening first. Learning together. Acting with care.

Lived experience is not a credential you earn. It is knowledge that comes from walking through things you did not choose — and discovering what helps, what harms, and what actually changes lives.

On this page you’ll find reflections, resources, and practical approaches shaped by lived experience — my own, and those shared with me — offered with humility rather than expertise.

This work begins not with solutions, but with presence.

What I Mean by “Lived Experience”

Lived experience is the knowledge carried by people who have directly experienced hardship, exclusion, displacement, illness, poverty, or systems that were not designed for them.

It is:

• knowledge formed over time, not theory
• insight shaped by survival, not abstraction
• wisdom that often goes unheard because it does not arrive polished

Lived experience challenges professional certainty and invites us to slow down, listen more carefully, and act more honestly.

Why This Matters

Many well-intentioned projects fail not because people don’t care, but because they move too quickly to fix rather than understand.

When lived experience is ignored:

• people feel managed rather than met
• services miss what actually matters
• trust erodes

When lived experience is honoured:

• relationships deepen
• responses become more humane
• change becomes sustainable

This work is about creating space where people are not reduced to problems — and where listening itself becomes an act of care.

How This Shows Up Here

Across this site, lived experience shapes:

• Reflections — short pieces that sit with real moments rather than resolving them
• Small Projects — simple, relational actions that emerge from listening
• Hospitality & Presence — practices of showing up without agenda
• Microenterprises & Community Work — ideas that grow from people’s realities, not systems’ expectations

Nothing here is offered as a universal model. Everything here is offered as an invitation.

Who This Is For

This page may be helpful if you are:

• part of a church or faith community trying to listen better
• working in community, care, or social services
• carrying your own lived experience and wondering if it matters
• tired of solutions that don’t seem to fit real life

You don’t need to agree with everything here.

You only need to be willing to slow down.

A Different Starting Point

We don’t start with programs. We don’t start with outcomes. We start by sitting down.

If you’d like to explore further, you might begin with:

• Reflections on Presence
• Stories shaped by lived experience
• Small, relational projects that grow organically

An Invitation

If something here resonates — or unsettles — you’re welcome to stay, read, and reflect.

And if you’d like to talk, listen together, or explore what lived experience might mean in your context, you’re welcome to reach out.

We don’t begin by knowing. We begin by listening.

More reflections shaped by lived experience

These reflections are shaped by lived experience — moments learned from the inside rather than observed from a distance. They are not instructions or case studies, but stories, questions, and quiet learnings gathered along the way. You’re invited to read slowly, take what resonates, and leave what doesn’t.

• Protective Action vs. Control: A Reflection on Risk, Presence, and Power
• Finding Roots in Shared Tables
• We Don’t Start With Solutions. Why lived experience resists being rushed into outcomes.
• Lived Experience: A Starting Point

Lived Experience Menu

Core Lived Experience Reflections

We Don’t Start With Solutions
Why lived experience resists being rushed into outcomes.

What Changes When You’re the One in the Room
How proximity reshapes what we think we know.

The Difference Between Being Heard and Being Helped
A reflection on dignity, agency, and unintended harm.

When Listening Costs More Than Acting
Why presence is often the harder choice.

Knowledge You Can’t Learn in Training
What lived experience teaches that frameworks can’t.

Organisational Context

When Organisational Language Misses Real Life
Moments when good words fail real people.

Hospitality That Doesn’t Ask for a Story
Creating space without extracting explanation.

Who Decides When Someone Is “Ready”?
Power, timing, and lived experience in organisations.

The Quiet Weight of Being Interviewed
A gentle look at how helping can both help and hurt.

Presence Is Not Care Lite
Why simply “being there” is not a lesser form of care.

Systems, Services & Helping Roles

When Support Feels Like Surveillance
How systems can unintentionally erode trust.

Being Known by a File Before a Person
What it’s like to meet services from the other side.

The Exhaustion of Retelling Your Story
Why repetition is not neutral.

Good Intentions Don’t Always Feel Good
What lived experience notices first.

Why Some People Stop Asking for Help
A reflection on withdrawal, not resistance.

Small Moments, Human Scale

A Cup of Tea Is Not a Small Thing
What ordinary gestures actually do.

Sitting in the Car Before Going Inside
That in-between moment many people know.

When Nothing Is “Resolved” — and That’s Okay
Learning to leave things unfinished.

The Long Work of Being Trusted
Why trust grows slower than programs.

Staying When There’s Nothing to Say
A reflection on shared silence.

Microenterprise & Practical Life

Work That Fits a Real Life
Why lived experience matters in economic ideas.

Why Some People Can’t Just “Get a Job”
A humane look beyond slogans.

Small Income, Big Dignity
What autonomy actually looks like.

Latest Posts

• Protective Action vs. Control: A Reflection on Risk, Presence, and Power
• Finding Roots in Shared Tables
• We Don’t Start With Solutions. Why lived experience resists being rushed into outcomes.
• Lived Experience: A Starting Point