Hello!
 

My name is Kay McGarrell and I am in my final year of Harvard. I am a senior in Cabot House (#quadlyfe #thatshuttletho). I am studying History and Science, with a secondary in Global Health and Health Policy. I have never seen myself as much of a leader, but I have always tried to live by the idea of caring and listening. Sometimes, that is all you can do.

My project is looking into the history of the Indigo Peer Counseling group. Now that I have told the story of the group and a bit some insight of the people within the group, I would like to use this space to tell my personal journey in joining the group.

I have been a peer counselor since my freshman year. From Spring 2015 to Fall 2016, I was a Response Peer Counselor. Response focuses on issues of relationship, sexual assault and rape. We had around 40 hours of trainings the week before each semester. At the end of my junior fall, Indigo was recruiting. I was not sure if I could do both. Normally, people are not allowed to be a part of multiple counseling groups because of confidentiality policies and the emotionally charged nature of the issues each group handles. At the time, Indigo was only an outreach group and was not counseling, so I did not believe it would be a problem. However, my interview for Indigo fell through at the last second due to the gray area of this policy.

In the last few weeks of the fall, I decided to spend my junior January doing a wintership in Mexico City through DRCLAS. This meant that I would be missing the trainings for Response. Therefore, I would not be able to staff during the spring semester. The day before I returned to campus I emailed the Indigo director. I let her know how I would not be a part of Response that semester and if there was anyway I could have an interview to possibly join Indigo.

She emailed right away and the very next day, right before school began for the semester, I had my interview. I didn’t hear back for a week or two, and then I began getting emails through the Indigo group and I assumed I had made it into the group.

During the semester, it was mainly learning about the group and the issues that we were handling. Each week, we would meet, checkin, and then train on some relevant issue. In one meeting, the Director announced how she needed support. This made sense because common practice for peer counseling groups is to have at least two directors for each group due to the workload and intensity of the issues we handle.

Around a month into my first semester with Indigo, I emailed the Director to let her know that I could lend a hand if she ever needed it. She responded quickly, so grateful that I had reached out. The first semester, I did not do much but try to be supportive and learn from her. The next semester was when I truly began my Co-D responsibilities, from trainings to events to staffing concerns. I did my best to be counted on.

I wanted to be a part of Indigo not only for the work that it did, but also for the message it represented. People were acknowledging the challenges of race, immigration, first generation, and socio-economic status as issues of mental health. No one was talking about what it means to be in an environment in which falling under any one of these issues could make you feel like you don’t belong.
 

Why Indigo Matters to Me

I come from a mixed background. My mother is from Mexico and my father from Guyana. I was the child of immigrants, which meant I was the first generation of my family in the US and to college. It meant that I learned Spanish first before English. It meant growing up never really feeling you belonged in any one community. It means crying over black lives and praying for the many affected by the removal of DACA.

This space matters. I am not the only one who has felt this way or something similar. This space finally said that we live in a messed up world. It said that sometimes just being who we are is hard and made harder because of the prejudice and injustice in the world.