help.withwarmth.org

a small idea, offered gently

Helping helps.

When I feel awful, my instinct is to fix me first. Sort myself out, then show up for everyone else once I am shiny again.

It rarely works in that order.

What does seem to work, more often than I would expect, is helping someone else while I still feel like a mess. Carrying a neighbour's groceries. Answering the text I had been avoiding. Doing one small useful thing for one other being. Not because I am noble. Because it gets me out of the little room in my head where the bad feelings pace around.

Helping gives you somewhere to put your attention that is not your own pain. It reminds you that you are useful, which is hard to believe from inside a low moment and easy to believe while you are actually being useful. And it connects you to someone, which is usually what the pain was about anyway.

I am not saying helping replaces rest, or therapy, or asking for help yourself. (Please do those too.) I am only saying it belongs on the list of things to try when you feel bad. Maybe near the top.

If you are hurting today: find one small way to help someone, and see what it does to the hurt.

with warmth, Em

What this has looked like before

Around 2016 I helped start the Animal Activist Support Line at helpactivists.org, run by a tiny volunteer organization called Animal Advocate Support. The whole idea fit on one line:

It offered round-the-clock text, email, and chat support for animal rights activists. Free, confidential, anonymous. When activists felt overwhelmed, angry, alone, discouraged, stuck, depressed, or anxious, there was a real person to vent to, plus self-care tools, resources, and a connection back to the community. The volunteer counsellors funded the service themselves. There was a blog too, on burnout and mental health, community, and effective activism.

The project eventually wound down, but the instinct behind it never did: activism is emotionally expensive work, and the people doing it deserve support.

You can still visit it in the Wayback Machine: the homepage (2016) · mid-2017 · the blog (2017)

Where this might go

I keep wondering about support at scale. The support line could hold one conversation at a time; the need was always bigger than that. What would it look like to offer warm, real support to thousands of people who are hurting or burning out, without the warmth going thin? I do not know yet. I am exploring.

If you have thoughts, or you would simply want something like this to exist, tell me:

Version notes · v0.01