Obviously, today, you’ll hear a lot about fundraising efforts, and that’s fine. However, that’s only one way to give of yourself. Even small acts of kindness can positively affect our mental health and boost our outlooks. So, if you’re struggling right now, feeling out of sorts with the world, etc., do something nice. Volunteer your time, give money, or notice someone who could use a small act of kindness and provide it.
I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t much acknowledgment of situations we are powerless to change and thus have no reason to feel hope about. That aside, the advice in this article is pretty good. The first two bits of advice have helped me in times when everything has seemed overwhelming and hopeless.
Get specific and break down what seems like an overwhelming problem into tasks I can realistically do one at a time. Then, do the next task.
Ask for help because many things seem less overwhelming when we know someone else is there. They don’t have to improve everything; it just helps to have hope when we are not alone.
The sexual abuse of children was something that happened when dudes in vans kidnapped children. No one mentioned that you could be sexually abused in your own home. If you asked me as a kid if I was being abused, I would have said no, even as every definition of that word applied to me. There was no education, no awareness programs, and no discussion about sexual abuse anywhere in the public sphere, so I didn’t know until I met someone in my early twenties who talked about being the victim of sexual abuse.
Instead of trying to fix our friends and loved ones struggling with anxiety and depression because of what they believe about themselves, maybe we should understand that by staying in their lives, we are already providing the argument against those beliefs through our actions.
That’s why we need to talk about it. Keeping that kind of abuse hidden makes it more difficult for families to figure out the best way to navigate an abusive situation between siblings, and I know there are many survivors out there who have struggled with exactly this situation.
This is an issue that I suspect gets confusing for many people. Creating deepfake abuse imagery has become relatively easy to do, but in many places, it is illegal. The harm, though, is indirect. A child wasn’t being abused to create the images, but once they are in public, the child who is being portrayed in the picture is being harmed in other ways.
