Before I started chemotherapy I was a Samaritan Listening Volunteer and I wanted to share some of what I learned as a Samaritan, with the Macmillan community. Most first thoughts about Samaritans are probably about suicide, but what Samaritans do is provide emotional support to someone in distress. I wrote an article about emotional support and was advised by the community team that the best way of publishing the article would be as a blog, so if you're interested look for my blog entitled 'Becoming a Good Companion'. It's probably much longer than the average blog but I hope that someone finds it helpful.
Hi and welcome to the our community.
Thank you for your service with the Samaritan's, they are someone we has often signposted to when the helpline here is closed and have often highlighted that they are there for everyone. As a time-to-change champion in the workplace we are lucky to have representatives come to visit us and if we were in work there would be lots of opportunities as this month is stress awareness month.
I very much like the last thought in your blog "The best help we can give someone is the ability to help themselves", one of the problems with trying to help directly is that it is highly likely we never know the whole truth so if people give an answer and then things go wrong it is easy to destroy any confidence that there is good support out there.
I know the first time I walked in to a Maggies I was a mess - a hour of sitting/talking/crying with a wonderful volunteer and they helped me make a plan for how to deal in the short term and then what I could do next.
Hope things are going as well with you as you hope in this strangest of times we find ourselves in at the moment.
<<hugs>>
Steve
