I grew up as the oldest of seven children and ended up helping out with my younger siblings quite a bit. I also struggled a lot with my mental health when I was in school and eventually figured out how to manage my life. Over time, I learned a lot of different techniques for helping others.
Most of the people I give advice to are my online friends or mutuals. I often see people making posts about reaching a burn out and needing to take a break from social media or art. For those posts, I remind them to just take a break and try not to force themselves to get back into art and let it come back naturally. It always sucks when you can’t find the motivation to do your favorite things, but sometimes you just need to take some time to take care of yourself and allow yourself to feel burnt out before getting back into things! A few of these friends with message me in dms or whatever with more specific issues and I’m usually pretty good at answering them. I have a lot of tricks for dealing with anxiety, like music or breathing exercises, and sometimes all they need is someone to distract them!
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot more calls and texts from some of my online friends I’ve known for a few years now. One of these friends is discovering their identity and talking to me about it. I can’t say I know everything about gender, sexuality, and identity in general, but I’m always happy for my friends for discovering a fitting title! This friend called to tell me about something I can’t even begin to wrap my head around, but I was happy for them anyway! They said they appreciated how I was willing to blindly accept their identity. I told them, “in the nicest way possible, I don’t care. Be whatever you want, just tell me what name and pronouns to use.”
I love all of my friends and family, even the ones I haven’t met yet. In fact, they don’t have to be friends to ask for advice. I made sure to set up and link an email here and other places so anyone can talk to me about stuff if they ever need. I’ve had people in the past ask for advice in the comments of my posts, Twitter dms, or just on Discord! I’m always happy to help people and I really like doing it. I always feel proud of myself when I’m able to show myself as a mom or a big sister type of friend! I’ve learned and grown a lot over the years, and I’m always happy to share what I know with others.
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