In support of everyone affected by the events in Israel and Gaza

I’m horrified by the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli bombings of Gaza that followed. My heart goes out to the people trapped in Gaza, and the relatives and friends of those who’ve been killed or are missing – Israeli, Palestinian and other nationalities.

This feels very personal for me, not just because I’ve had Jewish and Palestinian friends all my life. I lived in London during times of constant threat of terrorist attacks, from the IRA, al-Qaeda and ISIS. On July 7th 2005, bombs exploded across London. One blast blew up a bus just a block from our house, another a train at our local underground station. One of my friends was in the train carriage that got hit. She escaped almost unhurt only because the train was so full that she was shielded by the bodies between her and the bomber. I had gone to work early that day, otherwise I could have been there.

I relegated this event to a drawer of my memory that I never opened until last week, when an Israeli friend told me about being caught up in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. Hearing his story brought back the London bombings for me very vividly. We cried together as we remembered the terror of a narrow escape, of not knowing whether our loved ones were safe. It was many years ago, but it still affected us. You can imagine our shock when we saw the news of the attacks in Israel a day later.

Trauma takes many forms – peer support can help.

Processing trauma is hard, and it can take years to recover. I know that peer support helps from my personal experience: being with my friend who had gone through a similar experience and understood what it’s like felt incredibly healing. That’s what peer support is all about.

Many of our Peers.net supporters have experienced trauma. Even if they haven’t gone through community trauma like we’re witnessing right now, all of our professional peer supporters are trained in trauma-informed care and supported in turn by our experienced supervisors. We’re also rolling out an additional training on this kind of trauma for all our supporters next week.

It’s always risky when a company offers something during a crisis, because it might be misunderstood as self-promotion. I talked to my team and we decided to take the risk because peer support is what we do and we know it can be so helpful with trauma.

So here we go:

If you’re a 13-30 year old who is affected by what’s going on in Israel and Gaza, we’re here for you. 🤍

🕊️ Enter code PEACE when you book a support session on Peers.net and pay just $5 (instead of $65). All proceeds will be donated to Save The Children who are providing mental health support to children in conflict zones, including Israel and Gaza. We won’t make any money on these sessions. 

Please share this with anyone who you think might benefit from this support. We’re giving out the code freely and trusting people to not misuse  it. Unfortunately, we can’t offer peer support service overseas yet, so you need to be based in the US. 

If you need immediate help, call 988 or text HOME to 741741 to reach a Crisis Text Line counselor.

The Child Mind Institute offers free trauma resources to help parents, educators, and other adults in talking to children and adolescents about potentially traumatic events.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones during these tough times.

Obi

Flourish Labs founder