My name is Martine. I am a Wife, a Mother, a Doula and a friend… and I am a HUGE advocate of Gather My Crew….
I first encountered Gather My Crew while I was studying to be a Doula. I was researching ways for my clients to build their village around their postnatal journey. In western society, we have somehow become accustomed to doing everything on our own and we have truly lost the sense of ‘It takes a village’ but Gather My Crew is bringing it back and normalising asking for help. I love that!
I am your typical “Type A” Personality who loves helping others but find it unreasonably difficult to accept help from anyone, let alone ask for it. When our daughter was 4 years old, I needed a full right shoulder reconstruction (of course I’m right handed too!) which meant I would spend up to 9 weeks in a sling. Complete immobilisation of my right arm and obviously no driving. I would need help with just about every aspect of daily life. I have a wonderfully capable, supportive, engaged husband who carried most of the load over the weeks that followed but as we don’t have any family/parents or grandparents around, we enlisted the help of our friends and neighbours… Our village.
I sent the following message out to our friends:
Hi My friend
As you know, I will be having surgery on my right shoulder on Monday 19 October. I will be in a sling and unable to drive or do much of anything for myself…or anyone else for 9 weeks following surgery. You all know me well enough to know that this presents my Type A personality with a number of challenges. You will also know that I really struggle asking for help. Duncan is AMAZING and will manage most things himself but we may need additional help from time to time. Below is a link to “Gather my Crew” It is a task platform that has a group of friends linked to it. As and when we need anything, we will post on there and you will be able to nominate yourself as/when/if you have the capacity to help out. Thank you for being part of our village and our A-Team crew.
My husband was home during my recovery and refereed soccer on weekends. So my friends would take turns over weekends to come over, help with dinner and bath time for our little one and set us up for the night. Some would deliver meals, pop to the chemist, pop in just to visit me when I was feeling down and helpless.
There are so many things I love about Gather My Crew:
- It is a way to let your crew know that you need a hand without directly having to ask any one person in particular.
- Your crew love you and WANT to help you but may not know exactly how. Your crew can easily see what kind of help you need.
- Gather My Crew is smart enough to make suggestions for you – because sometimes you know you need help but have no idea how to ask or even what to ask for. It is a wonderfully intuitive and easy-to-use app.
- Gather My Crew can be used not only to get help yourself but also amongst a group of friends or within a community to organise help for someone you know.
Now, more than ever, we need to come together as a village and support one another.
Help comes in all shapes and sizes – let Gather My Crew make giving and receiving help easier.
Martine ❤️
