This weekend we were planning to see some of you at Origins Online, and we are sad that we will have to wait again.  

 

We miss you. We especially miss you because there are a lot of things going on in the world right now, and we would like to make beautiful memories with you. 

 

But this is important.

 

When your friends need help, you help them. 

When your friends are afraid, you help them to be brave

When your friends are hurt, you help them to get better.

When your friends need you, you are there for them. 

 

There are lots of ways to help your friends. 

You can help them with your words, with your actions, and with your presence (that means being there). 

 

When you are helping someone with your words, what you say matters. But what you don’t say also matters. And who you say (or don’t say) it to matters a lot. Sometimes, the best thing you can say is “Listen to my friend.”

 

When you are helping someone with your actions, what you do matters. But it’s important to use your words, too. Remember to ask the person you’re helping what kind of help they need. 

 

When you are helping someone with your presence, showing up matters. It’s hard to do things when you’re the only one doing them, so having friends with you can help someone feel braver, or stronger, or more able to stand up for themselves. When you help someone by being there, you let them know that you are ready if they need other kinds of help too. 

 

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do. Sometimes, helping your friends can be scary. Sometimes, you may not think you can help at all. But being a friend to someone means that when they need help, you do the best you can to help them. 

 

Right now, there are a lot of people who need to be able to count on their friends to help them. The world has been a scary place for them for a long time, in ways that their friends might not understand, and they are trying to fix that. What they need right now is to know that their friends believe them, and their friends are ready to listen to them, and their friends are willing to use their words and their actions and their presence to help them. 

 

We don’t have an answer for all of the things happening in the world. We are doing a lot of listening, and reading, and thinking. We are still learning about how to be the best kind of friends we can to people. But we believe that making friends, helping friends, and building beautiful things with friends is part of the answer.  

And we will look forward to seeing you — and your friends — at the crafting table someday soon.

  With hope,

The Motley KidsMotley Kids Logo