What you can do when you feel hopeless

The recent death of a young women in Taiwan really got to me and I took a short break from my blog. I felt powerless and devastated by the injustice. I desperately wanted to bury my head in the sand and be in denial like the rest of the world, but I won't. Just like them, I find it hard to live in a world where such cruel things happen, but you don't cope with that feeling by calling the victims liars or sluts and pretend to not see it, when something strange happens right in front of your own eyes. You need to actually find the courage to change the world. Don't say it is too hard, when you have never seriously tried. Like I wrote before, I feel like I cannot do much since I am just an ordinary person - this is probably how most people feel -, but just like with charity, you can just do as much as you can within your own boundaries. Don't become paralyzed (I understand that the easiest thing to do is just doing nothing at all) and numb (you hear it so often and cannot do anything against it that you don't feel any emotions anymore) to sad news, get in action.

Short call to action for charity

If you don't have enough money to spare to donate, you can do charity work in your free time. If you have long work hours and not even enough time to have a healthy work-life balance, you can suggest to your company to hold a team building event, where you do something nice together for a charity of your choice. You can go paint the walls of an orphanage and buy/collect new books & toys for the children, cook for the homeless and the needy, run a marathon together and get sponsors, open a bakery stand at the office canteen with all proceedings going to charity, etc. You can also do something in a smaller scale. Just invite a lot of friends and family members and tell them to bring something they are good at cooking and ask for an entrance fee. Basically, it is an all-you-can-eat homemade food party and the proceedings all go to charity. You don't necessarily need to make a lot of food. Just the amount of food, you normally make for dinner is enough. Just in case, there are still some hungry people, you can also buy some filling and inexpensive food, such as pasta, rice, bread, fries, and potatoes, that goes with almost any dish.    

Short call to action to be there for abuse victims 

We can no longer tolerate someone ruining a young girl's life like this and just move on to some place else and make more victims. I know it is an illusion to think that we can stop people from harming people (there will always be bad people making bad decisions in this world), but we can make the world a better place for victims. We can be more alert to the signs, care more about other people's well-being and be less selfish and self-centered, and ask more questions when they seem to avoid thinking and talking about a certain topic (on the other hand, also give them the space they need and let them know you will be there for them, when they are ready to tell their story). We can take them seriously, when they have finally found enough courage to break the silence. We can make it an easier topic to talk about and remove the taboo and stigma. We can make reporting it to the police an easier step. We can make getting justice easier (no more long and dragged out trials, when the victims want to move on with their lives and heal) and not just punishing the perpetrators, but making sure that they won't make any victims again. We can do a lot more to make sure the victims get the proper help, support, and mental health treatment. This change requires a lot of work and commitment, but we can get there, a little step at a time. On our own, we can't do much, but if everyone does a little bit, we can go a long way.

My contributions: I have made the article I wrote about the death of the Taiwanese girl a sticky post on the main page of my blog. I will keep it there, as long as people are still reading it (as in: the number of views is still increasing) and at least, for one whole month. I have also consistently discussed and shared similar news articles about abuse with friends and family and through talking a lot about it, it will become a more natural thing and not something that is too creepy or gross to even think about.