„Menschen begleiten zu können, ihnen dabei zu helfen, Fortschritte zu erzielen, dadurch Selbstsicherheit zu gewinnen und ihren eigenen Beitrag in die Welt einzubringen, macht einfach glücklich“, sagt Conni. Die 66-jährige liebt es, als Ermöglicherin aktiv zu werden. Derzeit spricht sie bei Little World mit ihrer dritten Gesprächspartnerin, einer jungen Ungarin. Zuvor hat sich Conni jeweils für etwa ein halbes Jahr mit Studierenden aus der Türkei und aus Ägypten ausgetauscht.

„Am Anfang tastet man sich erst mal ab und schaut, welche Themen interessant für beide sein könnten“, erzählt die Thüringerin. „Mit der Zeit entsteht dann mehr Vertrauen und man kann auch über Familie und persönlichere Themen reden.“ Da Conni auch als Trauerrednerin tätig ist, weiß sie mit sensiblen Themen umzugehen. Außerdem hat sie vor Little World mit ihrem Mann auch schon in der Geflüchtetenhilfe vor Ort mitgewirkt und dabei einige Erfahrungen gesammelt.

Via Social Media weiterempfehlen

Auf Little World wurde Conni via Social Media aufmerksam. „Wahrscheinlich über Facebook“, überlegt sie. Dort und auf Instagram versucht sie, öfter zu kommentieren und Little World weiterzuempfehlen. Auch Flyer hat sie schon in ihrem Umfeld verteilt.

Am Austausch mit ihren Gesprächspartner:innen gefällt ihr auch, dass sie das zum Nachdenken über ihre eigene Sprache bringt und sie dadurch kuriose Details entdeckt. Fremdsprachenkenntnisse hat die Geraerin nach eigener Aussage nur wenig, dafür aber ihr Mann und ihre vier Kinder. „Wir mögen Sprache“, sagt sie.

Dadurch dass Conni in ihrer eigenen Familie damit konfrontiert ist, wie mit nicht deutsch Aussehenden im Alltag umgegangen wird, ist das Verständnis füreinander innerhalb der Familie gewachsen. Umso wichtiger ist es ihr, mit ihrem Ehrenamt bei Little World ein Zeichen zu setzen. Gerade in einem Bundesland mit hoher Fremdenfeindlichkeit ist es wichtig zu zeigen, dass es auch andere Menschen gibt, die sich ganz bewusst um die Verständigung bemühen.

Du möchtest auch etwas zu Little World beitragen?

Hilf uns, Little World noch bekannter zu machen, damit wir weiter neue Menschen erreichen und zum Mitmachen motivieren können.

• Eine halbe Stunde pro Woche reicht schon, um dich ehrenamtlich für Deutschlernende zu engagieren. Schon eine halbe Stunde pro Woche einfach nur miteinander zu reden, hat große Wirkung.
• Du hast schon eine:n Gesprächspartner:in? Dann erzählt uns doch eure Geschichte. Dazu könnt ihr zusammen unseren Fragebogen ausfüllen, oder ihr vereinbart einen Interviewtermin mit uns, damit wir eure Geschichte für euch aufschreiben. Hier veröffentlicht wird sie natürlich erst nach eurer Freigabe.
• Du kannst uns auch mit einer Spende helfen, die Arbeit von Little World weiter zu finanzieren. Oder verbinde uns gern mit Deinem Unternehmen, damit es uns unterstützen kann.

Buy this content in print zine format

Between another pointless war, ongoing and unchecked genocides, civil rights ebbing away, massive layoffs in multiple sectors, the rising price of everything, and the ongoing threat of fascism, it is a rough time to be embodied.

It’s easy to get paralyzed. It’s easy to give up hope. But hope is more than a feeling: it’s a practice. Sustaining it takes work: absolutely vital work.

Some of that work is practical. Some of it is magickal. Some of it involves setting hard boundaries and sticking to them. Some of it involves giving yourself space to not be inundated by negative stimuli — because wounds can’t begin to heal if you’re constantly bathing in the emotional equivalent of an acid pool. And some of it involves doing something, however small, regularly, to keep working towards a better world.

Here are some ideas, based on my own experience, to help you stay informed, take action, and keep hope alive.

Step 1: Set yourself a strict media budget

More and more people are getting their news from social media rather than from direct news sources. Before the advent of 24-hour cable and radio news stations, the news was something you consumed in a finite manner, because only so many stories would fit into a daily newspaper or evening news program.

Once CNN came along, suddenly they had a lot more time to fill, and they filled it with pundits: People sharing their opinions on the news, rather than reporting the news itself. Soon networks learned that pundits got more viewers than news programs, because they provoked an emotional response, especially if those pundits were particularly extreme in their perspectives.

Fast forward to the inventions of smartphones, infinite scroll, and algorithmic social media, and we’re seeing the same thing play out. Except seemingly everyone in our orbits are pundits, there are a million different commentators to follow, and even if you don’t intentionally follow them, their views will be pushed into your feed because strong emotions keep you on social platforms longer, and social media companies make their money based on how many ads you see. This is the proverbial “doomscrolling” — being unable to look away from bad news and things that make you scared or angry. It’s incredibly easy to fall into a state of mindlessly, constantly ingesting more and more awful news, during every break in the day. It’s the emotional equivalent of bathing in acid.

To say that this is a bad thing is a weirdly controversial viewpoint. There are many out there saying that it is some kind of moral imperative to stay informed all the time, and that to look away is a sign of weakness, callousness, or selfishness.

I am here to say to you: No.

There is no moral imperative to keep yourself in a constant state of anxiety and stress over things that are happening in the world.

In fact, I would argue that there’s a moral imperative to not do that, because first of all, awareness alone does not create change, and secondly, living and breathing doom actually makes it harder for us to take action by depleting our energy reserves. You shouldn’t stick your head in the sand, but you also don’t have to live in a constant state of fear. There is a middle ground to be had.

So how do you stop yourself from being constantly inundated with bad news?

With a strict media budget.

The answer is not avoiding all news all the time, but choosing with intention when and how you consume it.

Media budget part 1: Social media boundaries

You’ve got two controls with social media:

1. How much time you spend on it
2. Which social media platforms you use

Depending on the platform, you may also have control over the type of content you see.

I left Meta in January of 2025, when their leadership decided it was just fine to harass trans people on their platform. I’ve also never joined TikTok. I haven’t regretted either decision one bit.

I know not everyone is willing to leave popular social platforms, so for those who aren’t, I suggest using the digital wellbeing app timers built into your phone and tablet to limit how much time you can spend on them (Android, iOS), or uninstalling the apps on your phone and only allowing yourself to use them on a desktop computer, so it takes more effort to use them.

You could also decide on one day a week which you’ll use for social media, and not check your accounts the other days of the week.

You could even take a social media sabbatical for a month and see how it feels.

It’s also entirely valid to unfollow friends and groups who share a lot of unpleasant news. This doesn’t solve the problem completely, as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will keep pushing stuff into your feed that you don’t follow because they’re trying to keep you engaged. But it is a start.

You can also decide to use non-algorithmic social media that gives you tighter control over the content you see, and intentionally filter bad news out of your feed. Mastodon (which has no ads, by the way) and Tumblr (whose ads are not targeted at your demographic and are often delightfully unhinged) let you filter keywords in posts. I have a filter in Mastodon for “bad news” that contains a lot of keywords that tend to come up in the types of news that gets my heart rate spiking: “Trump,” “Supreme Court,” “war,” “genocide,” etc. (here’s how to set those filters up). I have those keywords filtered out of my Tumblr dash as well (here’s how to do that). I’m not on BlueSky, but it seems there are at least some base filters available for violent or graphic content there as well. (BTW, if you’re interested in Mastodon and not sure what server to join, I can highly recommend the one I’m on: kind.social.)

Media budget part 2: Staying informed

Most people are in a terror loop: Wanting to stay informed, but also being negatively impacted emotionally by all the information coming at them. It is important to stay informed. But that doesn’t mean you need to know every single thing that happens the moment it happens. Trust me on this. You can return to the days when people read a newspaper or watched the evening news and then did other things the rest of the day. But you have to make some choices.

I have a few recommendations for staying informed without drowning, and I recommend you pick one of these, not all of them. The point is that your news consumption in a day should be finite and time-boxed, rather than permeating your entire day. Unless your job requires you be constantly tuned in, this should be pretty manageable.

E-newsletters

Many news outlets offer daily e-newsletters with the top headlines of the day, if you want a broad look at things. If you’re looking for news on a specific subject, there are lots of nonprofits, organizations, and cultural commentators offering e-newsletters as well. I recommend picking two or three issues you’re passionate about and focusing on receiving news from one or two sources for each, depending on how frequently they publish.

Personally, I subscribe to the following:

• The New Paper. This is a “just the facts, ma’am” style daily e-newsletter with the top U.S. and international headlines of the day. It costs a few bucks a month, but it’s ad-free. (Note that the link has a referral code to get you and I a free month if you decide to give it a try.)
• Erin in the Morning. Erin covers transgender rights news, with a U.S. focus but also some international stories. You can subscribe for free, with the option to help support her work financially with a few dollars a month.
• Inside Medicine. Jeremy Faust, M.D. covers breaking U.S. healthcare news from the perspective of an E.R. doctor and health researcher. (My therapist actually recommended this one to me.) This newsletter is free.

Podcasts

There are a lot of daily or weekly news podcasts available, either general news or news for particular subject areas. I don’t have any recommendations here, because I am notoriously bad at listening to podcasts myself (even though I have my own — I know! I’m sorry!), but this is a great way to stay informed in a time-boxed way. There are also daily newscasts on YouTube that may be worth checking out, but this may end up filling your feed with lots and lots of other news shows, so be wary of that if you spend a lot of time on YouTube.

RSS feeds

RSS feeds are a great way to stay up-to-date without infinite-scrolling. Most news outlets have an RSS feed of their content, segmented by section, and you can subscribe using an RSS reader app (of which there are many available). This gives you closer to the newspaper-style experience.

An actual fucking newspaper

Newspapers do still exist! If you want to go analog and read the news in a physical format each day and you have a reasonable amount of trust in your local paper, go for it.

Media budget part 3: Inspiration and joy

If you’re not able to fully relinquish your phone during idle times, I recommend you replace doomscrolling with hopequesting! Intentionally seek out and spend some of your online time with things that bring you joy, every single day. Whether it’s following a bunch of cute animal blogs, listening to a trivia podcast, watching silly videos on YouTube, slowly learning a new language with an app, playing word games online with friends, listening to music you love, or watching stand-up comedy, make sure a significant chunk of the media you’re consuming brings you happiness and reminds you what we’re fighting for. The quickest way to lose hope is to stop looking for and experiencing joy, even in the smallest things.

A great example of hopequesting and experiencing collective joy happened in early 2026, when many of us (myself included) were absolutely entranced by the Artemis II moon mission. This is a perfect case in point that we need to both decrease the suck and increase the awesome in our world to make it a better place. We cannot focus on the “suck” all the time — we also need to make awesome things happen. More on that in step 3.

Media budget essentials

The important things to remember when curating your media budget are sources and time spent. Make sure you’ve got sources you trust and find ways to limit the time you’re spending ingesting news each day, most notably avoiding using social media as your primary news source. Experiment a bit, because you may not find the right balance right out of the gate.

You can also experiment with what time of day you choose to look at the news. (Pro tip: Do not look at the news the moment you wake up! Give yourself a chance to get into the day first.)

Step 2: Magickal shielding and mindfulness

The next part of my regimen to keep hope alive is to do daily shielding against the hopeless miasma surrounding us. This is more than the news — it’s an entire vibe that permeates just about everyplace you go, particularly in the U.S.

A regular grounding, centering, cleansing, and shielding practice is vital for maintaining balance and keeping hope alive. If these practices are new to you, you can try listening to my three audio recordings of grounding, centering, and shielding meditations, all of which are strong and helpful practices for helping navigate the day-to-day horrors without becoming paralyzed.

I recommend building into your grounding, centering, cleansing, and shielding practice a layer of shielding specific to keeping the miasma from touching you. Personally, I visualize it as a ring of fire about 8 feet in diameter, that destroys the miasma whenever it comes in contact with it. Visualize it clearly, send energy into it, then speak it into being, aloud: “I surround myself with a ring of fire, to destroy the miasma of hopelessness. May it not touch me. So mote it be.” Or use whatever imagery or words ring truest with your beliefs and personal practice.

Mindfulness activities can also be useful for keeping our brains from spinning out into doom. Mindful breathing, yoga practice, meditation practice, going on walks outdoors without staring at your phone: all of these activities will serve you well. If there are other exercises or movement practices that help you focus on the moment rather than your worries, incorporate those into your weekly routine as well.

You may also try taking sensory rest breaks, particularly if you have a tendency to get overstimulated. We spend a lot of our days taking in information, surrounded by noise, lights, and advertising. Time in a quiet room, with noise-canceling headphones, without looking at a screen, talking to anyone, or even listening to music, even if it’s just for a few minutes a day, can be an excellent reset. If you have access to a float tank center, and are able to make a regular practice of visiting it, that can take sensory rest to the next level: a place where you cannot be disturbed by your phone or others, in perfect darkness, fully supported by the water, with no noise other than the sound of your own breathing, is truly an incredible experience for those of us who are prone to overstimulation. (Bonus: The saltwater used in float tanks is fantastic for grounding excess energy!)

The point is: Take measures to protect your energetic field from the overwhelming “ick” around, and seek out activities and types of rest regularly that provide a parasympathetic nervous system reset of some kind.

Step 3: Activism

One of the best ways to keep yourself balanced amid all the horrible news is to do something about the horrors. Freezing up creates a vicious cycle of terror and helplessness. It’s hard to settle your brain when you see terrible things happening, feel powerless to do anything, and then feel awful for not doing anything.

Activism is going to look different for each person, as we all have different skills, capabilities, and capacities.

Remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint — do not exhaust yourself trying to do everything or take action on every issue. Pick no more than three you will focus on.

Myself, I do a number of different things, and will share a few examples below, but these are just ideas; you should do what works best for you.

First, I call my members of Congress every Sunday and leave a voicemail about an issue that’s both timely and important to me, using scripts in the 5calls app. (Fun fact, calling your Congressperson has a bigger impact than emailing them, and it takes about the same amount of time. If you’re scared to talk to a person, call after hours and leave a voicemail, but remember to leave your full name and address so your call gets logged as a constituent.) I also keep track of state-level legislation and will email my state reps when they’re in session.

You can also go to protests, do phone banking, create protest art, or create and distribute zines.

If you’re not sure how to get started with advocacy, see if you are near a Unitarian Universalist church, as a lot of them have advocacy groups and volunteer opportunities to help get out the vote, protest, and do letter-writing campaigns.

If you have little time but some money at your disposal, lots of nonprofits are tight on funds right now and trying to do a lot of work with a lot fewer resources. Consider setting up monthly donations, even as little as $5, to causes you care about. I personally donate to free speech and trans rights organizations, as well as the local UU church of which I’m a member.

You may look inside yourself and find that your personal ministry is one of supporting your fellow beings rather than taking direct advocacy actions, and that work is important, too. Consider offering support for activists in your network to keep them from burning out — offer to babysit while they protest, maybe help out with household chores, buy them dinner, walk their dog, etc. After a particularly gnarly protest day, I dropped off a bottle of wine at an activist friend’s house, for example.

You could also look for ways to perform small acts of kindness for friends, or even strangers. Donating blood, helping someone carry their groceries, texting a friend to see how they’re doing, baking cookies for your coworkers…little things mean a lot. Brightening someone’s day with something unexpected can help dim the miasma cloud. We need to keep hope alive collectively, not just individually!

And never underestimate the importance of creating things that bring joy to others: whether it’s beautiful art, a bangin’ song, or spicy fanfic, by creating and distributing art you are helping fuel the collective and keep everybody going.

Conclusion

We all have responsibilities to stay informed and take action, but we shouldn’t drown in bad news to the point where we’re paralyzed or unable to experience joy. We need to balance our media input, protect ourselves magickally, and take action in these times to keep hope alive.

Buy this content in print zine format

P.S. Some books that helped inform this post:

Blogs I love

White Rose Witching

Gay Hispanic hedge priest (he/him) in the Mid-Atlantic. Social justice necromancer working with Queer Ancestors. LGBTQ+/disability activist.

Glasse Witch Cottage

Glasse Witch Cottage is a safe, sacred space for guidance and connection along the Winding Path.

Laura Tempest Zakroff

Laura Tempest Zakroff is an artist, author, performer, and Witch.

Make a one-time donation

Your contribution is appreciated.
Donate

Which content