Our commitment to caring for native wildlife may lead us to have an internal message of either ‘them or me’. Two Green Threads aims to help individuals understand that looking after yourself, whilst living your service to animals, will multiply the assistance for the animals you are motivated to support. If we sustain ourselves we have a more sustainable community of volunteers to support our wildlife for the long term. Let’s reframe self-care to self and community sustainability.
‘Refill Your Bucket’ is a call to action for wildlife volunteers to prioritise their own well-being, so we can keep supporting the wildlife that need us. Our FREE 5-part email series is aimed at helping to acknowledge meaningful steps towards understanding and refilling your bucket. Each email will be sent to you a week apart, giving you time to reflect on its content.
Caring for wildlife can be an extremely rewarding and fulfilling experience. Many wildlife volunteers are drawn to the role because they prioritise the needs of animals, but it’s important to also remember that ‘taking care to give care’ means you need to care for yourself so that you can care for wildlife for longer. Two Green Threads has prepared the Take Care to Give Care guide to help build resilience for individuals and the wildlife volunteer sector as a whole.
As wildlife sector volunteers we are ‘the helpers’, and we don’t often let ourselves be ‘the helped’. However, seeking help to be in the strongest state we can be to continue caring for wildlife is important. There is free mental health support for everyone, and there is no pressure to talk. but don’t let the reason not to talk be because you don’t know where to access help. Two Green Threads has collated information from a range of sources about how to access mental health services.
The Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife has teamed up with podcast producer Gretchen Miller, wildlife carers and mental health experts to share stories and perspectives about climate worry, personal wellbeing, community conflict, catastrophic events, and supporting others. Australia’s 15,000+ wildlife volunteers work hard, under intense conditions. The Wildlife Heroes: Caring for Carers Podcast aims to start a mental health conversation to support our volunteers to look after themselves and each other.
The 2019/20 Black Summer’s bushfire season left a toll on many people, especially those working in the wildlife volunteer community. Dr Rob Gordon, a psychologist and also a bushfire survivor, has been working in the field of post disaster recovery for near on 40 years. Two Green Threads has drawn on Dr Gordon’s guidance offered in the context of the the Black Saturday bushfire affected communities, and these words are offered as a means to inspire and support self agency as we acknowledge future anniversaries of the Black Summer fires.
As a result of the recent bushfires, people are hurting, and for those in the wildlife caring community, we are experiencing huge demands on our physical and mental resources. In order to keep going, even when we are feeling overwhelmed with the scale of what is before us, we need to care for each other and consider ourselves. These guides from the Australian Psychological Society provide effective strategies and skills to support one another through these difficult times.
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