TEDxDelftWomen 2015 | Noa Brume | Ropes of hope

“There is one story I would like to share with you, the story of my rope of hope,” Noa Brume says. “If we help, what we get back is help.”

A former educator at Oxford University and currently working as a counsellor and life coach, her story starts with the loss of her first born baby. “One morning I felt like I was suffocating, smothered by my grief.” She decided to post about her feelings on an internet forum, and was overwhelmed with the response of kindness and support she received. “Women pulled my rope and gave me hope. I would be listening to others, telling stories created hope and gave hope.” Brume found that helping others was a huge part of the healing process.

“We can look at the healing process as if it were a building,” Brume explains. The ground floor is the starting point of the healing process, where we have hit rock bottom.” The top floor is the solid recovery point, when one’s been through the process and has come through. Though it is possible for people to move back and forth between floors, having good and bad days, it is possible in the end to reach the top floor. “When you help, it is not necessary to be on the same floor. You can help and inspire others from whichever floor you find yourself on.”

People receive help in return for them offering it because, Brume explains, Newton’s law of action and reaction works for people as it does for objects. “When one object puts force on a second object, it simultaneously has a reaction of equal force upon the first item,” Brume explains. The same goes with people. By offering ropes to others on lower floors, people are being offered help to recover and in turn can give help back to those who had offered it. “We can all help. We should look for our building, for others who are currently in it, and to throw a rope of hope.”