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Amy Julia Becker (00:06)
I’m Amy Julia Becker and this is Take the Next Step, a podcast for families experiencing disability. We have teamed up with our friends at Hope Heals to bring you weekly conversations with fellow parents, therapists, and disability advocates about practical ways to cultivate a thriving future for the whole family. Here at Take the Next Step, we see your family as a gift to our society and to your local community. Your family matters. Your child matters.
We need you among us. I learned about SupportNow last spring and I’ve been telling people about it ever since. Today we have CEO and co-founder of SupportNow, Jordan Arogeti as our guest. SupportNow is a free platform that simplifies giving funds, meals, and time. I want to be clear, she’s not paying us to advertise her company.
We just have her on here today because we believe that support now can be a real part of equipping parents like you to start with delight, connect to community, and take the next step toward a good future. And that is what the show is all about. One more thing before we turn to this conversation, I have a free gift for you that is related to what we’re talking about today. The Connect to Community download is a one-page guide.
that helps you map out the connections and support that matter most to your family in your community. You can find the link in the show notes and that’s for free. And now my conversation with Jordan Aracetti.
So I’m here today with Jordan Arogeti, founder of Support Now. Jordan, thank you for being here.
Jordan Arogeti (01:47)
It’s great to see you again. I’m excited to be here.
Amy Julia Becker (01:50)
Well, we talk about three things here on the Take the Next Step podcast. So we talk about starting with delight, connecting to community, and taking the next step towards a good future. And today I want to zoom in with you on the idea of connecting to community because you have started a company called Support Now, and it’s really designed for, of course, support for families, but also
maintaining connection to community, especially in times when that might be easy to lose. And I, so let’s start with an introduction to you and to support now. What motivated you to start it? What is this organization? Just tell us about it.
Jordan Arogeti (02:29)
Sure. So I am the proud mom of three children. My husband and I started this company a couple of years ago. Unlike yourself, Amy Julia, I don’t come from the background of having a child with a disability. During the pandemic, like a lot of people, I was on the receiving end of many, many text messages, emails, phone calls, Facebook notifications that people I loved loved were struggling.
struggling with loss, struggling with NICU babies, struggling with house fires, cancer, disability. And I turned to my husband and I realized that we live in a culture of cash and casseroles. And I really questioned and wondered, why is that? Why is our knee jerk to just give money and meals? Because I knew that I wasn’t the only person that had this desire to do more than those things. It’s not that I didn’t want to do those things. I’m happy to do that, but
I always thought about what about their dog? What about their children? What about prayer? What about just listening? Why isn’t there an opportunity to like really step up in that fashion in a way that can scale and a way that can be normal? And so we became pretty obsessed with this idea of building a more compassionate, empathetic, comprehensive place where you can raise money, organize meals, coordinate volunteer share updates all together in one place.
And that became Support Now. And then about a year later, we came across an amazing woman named Abby Zacharitz, who had built a spreadsheet full of grants, medical grants, ⁓ after her son endured a major life-changing injury in a near drowning incident. And we found an opportunity to help families further by building Connect, which is the largest database of active, sortable medical grants in the world.
And so together, these two tools are there to help families alleviate and reduce the overwhelm that they feel. And Connect especially tends to be for our families that do have a child or a loved one with a disability. And it just, again, reduces that overwhelm that they feel, especially when it comes to funding.
Amy Julia Becker (04:42)
Thanks so much for just giving us, I love the backstory there and that you were on some level just the person who wanted to be able to be connected and to help, know, not of course with any attitude that you wouldn’t one day be on the receiving end of that, but at the same time, recognizing how much we actually want to be engaged and involved in each other’s lives in especially these times of need. And I’m curious and it’s interesting to even think about the pandemic as a part of this question.
But what are some of the barriers that you see that keep people from being connected to each other and helping support each other? What are some of those barriers? I know support now helps to break down some of those barriers, but what are some of the barriers?
Jordan Arogeti (05:25)
There are several but the main one and the one we talk about the most is that the greatest fear that people have in life is asking for help. It’s really, it’s that simple. It’s also that deep asking for help is rooted in this sense of shame that I am not enough. I’m not capable or rather that I should be able to rise to this occasion or that I was put in this place to figure this out on my own. ⁓
And that is the number one barrier for anyone to get the support they need. Because in order for people to help you, generally speaking, you have to be willing to accept that help. we live in a very, I don’t like this word, but I’m gonna choose to use it on this podcast. We live in this kind of toxic culture of motherhood in particular, where we’re expected to do it all and to look good while doing it.
⁓ I think it’s really dangerous and think social media only.
Amy Julia Becker (06:27)
⁓
Jordan Arogeti (06:28)
right, highlights and really makes that problem worse because people are always projecting the best of themselves, the best of their families. And I do think it kind of corrodes this motherhood and this sense of that I must be doing it wrong because everyone else is doing it fine on their own. And so it’s a very difficult thing to reverse because it’s psychological, it’s rooted, it’s emotion.
to feel shame. ⁓ But I’m also extremely ⁓ bullish and optimistic that we can actually turn that shift towards normalizing help, normalizing support as actually the cool thing to do, the trendy thing to do. And I often say this, but I believe it. don’t think sometimes moms realize when you put all of that pressure on yourself,
Not only does it make it harder for you, but it’s also a detriment to your children because we are supposed to model the behaviors that they see. So if we don’t model asking for help, if we don’t model the idea of letting others into your home to support you, how are we to expect them to know how to ask for help and to be willing to receive it? And so I mean it. ⁓
Amy Julia Becker (07:33)
Mm-hmm.
Jordan Arogeti (07:56)
very sincerely that like it is such a blessing to wake up every day, not just to see families get support, but also to change the culture in which accepting support is normal and dare I say validating and fulfilling for everybody.
Amy Julia Becker (08:10)
Yeah. I also know from being on the receiving end of that type of support and recognizing my own ⁓ various stages in our family’s life need to ask for help. What’s really remarkable is that when you become someone who is receiving support and asking for help, it actually is remarkably freeing for other people to say, ⁓ I’m needy too.
Like me too, me too, I need help too. And there’s actually like this beautiful reciprocity over time that can begin to happen as a result, as you said, of kind of a culture change of not believing I need to prove myself as invincible or as completely independent. But actually our families can be people who rely on each other instead of doing it all for ourselves, which is transformative for the whole family and for the ecosystem, right, of all the people. So I I really love that.
and
Jordan Arogeti (09:08)
As you know, as humans, are tribal beings. By nature, we are tribal beings. It is only in recent centuries where we have kind of lost this. We’ve leaned into this individualist society, which is again, not a bad thing. It’s just a thing. But as a result of both how we live, we live separated. We don’t live in huts. We don’t live in communities. We live spread out. Certainly the rise of technology, certainly
the pandemic, has begun to isolate us. So it’s harder to get connection than it used to be, but it’s in fact a very innate part of the human experience. So it doesn’t surprise me when people say, wow, I didn’t realize how good it would feel to receive and then to give that back to your point about reciprocity and kind of that domino effect that takes place because it is by nature what we are designed to do.
Amy Julia Becker (10:06)
So tell me about a family who either feels like their needs are too much to ask for help or who just don’t know how or who to ask. Where would they start? And that can be in general or specifically with support now. What does that asking for help actually look like?
Jordan Arogeti (10:24)
Yeah. So there’s a couple of ways to answer that question. think something I’ve learned from our customers, from our families is the great reframe comes when you think about not from, not about what you receive, but what you get to give to others. So a framing that I’ve heard often is I finally was willing to create a support now or to let someone create a support now when I realized that it was, I was giving my community a chance to bless us with their blessings.
Amy Julia Becker (10:53)
Mm-hmm.
Jordan Arogeti (10:54)
And that reframe is really, really important because what you realize is that shift again, it’s not about what you need. It’s about letting others do what they are designed to do. And support now is so perfectly positioned for that because we allow, you know, what I call all these different support languages to take place because it is so comprehensive. We don’t say that it’s just money or just meals. You can step up and show up.
in ways that feel most natural for that person, for your community, for that circumstance. It’s flexible in that way. So that’s one way. The second way is, and this takes a little bit of, I’m Jewish, so I’ll use some Yiddish on this, some chitpa. And that is that there are some of the most successful support now’s experiences I’ve seen have come not as a result of the family coming around to it, but has come as a result.
of that closest person in their life saying, I’m doing this anyway. I’m doing this anyway. Because absent you giving clear direction, what happens is you actually create more chaos for yourself. You create more confusion, you create more questions. And so some of my favorite examples, I call this person the maid of honor. It’s typically a woman. And I call it a maid of honor. In support now, we call these people organizers.
Amy Julia Becker (11:58)
Yeah.
Jordan Arogeti (12:21)
But A Maid of Honor, it’s so easy to visualize. It’s the person in your life that is willing to push back on what you’re saying because they know you well enough to know your needs. They know you well enough to say what you need. Your needs are more extraordinary than you might recognize. And your community wants to do something, not because you’re asking for it, but because they love you. And so I think there’s another route to take, is
You know, if you know someone that’s going through what we call a major life moment or a moment on their journey or in a season where this is just helpful, just do it. Because in that moment, the family might say, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t need this. But I assure you six months later, nine months later, a year later, they come back and say, I’m so grateful. The most reoccurring theme I hear when I interview people is that the people that meant most to them.
are the ones that just did it. They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t overcomplicate it. And I think there’s a lot of beauty and that’s just taking initiative perspective ⁓ because a lot of times families are too overwhelmed and frankly too prideful to know what their needs are.
Amy Julia Becker (13:38)
Will you give us a couple examples of how people have used support now? ⁓ Because I know there are lots of different ways that families might avail themselves of those services.
Jordan Arogeti (13:49)
So, I mean, there are really just hundreds of use cases. ⁓ For the disability community, it’s so beautiful. I mean, it can be, I’ve seen people raise money and just raise money for equipment. know, the thing about the disability community is you’re kind of chronically needing money. Because the needs of your child evolve, whether that’s surgeries.
therapies, equipment, your families, God willing, your children, God willing, they keep growing. And so for a lot of families, what their communities don’t realize is even if you just raise money for some hospital bills, an emergency visit, in five years, they’re gonna need a new wheelchair or a new van or new therapy. So one of the most common use cases I see from ⁓
families with a child with a disability is just raising money for equipment. And it’s a beautiful thing. ⁓ And in that vein, a lot of times it’s for intensive therapies. We have a lot of cerebral palsy families that use SupportNow. And with CP, they need, and it’s possible to help with walking, help with balance, but those things cost money. ⁓ And then beyond that, beyond the fundraising element of what SupportNow does, our Linda Hand feature is what
Amy Julia Becker (15:08)
Yeah.
Jordan Arogeti (15:15)
is what we call really, it’s a fancy term for volunteers. But it’s been really incredible to see when we’ve had families, whether it’s cancer or disabilities, God forbid, loss, people to leverage this feature inside of support now to do things like dog walking, to do things like mowing the lawn, to do things like ⁓ play dates for their other children who might be neglected in that short season while you might be with your kid that’s struggling.
And so what’s really special about what we’ve built is everything is customizable. So sometimes people just start with volunteering. Sometimes people start with just fundraising or a combination of the two. But we know the situations, especially for disability families, it’s constant. And so the needs are constant. And it’s not that your community doesn’t want to help you, but if there’s not one place to be informed of what the latest is or what they can be doing to better show up, then it kind of makes it.
hard for them to do that thing. And what we want to do is really extend that timeline of support for much longer.
Amy Julia Becker (16:20)
I love that and I know you’ve already mentioned this ⁓ but I’d love to ask you to speak to the idea of support languages because one of the beautiful things about support now is exactly what you said. We’re not assuming that everyone wants to bake a casserole although we know there are casserole’s needed you know but like so what are support languages and how do they let different people be involved.
Jordan Arogeti (16:39)
Yeah.
So there’s a like a practical way of me answering that question. And then there’s more of the philosophical. And I was really fortunate to give a TEDx talk on support languages a few months ago, where I laid out this framework framework for people to discover what their support language is. So think of a support language similar to your love language. It’s how you like to give and receive support. And what we saw at support now was there’s an opportunity to educate people on their support language based off their natural inclination when
things in their community happen. And it’s based off of multiple variables, things like, do you tend to take initiative or do you kind of wait for direction? Things like, do you like to do more tangible things or are you more emotional? Meaning like, do you prefer to listen? Do you prefer to kind of play that role of the listening ear? And what we found is that we could create eight different support languages as a result of how you answered this quiz, we curated.
But the end result of this support language is designed to teach you that you are born with a natural instinct to support. Now that might look different. We may have very different support languages. I always say, if you’re not the cook, don’t cook. But I know plenty of people that love to play the role of the dog walker. I know plenty of people that love to be the prayer person. I know plenty of people that say, I don’t want to do any of that, but the second you just want to break down in tears, I’m here to listen.
And they all matter. ⁓ what we’re uniquely designed to do is to support those things so that everyone feels like they have the opportunity to support. Everyone feels like they had the chance to show up because the number one thing that I hear from supporters ⁓ when major life moments happen and they don’t is that guilt and that shame of doing nothing. And so often it’s because they simply didn’t know what to do.
And so we curated this whole quiz. You can go to supportlanguages.com for that. But then through the platform, through Support Now, you can actually act on that.
Amy Julia Becker (18:48)
I love that. I think about my mom, and this is not specifically through support now, but she has a friend who has dementia and my mom has been saying for years, like, I know that dropping off food is actually not helpful to them because of just her condition. Like she literally forgets that the food is there. So it goes to waste. like, you know, I’ve been trying to support her in so many ways. And finally, her friend just made a comment. They were she drove her somewhere and her friend made a comment was like.
I have just been looking for someone to drive me around town. And my mom was like, what? What? Wait, I can do that. I can do that. And I would love to do that. I’ll come over once a week and we’ll take a drive around town. Like, that’s great. And we can get out and walk somewhere. We can, you know. And it was just such a beautiful gift because it’s something my mom is delighted to do. And it’s also something that is like truly life giving to her friend, which then ripples down, honestly, across the whole family. So, know, the rest of the family as well. And.
I just love the way in which when we start to give to one another and in meaningful ways that there is a sense of it kind of like falling into place in like a beautiful, almost a system that was meant to be there already. And I love your stories that support that idea too.
Jordan Arogeti (20:00)
Thank you.
Amy Julia Becker (20:02)
I have one last question, just which is very practical. So someone’s listening to this podcast and they’re like, gosh, I think that’s me or that’s my friend or my family member or whatever. And they want to get started. The name of this podcast is Take the Next Step. Can you give us like a couple next steps that people might take if they want to get more connected and ⁓ connected to a supportive community? Yeah.
Jordan Arogeti (20:27)
be happy to. The best place to start is to go to our website, supportnow.org. Again, we call Support Now a registry. We kind of play off the wedding or baby registry idea. But anyone can create a Support Now. It can be the family themselves can create it, a best friend can create it, a sibling can create it, it doesn’t matter. And then you go on and the onboarding is less than two minutes. We just ask you some questions. Who are you? What are your needs? Or what do you think your needs are?
And then from there, you can customize the entire experience. You can add more organizers, which we highly recommend doing because by, especially if you’re creating it for your own family, you’re, just going to be distracted because you have a family to run. we, we encourage you to invite others that you think would take pride and be excited about taking on this initiative. ⁓ but the process is really simple and it is driven by your own community. It’s driven by the.
kind of social circles you’re already in. So we recommend sharing with your school groups, with your church communities, with your close friends and family. And it’s not uncommon for people to tell me, well, I’m not sure that I have a big community. I’m not sure. And those are the ones, Amy, Julia, that do so well because their community has been waiting for an opportunity to do something. They’ve been waiting. They’re eager.
And because support and helping and asking is so awkward in our culture, again, people are reluctant to be proactive and now you’re giving them a chance. So that’s the easiest way. We have an amazing support team over here at Support Now that provides all the help you need, whether it’s writing a description, how to share, what communities, I mean, we really do everything we can to make the experience as seamless as possible. ⁓ And then if you’re not ready.
for to create a support now registry. can always follow us on Instagram just to see the type of content that we’re putting out there too. Because sometimes you just need a little bit more of an edge and that’s just support now underscore org on Instagram.
Amy Julia Becker (22:37)
Awesome. Those are fantastic next steps. to your point before, if you know you need a support now but don’t want to make it for yourself, then your one next step would be to ask your maid of honor to do that. Maybe not your literal maid of honor from your wedding, but the person who you know would do that for you. So.
Thank you so have something I can do. Yeah, I know. yeah. ⁓ Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for the work of support now. I know that I am just so grateful to be able to share this resource with so many people. And I know it has already meant so much to so many and that’ll only continue.
Thanks so much for joining me here at Take the Next Step. This show is produced in partnership with our friends at Hope Heals, a nonprofit that creates sacred spaces of belonging and belovedness for families affected by disabilities to experience sustaining hope in the context of inter-ability community.
Jordan Arogeti (23:43)
you
Amy Julia Becker (23:43)
Before we go, I want to remind you of your free gift, the Connected Community Download. This is a one-page guide that helps families experiencing disability map out the connections and support that matter most to your family in your community. You can find the link in the show notes. We’ve still got more great episodes upcoming. I’m to be talking with Kerry Hahn, author of Beyond Inclusion, the show Baraka, father and hip-hop artist, writer,
Nero Feliciano, who is the author of a book that all of us might need going into the holiday season. All is calm-ish. ⁓ So please stay tuned for all of those great upcoming conversations. Please also follow, rate, review this show. We need more people to know that this is available to them. They too can start with delight and connect to community and take the next step towards a good future. So please share this conversation.
send questions or suggestions my way. We’ve got a link in the show notes that says send us a text. You also can email me at amyjuliabeckerwriter at gmail.com. Thank you, Jake Hansen, for editing this podcast. Thank you, Amber Beery, my assistant for doing everything else to make sure it happens. And thank you for being here. I’ll say it one more time. I hope you leave this time with encouragement to start with delight, connect a community, and take the next small step.
toward a good future for your family.
