If you need someone, now
You do not have to be at your worst to call. You only have to want to talk to someone. These cost nothing, and the people who answer do this every day.
Any hour of the night
- Suicide Crisis Helpline, SADAG 0800 567 567 24 hours, every day
- Cipla Mental Health Helpline 0800 456 789 24 hours. Or SMS 31393 and they call you back.
- Lifeline South Africa 0861 322 322 24 hours. WhatsApp 065 989 9238.
If it is something else
- Drink or drugs 0800 12 13 14 24 hours. Or SMS 32312.
- Someone is hurting you at home 0800 428 428 24 hours. Or SMS the word help to 31531. Or dial *120*7867# and they call you.
- If you are under 18. Childline 08000 55555 24 hours, every day
- You want to talk it through, and it is not an emergency. SADAG 0800 70 80 90 8am to 8pm
- You want a counsellor or a group near you. SADAG will find one 011 234 4837 8am to 8pm
Outside South Africa, findahelpline.com will give you the number that works where you are.
Checked 13 July 2026. If one of these no longer works, tell me at [email protected] and I will fix it the same day.
What I am, and what I am not
I wrote ROOT. I am not a doctor and I am not a psychologist, and nobody is watching this mailbox at three in the morning. If you write to me then, I will read it, but it may be hours. The numbers above are answered now. Use those first. Write to me after.
If the forty days finds something
It might. The path goes through a desert, and near the end it goes into a garden at night. That is on purpose. It is where he was, and it is where his words land hardest.
For most people it is uncomfortable, and then it is useful. For some, it will find something that was already there and was already heavy.
If that is you, nothing has gone wrong with you. Put the emails down. There is no streak to keep and nothing to finish. Talk to someone. Come back when you want to, and start at the beginning of the day, not the beginning of the forty.
You can stop the emails any time, from the link at the bottom of any of them. Nothing happens if you do.
Your email address
If you sign up for the forty days, I take your email address. Nothing else. Not your name, not your age, not where you live.
It is used for one thing: sending you the forty. It is never sold, never shared, never given to anyone.
There is no tracking pixel in any of the emails. I do not know if you opened one. I do not know if you clicked anything. That is not a promise, it is how they are built. I cannot use what I never collected.
Signing up tells me something about what you believe, and South African law treats that as sensitive, which it should be. So: you give it to me freely, you can take it back in one click, and when you unsubscribe your address is deleted. If you finish the forty and do nothing, it is deleted anyway, because there is nothing left to send you. There is no day forty-one.
The emails go out through Sender, a Lithuanian company, who hold your address only to deliver them, and for nothing of their own.
You do not have to give me anything at all. All forty days are on this site, in full. Walk them from here and I never learn your address.