My cousin Lynn suffered from lung cancer long before I knew anything was wrong. I noticed that she was a little slow to get to the phone, often sounded like she’d been asleep, had a little cough here and there. But she chatted on the phone across 2,800 miles as if she was still a kid romping around the blueberry patch.

In reality, friends from the office where she had been working were in the habit of stopping by her house every couple of weeks to check in on her, and to supply her with economy-sized packages of Ensure, toilet paper, cat food, cigarettes, and scotch.

By the time those helpers called to tell me I’d better come, she was on her third or fourth hospitalization. She was emaciated and weeks away from death. She didn’t have the strength to empty the cat litter or get dressed. It hurt to swallow solid food. She just wanted to smoke and drink and be left alone to die.

How frustrating it is to know of a bad situation, to want to do something, and to feel as if you have no way to help. Tragedies can happen just as easily to beloved relatives as they have to the thousands of once free and healthy migrants penned up and treated like cattle at the border. It can happen in a heartbeat – with hurricanes, floods and wildfires – or with lethal slowness, like the poisoning of water supplies in Flint, or the growth of a tumor.

Here’s the good news: An organization called Together Rising has figured out a way to help us when we see suffering and wish we could think of something real and concrete we could do to make the situation better. Together Rising is a non-profit that uses a variety of tools to address overwhelming and seemingly unfixable circumstances of human distress.

Ordinary people like you and I can contact Together Rising to let them know of a distressing situation we wish we could alleviate in some way. For example, if you or someone you know is struggling with a life-threatening disease, or with moving to a new area, or with raising teenagers alone, Together Rising has a program called “Together Letters.”  Anyone can go to the web site and write about any struggle, and other readers will leave encouraging comments and ideas and resources.

Another program is focused on families and communities that are struggling. Donations to Together Rising have been used to help families through tough circumstances with joblessness or handicapped relatives, and to help a community develop resources for foster children. They might do a fund raiser to help impoverished schools with educational needs, or to lift up the quality of life for seniors, or to help regions affected by climate disasters.

If you are thinking about issues in your area, such as the number of homeless veterans, or the number of teen suicides, or the farmers who are struggling to make ends meet, or the library demolished by the last wildfire, Together Rising might be a good resource.

When hundreds of people contacted Together Rising to ask how they could help the children separated from their parents and being kept in cages at the border, the organization used the tool of internet Love Flash Mobs. These are on line fundraisers in which individual donations are $25 or less. Together Rising raised over $2 million during an emergency Love Flash Mob, and allocated it to increasing the number of advocates and legal representatives for children at the border.

This organization wants you to know exactly where your money is going and the impact your dollars had. On their web page, you will find their tax ID number right there, and access to their tax returns from the past several years. At the bottom of the page about the fundraiser for children at the border, you will find the names of all of the organizations to whom the money was distributed.

Cruising through the Together Rising web site gives you a good idea of the number and variety of causes they have helped to address. Their goal is to take those moments of feeling unable to help, and “transform your heartache into action” (https://togetherrising.org/about-us/).

I didn’t know about Together Rising when I flew out to California to be with cousin Lynn. Although I was able to take care of her for a while, I saw the impact of trying to go it alone. Her end-of-life experience was an extreme example of that Yankee independence that was ingrained in my family. She was alone with her smokes and her drinks, and I was alone with my grief.

The tragedies that break our hearts and cry out to us to do something are often times of feeling terribly alone and powerless to help. Together Rising works to remind us that we belong together, that we love one another so much we give to strangers all the time, and that when we reach out to others, good things happen.