“Low Pressure but High Impact”: Why Text-Based Grief Support Resonates With Men
“Low Pressure but High Impact”: Why Text-Based Grief Support Resonates With Men
Minnesota executive, Mark Cullen, had recently lost his dad when he took a call from Emma Payne, CEO at Help Texts. The call helped him more than he could ever have expected.
Mark Cullen is the Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Trellis, a large Area Agency on Aging (AAA) in Minnesota that delivers public programs and social services aimed at improving the health of communities in the state.
“I talk to five to ten vendors a month. Like so many others, I receive incoming messages that I can’t get to,” Mark says. “ But I decided to take a call from Emma, because I trusted the person who introduced us. And I’m so glad I did.”
Low Expectations, Deep Impact
As it happened, at the time that Emma and Mark met to talk about support for seniors in Minnesota, Mark had recently lost his dad. He was still going to work, being a dad himself, trying to power through, but admits now that emotionally, he was unraveling. Friends saw him slipping and made gentle suggestions, but he brushed them off. Luckily, Mark mentioned his loss to Emma during their call, who offered to send him a gift subscription for Help Texts. “I let him know that we’d text him grief support and that we’d also send suggestions for how he could support his 7-year-old son, who was having a hard time,” Emma shared.
At first, Mark remembers thinking, “What’s a text message going to do? I get texts from political candidates I never even signed up for.” And yet, he signed up for Help Texts. Partly out of curiosity. Partly because it was easy. And partly, maybe, because someone offered it at just the right moment.
Text Messages That Actually Matter
What Mark found surprised him.
“It didn’t fix anything. I was still depressed and grieving. But it wasn’t trying to fix me. It just helped.” Two months into receiving the messages, Mark found them uncannily timed to what he was going through.
“They were anticipatory. Like the messages knew what I was experiencing without me telling anyone. They’d show up, and it’d be exactly what I needed to hear to go outside, take a walk, breathe. These are simple things, but when you’re grieving, simple things are hard.”
Unlike many support tools, Help Texts didn’t require Mark to schedule anything, talk to anyone, or carve out time he didn’t have. “That’s the thing. For men, especially, and I’m generalizing here, if you make it too complicated or too emotional upfront, we check out. This was low-pressure but high-impact.”
A Model That Makes Sense for Men
Help Texts taps into something often overlooked in grief care: simplicity and privacy. Mark pointed out that many people, men in particular, may not be comfortable admitting they need help. “You don’t always want to say it out loud. You don’t want to tell a coworker or even a friend, ‘I’m not okay.’ But a message? That feels safer.”
He never used the supporter add-on (where friends or family get tips on how to support you), though not consciously. But it didn’t take away from his experience. In fact, he tested the program alongside colleagues, one grieving a pet, another dealing with divorce. “The one with pet loss, it hit her hard. She said it helped as much as it helped me. The other guy… well, his divorce was his fault, so he’s in a different place,” he laughs.
Where Help Texts Fits and Why It Works
From a systems perspective, Mark believes grief support like this fits into the broader patchwork of health and wellness services, the kind often left out of traditional care models. “It should be integrated,” he says. “Look at how NordicTrack bundles wellness, exercise, and coaching. We could be embedding grief support the same way in healthcare or employee benefits.”
And he thinks the core product is solid, “I wouldn’t change a thing with the messages. They were that good.”
A Quiet, Powerful Support
Grief is quiet. It slips into the background of your daily life. And for many men, the cultural pressure to keep moving means that even the idea of asking for help feels like too much.
That’s where Help Texts comes in, offering comfort that’s practical and clinically sound, and that doesn’t demand anything back. As Mark put it, “Help Texts didn’t try to 'fix' my grief. They normalized it, gave me real, practical ways to take care of myself, and—it worked.”