A map you make before you need it.
Transformative Mutual Aid Practices (T-MAPs) is a set of tools for writing down what matters to you, what helps, what it looks like when you're struggling, and who you want beside you when things get hard. It grew out of twenty years of peer support, starting with The Icarus Project, and it's used today by individuals, peer support workers, and early psychosis programs.
What is a T-MAP?
A T-MAP is a personal guide for hard times, written in your own words, ideally at a time when you're steady.
It's more than a crisis plan. A standard crisis plan starts with what goes wrong. A T-MAP starts with who you are: your values, your strengths, how you treat yourself when you're well, and the people who matter to you. The crisis plan is built on top of that.
You can make a T-MAP on your own, with a friend, with a peer support worker, or in a group. Fill out a digital version or write by hand in a printed workbook. Then share it with the people you trust, so they know how to show up for you.
Written while well. You decide what helps, what doesn't, and who speaks for you, before a crisis decides for you.
Made with others. T-MAPs are built in relationship, with friends, family, peers, and the people who support you.
Yours to keep. Your map belongs to you. You choose who sees it and how it's used.
Not only for people who've been through the hospital. T-MAPs is for anyone who wants the people around them to know what matters to them: families, teams, organizers. When enough of us do this, advance directives stop being paperwork and start being something the system has to honor.
"A thread you lay down while you're well, so you can follow it back in the dark."
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