Help Texts CEO Emma Payne came up with an innovative way to get support to people who need it.
By: Adeline Von Drehle
A Message Left Undelivered: The Silence After Loss
Emma Payne didn’t expect inspiration to strike at a friend’s funeral, but that’s precisely how Help Texts began.
When Emma’s husband Barry died by suicide, she was left grief-stricken and isolated. Few people reached out after Barry’s death, a silence Emma interpreted as “a lack of caring or a feeling of blame.”
Then, a decade later, one of Emma and Barry’s closest friends was dying of cancer, and asked Emma to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. She was nervous. There would be people at this funeral who knew her late husband, and who she hadn’t spoken to in years. Part of her expected icy stares or the cold shoulder, but what she received instead surprised her.
“Without exaggeration, probably 50 or 60 people said some version of, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t reach out. I didn’t know what to say,’” Emma remembered.
The experience changed the way Emma understood how we communicate with people who are grieving.
Designing for Accessibility
At the time, Emma already had decades of experience building web and mobile platforms, including the launch of North America’s first online suicide prevention line. She spent the flight home from the funeral imagining a simple, accessible way to support grieving people.
“I thought, what is the absolute lowest-threshold way to get the very best wisdom and support into people’s hands? And I landed on text.”
That idea became Help Texts – a program that sends tailored text messages to grieving individuals after a loss. Messages are personalized based on the person who died, the relationship, the cause of death, and the timing of anniversaries and birthdays.
Help Texts is subscription-based, and often given as a sympathy gift. Emma tells the story of a griever who received a Help Texts subscription, and despite his skepticism, gave it a try. That man is now Help Texts’ “number one gift-buyer. Every time his friends lose a parent, partner, or friend, this is his sympathy gift.”
Help Texts also partners with charities, payers, hospices, tissue banks, and other organizations that cover the cost and give a subscription out to bereaved individuals as a means of support.
Every subscription includes tips and reminders for friends, family, and colleagues who want to help, but may not be sure how. Rooted in her experience at her friend’s funeral, Emma and her team have created thousands of texts geared towards supporters who often just need some encouragement and practical advice about how to help. As Emma experienced after her husband died, grief support is hard to find, and friends and family often shy away during periods of bereavement. Help Texts provides specific suggestions, reminders for the anniversary of the death, and on.
In creating Help Texts, Emma’s goal was not to replace grief counseling or invent a new model of bereavement care. Rather, she wanted to make expert-informed support easier to access, and to provide alternatives for people who might not want therapy, but do want support as they navigate grief. Emma teamed up with a clinical bereavement expert to ensure what she was building was not only simple, but clinically grounded.
“The wisdom already exists,” she said. “Our work is to capture that expertise and deliver it so that people who are grieving and overwhelmed can easily digest it.”
Help Texts CEO Emma Payne.
What the Research Shows
Emma’s assumptions were spot on: according to a 2024 study published in Death Studies, researchers found exceptionally high engagement rates among individuals enrolled in Help Texts, with 87.8% of users remaining enrolled after six months and 83.2% still participating after a full year.
The study also found overwhelming satisfaction among participants. Nearly 95% rated the program as moderately or very helpful, while 95.4% said the messages contributed to their sense of being supported in grief. Today, Help Texts provides personalized grief and mental health support in 63 countries and 28 languages.
For Emma, one reason the approach works is because texting feels manageable during periods of acute grief.
“When my husband died, I couldn’t read – it took me a year to read even a short story,” she said.
Instead of long articles, therapy homework, or intensive conversations, Help Texts delivers small pieces of information and emotional reassurance directly to a person’s phone.
Emma put it plainly: “You don’t have to talk about your grief, make appointments, sit with strangers, or remember to open an app.”
Personalization at Scale
The research supports that accessibility. In qualitative responses gathered during the study, participants described the text messages as comforting, validating, and emotionally supportive. Many said the program helped them feel less alone and better able to process the pain of grief, while others appreciated how the program offers “low threshold” support – little effort on behalf of the bereaved. The format itself may even matter more than people realize.
“When you get a text message, especially if it has your name in it, you actually get a dopamine lift,” Emma said. “And when you get a dopamine lift, you feel cared for, which boosts motivation and makes you a bit more likely to do whatever suggestion is in the text.”
Texts support as well as practical suggestions. One example on the Help Texts website reads, “Hi, Franny. Here’s an idea you might like to try. Take a few minutes to write down something that you learned from your dad. Maybe he taught you a practical skill or imparted a favorite life lesson? Put the piece of paper in your pocket, so that you have his lesson with you as you go about your day.”
Some respondents specifically highlighted how personalized the texts felt, while others appreciated that the messages arrived at meaningful moments, such as anniversaries or birthdays connected to the person who died.
Why Grief Literacy Matters
Emma is careful to distinguish Help Texts from AI-driven “grief bots” or simulated conversations with deceased loved ones. While Help Texts uses human-in-the-loop AI on the back end for sentiment analysis and crisis detection, they do not employ AI to talk to grievers.
“Our clients – including health authorities, hospitals, and hospices – understand that grieving people are vulnerable and at risk for a host of negative health outcomes, including substance misuse, depression, and suicide,” Emma said. “We are committed to delivering support grounded in established bereavement research, and to finding safe, responsible ways to do that at scale.”
For Emma, the mission to help address gaps in bereavement care remains personal.
“Grief literacy is a real issue,” Emma said. “Friends and family, as well as many clinicians and therapists, aren’t comfortable talking about death and bereavement. Everybody can benefit from clinically informed, practical, thoughtful information being sent to them in a simple way.”