The Phone Rings at 7 a.m.
Most people on a Saturday morning are reaching for coffee, scrolling through their phones, or pulling the blanket back over their heads. Margaret Osei is reaching for a headset.
For the past 22 years, every single Saturday without exception, the 61-year-old retired schoolteacher from Columbus, Ohio has volunteered at a crisis hotline. She has taken calls during blizzards, during holidays, on the morning after her mother’s funeral, and on the Saturday her youngest daughter got married. That last one, she laughs, required some creative scheduling with the bride.
“She had the ceremony at 4 p.m.,” Margaret says. “I finished my shift at noon. I made it with time to fix my hair.”
That is, in essence, who Margaret Osei is.
How It Started: A Loss That Became a Purpose
Margaret did not come to crisis work through a professional path. She came through grief.
In the winter of 2002, her younger brother David took his own life. He was 34 years old. In the months that followed, Margaret found herself cycling through the particular agony that survivors of suicide loss know well, the questions that have no answers, the replaying of conversations, the wondering what a single phone call might have changed.
“I kept thinking, did he ever reach out? Did he ever try to tell someone? I didn’t know,” she says quietly. “And I thought, if he had called somewhere, I would want someone like me on the other end. Someone who would really listen.”
She signed up for volunteer training the following spring. She has not stopped since.
What 22 Years on a Crisis Line Actually Looks Like
People have a lot of assumptions about what crisis hotline work involves, and Margaret is patient in correcting them.
“It is not all life-or-death emergencies,” she explains. “Some calls are. But a lot of calls are people who are just overwhelmed. People who haven’t slept in four days. A college student who failed an exam and feels like their whole future is ruined. An elderly man who hasn’t spoken to another human being in two weeks.”
She pauses. “Every single one of those calls matters.”
Over the course of more than a thousand Saturdays, Margaret estimates she has taken somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 calls. She does not keep a tally. The organization she volunteers with, a regional affiliate of a national crisis network, does track outcomes, and her supervisors describe her as one of the most consistent and effective long-term volunteers they have ever had.
“Margaret has a quality that is genuinely rare,” says the hotline’s volunteer coordinator, Priya Nambiar. “She makes people feel heard without making them feel managed. There is a difference, and not everyone can find it.”
The Calls She Carries
There is a question that comes up whenever people learn about Margaret’s work, and she anticipates it before it is asked.
“You want to know how I don’t burn out,” she says, smiling. “Everyone asks that.”
Her answer is nuanced and, frankly, worth sitting with.
“I don’t try to fix people,” she says. “That was the first and most important thing I learned in training, and it took me a while to really believe it. My job is not to solve someone’s life in a phone call. My job is to make sure they feel less alone for the time we’re talking. If I can do that, I’ve done my job.”
She also speaks honestly about the calls that stay with her. She does not pretend they don’t.
“There have been calls I’ve thought about for years,” she says. “Calls where I don’t know what happened afterward. You don’t always get to know. That is one of the hardest parts of this work, and I think anyone who tells you it doesn’t affect them is either very new or not being honest.”
What she has built, over time, is a practice of what she calls “putting it down without putting it away.”
“I give myself time after a hard call. I breathe. I sometimes write a little in a journal I keep. And then I pick up the next call, because that person deserves my full attention too.”
Seven Things Margaret Has Learned in 22 Years of Listening
When asked what this work has taught her, Margaret does not hesitate. These are the lessons she returns to again and again:
- Silence is not failure. “Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is just stay on the line and say nothing. Let someone know you are there.”
- People rarely want advice first. “They want to be understood. Advice can come later, maybe. But first, just listen.”
- Pain does not compete. “Someone’s grief over a breakup is real grief. Someone’s anxiety about a job interview is real anxiety. I never rank suffering.”
- Reaching out is an act of courage. “Every person who calls has overcome something just by dialing. I try to honor that.”
- You can hold space for someone without carrying their weight. “There is a distinction between empathy and absorbing someone’s pain. Learning that distinction has kept me in this work for two decades.”
- Most people already know what they need. “A lot of my job is asking the right questions until they hear themselves say it.”
- Consistency is a form of love. “Showing up, week after week, even when it is hard, tells the universe that this matters. That people matter.”
The Saturday That Changed Someone Else’s Life
Margaret does not share details of specific calls, a firm ethical boundary she maintains without exception. But she does share one story, with the caller’s knowledge and blessing, that she received years after the fact in a letter.
A young woman, then 19 years old, had called the hotline on a Saturday morning in 2011. She was in crisis. She spoke with a volunteer for nearly two hours. She does not remember everything that was said, but she remembers the voice, calm and present, that kept telling her: “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She wrote the letter to the hotline organization in 2023. She is now 32, a mother of two, working as a social worker herself. She wanted whoever had taken that call to know that she had made it.
The letter was forwarded to Margaret.
“I read it and I just sat with it for a long time,” Margaret says. “I cried, honestly. Not because I needed the validation, but because she had done it. She had built her whole life. I had one small part in one Saturday morning, and she did everything else herself.”
What She Wants People to Know
Margaret is not on a recruitment drive, though she says she would never discourage anyone from looking into crisis volunteer work. What she wants, more than anything, is for people to understand something simpler.
“We are all, at some point, one hard night away from needing someone to pick up the phone,” she says. “That is not weakness. That is being human. And there are people out there who will pick up. I want people to know that.”
She glances at the clock. It is Friday evening as we finish our conversation. She has a shift in the morning.
“I’ll sleep well tonight,” she says. “I always do on Fridays.”
If You Need Support
If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. In the United States, you can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You are not alone, and someone is always ready to listen.