Free guides and workbooks for families navigating mold in their home, life, and relationships.
For Adults
Two people can live through the same hard year in the same house and come out of it needing different things. One is still worn down. One is ready to put it behind them. This guide is for the couple sitting in that gap, and for the person reading it alone because their spouse is not there yet.
Part One is about being heard. It covers naming what the two of you went through, moving away from keeping score, and the kind of validation that tends to matter more than being right about who understood first.
Part Two covers the practical ground that survival rearranged. Safety before closeness, roles that got reassigned without anyone choosing them, and money conversations that many couples start avoiding entirely.
Part Three turns toward grief, what home means now, where to find support, and the strengths the two of you have already used. Three reflection pages are spaced through the guide, with room to write.
There is also a referral page near the front, with the crisis and support numbers we think belong in a guide like this one.
Everything found here is a suggestion. Some couples find these tools useful and some do not, so take what fits your marriage and leave the rest. There is no order you have to follow and nothing to finish.
Please note: This guide was developed from experiences of members of our community and our own story. It is not meant to replace seeking professional help. It does not diagnose or treat anything, and it does not replace care from a counselor, therapist, doctor, or other qualified professional. Malachi's Message Foundation offers peer support, which means survivors sitting with survivors. We do not provide clinical care. Couples therapy is different work, done with a licensed therapist, and it is not something we provide. If there is abuse, coercion, or fear for your safety there is a referral page with contact details for national help and support organizations.
For the wider circle of family, friends, and the people you have to explain this to, see Navigating Relationships.
Free to download upon check-out. Print it at home.
After hard experiences, your body can stay on high alert long after the ‘danger’ has passed. That isn't a flaw. It's possible your body is in a protection mode that hasn't switched itself off yet.
This guide is nine sets of practical tools, arranged in three parts. Part One is noticing, learning to read the signals of a system stuck in fight-or-flight, and three breathing techniques you can use anywhere. Part Two covers gentle movement, mindfulness, and using sight, sound, touch, and smell to settle. Part Three is the foundation underneath all of it, sleep, nourishment, connection, deeper reset techniques, and a daily rhythm that takes ten to fifteen minutes.
Nothing here asks you to push through. Every practice starts with the mildest version and says so, because a sensitized system can find even gentle things to be a lot at first. Read it in order, or open to whatever you need today.
Written for adults on their journey towards recovering from mold exposure, chronic illness, or trauma.
Educational only, and not a replacement for care from a professional who knows your situation.
Free to download. Print it, or keep it on your phone for the days you need it.
Some children come to what happened in their own time. Some ask right away, some circle back months later, and some never quite put it into a question. This workbook gives you words ready for whichever way it goes in your family.
Thirteen pieces in four parts. Five activities to do together, where a child names what they feel, tells the story in their own words, and works out what home means now. Four scripts for conversations that tend to be hard to start, covering the move itself, money, missing the old place, and worry about getting sick again. Each script gives you the actual sentence for ages three to six, seven to twelve, and teens, along with what not to say. Then guidance by age from toddlers through eighteen, with what to watch for, when calling in a professional would help, and the signs in the teen years that need attention right away. It closes with a promise a family writes and signs together.
Use what fits your child and leave the rest. Give yourself grace as you go, and know there's no right pace for any of this.
Educational only, and not a substitute for a licensed child therapist, counselor, or pediatrician.
The companion Parent's Guide holds the thinking behind everything here. It's a separate free download.
Free to download. Print it at home.
Every family's road through mold looks different, and so does every child's. There are some children who have quietly decided some of this could be their fault. Some children who grieve over things that couldn't come along. Some children whose behavior that reads as defiance, but their body may still be on alert. Some might even question what home means now.
So, we put together this parents and caregivers guide that covers the chanllenges that come up often in our community. A set of tools you can pick from rather than a program to follow. Some of it may fit your family, some of it may not, but the beautiful is it’s a tool for you to know it’s there.
Nine steps in three parts: seeing and reassuring, rebuilding safety, moving toward hope. Each step gives you words you can actually say out loud, and each part ends with two short questions for you.
Give yourself grace as you go. There's no right pace so you can come back to a page as many times as it helps.
This guide is educational only, and not a substitute for a licensed child therapist, counselor, or pediatrician.
The companion workbook has the activities and scripts for working through this together with your child. A separate free download with its own checkout.
Free to download upon checkout. Print it at home.
Someone asks how you're doing, and there's a quick calculation before you answer. How much to say. Whether it's worth it. This guide is about that calculation, and about the relationships behind it.
Movement One covers naming what happens in those conversations, and why some people dismiss what they cannot see. Some of it is fear, some of it is outdated information, and some of it is money.
Movement Two is the practical middle. Deciding who gets access to your story, short phrases that hold a line without starting a fight, and how to tell when a conversation has stopped being worth having.
Movement Three turns back toward you. Steadying yourself after a hard exchange, finding the people who believe you without needing proof, what to do when the dismissal comes from family, and how much less it can cost you over time.
This guide was developed from the experiences of members of our community and our own story. Treat these as insight rather than a script, and use the parts that are true for you.
Please note: Nothing in here should be treated as a diagnosis, program, or treatment, and it does not replace working with a counselor, therapist, or doctor. What we offer is peer support, survivors sitting with survivors. Support groups are not a replacement for seeking professional care. There is a referral page near the front with resources for a variety of situations, including those who need help right away.
Free to download, available upon check-out. Print it at home.
The questions you meant to ask tends to surface on the drive home, after the door has closed and the next visit is three months out.
This guide gathers the questions in one place, grouped by topic, so you can find the ones that fit and mark them before you go. It works whether you have a diagnosis already or are still trying to get someone to look.
Part One, understand where you stand. Questions about what is being considered and what it rests on, what the testing can and cannot tell you, and what part your environment may be playing. Includes a note on which tests insurance tends not to cover.
Part Two, shape your care. Questions about treatment goals, what is essential versus optional, side effects, and pacing a day around activity and rest. Also covers how to ask for mental health support without your physical symptoms getting set aside.
Part Three, partner and plan ahead. Questions about coordinating between providers, what to expect over the next few months, when to seek urgent care, and how to get a diagnosis and its functional impact documented for accommodations, disability, insurance, and legal protection.
The guide also includes a page for the appointment that does not go well, a one-page checklist of every question to bring with you, and a resource page near the front listing where to go for things a question cannot hold.
Take what fits and leave the rest. Nine sections, and nobody is expected to use all of them.
This guide was developed from the experiences of members of our community and our own story.
This guide is educational. Malachi's Message Foundation does not diagnose or treat, and nothing here replaces professional medical advice.
Free to download, available upon check-out. Print it at home.
For Children
A child who can't find words for what's happening can usually still point at a face, or circle one, or color it in. That's what these four pages are for.
The first asks how the body feels today. Calm, wiggly, tired, mad, worried, sad, with room to draw the rest.
The second explains the alarm. Bodies have one, it goes off to keep you safe, and sometimes it goes off when nothing is wrong. There's a checklist of what that feels like, another of what helps, and a line to trace with a finger.
The third is a calm-down toolbox, three things a child picks and draws for themselves. The fourth is for the people they can turn to, three hearts to fill in, and a list of what makes a grown-up someone you can go to.
Behind those are five short scripts for the adults. What to say when a child is melting down, what to say when they've gone quiet, how to explain the alarm in words a child can hold, what to say at the end of a hard day, and what to say to a child who has decided something is wrong with them. Each one comes with why it lands and what it deliberately leaves out.
Print one page at a time as they come up, or print the set as a small workbook a child can put their name on.
Nothing here diagnoses or treats anything, and it does not replace working with a doctor or a therapist. These are pages to color and talk over.
Free to download upon check-out. Print it at home.
A kid can tell you their tummy hurts today. Asking whether it hurt more than last Tuesday is a different question, and most of us can't answer it about ourselves either. This tracker is a tool to help keep the record so nobody has to hold it in their head.
Each week has one page. Nine parts of the body get a number from 0 to 3, or a face for younger kids who would rather draw. There's a spot for water, and a color for how the whole day felt.
The journal page is for the parts a number can't hold. What felt good, what was hard, what they noticed. Writing or drawing, whichever suits the day.
The graph page turns one week of numbers into a line they can see, which is often the first time a kid understands that a rough patch has edges. There are notes throughout for grown-ups, and a page on how to make the habit stick without it becoming one more thing to get right.
Print a fresh page each week and keep them together. You can bring the numbers to appointments, where a month of daily notes tells a doctor more than anyone's memory of it.
Some weeks will have blanks in them, and that's just fine too. The tracker works when it gets filled in most days, not every day.
Free to download upon check-out. Print it at home.
A house is full of hiding places for water, and kids are good at finding things adults have stopped noticing.
This workbook takes a child through twelve parts of a home, from air vents and the bathroom fan to the water heater and the ground outside. Each page asks them to find the part, sketch what they see, circle what they notice, and write down one thing they learned. Benny the lion comes along for all twelve.
Every hunt is looking only. Nothing here asks a child to open a panel, climb into an attic, or touch a machine. Four pages carry a grown-up flag for the parts that need an adult, and the safety rules come first, with a place for your child to sign.
Written for younger children and adapted from our Home Detective Workbook for Teens. Go one page a day, or work through the whole book on a rainy Saturday.
Receive the free download upon checking out and print it at home.
For Teens
A home inspector walks into a house and knows within ten minutes where the trouble is likely to be. Not because of a gadget, but because they know which parts hold water, which parts move air, and what a stain on a ceiling means about the room above it. Most of that is looking, and looking is learnable.
Twelve investigations across four systems, air handling, high-moisture rooms, water-holding appliances, and the building envelope. Each one covers what the part is, where to look, what to circle, and why it matters, with a sketch box and a line for one thing you did not know before. The detail is real rather than simplified. MERV ratings, condensate lines, the toe kick test, and what a white bloom on concrete tells you about water that already moved through it.
Every investigation is looking only. Nothing opens, attics and crawlspaces stay shut, and four pages carry an adult flag. Five field rules come first with a place to sign. A tracker page holds all twelve in one view, so everything flagged sits in a single column to hand an adult.
For ages twelve and up. If your family has already been through a mold problem, this book does something a guide cannot. It hands them the vocabulary, so a return air intake stops being the scary thing in the hallway and becomes a part with a job, a filter, and a date on it. The back holds a materials sorting page, a field report in their own words, a record of completion, and a page of notes for parents.
Receive the free workbook to download after checkout and print it at home.
A doctor asks how you've been, and you have about fifteen seconds to summarize six weeks. Most people say "fine, I guess," or describe whatever happened yesterday. This is the thing you bring instead.
One page a week. Twelve rows, energy through sleep and mood, each one rated 0 to 3 based on how much it got in the way that day. The scale is up to you, but it’s meant to be simple. An example could be that a headache you pushed through is a 1 or a headache that sent you to bed is a 3. The notes column is where the causes turn up: a new place you slept, a long drive, a cleaning day at home.
The notes page is four short lines about the day, written the way you'd text a friend. The graph page turns one row into a line across seven days, which is usually the first time a bad stretch looks like it has edges instead of going on forever.
There's even a page for parents at the back on how to be useful without taking it over, and a page of small habits that keep the thing from becoming a chore.
Print the week grid four times and staple it. Blank boxes are fine. Tracking is progress. Maybe a week with four columns filled shows you a pattern or helps you understand something you didn’t know.
Please note: nothing here diagnoses or treats anything, and it does not replace working with a doctor. This is a tracker and record you can bring to one.
Free to download upon check-out. Print it at home.