Join our Guidebook

Our Story

If Lost, Start Here started five years ago when the two of us—Amanda Sheeren and Claire Fitzsimmons—began to seek out places for happier lives.

We set out to bring together all the different types of places that can help us navigate our lives more thoughtfully. We’ve since visited co-working spaces, bookstores, museums, therapy offices, festivals, meditation rooms, and many other kinds of spaces and places, interviewing entrepreneurs, makers, therapists, and even poets for their perspectives on why they started the places they did and why we might need them in our lives.

Since then, we’ve featured:

• a café that deals with anxiety, a museum that can teach us about happiness, and a garden that cultivates both herbs and emotional health.

• an organization that offers mental health walks, and another that focuses on getting out of our heads and into nature.

• a festival that encourages the good life, reframed a tourist attraction that has mental health woven through its mission, and highlighted a collaborative art workshop that invites participants to make connections, material and otherwise.

While some are whimsical or idiosyncratic and some are firmly based in the sciences, all of them inspire people in their everyday lives. Together, these places represent the world we want to live in, one that values the independent and unexpected.

Behind the storefronts and white walls, the high streets, and culture districts, we’ve been finding the people bringing these places to life, and closer to people who need them in theirs.

Why we created our (online) Guidebook

But here’s what we’ve also found.

1. Collectively, we’re grappling with our mental and emotional well-being, and sometimes, we can feel more isolated than ever as we do so. The things we cherish most in life – connection, meaning, nature, purpose – can seem elusive, and accessing them can be a challenge.

2. Moreover, the very places we hold dear – museums, cafes, co-working spaces, bookstores, live music venues, and more – are also facing their struggles.

We sit in the gap between the two: getting people to places that we know will make them happier while supporting those places that we want to see in the world.

Why we believe our mission matters

Our guide is all about uncovering those resources that can lead us to a better place. It's about fostering connection, embracing nature, nurturing curiosity, exploring spirituality, and maybe even taking a break from our ever-present technology. And it’s about doing so while we work to make our neighborhoods and high streets more people-oriented.

We're continuing to scour the US and UK right now to find well-designed, human-centered initiatives that can help us have more good days. Our focus is on the independent and unexpected: From locally-owned shops and interactive exhibits to breathtaking natural landscapes and those meet-ups you never knew you needed – anything that can help people orientate life to more of what feels better.

We’d like to invite you to join our Guidebook Community

We're excited to welcome you to our Guide to Life. To make sure you get the most out of being featured, we offer different membership levels to suit your needs.

If you have any questions, do reach out to Claire, co-founder and seeker of spaces, at claire@ifloststarthere.com

For all tiers:

• Joining our Guidebook for Life makes you part of a network of independent places helping us all get to a better place. 

• We donate a portion of our proceeds to mental health initiatives each year.

• Discounts for CICs/ Not-for-profits: We offer a 20% discount on all tiers — contact Claire for a discount code to access these rates.

Choose the membership that best fits your needs: 

Each level offers unique benefits to help you promote your space. To sign up follow these steps:

1. create an account (name, email password)

2. you then go to the payment page

3. once you pay, you then get redirected to a form to complete to create your guidebook submission.

   
   

    Let us know if you have any questions!

Ready to join? Choose the membership level that works for you.