It began without a plan. Five women, one living room, a standing Thursday evening. No agenda, no facilitator, no funding. The only rule was the one they set in the first week: whatever is said here does not leave here.
That rule turned out to be the whole foundation. Trust is not a nice-to-have in this work — it is the product. Every decision the group made afterwards was measured against whether it would protect or erode the confidence people had placed in the room.
Growth was slow and entirely by word of mouth. A sister brought a sister. A colleague mentioned it to someone at work. By the end of the first year there were two evenings a week and a waiting list, which forced the first real decision: split into smaller groups rather than let any single room get too large to be safe.
That instinct — keep the unit small, replicate it rather than scale it — is what let the model travel. There are now more than twenty rooms across three states. None of them is run centrally. Each one holds the same rule from that first Thursday, and that is mostly what they have in common.
If you are thinking about starting something similar where you live, you need far less than you think. A room, a fixed time, and a promise you intend to keep. Get in touch and we will help with the rest.