Note: This long essay is excerpted from a recent book proposal I cobbled together about the importance of community groups for this era and through the collective crises we are facing. I don’t know that I feel motivated to complete it or self-publish it (although anything may change now that my children are suddenly out of the house). But I wanted to get it out in the world because I hate writing that just sits on my laptop and doesn’t DO anything.
I am accepting applications for the fall sessions of the Group-Group workshop - as well as my dream work and living with mortality workshop. All are simply opportunities to come together and sit in community around a common center. More information at my website
The healing power of any psychotherapeutic method depends on the dosage of its break with the dominant culture. - Martín-Baro
For the past thirty years, I’ve worked as a clinical social worker and a community organizer providing individual and group psychotherapy as well as a promoting peer support community care. Yet, in the past several years my work has shifted – now increasingly, and almost exclusively focused on helping people construct social support and build healthy communities for themselves. There are many reasons for this, but the central one is that community support is now increasingly hard to come by. For many, finding your people is now harder than ever.
The breakdown of social cohesion began even before the pandemic: Political divergence severed many from family members, and childhood friendships. The pandemic then ushered in a significant period of increased national death and bereavement. Social distancing as well as differences in perceived risks, disinformation, and divergences in safety practices pulled many more relationships and community connections apart.
Deteriorating social support has become an urgent matter of national public health.
In May 2023 Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBA, the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States issued an alarm[1] about the “devastating” impact of isolation on American’s mental and physical health: People with less social support live shorter lives.[2] Lack of social connection significantly increases risk anxiety, depression, and dementia.
In the report, Surgeon General Murthy stated: “Each of us can start now, in our own lives, by strengthening our connections and relationships” But how do we even begin? For most of us creating networks of belonging is easier said than done. When relationships have been lost, for whatever reason, they are not easily replaced.
The first line recommendations for treating anxious or depressed symptoms are customarily to see a psychiatrist or an individual psychotherapist, for one-on-one support. But, to whatever degree that these symptoms have been generated by real fractures in our national social circles and lost sense of community – individualized professional support can offer some important comfort and insight, but individualized services cannot address the collective aspects of problem. It has become increasingly difficult to help clients even find opportunities for community support and connection.
As vital as these services are, mental health professions cannot treat everyone individually through what are community and collective failures.
Collective problems require collective solutions.
To complicate these challenges further we are facing a significant national mental health crisis with two out of five adults reporting anxious and depressive symptoms, while we also negotiate a severe shortage of mental health providers. [3] Although sufficient professional mental health support is essential, we simply aren’t going to be able to connect everyone encountering isolation and alienation to individual providers. And if we did, it is unlikely that professional psychotherapy alone can repair the damage to our cultural problems and or address problems that really belong to whole communities to hold and heal.
We can’t abdicate notions of care or support entirely to institutions or professionals. We need each other as peers, neighbors, elders, collaborators, and fellow human beings. We need to find ways build a culture of care. One way to start strengthening our connections is by organizing and participating in community groups of various kinds.
What are community groups?
Community groups are gatherings that are regularly organized and facilitated by laypeople for a wide variety of purposes. Religious institutions, schools, civic organizations, libraries, community centers, and non-profit organizations have been common hosts of such groups, but we are of course allowed to organize groups ourselves, around our own needs and interests. Chess clubs, bowling leagues, Bible studies, and the Girl Scouts are all examples of community groups. But so are breastfeeding support groups, cancer survivors’ groups, 12 step programs, bereavement groups, and climate action groups.
Community groups may have a designated leader, or leadership team, or may have shared/rotating leadership among all members of a group. Mental health professionals may facilitate or participate, or be consulted in such groups, but their presence is not, and has never been required for communities to gather in circles around shared concerns.
Types of community groups
Here are some common kinds of community groups:
· Peer support groups are organized by and for people who share common challenges, to provide encouragement, belonging, and exchange information and resources. These are groups whose concerns are specialized or marginalized in some way, and not readily discussed or understood in mainstream spaces. These are places to discuss personal experiences that are considered outside of conventional public conversation. Members may have to regularly advocate for themselves and for others like them, and need to come together to share strategies and rest with others who won’t require them to explain themselves overmuch. Such groups are organized around shared identities, diagnoses, or life transitions. Some examples of peer support groups include: Twelve step programs, PFLAG (formerly Parents and Family of Lesbians and Gays, now using initials only and supporting families of queer people), NAMI (The National Alliance on Mental Illness), and various support groups organized around communities of people sharing specific medical diagnoses and disabilities etc.
· Discussion groups are gatherings for people who want to share information and deepen their understanding of a particular issue by sharing and exploring different perspectives. Such groups often gather to contend with big, complex ideas. These are groups that want to wrestle with ideas with other people. Time limited discussion groups are often created to examine many facets of a topic before proceeding toward group decision making and action.
· Reading and study groups are content focused groups, anchored around texts, (or video or audio) - usually chosen around a particular theme. Members read or watch, or study assigned content in between group meetings. The ideas that are evoked, and potential meanings of the content are explored together.
· Consciousness raising and social action groups are mission driven and organized around specific social issues and causes. A parent-teacher association is an example of a common social action group, with a focus on improving support for a particular school. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) is another. Groups that organize for the purpose of raising awareness and taking action on social justice issues, civic actions, local environmental concerns, or have a goal of changing or redirecting cultural or political trends are all social action groups.
· Activity and recreation groups come together around a common task, action, or recreational activity. A quilting or knitting circle, a running or hiking club, or a group organized to play poker or Dungeons and Dragons, or care for a community garden are all examples of activity groups.
Many groups creatively mix these models and transcend these broad descriptions. Even groups that see themselves as strictly focused on an activity or a social cause usually offer support and learn from each other. If someone on your bowling team is going through a crisis, the team members are likely to provide support even though that is not the central focus of the gathering. Peer support groups may participate in awareness campaigns together. Social action groups may need to spend time in peer support and discussion before they are consolidated enough to take action or after a setback in their work for a cause. Some groups are organized around a central focus so innovative that it is difficult to easily categorize them.
Healthy community groups are circles of peers who (metaphorically) stand around a common center – a cause, a value, a belief system, an identity, a mission, a challenge, a shared story, or experience. The center is their shared concern, the deeper purposes of their gathering together.
Sometimes we search outside of ourselves for our heart’s desire, looking for a space or a community pre-fabricated, fully developed, waiting to welcome us into belonging, but very often, we must create and assemble the community we desire.
I encourage you to sit with your own experiences of isolation, of loneliness, of yearning for community long enough to define the personal and specific needs that lie behind the emptiness.
It is my belief and experience that although there are always aspects of our alienation that are unique to us, that vital parts of our stories are shared by others. I also believe our personal needs can be fulfilled in ways that will simultaneously help other people. Whenever we can identify parts of our identities or stories that have been erased, isolated, or suppressed we are often identifying shared experiences that the larger culture does not support. Other people’s stories that you might identify with have likely also been ignored, erased, minimized, or hidden away. The things we need to share with others are often the things that we don’t talk about in “polite company” or that we have learned to keep silent about to protect ourselves.
If you feel you are slipping through a crack in the social support safety net, you are almost certainly not alone.
A personal example:
In 2016 I was diagnosed with a uniquely rare blood cancer. Because my illness did not emerge in the usual way, because my symptoms were very different from other people with blood cancer, because I was the only one in this position, I couldn’t find much collective support. I looked online for cancer groups and support from people with cancer – but I all that I could find were diagnosis specific groups of people sharing similar symptoms and similar medications and shared treatment protocols – even if each of them also had their own unique stories and challenges. I couldn’t share in what they had in common, and I found that my divergences from their experiences were hard for them to tolerate as well. They had the comfort of turning to other people who understood just what they were going through – and I was a fly in that ointment because my experience was different and experienced as disruptive.
Most people who were abled and healthy found my circumstances frightening, overwhelming. Many people simply stayed away because my situation scared and unsettled them, others ignored it trying to be “positive” or polite, or to avoid saying the wrong thing. I noticed many people couldn’t deal with the reality I was negotiating at all – changing the subject instantly if I referred to it at all, referring to my “cancer scare” or often simply explicitly forgetting what my challenges and limitations were because they couldn’t tolerate the reality I was living through.
Doctors, nurses and oncology social workers were kind and informative, but I could feel the way that stood outside of my experience, and that their emotional guidance was second-hand. I yearned for support from others who were negotiating similar uncertainties.
It was the most isolating, alienating experience I have ever had.
I knew I was not the only person in the world with an uncertain prognosis, undergoing hard treatments for a life-threatening illness. But I sure felt like it. This required that I think very specifically about what my needs were and seek out community in similarly specific ways.
I knew, for example, that I wanted and needed to keep my body moving gently through a period of incapacity and I sought out, through our town Facebook page, other people with cancer or fatiguing illnesses who wanted to meet to take slow, careful walks together and support each other if someone needed to rest on a park bench or help each other home if someone became too tired to go on.
I also learned, by publishing parts of my story in essays and through social media that there were many other people with unique illnesses and cancers, and that we shared many similar challenges even if our symptoms and challenges were different.
I eventually created a community workshop focused on forging a healthy relationship with mortality, and began meeting regularly with people who were bereaved, who had challenging diagnoses, caretakers who were anticipating their parent’s or partner’s deaths, who had lost a child, or who just wanted a space to talk frankly about finding some more peace with death and dying as a natural part of living. I hoped, as I was designing convening this group that this would relieve some of the alienation I struggled with. After the first few sessions, I knew that this was just exactly the community and the conversation that I needed to convene.
By dialing down into my feelings of isolation, and really trying to figure out what need lurked below the loneliness, I was able eventually, to find communities that could join me in that need, who needed and desired the same space for similar but not identical reasons. I didn’t need people with the same diagnosis that I had or in the same circumstances I was in.
It turned out that I needed people with similar needs.
The group you need.
Defining needs clearly and finding others who share them isn’t necessarily a quick or easy process. It takes some trial and error, and often a few false starts before our needs can be named in such a way that others can identify with them.
In my Group-Group workshops participants come back to this first step of defining the group they need several times over the course of our seven meetings. Over the course of the workshop members regularly define and re-define their needs, honing in on and sometimes even transforming their entire vision of the group they plan to launch.
If that happens for you while thinking through to your needs and collectivity that is fine. That is expectable. That is productive. That isn’t a failure of your first idea. Perfectionism is one of your greatest enemies in building community groups. If you find yourself stuck at a later point in working through, it may be that you need to come back to this essay and identify the group you need more specifically. It may be that your need has shifted since you read this and needs to be redefined. Group visions often shift and change and reform around our evolving understanding of our needs, just as established groups shift and evolve over time, along with their members.
Isolation is the starting point.
Generally, we are most isolated when our experiences or needs exist outside of what is perceived to be the “norm.” When we feel out of step with our cohort, when we find ourselves in a minoritized position - “the only” fill-in-the-blank - only person of color, the only divorced person, the only bereaved person, the only neurodivergent person – in a specific setting. When we feel ourselves to be or are in fact the “only” (or one of a very few) in our immediate environments, this the space where we need to actively search out and gather others who can relate to our experience.
This James Baldwin quote has served as a reminder to me that the places where we think we are most alone, are the self-same places where we may most deeply connect to the human condition generally, and to other people specifically:
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.[5]
Usually, we aren’t the “only” even if we think we are. Often the isolating experiences we have are not only “normal” but even common, even if they are not commonly claimed or discussed in public. Sometimes the very people who seem to be comfortable in the center of the pack, feel like outsiders who are keeping their feelings of isolation private. Sometimes it simply takes some intention, effort, the right language, and methods to find them.
Our immediate environments may not be able to offer us the support we desire, but there are almost always others, somewhere, in similar situations. The wonder of the internet, of social media, and video conferencing is that it may enable us to find and create communities over great distances, and to cast wide nets.
Dialing down:
This is a series of questions that might be worth contemplating and may help you understand what kind of group you need to create.
· Where does your isolation sit?
· Are you negotiating a visible or obvious difference from those around you – such as race or ethnicity or a visible disability? Or are your isolations invisible to strangers and acquaintances, internal, private, unnoticeable?
· What kind of support do you want to offer and receive, that isn’t readily available to you?
· What are the conversations or interactions you yearn to be able to have that seem to be experienced as impolite, disruptive, too-much-information, or boring to people in general social settings?
· Where do you feel stifled?
· What part of yourself do you wish you could just share freely with others who could “just get you?”
· What are the stories about your life that are hard to tell, that seem to require too much explanation too often, or that start to feel burdensome to share with others? Are there parts of your story or your interests that are actively ignored by others, or maybe even by yourself?
· Are there stories that are never or rarely given words or somehow deleted, or never even seem possible to bring into conversation because they just don’t fit in with the dominant story? How do you feel about the parts of your story that just don’t fit in?
· What kind of audience do you hate explaining yourself to the most? Who do you imagine could hear what you have to say most easily?
· Do you sometimes change or edit your story to protect yourself from being misunderstood, to save energy, or to guard your privacy? Or in order to make other people feel more comfortable?
· Can you think of times when it felt relieving to share a challenging experience or specific interest with someone who had been through something similar? Or, if not, can you try to imagine what that would be like?
· When does telling your story make you feel closer or more connected to other people or groups? When does it make you feel more alone?
· When do you want to fight for your story to be heard accurately? When do you want to save your energies and choose your battles?
· How do you feel about teaching and explaining? When does it feel like a good use of your time and energy? When does it feel draining or discouraging?
· What kind stories do others share that you receive the most from or identify with?
· What is your favorite way to tell your story? Who in your life - or if there isn’t anyone currently, who in your past, or in your imagination - can most readily appreciate, accept, and support the parts of your story you most want to share?
Withstanding yearning
Another challenge that I’ve seen people in the Group-Group workshop experience is simply tolerating their yearning for a community they do not have yet long enough to investigate it.
As you may have experienced while moving through that list of questions, it can be uncomfortable, bittersweet, maybe even painful to imagine an unmet need, to explore the seat of a specific loneliness or name heart’s desire yet to be fulfilled. But there is something important in the power and function of our yearnings. Not mere wanting, but the deeply felt soul-need for connections and community we do not have, that we do not see coming, that we have no idea (yet) how to find. We may half-believe our wish for community support is a totally unreasonable desire, impossible – yet we yearn for it none the less.
Many very rational and practical people, when I ask them to identify their community yearnings, reply: “What is the point? It isn’t going to happen.” and shut down the process. It in fact, hasn’t happened yet in spite of whatever search or effort has been undertaken so far. There is something painful about contacting unmet longings, especially when we think they are entirely beyond our reasonable assessment about our available and potential environmental resources. The questions listed above might create tension or hurt a little in a lonely or bittersweet way.
But you’ve read this far in this long essay because you suspect that you might be able to convene, or possibly administrate, and/or facilitate a community group. A key part of building a peer group that won’t drain you or make you resentful is to be sure that your own needs are met in some essential way. A community group is a circle of peers and as one of the members (even if you are also a facilitator or the convener) your needs must be considered and included from the very beginning.
Some people get stuck at this phase, by blaming themselves for their isolation, internalizing the dominant story that there is something odd or weird about their needs or interests. “I mean, who else would want to play with watercolors while we listen to Nigerian dance music?” You’d be surprised! Especially if your vision can form in a flexible and open way and you feel comfortable considering meeting remotely or widening your nets. Can the group include people who want to use tempera paints and listen to Senegalese music? Could you still feel connected enough in a group that allowed people to work in any artistic medium with a rotating group created playlist? Maybe that is a bridge to far, and you start to feel overwhelmed or like something essential to you is becoming diluted. Or maybe it is exciting and energizing to think about painting to other kinds of dance music and expanding your horizons.
It might not be common to find ready-made groups gathered to interact with color, art, and music, or whatever your interests might be - but too often we then assume that our interests are inherently unusual. Human beings have many kinds of needs that are not met by the free-market or are left unaddressed entirely by our wider systems. Remember, that a large reason that the Surgeon General has called for the promotion of community groups as “pro-social” behavior is because our current forms of community have left so many people feeling disconnected and alienated. The current opportunities for coming together are insufficient, and many people are seeking new methods of connection, and new kinds of community.
It is also important to remember that your group is also not being created to appeal to everyone. It is probably true that there are very many, even a vast majority of people who would not be interested in attending a group focused on art or painting and music - but you aren’t looking for most people. You are looking for four to nine other people with a shared appreciation for the activity, who find it soothing, peaceful, creative, or healing in some way and who are also looking for some low stress way to spend time with other people.
No community group is going to fulfill all needs or even a large handful of them. I’ve convened peer groups organized around many different common-centers: frank discussions of mortality, living with immunocompromising disability through a pandemic, fatigue-sensitive exercise, raising transracially adopted children, reading about mediation, contemplation, and mysticism, studying Liberation Psychology, support for individual therapists who are also interested in community work, groups for tending and listening to our dreams together. All these groups are responsive to different needs and different parts of my personal experiences and interests, and all of them mean something to me personally. These are all conversations that I wanted and needed to have with others who also to need and want the same things. These are my passions, my quirks, parts of my personality and history that can feel alone, isolated, or stifled. These are the conversations that lift my spirits, and that are not easy to encounter in day-to-day living, about subjects that most people find too particular, threatening, boring, or burdensome to talk about. These conversations that I convene and broker, help me, and those who gather, to feel less alone.
The imagining phase
So, you may not be able to identify your needs easily, because the yearning is uncomfortable, or because your practical-mindedness won’t let you imagine that it is possible to build community out of isolation. You may have many ideas for many kinds of groups, many different needs, and it may take some time and exploration to figure out which one you want to start with, which ones feel worth dipping your toe into the waters of group-building processes. You may find it hard to prioritize. You may cluster them all together imagining building one place that will meet all your wishes at once.
The first group you convene will likely teach you more about what you want and need and help to refine your vision for the second one. Sometimes the first iteration of an idea is impeccable and wildly successful, but more commonly we learn more by experience and implementation. Groups themselves evolve, have mission shift, and complete their work – allowing you to take what you have learned, sharing it with the allies you have gathered along the way, and focus on a new central mission. Communities, groups, and individuals change and evolve, so there is no need for the group you want to start now to be your last.
Let this be a process. Let this essay leave you with a kind of flexibility and fluidity as you contact your wishes for a community that emerge from the parts of you that have felt isolated. The best metaphor for this stage of the process is working with clay or play dough. Something may start to take shape that doesn’t quite satisfy or doesn’t feel structurally sound. If so, it is perfectly appropriate to smash it all back into a ball and try again to pinch out the pieces to meet the shapes that live in your imagination. It will never be perfect, exact, unless you are gifted with extraordinarily creative skill – but you can probably make something pleasing, satisfying enough that can hold its shape without collapsing.
It may also make sense to start with simpler group projects of shorter duration, with fewer moving parts and experience some satisfaction and confidence building before taking on complex projects with many intricate components. It may be better to save big ambitious community building projects until you have the basics down and have learned what kinds of processes, structures, and methods work best for you. Hopefully, this essay, (or if you’d decide to attend my workshop) will help sharpen your vision a bit more, to pinch and press something into place.
This is not the decision-making, finalization stage. This is the creative, imagination-centered, visioning phase.
Mutuality
Another trap in this early phase of group development is over-focusing on trying to figure out what other people want first, before defining your own hopes clearly. This isn’t the phase to worry about how to market an idea to an audience or selling it to others. Later you can consider how others might describe experiences that you hope to gather around, and how to use language that is as inclusive and inviting as possible. But so many of us have been trained to think of branding, and marketing strategies as ways of encouraging others to buy into whatever product is being sold. That kind of strategy is probably essential for people launching business but that isn’t the goal or purpose of community groups.
Here, the focus is on forging connection in and of itself, not as a means to making a sale or a one-sided exchange. Community and peer groups are designed the needs of self and others. To form mutual connections, we need to define what we want to receive and what we want to give, and then find people who want to give and receive in compatible ways. We are imaging spaces where mutuality can flourish, which means your needs and gifts need to be included from
Allowing surprises to emerge
One of the most valuable parts of the work at this visioning stage is allowing yourself to be surprised by what answers come up or what takes shape. Sometimes people think they want to form a very different kind of group – and either it isn’t quite what they imagine, or it doesn’t quite take off.
The dream circles that I convene and facilitate for example, didn’t start that way at all. I first thought that what I wanted to do was to host a reading group for therapists who wanted to learn more about Carl Jung together. Some people came and some left. The group limped along. I sometimes felt disappointed that I seemed more interested in the reading than the other members. The group shrunk a little bit more. We got through ten or so sessions before I decided it was time to stop.
But I was left with all the handwritten notes on a legal pad I had taken on the texts we read, kept in a file folder. A year or so later I looked them over and thought about the group sessions, what were the times when the group felt most alive, most satisfying?
I realized it wasn’t when we were discussing the texts. It was when we were discussing dreams, our own, and the dreams our kids or clients or spouses shared with us. I realized that what I really wanted was a group where we could talk about our dreams in helpful and well-boundaried ways.
Sometimes the groups and communities we yearn for are about what we agree to not do together. Nina Hatfield, who attended my group-building workshop, and lives with a fatiguing illness wrestled with a lot of ideas that she felt would ultimately be too draining for her. She eventually realized she wanted a space to be still and work or sit quietly, staying in her own skin and respecting her own limits alongside other people. She convened and facilitates a series of online co-resting groups (www.co-resting.org) for people who want the option to connect for a bit of time at the opening and closing of the group, but spend most of their gathered time feeling free to just rest or engage quietly in restful hobbies and tasks together.
This was not a clearly formulated vision for Nina at the start of the workshop. It took some time really sorting through her wishes, needs, capacities, limitations and early on she imagined that no one else would possibly be interested in building community centered around resting together. But when she began to articulate her core desires for community clearly, the workshop participants all agreed that this group that this vision sounded comforting, and everyone involved could think of people they knew who would benefit and want access to such a gentle community space.
The guests at your party
When I was in eighth grade my English teacher asked us to identify three people from history who we would want to invite to a formal dinner party, and to give a three-minute speech about why to the class. My answer was I would only invite one person because I had so many questions that if I invited any other guests their presence would be too distracting. My single invitation was for Sigmund Freud only, which was not only a little prophetic about my future profession but also serves as a template when I begin thinking about a new group. Who do I want at my party? What do I want the dinner conversation to focus on? Who would contribute to that goal, and who would detract from it? Sometimes I make an imaginary list of people I could see gathering (or not): Historical figures, celebrities, fictional characters, and stereotypes – all representing the kinds of people I would love to see in my imaginary circle. I also think of the kinds of people that, even if I like them very much, would not be a good fit with the spirit and purpose of the group I am dreaming up.
What types of people do you imagine gathering with? What types would be challenging for you? Who might bore you, try your patience, but might also surprise you? Who could you learn to appreciate over time? What kinds of imaginary characters would you rather not have attend - not because the goal is to exclude anyone – but because they might bring in tangential concerns or requirements that could be distracting, derailing to the central focus and essential intention for the group? One of the reasons this is important is because as you shape, design, and spread the word about this group you will want to consider the range of potential members. You will also need to phrase the invitation so that people know what to expect, and not to expect of this gathering. People are more anxious and avoidant of groups that aren’t extremely transparent about who they are designed for and why.
For example, If someone invites me to a party and they tell me it will be a rave, with flashing lights and trance music – even if they really want to include people my age and with my musical tastes, I am not probably going to attend and select myself out. If someone were to convene a group of scientists focused on, astrophysics I would be explicitly excluded because I am not a scientist, and I would also select myself out as know I couldn’t contribute anything useful to the conversation. If someone wants to convene an eclectic group to explore the various implications of community mental health – my “type” of person would be included, and I would likely select myself in.
All circles include and exclude simultaneously. We can draw our circles too close and small and specific to be viable, or too wide and diffuse to be coherent. This is a good time to start imagining who you would like to invite, and what types of people could complement each other, expand each other’s viewpoints while maintaining the central focus in your group.
Roles and responsibilities:
Do you have a picture in your mind of what role you want to play in the group? How much responsibility do you want to take? What do you have to offer to this imaginary group? What hard won lessons are you eager to share with others? How actively do you want to participate in holding the group to it central purpose and managing boundaries and norms? How flexible are you in this vision? Do you want to shoulder the decisions, both pleasant and unpleasant? Do you want to share this task with one or two other people? Or do you want the whole group to make decisions about group protocols and norms together even if it strays from your initial vision?
Here are some of the roles that you might consider:
Convener: This is the person or people who incubates the idea and executes the initial leg work of calling people together. Sometimes the convener takes an on-going a leadership, or co-leadership role in the group, and sometimes they want to be in a group that makes essential decisions together. Sometimes the convener’s task is as simple as sending out an email or posting on a local social media page: “Hey! Anyone want to join me in forming a neighborhood food gardening club?” and to help organize the initial meeting if folks respond.
Facilitators and co-facilitators: These are the people want to take on the role of structuring the group in an on-going way. They want to organize the time and location, suggest the topics or tasks to be focused on, take on leadership functions, create an agenda, or serve as tie-breaker and decider when the group is hamstrung in finalizing a decision. This is the person who wants to and is willing take organizational responsibility, and who also will occasionally have to make hard decisions and communications if say, someone wants to join the group who doesn’t seem to understand its focus clearly or isn’t going be a good fit for the spirit and purpose of the group. Facilitators also manage the personal boundaries in the group by making time and resources are fairly distributed, as in: “Thanks so much Tim, but can you to hold that thought for a minute and let’s see if there is anyone who hasn’t spoken yet who wants a chance.” Facilitators also gently enforce norms that the group requires or has agreed upon: “A reminder that we do have to keep our voices down because the silent reading room of the library is right next to this conference room.”
Facilitation can be done by a single person. Usually, solo facilitation is done by someone who has some expertise in either group work, or the topic the group is focused on. A person with many years of quilt-making experience who gathers a group for beginning quilters, or an experienced environmentalist who has organized a local conservation group - because they want to share their passion with enthusiastic newbies will likely need to be the facilitator of the group, and not just a convener.
Co-facilitation is when these responsibilities are shared by a team of people. For example, I facilitated a group for people at high-risk for Covid complications with someone who had skills as a patient advocate. We were both peer members of the group – as we both had immunological problems – and could share and identify with the rest of the group – but we took on the administrative functions as well as helped structure the conversation by bringing up questions and topics for the group to discuss and managing group norms and boundaries.
Another variation of co-facilitation is when leadership roles rotate from meeting to meeting among the group members. Rotating facilitation usually works best with a group that is highly structured and consistent - with the same ritualized procedures each session. For example, a reading group where the rotating facilitator brings in two passages to read aloud and five questions for the group to discuss about the chapter assigned that week. Any changes or protocol decisions are otherwise collectively determined by the group members. Letting potential members know the expected facilitation design of the group is important information to include in the initial group invitation, so that people who want to participate more passively, who are inhibited in groups, are afraid of public speaking, or who don’t simply want to take on those responsibilities can select themselves in or out.
Administrator or administrative team: All groups will have some administrative and organizational tasks that must be tended to for the group to function. Sometimes the convener or facilitator takes this on, but sometimes the administrator is a peer member who wants to be helpful by taking on the role of secretary, maintaining a current contact list, moderating the group text, or setting the meeting place. In groups that have rotating leadership, there often needs to be one administrator who helps the group’s logistics stay structured and on-track by sending out reminders about changes in meeting place or time, for example.
Member: Even if you decide that you don’t want to be the one to convene, facilitate, or administer a community group, but just want to participate in one - and this has happened for some people who have taken my workshop - contemplating the questions and ideas posed throughout this book will be useful for you in being a contributing member of any group you choose to join. It can be helpful to learn about some of the challenges and possible solutions of community group building and management, and to be able to offer suggestions when groups are getting established, hitting an impasse, floundering, or closing out their time together.
Which of these roles and responsibilities appeals to you? Which ones feel draining or dreadful? What among these roles are you good at, are easy for you? What are you good at, but sick of, burned out on, and don’t want to take on at this time? Which among these roles would be challenging for you? Is that a challenge you want to take on, or would promote your growth? What among these tasks are you terrible at or worried about?
Limitations:
How much time and energy do you realistically have to invest in this project? There are very successful groups that did not require huge time commitments or preparation from anyone in any of these roles – so having little time or energy isn’t necessarily a barrier to forming a group – but it will certainly need to impact how the group is designed and which among these roles you can manage. Taking clear stock of your limitations, and stating those limits clearly in the initial invitation and early group sessions will help prevent the group from becoming unwieldy or overwhelming for you: “Listen, I don’t mind at all being the one to facilitate the book discussion each week, but I’m overwhelmed with administrative tasks between my work and my kids – and I know that I’m going to drop the ball on those details if that falls to me.” This will call on the group itself as a whole, and the individual members to figure how to fill in the gaps. If you are clear from the beginning, you might even consider naming the roles you cannot take on and will need the group to address in your initial invitation/information page i.e.: “Good ideas about where we might meet in person are welcome!”
One of the truly beautiful things about inviting others to join you in a community group is that the group as an entity has the capacity to solve many of its own problems, find solutions, innovate, and distribute responsibilities so that you aren’t alone in this.
We are in it together, and that is the entire point.
[1] Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, 2023, The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the
Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community
[2] Ibid. p.24
[3] March 01, 2022, White House Fact Sheet: President Biden to Announce Strategy to Address Our National Mental Health Crisis, As Part of Unity Agenda in his First State of the Union
[4] Buber, Martin, I and Thou, p. _____
[5] LIFE Magazine, May 24th, 1963