About Us
We are a peer-led support community of survivors and people helping survivors, dedicated to building paths out of active abuse conditions together. We help each other come together to address our unmet needs while addressing the needs of each other. We do this together in ways that are mutually protected and secure, and that value the agency of each person while building functional community.
About Peer Support
How do peer-led support groups work?
Volunteers take turns opening meetings by calling for volunteers to read the group's Relational Agreements out loud. Everybody is welcome to try to volunteer. It’s okay for volunteers to lack confidence; it’s okay for accidents to happen; and it’s okay to try again another time. If you offer to volunteer and become unable, you can pass at any moment by asking for a new volunteer. Throughout the meeting, everyone helps to make sure that everyone who needs to share has a chance.
Relational Agreements
Our relational agreements are agreements about how we wish to be treated and how we agree to treat each other. Their purpose is to provide all of us with the bumpers that we might need to be kind with each other. Chances are, if you are reading this, you might come from a place where there isn’t a lot of kindness. Relational agreements are made for us to help each other with as much kindness as possible.
What if I cannot prove or explain my experiences?
No one will ask you to. Survivors of many types of experiences may be unable to speak directly about those experiences––either through trauma; absence of shared experiences with others; social invisibility; disablement; or otherwise. Nobody will be forced to prove their experience or existence. We are just going to be kind with each other.
Does group membership have a fee? No.
Kindness and community should not have a monetary cost! We are however seeking skilled people to help with fundraising (web support, physical space, etc.) and for funding our Emergency Hardship Program that functions to help people who are born into trafficking and/or life-threatening trauma conditions leave those conditions and get the kind of actionable help they need to stay free of those conditions.
How do I join?
We offer an orientation with peer-support group coordinators for new people wishing to join, in order to make sure that we are a good fit together. If you're interested, you can reach out to us at registration@helpexists.org and a group coordinator will be in touch!
Community Guidelines
We are survivors building community for ourselves and each other. Our community guidelines function to help protect the special needs of survivors still trying to leave active abuse conditions, and to protect survivors from being forced to demonstrate their endangerment, disablement, lack of agency, or lack of cultural familiarity. The only customs and traditions that we have are shared agreements to practice kindness with each other.
No solicitation or self-promotion.
We ask that people do not solicit for reporting or public testimony here, and do not promote products, services, market research, websites, podcasts, etc., solicit financial support, or recruitment for religious, political, or professional services, nor share social media accounts for audience-building.
Disability rights.
We practice boundaries that allow disabled people to be disabled. Disability rights protect people from being forced to demonstrate their disabilities because doing so violates privacy and endangers people. We support disabled survivors to build community and learn about our rights to safety, privacy, disability, and effective representation and advocacy.
No assumptions about identity.
Some survivors from birth onward had identities formed by extreme harm. We do not assume that these conditions ended or lessened, just because the body grew older. Some survivors exist as people who have no outside identity, other than being a survivor, trying to survive a day at a time. Some survivors have only experienced identities defined entirely by roles imposed by abusers with no internalized sense of who they are, what choices they may have, what rights they may have, what aspirations they could have, and what may be possible for them.
No assumptions about shared culture.
Survivors of more extreme forms of abuse may be disabled from experiencing shared culture with others. Some experience exponentially harmful effects created by abusers to ensure that what is co-regulating and comforting for the general population can be especially painful and gaslighting for these survivors.
Meeting unmet needs.
Rather than measuring our own pain and suffering against the pain and suffering of others, we just respond directly by helping to meet unmet needs. Comparison disconnects us from our own needs, and replaces our actual needs with competition for worth. Part of recovery is discovering that kindness actually exists and you are actually worthy of it. Nobody is replaceable because everybody is worth more than the harm that their body can take and harm their body can inflict. Making kindness and building resources to meet our unmet needs are the only things left to do.