Dear Solid Ground Members,

We celebrated our 2-year anniversary on January 1! Thank you to every one of you for making this community what it is—a bright spot in all the chaos of internet communication. Thank you, also, for bearing with us as we make adjustments and catch up on housekeeping that we have neglected for quite some time.

Here are some important updates. We will give you the short version first and add some details below for those who want the long version!

UPDATE 1: As of February 1, we are migrating to Substack for our Peer Support & Discussion Group announcements. Due to some limitations with the Locals platform, we will be migrating to Substack as a way to share links and times for our weekly groups. The Locals forum will remain in place, but in order to attend our synchronous Peer Support and Discussion Groups, you will need to subscribe to Substack for $10/mo. If you are on a current annual/multi-month subscription, you will not be charged again until your subscription ends, and will receive links and times for peer support groups via regular email in the interim. The Locals forum subscription will remain at $5/mo. (more details below).

UPDATE 2: We are excited to welcome Dr. Aaron Kindsvatter to our facilitation team! Aaron will be hosting a new weekly group and joining some of our livestreams. We will announce his group time/day very soon!

UPDATE 3: We are beginning a new Media Discussion Group for our Peer Support & Discussion Group subscribers that will meet every 4 to 6 weeks. We will spotlight one long-form art/entertainment/educational piece for discussion. The event will be 2 hours long and attendance will not be capped. Our first meeting will be 2/8 from 4 to 6pm Pacific (7-9pm Eastern), and we will talk about the movie "Wicked."

That's the short story! Feel free to message us at [email protected] if you have any questions!

Thank you all for your feedback and your fellowship, and Happy New Year!

Leslie, Deborah, and Christine

Read on if you want a more detailed account:

As you know, we have been trying to figure out some structure and pricing issues. Here's a little review and backstory:

Beginning in January 2023, we invited you all to join us via Locals at only $5/mo. This fee was set at the minimum possible price in order to weed out trolls but not be a burden on members. Facilitators all worked largely on a volunteer basis, which brought great passion but was not sustainable. We have now lost 3 of the original 4 founders because it is difficult to commit long term to a set schedule each week consistently, as well as taking the time for the planning, organizing, maintenance, and communication we need in order to uphold our commitment to this important project. The original co-founders all poured a lot of love into this project and contributed many, many hours to building and supporting it. It has been sad to see them leave, but we understand that they each have had to move on to other responsibilities. But those of us still involved are not ready to see Solid Ground fold when there is still so much positive connection and potential here for us, so in order to retain the people we now have (and have the potential to grow), it is necessary to ask members to increase their support.

We announced at the end of 2024 that we would be moving from $5 to $20 in monthly member dues. If we'd been more thoughtful, what we should have done was raise rates to $10 or $12 in January 2024, and then raise them again in January 2025, but we have suffered from a lack of organization so this never happened. As a result, everyone got the lower rate for longer (yay), but some were understandably dismayed by the announcement of a significant jump all at once when we finally made the adjustment.

We have listened to your feedback and decided to roll back the increase to a total of $15/mo., and to make a couple of changes to our structure. Here are the details:

Because of some limitations with the Locals platform, we've decided to migrate to Substack for our Peer Support Group subscribers, where those folks will get access to our meeting Zoom links and times.

If you would like to continue to engage with us on the Locals platform, good news—we are not abandoning it! The forum option is not available on Substack, so Solid Ground members can continue to use Locals for the original $5/mo. The Solid Ground Substack subscription is for Peer Support Group links and times only, and will be $10/mo. (with an annual subscription discount available). This is SEPARATE from your Locals subscription. Both are optional—you can be a member on Locals but not Substack and vice versa—it just depends on whether you want to access the forum, the synchronous groups, or both.

If you are on a multi-month/annual subscription subscription, you do NOT need to start a new paid subscription via Substack until your prepaid term ends. We will honor all existing subscriptions based on the terms that were in place when those subscriptions began. We will send links to prepaid subscribers via email every week separate from Substack notifications. Month-to-month subscribers will need to start a new paid Subscription via Substack by the end of this month in order to receive next month's Peer Support Group links. As of February 1, we will no longer send and post these via Locals. You can subscribe to the Solid Ground Substack here: https://substack.com/@solidgroundsupport

Weekly meetings as of now include Christine's group on Tuesdays, Deborah's group on Wednesdays, Leslie's group on Thursdays, and Deborah's group on some Sundays, with Aaron's group starting in February, day/time TBA.

Also, we will be starting a new Media Discussion group for Peer Support & Discussion Group subscribers, which will be held about once a month for us to engage in discussion and analysis of a particular book, movie, or other long-form art/entertainment/educational piece together. Our first Solid Ground Media Discussion group will be held on Saturday, February 8 at 4pm PT (7pm ET), and we will be discussing the movie "Wicked."

Thanks for reading and we look forward to seeing you in group!