No. You do not need a formal chronic illness diagnosis, and plenty of us spend years being told nothing is wrong. What matters is that you are living with an ongoing health condition that affects your daily life.

You do not need a mental health diagnosis either. Held is a processing group mixed with education, built to help you navigate the intersection of mental health and chronic illness in your day to day and with your providers. If you are carrying both, that is enough.

You can express interest, and I want to be honest with you about what you would be stepping into.

Held is an affinity group. It was created for and is centered on Black women and women of color, femmes included, in all our intersections, because we carry chronic illness inside systems that disbelieve, dismiss, and under-treat us in ways that our white counterparts, and often the men in our own communities, largely do not experience. That reality is not a side topic in this group. It is the center, and it stays the center.

If you can sit in a room that is not built around your experience, without needing it to be, there may be space for you here. That is exactly what the conversation before the group begins is for. We will talk it through directly, and we will both be honest about whether this is the right room for you. If it is not, I will help you find one that is.

Held is a processing and educational group. It is therapeutic, but insurance pays for therapy tied to a diagnosis and a treatment plan, and a group like this may not be seen as therapy by an insurance company. I would rather tell you that plainly than hand you a superbill that may never turn into a reimbursement.

I know this puts the group out of reach for some people, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What you get in exchange is that nothing about this group, or the fact that you were in it, ends up in an insurance record.

Yes. $270 up front, or $45 a week for six weeks. Same total, same commitment, whichever is easier on your budget.

Paying weekly does not make you any less enrolled. You are still signing up for all six sessions, and the withdrawal terms are the same either way. It just means the cost lands in smaller pieces.

It is a written breakdown of what a service will cost you, which health care providers are required to give people paying out of pocket. Yours will say $270 for six sessions, and it will note whether you are paying up front or weekly. There is nothing hidden in it and nothing else you will be charged.

You will not be penalized for your body. Flares happen and this group is built for people whose bodies are unpredictable.

That said, this is a small closed group and your presence matters to the people in it. I ask that you plan to attend all six weeks and let us know when you cannot make it. If you end up missing more than two sessions, we will talk about whether it makes more sense for you to join a future group instead.

You can, and how much you owe depends on when.

After the first session, you are released from the remaining five. After the second, the remaining four. If you paid up front, you get that money back. If you are paying weekly, you simply stop.

From the third session forward, you are responsible for the full $270 either way. That is the same whether you paid all at once or week to week, because the two options are the same commitment with a different payment schedule.

I want to be honest about why that cutoff exists. It is not really about the money. By the third week the group has become a specific group of specific people who have started trusting each other. Someone leaving at that point is felt by everyone. The window closing is my way of asking you to decide early, so that if you do stay, you are staying.

If something happens that no one could have planned for, tell me. I would rather talk about it than have you disappear.

No, and I want to keep these separate.

Missing a session because your body had other plans is not withdrawing. You stay enrolled, your spot stays yours, and there is no financial penalty. That is built into how this group works.

Withdrawing means you are leaving the group and not coming back. That is when the refund policy applies.

No. Camera on, camera off, sitting up, lying down, in bed, with a heating pad, in the dark. However your body needs to be is how you should be. This is built into how the group runs from the first session.

Somewhere private. That means somewhere the people in your life cannot overhear what is being said, including what other members say. Not in public, not while driving.

I know private is not equally available to everyone. If your living situation makes this hard, tell me during our conversation and we will work it out. Headphones solve most of it. So does timing, or a closed door.

Mostly, and I want to be precise about the part that is not.

I am bound by law and by my license to keep everything you share confidential, with the usual exceptions around serious risk of harm. That part is enforceable.

Every member also agrees, in writing, that what is said in the group and who is in it stays in the group. That agreement is real and people take it seriously. But I cannot promise you what another person will do the way I can promise you what I will do. Any therapist who tells you otherwise is overselling it.

What I can tell you is that I take it seriously enough to act on it. If I learn that someone has shared another member's identity or story outside this group, they will not be able to join any future group at Village of Sound Mind. That is not a warning I expect to use. I am telling you about it because you deserve to know that the agreement has weight behind it.

We talk about this directly in the first session, and you get to decide what you share and when.