Community Support Spaces

*The need:* Trauma is often collective but healing tends to be private.

Trauma is often collective but healing tends to be private. This recipe creates community-stewarded spaces for collective healing: regular circles where people with a shared experience witness each other's stories, make meaning together, and heal together. The space is peer support, not therapy, with clear agreements about safety and confidentiality, a facilitator with lived experience or training, and a path to professional services without requiring them. Lived experience matters more than credentials, cultural practices increase safety, circles stay small and consistent, and joy is included so the work is not only bearing witness to pain.

How it works

1. Identify the shared experience in your community.
2. Find facilitators with lived experience who have started healing, or who are trained to hold safe spaces.
3. Create clear agreements about safety and confidentiality.
4. Open with whatever grounds the group: prayer, breathing, or movement.
5. Share stories without advice or fixing.
6. Make meaning together from experiences.
7. Close with affirmation and connection.

Ingredients

• 6-10 people with a shared experience
• a facilitator trained to hold space
• clear boundaries (peer support not therapy)
• a list of professional resources
• confidentiality agreement
• regular private space

Minimum resources: Free with a trained volunteer facilitator.

You'll know it's working when

• people feel less alone
• collective action emerges from collective healing
• participants become facilitators

Field tips

• lived experience over credentials
• cultural practices increase safety
• keep circles small and consistent
• include joy

Building from (real projects)

• Story Circles
• Sandy Storyline
• After the Assault
• Community Mapping
• The Wall of Wrigley Field

Details

• size: snack
• patterns: creating_shared_understanding, preserving_community_knowledge
• civic need: wellbeing.mental, wellbeing.social, agency.reparative
• field tips: lived experience over credentials, cultural practices increase safety, keep circles small and consistent, include joy
• source tag: CB
• timeliness: community_rhythm, longview
• ingredients: 6-10 people with a shared experience, a facilitator trained to hold space, clear boundaries (peer support not therapy), a list of professional resources, confidentiality agreement, regular private space
• source note: From the Civic Media Cookbook: 'Producing Civic Media: Recipes to Produce Civic Media Through Participation, Power and Community' — Jihii Jolly and Jennifer Brandel, with the News Futures Working Group (2026).
• how it works: Identify the shared experience in your community., Find facilitators with lived experience who have started healing, or who are trained to hold safe spaces., Create clear agreements about safety and confidentiality., Open with whatever grounds the group: prayer, breathing, or movement., Share stories without advice or fixing., Make meaning together from experiences., Close with affirmation and connection.
• building from: Story Circles, Sandy Storyline, After the Assault, Community Mapping, The Wall of Wrigley Field
• min resources: Free with a trained volunteer facilitator.
• need it meets: Trauma is often collective but healing tends to be private.
• practice kind: recipe
• success signals: people feel less alone, collective action emerges from collective healing, participants become facilitators
• charter alignment: news_as_care, care_for_caregivers, reparative
• participatory nature: collective_care, collective_sensemaking
• conceptual ingredients: trust, reciprocity