Quote Originally Posted by andrew View Post

Anyway, what I want to know is how you would start and then manage a face-to-face group if you could.
As you can see, still very much in the planning stages. What would you want from a face-to-face support group? Any ideas no matter how wild will be greatfully accepted.
I don't know how big your group will be, and you probably won't know either. You could put your phone number on any advertising you do so you would have a rough number, but you still may or may not have walk ins. Do you have any meeting halls? Church basements, senior citizen center? Someplace neutral. I would set chairs in a circle and I would set some really basic ground rules. What is said here stays here, everyone must be respectful etc. Then I would start going around the circle just saying name and when they were diagnosed with Wegner's. Then I would go back around and ask where they were and what their initial feeling was when they found out. After that I think I would ask what topics the group would like to discuss and/or learn about. For example, How to manage work. How to help family cope with dx. Where to go for treatment and how to talk to doctors etc. etc. Then each meeting could have a theme and if you didn't want to provide the information for each session you could divy it up amongst the group. And of course have double chocolate muffins in case elephant finds a way to get there and maybe some cheese cake for me (LOL). Good luck, I think you are an amazing healer, you started this forum and now you are expanding to face to face.