Rethinking The Koffee Klatch

Eight Toronto single mothers have recently started an innovative new type of support group using email called "Strong Women."

The women found each other through a city-sponsored family divorce workshop in which divorcees and a facilitator come together once a week for six weeks. Their connection was so strong that they began getting together regularly at their own homes after the six-week program ended. "In between [the meetings at the homes] people had specific questions about everything from shared custody to new relationships to childrens' adjustments. Someone would put [a question] out there and whoever had some wisdom or insight to offer, emailed back," says founding member Eve Kesaric. (As in other very private stories posted here, names have been changed to protect the innocent).

Although it's not a chat room, it has some of the same characteristics, says Kesaric. Each question or response is directed to all the others via the "reply all" function of regular email. "Many times many of us don't respond" she says. "You could be following someone's discussion, then someone else chimes in - or sometimes you'll get everybody responding to your question - many times people are just needing to rant," she adds.

The emotional benefit has been enormous, says Kesaric. "It was just a lovely, surprising level of support," she adds. Although they are scattered across the city and have widely varying jobs, religions, and ethnic and educational backgrounds, "there were no barriers. The wisdom gained from each other was immense and at times very fulfilling and rewarding" she says. "In general, people absolutely addressed their fears. The fantastic part of it was that we [connected] not only because of our circumstances, but because we started to see what we share as women and human beings, and that what we were now going through was a human tragic loss," she adds.

The trick for any woman who wants to set up an email support group is linking up with other like-minded women informally and then getting to the core of it quickly, says Kesaric. She recommends starting a group by hiring your own facilitator - perhaps a social worker or psychotherapist - who can help break the ice and create a little more formality. "Sometimes people really need it and sometimes they don't," she observes. From there it can evolve into a long-term email group after a few face-to-face meetings. "I think there's a lot to be said for knowing each other first and then doing the emailing," she adds.

One of the biggest eye-openers for the whole group, according to Kesaric, was the cyclical nature of moving on. Some of those who began the group with few issues later acquired new stresses, while others who started with major stresses tapered off over the course of the discussions. "The humbling thing about it has been for all of us to recognize that [being a single mother] is going to be an ever-changing, ever-evolving journey - and only by seeing other women go through it have we been awakened to this reality," she adds.

That said, coming into this awareness was easier to take thanks to the group. "It's very comforting because you are not alone. You don't all have to be at the same place [of development] at the same time - in fact it's often been more valuable for many of us to be in different places," observes Kesaric.

Kesaric embraces the notion that this email support group is a modern-day answer to the rapidly disappearing tradition of the neighborly coffee visit or over-the-fence chat. "These days, we have women who are single, women who don't have children, women who have careers, women who stay at home, women who are part-time. We don't have a shared common experience, let alone a neighbourhood or community where you could just run across the street and plunk yourself down like a sitcom and spend hours indulging in your own issues." Along with these losses, or perhaps because of them, there is "no shortage of need to communicate," she adds.

Image courtesy Library of Congress