This is the welcome message sent to new members. It explains how the meeting works. Enjoy!

Welcome to sia@lists.riseup.net, an open meeting of Survivors of Incest Anonymous. My name is ________ and I am an incest survivor and your secretary tonight. Let's open the meeting with a moment of silence followed by the Serenity Prayer. :)

~ Please grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. ~

We are a group of people who are guided by 12 suggested steps and 12 traditions. (They, as well as this welcome message, will also be sent out to all members once a month.) The only requirement for membership in SIA is that you have, or suspect you might have, experienced incest and that you want to recover from it. We have SIA's definitions of incest and ritual abuse available at the meeting's website; they can also be found at http://www.siawso.org.

Please post a message to this list introducing yourselves whenever you feel comfortable. If you are a newcomer, please tell us so we can welcome you. A newcomer is anyone who is attending an SIA meeting for their first, second, or third time. We also recommend that new members create a free account at livejournal.com (or use one you already have) and join the business meeting by going to: http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=sia_meeting. Information about the business meeting will follow in a separate email.

This list is a good place for:

  • posting introductions and hearing from other survivors
  • sharing your experience, strength, and hope about anything that you feel is related to your recovery from abuse
  • sharing your work on the steps
  • posting SIA-related announcements
  • sharing any recovery anniversaries you have

    This list is NOT a good place for cross-talk. Cross-talk is:

  • asking questions or giving advice
  • talking about other people on the list or about what they have shared

    We have another list for that: sia-discussion. (sia-discussion is currently being set up.) If this list is a meeting, sia-discussion is like the time after the meeting when everyone is hanging out and chatting. On that list, discussion, questions, and giving solicited advice are welcomed.

    Any of those can also be done via private email. However, if someone has not said that it is okay to comment on their share, please ask before you comment on it - whether it is via private email or on the discussion list. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes: if a member cross-talks on this list by mentioning someone's name or what they shared, it is up to that someone and/or the secretary to respectfully and privately (not on the list!) remind them about the cross-talk rule.

    Many survivor spaces online require "trigger warnings," where members warn everyone before mentioning specific subjects, or censor certain words using asterisks. We do not require any such warnings or self-censorship: there is nothing too heavy to share in this space.

    Our seventh tradition says we are self-supporting through our own voluntary contributions. Since we are an online meeting, we do not have literature you can order; you can order SIA literature directly from the World Service Office at http://www.siawso.org. Seventh tradition funds go to help SIA pay rent, manage its pen pal program and speaker's bureau, and produce outreach materials, as well as to make donations to riseup.net and livejournal.com to fund the spaces this list uses. The virtual "basket" for the seventh tradition gets passed separately, once a week.

    Welcome to the meeting!

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