Our rules.
And why they exist.

You choose your name. That is the only name we will ever know you by.

When you join Bridge of Hope, you create a name for yourself. Not your real name. A name just for here, one that belongs to you and travels with you through every meeting, every conversation, and every corner of this community for as long as you choose to use it. No one will ask for your real name. No one is entitled to it. You are expected to use your Bridge of Hope name at all Bridge of Hope meetings and events. If you ever want to change your name, that conversation belongs to you and no one else.

Use chosen names only. Never attempt to identify someone outside the fellowship.

Every member here has chosen a name. That name is who they are in this community. Never attempt to identify who someone is outside of Bridge of Hope. Never try to connect a member's identity here to their identity elsewhere. Never share information that could identify a member to the outside world. The anonymity of every person in this community belongs to them, not to you, not to the community, not to the platform.

One account per person.

Each member maintains one account. Creating multiple accounts to circumvent a ban, to participate under a different identity while holding another, or for any other reason is not permitted. If you are having trouble with your account, contact support.

No screenshots involving other members.

Do not take screenshots of meetings, conversations, or any content involving other members. This applies to usernames, profile information, shared content, and anything said in a meeting context. If you need to document something for a report, use the reporting system.

No recording of any kind.

Nothing that happens in a Bridge of Hope meeting may be recorded. No audio, no video, no screen capture, no transcription, no notes shared outside the meeting. This applies to phone conference lines, video meetings, in-person gatherings, and any other format. Hosts are responsible for ensuring their meeting platform is not recording. This rule exists because of our Trust pillar. A person must feel completely safe to say the hardest things they have ever said. Recording destroys that safety. There are no exceptions.

Bridge of Hope is for adults only.

This fellowship is open to people 18 years of age and older. No exceptions. This is not a rule designed to exclude young people who are suffering. It is a rule designed to protect them. The conversations that happen here involve adult experiences shared in full detail, and we are not equipped to provide the specific protections that minors require. If you are under 18 and need support, please speak with a trusted adult or contact a service designed for your age group.

We are not a crisis line.

Bridge of Hope is peer support. People who have been through hard things supporting people going through hard things. We are not a crisis management service. We are not equipped to assess risk, dispatch emergency services, or provide the kind of support a person in acute crisis needs. If someone in a meeting appears to be in immediate danger, the host may encourage them to call 988 or local emergency services. That encouragement is the full extent of what a host is expected to do. If you are in immediate danger right now, please call 988 or your local emergency number.

We are not a replacement for professional support.

Bridge of Hope exists in the space professional support does not reach. The experience that cannot be spoken in certain rooms. The person without insurance. The gap between appointments. We are a complement to professional care, not a substitute for it. Nothing said in this fellowship constitutes medical, psychological, legal, or therapeutic advice. No one here is your therapist, your doctor, your counselor, or your lawyer. If professional support is available to you, we encourage you to use it alongside this community.

No professional relationships exist here.

Bridge of Hope is a peer community. Nothing about your participation here creates a professional relationship of any kind. Nothing shared here constitutes medical advice, psychological treatment, legal counsel, or therapeutic guidance. No one in this community holds a professional duty of care toward you in their capacity as a member or host of this fellowship.

Some members of this community are verified therapists who have chosen to contribute their expertise here as an act of service. They help build the experience taxonomy that makes your healing profile personal to you. They create the Right Now tools, the mental health medication reference list, and the assessments and workbooks available on the platform. They lead meetings. If they are also your therapist outside this fellowship, they can initiate a connection with you here, and you can confirm it. That connection allows you to choose to share journal entries and other items from your account with them directly. Nothing is ever sent to a therapist unless you specifically send it. The connection only exists because both parties agreed to it, and you can end it at any time.

Everything verified therapists contribute here is done freely, without compensation, as an act of service to this community. Using the tools they have built is not the same as receiving clinical treatment. Participating in a meeting they host is not the same as being their patient. Their presence here does not create a therapeutic relationship between them and any member who has not explicitly established one outside this platform.

We are not bound by professional confidentiality.

Hosts and members of Bridge of Hope are not licensed professionals. We are not bound by the same confidentiality laws that govern therapists, doctors, or lawyers. We protect each other's stories because we choose to, because it is the right thing to do, and because anonymity is a core value of this fellowship. Not because the law requires it of us. When you share something here, you are sharing it with other human beings who have no legal obligation to protect that information the way a licensed professional would. We want you to know that clearly, so you can make an informed choice about what you share and with whom.

We are not a company, an organization, or a charity.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is none of those things. There is no executive, no board, no staff, no registered entity. We are people, a website, and tools we have learned to heal with. There is no donation button. There are no paid tiers. There is no financial transaction of any kind within this fellowship. The costs of keeping this place running are covered by members who choose to contribute as an act of service, without recognition, without pressure, and without any expectation in return.

No one may use Bridge of Hope to create a nonprofit or any other business entity.

Bridge of Hope Recovery may not be used to establish a nonprofit, a charity, a company, or any other business entity, by anyone, for any purpose. That is deliberate. Hierarchies destroy healing. The moment there is an organization, there are titles. The moment there are titles, there is power, and power in a healing space always finds someone to stand on. So we built this place so that no one can own it and no one can control it. Every change to the community and every behavior report is decided by community vote and applied automatically, with no one in between. It is all done identity-blind, which protects everyone involved and keeps the system from ever being weaponized against a member. Money keeps too many people from healing. Insurance decides how long someone is allowed to heal. A price tag decides who gets to start. A person’s healing should never come at that cost, and we are here to make sure it does not have to. We are not owned, we are not managed, and we are not for sale. We are designed to be community sustained.

We are not a dating platform.

This community exists for healing. The vulnerability that makes healing possible also creates specific risks around romantic pursuit. Using Bridge of Hope to seek romantic or sexual relationships with other members is not permitted. This is not about policing connections that form naturally between people over time. It is about protecting the safety of the space itself.

Bridge of Hope has no legal liability for member actions or outcomes.

This fellowship does not accept legal responsibility for the actions, decisions, or outcomes of its members. Participation in Bridge of Hope is voluntary. The support offered here is peer support, offered in good faith, without professional qualification, and without guarantee. Members participate at their own discretion.

Your experience, in whatever detail you need to share it, is always welcome.

You are allowed to say what happened to you. In full. Including the parts that are graphic, disturbing, or that other spaces have told you are too much. One of the most damaging things other fellowships do is put a ceiling on what survivors can say about their own experiences. We do not do that here. If you were assaulted, you can describe what was done to you. If you were abused, you can name it exactly. The act of speaking the unspeakable is part of how it loses its power. You will not be stopped.

Content that instructs or glorifies harm is not permitted.

There is a difference between sharing your experience and providing a roadmap. Detailed instructions for how to harm yourself, how to harm others, methods for suicide, or content that celebrates or glorifies violence or abuse is not permitted. This is not about protecting people from difficult realities. It is about the difference between a survivor speaking their truth and content that could cause active harm to someone listening. The direction matters. Your healing is always permitted. Instructions and glorification are not.

Sexual content: the direction test.

Sexual trauma is real, the details matter, and you are allowed to speak them. What is not permitted is using meeting spaces or platform features to generate, perform, or direct sexual content toward other members. The test is simple: is this person processing something that happened to them, or is this person performing at someone else's expense? If the content describes the speaker's own experience, it is processing. If it is directed at people in the room, solicits or implies a response from them, or uses explicit detail in a way that puts the listeners in the position of participants rather than witnesses, that is the line. The subject of the content tells you which side you are on: your own experience, or the people listening to you. Hosts are empowered to end the meeting or remove the participant when that line is crossed.

Supporting each other is one of the most powerful things we do.

The peer support that happens in this community, one survivor reaching toward another, sharing what helped, staying on the phone, being present, is real and it works. You are encouraged to connect, to support, and to show up for each other. The relationships that form in this community are part of what makes it worth building.

You are not responsible for each other's recovery or safety.

Supporting someone is a gift. It is not an obligation, and it is not a professional duty. No member of this community is responsible for another member's choices, their recovery, or their safety. You cannot save someone. You can be present for them. You can point them toward resources. You can stay on the phone. But if someone you care about in this community makes a choice that hurts them, that is not your failure. Carrying that weight is not the cost of being part of this community. Show up for each other. Take care of yourself.

Your healing matters too.

It is easy in a community of survivors to pour everything into other people and leave nothing for yourself. The instinct to caretake, to be the strong one, to hold others while not being held, that instinct is familiar to many of us and it is also one of the patterns we are here to work on. You are not just a support person for others in this community. You are also someone who deserves support. Use it.

Relapse is part of the journey. You are still welcome here.

We have been there. Most of the people in this community have been there. Relapse is not a reason for shame, for removal, or for silence. It is information. It is part of how many people find their way to sustained recovery, not in spite of the times they went back, but through them. If you relapsed, you are still welcome here. You do not have to explain yourself. You do not have to have a certain number of days to belong. You just have to show up.

Come back.

The most dangerous thing that happens after a relapse is the decision not to return. Shame tells you that you lost your place here, that people will judge you, that you have to earn your way back. None of that is true. Your place here does not expire. Come back the same day if you need to. Come back the next day. Come back whenever you are ready. The door does not close.

What is shared here stays here.

Anything a member shares in a meeting, in a conversation, or anywhere on this platform is shared in confidence. You may take the lessons, the insights, and the healing with you. You do not take the stories. You do not share what other members have disclosed, not with friends, not with family, not publicly, not anonymously. Their story is theirs.

Reporting and accountability.

Anything can be reported. If something did not feel right, report it. A host who did not show up. A host who ran the meeting in a way that violated these principles. A member who was disruptive, harmful, or threatening. A rule violation of any kind. You do not need to be certain a rule was broken. The review process exists to make that determination. You just need to say what happened.

All reports are anonymous and identity-blind. Your identity as the reporter is not visible to anyone, including the admins who review it. The person being reported is also not identified by name to reviewing admins. Admins see only the details of the incident and decide whether a rule was broken. This architecture exists to make favoritism impossible, not just unlikely.

After a report is filed, it enters a review pool visible to all available admins. The first five admins to review it close the review. If three of those five independently agree a rule was broken, the consequence is applied immediately. If the review closes without three agreements, no action is taken. All reports close automatically after seven days if not reviewed to conclusion.

This system was designed so that it cannot be effectively weaponized. The identity-blind review, the three-agreement requirement, and the five-reviewer cap all exist to prevent any individual from controlling an outcome. Filing reports against someone you simply dislike is itself a violation of community conduct. If you are using the system in bad faith, that pattern will be visible to reviewers over time.

The mark system.

When a rule violation is confirmed, a mark is added to the member's record and the appropriate consequence is applied automatically.

Here is how a confirmation happens. After a report is filed, it enters the review pool. Available admins review it independently. Critically, no reviewer can see who filed the report or who the report is about. They see only the details of what happened. This architecture makes favoritism structurally impossible, not just unlikely. The first five admins to vote close the review. If three or more of those five independently agree that a rule was broken, the report is confirmed. If fewer than three agree, no action is taken. Three independent agreements are always required before any consequence is applied. The system then executes the consequence immediately, with no additional approval step.

The first and second confirmed marks on your member record carry no ban. They are a record and a warning. The third confirmed mark results in a 30-day ban from the platform, with all roles suspended for its duration. The fourth results in a six-month ban. The fifth results in permanent removal. On permanent removal, a one-time download link is emailed to you so you can keep everything you wrote. Your data is yours regardless of the outcome.

Marks are not permanent. One mark is removed from your record for every consecutive month of clean standing. The decay is calculated automatically, and you can see your current standing on your profile under My Standing.

For hosts, no-shows work differently. No-shows land on a separate hosting track. The first and second confirmed no-shows on that track are recorded but carry no suspension. A third confirmed no-show suspends hosting privileges. When that happens, your solo meetings are canceled and any co-hosted meetings continue under the co-host. The host role has to be re-earned. Hosting marks follow the same one-month decay as member marks.

Hosts are responsible for their meetings and have authority to protect them.

When you host a meeting you are responsible for everything that happens in it, regardless of format. For phone and video meetings, you provide your own conferencing account and dial-in details. For in-person meetings, you are responsible for finding, arranging, and securing an appropriate space. Bridge of Hope Recovery is a fellowship of peers and does not own, manage, or take responsibility for meeting spaces or meeting outcomes.

Hosts are responsible for reading the community rules aloud at the start of every meeting, every time, without exception. This applies to all meeting formats: phone, video, and in person. New members may be joining who have not heard the rules. Returning members benefit from the reminder. The reading creates the container that makes everything that follows possible.

If a meeting is being disrupted, if a participant is violating community rules, or if the safety of the space is at risk, hosts are authorized to mute participants, remove participants, or end the meeting entirely. Hosts are not required to warn before acting when safety is the concern. Their authority in the meeting is final. If you believe a host has abused that authority, the reporting system exists for exactly that purpose.

Hosts who cannot make a scheduled meeting must cancel it in advance. Members schedule their time around listed meetings. Unexplained no-shows are reportable and reviewed the same way any conduct issue is reviewed.

The content you write, and what we may remove

Your private writing, your journal, intake, and assessments, is encrypted and belongs to you. We cannot read it, and we never use it for anything but the features you asked for. Anything you post where others can see it, including meeting listings, reports, and requests, must follow these rules, and we may edit or remove it if it breaks the rules or puts someone at risk. Meeting listings you create may be paused or removed by calendar volunteers when reports require it.

Your account, and how it can end

You may delete your account at any time from your profile. Your written content is permanently erased when you do. The fellowship may suspend or permanently remove an account through the identity-blind review process described in these rules, including an emergency removal in cases of deliberate harm to members. If an account is permanently removed, the person can request a one-time export of their own writing. Before our public launch, all test accounts and content will be wiped.

The service itself

This platform is offered as-is, free, and run by volunteers. We work hard to keep it online, accurate, and safe, and we do not promise perfection. Features may change, appear, or be removed as the fellowship grows. We will never charge you, sell your data, or show you advertising.

If this agreement changes

If any of this changes in a way that matters, we will say so plainly on this page with a date. We will not bury it. Continuing to use the platform after a change means you accept it.