Our chapter holds bi-weekly support group meetings for the adults involved in a stepfamily (or who are planning to be involved in a stepfamily). The meetings are held in our home in Perry Hall, Maryland, on Thursday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00. For the address and directions, call 410-529-7176. The meeting dates for June and July 2008 are as follows:

• June 5th
• June 19th
• July 10th
• July 24th

In the meetings, participants help each other to deal with the challenges presented by living in a stepfamily. Each person or couple is given the opportunity to share with the group what has been recently happening in their family life. However, if a person feels uneasy about sharing, they are never pressured into doing so. You can learn how to help your family by sharing your story and having others make observations about it, but you can also learn simply by listening to the experiences of others. We do, however, try to make people feel comfortable about opening up. We do this by (1) having people who've attended before speak first, and (2) discouraging side conversations and prohibiting personal attacks.

We sometimes make reference to concepts contained in the book "Stepfamilies Stepping Ahead", which is recommended but not required reading. Among other things, the book contains an 8-step program for building a healthy stepfamily. We like to emphasize that just coming to a bi-weekly meeting is not sufficient to work out all the challenges in a stepfamily. Therefore, we often encourage participants to make a Commitment to Change (CTC), which is something they have decided they will work on between now and the time of the next meeting.

It should be noted that the Stepfamily Association requires that we, as group leaders, inform participants that we are lay persons and not trained counselors. In other words, any advice that we give comes from our experience rather than from formal training.

It is allowable to attend a few meetings before making the decision whether or not to join the Stepfamily Association. Joining is accomplished by contacting the national office.