Family and friends
Kitchen Table
For anyone who loves someone struggling with substance use or mental illness. You don't need a diagnosis, a referral, or your person's permission. You don't need them to be in treatment. You don't need them to want to be.
The person who loves someone in crisis isn't a bystander to it. You're living inside it, usually without anyone asking how you're doing. This is a room where somebody asks.
Every week
The open group
Wednesdays, 6:30 to 8:00. Free, no registration, no paperwork. Come once, come for a year, come back after six months away. There's food on the table when you arrive.
The first twenty minutes
No agendaFood, and no one asking you to explain yourself yet. Most people need a while before they can talk.
The middle
Open conversationWhatever people brought with them that week. Lightly facilitated, not a curriculum. You can sit and say nothing.
One practical thing
Rotating topicsSleep. Money. Talking to your kids about it. What to do in a crisis. Anger, and where to put it. Holidays. When they say no. When they relapse. The cycle repeats, so nothing is a one-time chance.
Before you leave
Ten minutesEveryone names one thing they'll do for themselves before next week. It's the only homework.
Eight weeks
The series
A closed group of no more than twelve people, meeting eight weeks in a row. Same people every week, which matters — by week six you'll say things you couldn't have said in week one.
This one teaches skills. How to talk without the same argument happening again. How to set a boundary that isn't a threat. How and when to raise treatment, and what to do when the answer is no. It draws on Community Reinforcement and Family Training, the approach with the strongest evidence behind it for families in this position.
Weeks one and two
What brought you here, and what's actually happening. No jargon, no moralising, no willpower talk.
Week three
Your own sleep, health, money, and support. Not about your person. Most people haven't been asked about themselves in years.
Weeks four to six
Talking without escalating. Understanding patterns without blame. Boundaries that don't require withdrawing love.
Weeks seven and eight
How to raise treatment, rehearsed in the room. Then living with not knowing, which for many families is the permanent condition rather than a phase.
Fee set by scope, with sliding-scale rates. Nobody is turned away for cost.
What we're promising
This is for you, not for them.
Most family programs are education about the person you love, delivered to you so that you can be more useful to their recovery. That treats you as a means to somebody else's outcome.
Our measure is different. If you come for eight weeks and your person never enters treatment, you should still leave better than you arrived. Sleeping more. Arguing less. Clearer about what's yours to carry and what isn't. If we can't do that, we're not running a family program.
A note on privacy
Your being here says nothing about anyone.
These groups are open to the whole community. You don't have to be connected to Casa Tendo, and neither does your person. That's deliberate: it means walking through the door reveals nothing about anybody, to anyone in the room.
Our staff can't confirm or deny whether any particular person is a client here, and won't, including to you. What's said in the room stays in the room, with the usual exceptions where someone is in danger.