Prep-Work · Before Session 01

Before Session 01.

The course officially begins at Session 01. The work begins now. This page is for the days between your interview and the first session — a chance to prepare yourself, your schedule, and your willingness for what is about to happen. It is not long. It is not optional.

Why prep matters

The cohort lands better when you've already arrived.

The cohort holds best when each member walks into Session 01 already oriented to what they signed up for. Reading this page, sitting with the questions below, and setting up your week is the equivalent of stretching before a long run. It is not the run. But you will feel it later if you skip it.

This page asks for about thirty to forty-five minutes of your time across the days before Session 01. Some of that is reading. Some of it is sitting quietly with a notebook. None of it is hard. All of it matters.

Step 01 — Sit with three questions

Three questions to think on before Session 01.

Take thirty quiet minutes somewhere you will not be interrupted. Write your honest answers — for yourself, not to share unless you choose to.

What pulled you to this work? What was happening in your life when you decided to sign up?
What is the hardest thing you might be asked to look at during these ten weeks? Name it for yourself, even if you would rather not.
What are you most afraid of in this work — being misunderstood, losing relationships, changing in ways you didn't predict, looking foolish?

Step 02 — Set up your week

The invisible commitment is everything around the cohort.

The cohort meets once a week for two hours for ten weeks. That is the visible commitment. The invisible commitment is everything around it — and it is what makes the visible commitment hold.

Block the two hours every week on your calendar — including the week of your birthday, the week your kid has the play, the week work is hardest. Move things around the cohort, not the other way around.
Tell the people in your life what you are doing — the people closest to you may notice changes in you. Let them know you are in something for ten weeks. You do not have to explain it deeply.
Find a quiet space for the daily small. Even five minutes. Even just one breath. The daily practice begins now, before Week 02 names it explicitly.
Identify a notebook or journal you will use for the course. The cohort will give you a workbook, but a private journal — somewhere you can write what you cannot share — is also useful.

Step 03 — A baseline reflection

Where you are right now.

This step matters more than it looks. The course will change you. Without a record of where you started, you will not be able to see the change.

Write the answers down — for your eyes only

Three short questions about your life right now.

How peaceful does your life feel today, on a scale of 1 to 10? Why?
Where is your reactivity highest? With whom does it show up most often?
What does peacemaking mean to you right now — in one or two sentences? What do you think you will learn?

You will return to these same three questions in Week 10. Keep your answers somewhere you can find them.

Step 04 — What to bring

What to bring to Session 01.

Not much. The session does not require preparation beyond presence.

A notebook and a pen.
Yourself — rested, fed, without distractions where possible.
An open mind about what the cohort will become.
Nothing else.

If you are unsure who else is in the cohort or what to expect of the room itself, the cohort formation page and the who this course is for page may help.

Step 05 — A quiet question for the road

One question to carry between now and Session 01.

The course closes each session with a question to sit with through the week. We start the same way. Carry this question with you — in your morning, in your car, while you are doing the dishes — for the days between now and Session 01.

The question for the days before

"What part of my life is peaceful right now — and what part is just quiet?"

Before we meet

A short word before Session 01.

From your facilitator

What you signed up for is hard. And worth it.

You agreed to spend ten weeks doing something most people will not try. That is already meaningful. Most of us were not taught these skills — peacemaking, repair, the discipline of listening across difference. We are learning them together, late, in adulthood, because we want them in our lives more than we have them.

You do not have to come to Session 01 ready. You only have to come. The cohort will do the rest with you.

See you soon.

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