Before you come in
SUBHEADLINE-GOES-HERE
CREDIT-GOES-HERE
I was removed from a paid community for autistic and ADHD adults during the worst week of my year. I asked what rule I'd broken. There weren't any written down.
What that room gave me was real. But what you pay for monthly, someone else owns, and what someone else owns they can take back.
Belonging is not a product.
I wasn't the only one who went out that door. NeuroSpicy Refugees is what I built so it couldn't happen again. It's free and stays free. The agreement was posted before the first member joined. Nobody is removed without being told why and given a chance to answer.
The model calls for three stewards deciding by consensus. I hold one seat, and two are open to member nomination. Until they're filled, no removal or urgent policy change happens on my word alone. Senior members step into the open seats for that decision.
One disclosure. Refugees is under the care of TranquilTech, a company I founded, which is raising its seed round. The whole budget is under $30 a month, and TranquilTech covers it. It does not moderate. It makes tools built for people like us, and you'll hear about them here sometimes, from me, labeled as mine. You'll never need one to belong, and joining doesn't put you on a sales list. Investors may hear how many of us there are. They won't see what anyone said.
You don't have to have been banned to come in, and you don't have to be angry at anyone. The door's open and nobody's standing at it with a list.
Josh Wolf, steward
A free, peer-led, transparently-governed community for autistic and ADHD adults. Built by people who needed exactly this and couldn't find it. No subscription. No paywall. Belonging is not a product.
Refugees is small. It's a message board, a Zoom session I host every week, and a governance meeting once a month called Shared Ground.
Most of the living happens on the board. People show up there at hours when nothing else is open.
The weekly session is low-stakes on purpose. I've hosted ones where one person showed up, and those were good sessions.
Shared Ground is the one I'd point a skeptic to. It's where the rules get made, and you can watch it happen.
Everything else is unbuilt. If you want a circle that doesn't exist yet, say so, and it goes on the calendar.
I was removed from a paid neurodivergent community. Three times. Two bodies of work came out of that. The Creative Processing is fiction, myth, and music refracted through the experience. The Work Product is analytical papers built from the same evidence using clinical and theoretical frameworks. Show, don't tell. Then publish, or perish.
A free, peer-led, transparently-governed community for autistic and ADHD adults. No subscription. No paywall. Belonging is not a product. One steward seat is filled and two are open for community nomination, with senior members standing in for any removal until then. Posted public agreement before decisions. Due process before removal. It costs under $30 a month to run. TranquilTech, the company Josh Wolf founded, covers that and does not moderate.
This site's address is one suffix away from neurospicycommunity.com, a paid community we are not part of. The comparison puts the two side by side, with a source for every line about them. The FAQ says who owns this place, who pays for it, and what they get. The book is the full account of how it came to exist.