I got an email from a friend who was starting a MySpace group to try to make an informal network of people to help support each other through more serious physical/psychological illness. A few days ago, the Icarus Project, a grassroots mental health support network, came up in a conversation, and a few months ago, I did a training with the Community Justice and Mediation Center which provides resources for people in Bloomington to navigate through conflicts that they can’t work out by themselves. Lately, it seems like people around me have been struggling with their health in a lot of ways, and connected with this, conflict between each other. It’s the thing that everybody’s talking about, but nobody’s talking about. I think formal support structures (counseling, therapy, psychiatry, mediation) can be intimidating or may seem inaccessible or can be really disconnected with one’s experience, but at the same time they can create a space to start dealing in a way that one can’t create for themselves, or their peers. Is there some kind of middle ground, between being on one’s own and these more formal institutions? Also, is there a structured way to support folks who are dealing with things that sit in a grey area between mental health, relationship health, physical health, and more?