When you spend sixteen years inside an environment that dictates where you look and who you answer to, layout matters. My first or second night out, we didn't sit at some long, rigid, rectangular table. We sat around a massive round table at a diner in New Jersey. Fifteen of us.

For the first time, we were looking at each other completely face-to-face. No hierarchy. No one sitting at the head. Just equals. The COBU cloud over our heads was finally gone.

"I was completely broke. No job, no footing. But someone—Harry or Tom—just quietly stepped up and covered my meal. That’s how we did things. We took care of each other."

By the end of the night, the relief and energy in our group was so thick that we pooled together a $300 tip for the five or six waitresses working the night shift. It was probably the biggest tip they’d ever seen on a late shift, but we were just so grateful to be sitting in freedom.

Around that circle were people trying to stitch themselves back together: Mark H., Mark S., Jeff, Rick W., Tom H., Beth, Darlene, Stephanie, Maria from Romania, Steve B., and Harry.

Right there, over cheap diner coffee, Darlene brought up something that stuck with me. She talked about the four stages you go through when you finally leave. We didn't have all the answers yet, but around that round table, under the neon lights, the processing began.