How Moranne works
What is a Porch Circle?
It is a small private room — usually a few dozen parents and caregivers, not a few thousand — organized around one part of this life instead of all of it. You post in the circle that matches the night you are having, and the people already sitting there do not need the backstory.
The shape of it
Small on purpose, and it stays small.
Big groups reward the loudest post of the day. A room of forty people rewards the honest one. Circles stay small enough that you recognize names within a week, which is the whole difference between posting and being heard.
Five rooms
You choose the room, not the algorithm.
Newly navigating, for the stretch right after the word. School & advocacy, for meetings and the polite email that took an hour. Sensory life, for seams, sound, water, and the exact blue cup. Caregivers need care, too, for the part nobody asks about. Montgomery County, for the people who are actually nearby.
The rules that make it work
No advice you didn't ask for.
You can say what happened without anyone diagnosing your child, correcting your parenting, or pasting a link. If you want ideas you ask for ideas. Otherwise the correct reply is the one you would give a friend on a porch: I know. That was a hard one.
Privacy
Nothing here is public or searchable.
There is no public feed, no crawlable profiles, no reshare button. What you write stays inside the circle you wrote it in. Your child is not a content category, and their hardest week is not going to end up in a search result.
Reading is allowed
You can sit quietly for as long as you want.
Most people read for a week or two before writing anything. That is not lurking, that is arriving. When you do write, you do not need a beginning, a middle, and an end — one true sentence counts.
What a Porch Circle is not
A support group with a facilitator and a topic for the week.
There is no schedule and no homework. It is closer to a kitchen at 11 p.m. than a meeting at 7.
A Facebook group with better branding.
No public posts, no engagement bait, no strangers arriving from a share. Real names, small rooms, human moderation.
A place to get an expert answer.
Experience is not advice. For anything binding — legal, medical, educational — bring a real professional. We bring the company.
Questions about circles
How many circles can I join?
As many as fit your life, though most people settle into two. You can leave a circle any time without an explanation, and nothing is announced when you do.
Is a Porch Circle the same as group therapy?
No. There is no clinician, no treatment plan, and no goal. It is peer company between parents and caregivers who already understand the context you would otherwise have to explain.
Who can see what I post?
Only members of that specific circle. Posts are not public, not indexed by search engines, and not shareable outside the community.
What happens if someone is unkind?
Every post and reply can be reported, reports go to a human, and blocking is one tap. The safety promise spells out exactly what is not allowed and what we do about it.
Do I have to use my real name?
Yes — first name and last initial at minimum. Anonymity is what makes public groups feel unsafe; a room where everyone is a real person behaves differently.
Come see which room is yours
You do not have to decide before you arrive. Join, read for a while, and sit in the circle that sounds like your week.
Moranne is peer company, not medical, legal, or educational advice. If you or your child might not be safe right now, call or text 988 (US) or call 911.