Tending the chair
No mystery. No fine print. Here is what happens, in order, from the day you sign up.
Before we pair you, we sit with you for about 12 minutes. You tell us what you’re carrying — the specific weight that brought you here. We run three short screeners: one for what you’re navigating, one for your cultural context, and one to make sure Hearth is actually the right fit. If something clinical comes up, we tell you plainly and point you toward The Bridge instead.
The First Sit is not a sales call. It is a real intake. We listen for what kind of company will actually help — and that sometimes means telling you Hearth is not it.
We hand-match you with three Keeper candidates based on your language, cultural background, and the themes you carry. You get to watch a short video introduction from each one, read their profiles, and pick the one who feels right. There is no algorithm making this call — a human at Hearth makes the match.
If the match does not feel right in the first 30 days, you switch — no questions, no extra charge. The pairing takes 72 hours from your First Sit. If we can’t find the right fit in 72 hours, we keep looking and tell you why.
Your regular Sit is a 35–60 minute video call. It has a shape: an arrival ritual at the start (a short grounding practice your Keeper leads), long listening in the middle, and a closing ritual at the end. Your Keeper doesn’t take notes while you talk — their attention is on you, not a clipboard. No notes unless you want them.
Your Keeper notices patterns across sessions. They remember what you said six weeks ago and will name the shape of something you’ve been carrying. Audio-only is always an option if the camera feels like too much. Recording is opt-in and belongs to you.
Between Sits, there’s an async thread — your private channel with your Keeper. Text, voice notes, photos, links. You can write at midnight when something lands. Your Keeper replies within 24 hours on Hearthside, within 4 hours on Hearth Deep. Slow on purpose. This is not a hotline.
Every Friday, your Keeper sends a reflection — a short note about what they noticed this week. Not advice. Pattern-noticing. The thing you said that stayed with them. This is a Hearth signature.
Not every week is the same, but here is the shape of a typical one on Hearth Deep. Hearthside has the same thread, every-other-week Sits.