Our Word, In Writing

Our Promise

Before you come to a meeting, take a book, or spend a single dollar anywhere on this site, you deserve to know exactly how Shadow & Strength works — what’s free, what isn’t, and where the lines are drawn. Here they are, in writing, so anyone can hold us to them.

First

The Group Is Free. Always.

The Shadow & Strength men’s group costs nothing to attend. There are no dues, no membership fees, and no charges — not now, not later, not ever. Nothing is sold at a meeting. There is no pitch, no sign-up table for paid programs, and no moment where the free group turns into something else.

The group is not a business. It is not a nonprofit. It is not therapy, and it is not counseling. It is men in a room, telling the truth and holding each other accountable — started and led by one man, personally.

The manifesto book given to every man who joins is free, and it will stay free.

Second

How the Room Pays for Itself

Renting a room and providing coffee and food costs real money, and that cost is shared the way brothers share things — voluntarily.

At meetings there is a jar by the door. If you can put something in, you help carry the cost. If you can’t, you are exactly as welcome, and no one is keeping track. Nothing is recorded, nobody is checked, and a man who never puts in a cent belongs here as fully as a man who covers the whole night.

A simple notebook records what comes in and what goes out for the room and the food. Any man in the group can look at it, any time, no questions asked.

One honest note: because this group is not a registered nonprofit, anything you put in the jar is a gift toward shared costs — it is not a tax-deductible donation, and we will never describe it as one.

Third

The Books and Mentoring Are Separate

Shadow & Strength is also a publishing platform. The book series — Wounds That Make Kings, Rewrite the Man, Strength at the Edge of Collapse, The Masculine Compass, and Sons of the Fallen — will be for sale someday, at a price, as books are.

Mentoring, when it opens, will also be a paid service — because it is personal time, one man with one man, and that time has to be limited and sustainable.

Here is what will never change: the books and the mentoring are never the doorway into the group. You never have to buy a book to come to a meeting. You never have to pay for mentoring to be welcome. The group stands on its own, free, whether you ever buy anything or not.

The books are offered to help you walk further. The group is offered to help you stand. Neither is a condition for the other.

The Rule, In One Line

The group is a gift. The books are a store. They stand on the same street, run by the same man — and the gift is never the store’s doorway.

Finally

Why This Page Exists

This page exists because men who have been burned by systems that claimed to help them — churches, programs, coaches, gurus — deserve to see the rules before they trust the room.

You are not a customer here. You are not a lead. You are a man, and you are welcome.

If this promise is ever broken — if a meeting turns into a sales pitch, if a man is made to feel less welcome because he can’t pay, if the group and the store get tangled — then this page is the standard you can hold us to.

— Wilberto Burgos, Founder

Shadow & Strength · Milford, Delaware

Call or text: 302-681-6508 · [email protected]