README.md

---
title: Tend & Send - The ARI Toolkit
emoji: 💜
colorFrom: red
colorTo: purple
sdk: docker
pinned: false
license: mit
---

# Tend & Send - The ARI Toolkit

**ARI (Assistive Relational Intelligence)** is a suite of tools built around TEND - designed to help you show up more fully in difficult conversations.

*These tools exist to support YOUR relationship. ARI never becomes the relationship - it augments human-to-human connection.*

## The ARI Toolkit

### Express
- **SEND** - Send your message to your partner
- **TEND** - Transform your message with clarity and warmth
- **PRACTICE NVC** - Guided I-statement builder

### Regulate
- **SOMA** - Body check-in. What does your body know?
- **LOVE** - Slow down, breathe, return to presence
- **GROUND** - 5-4-3-2-1 senses. Orient to the present

### Understand
- **FEEL** - Identify feelings in the conversation
- **NEED** - Extract underlying needs
- **STORY** - "The story I'm making up..." Own your narrative

### Reconnect
- **REPAIR** - Craft genuine repair after ruptures
- **APPRECIATE** - Catch the good. What's working?
- **WISDOM** - Draw from sacred texts and grounded wisdom

## Practice Conversations

- Choose attachment style: Anxious, Avoidant, Disorganized, Secure
- Set difficulty level: Gentle to Crisis
- Partner responds like a real person (not a therapist)

## Clinical Foundation

Informed by:
- Nonviolent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg)
- Gottman Method (5:1 ratio, bids for connection)
- Attachment Theory
- Brené Brown (vulnerability, "the story I'm making up")
- Somatic awareness practices
- Trauma-informed design principles

## Created By

Jocelyn Skillman, LMHC

*Reflection prompts only - not therapy. If in crisis, contact a professional.*