A charity offering group sessions
The New Normal (TNN) offers a unique alternative to therapy. The Charity’s mission is to connect young adults through life’s difficult moments. They facilitate group sessions to talk about your loss with people of a similar age. The groups tend to be for people in their 20’s-30’s but TNN welcome everyone!
The notion of loneliness which comes with losing a loved one as a young adult can be really isolating. Through their own lived experiences, the founders James, Jack, Matt and Ben came up with the idea to set up grief meetings for young people in London. As they say “Simply put, we all belong to a pretty rubbish club. Here we acknowledge that we are not alone.”
The TNN’s simple, human approach makes this a welcoming environment for the grieving community. Music is powerful and emotive, stirring memories and emotions; we think it’s fantastic that the guys at TNN have created a playlist which helps the community to remember their loved ones. You also have the opportunity to request a song to be added to the playlist.
There is also a story section on their website which consists of different experiences of their meeting attendees who have shared their stories with the New Normal. Like us, they believe in the power of lived experience so they have compiled different stories together onto their website to help to ‘reassure’ anyone looking and searching for support which is really powerful. The New Normal also has a shop and an advice page. Their advice page is extremely helpful and provides lots of information and tips through articles such as ‘Tips for Talking about Mental Health,’ ‘How to be a Grief Ally at Work,’ and more. It covers lots of areas of grief including the topic of suicide. They have an article on ‘How to be a Grief Ally to Someone Bereaved by Suicide,’ here which is useful for anyone looking to support someone who has lost someone to suicide and gives helpful tips that are laid out clearly.
They hold weekly group sessions where you can talk with likeminded people in the same grief boat as you! These meetings are every Monday at 7pm in Holborn, or alternatively, they have a virtual option which occurs at 6pm on Zoom instead. These also have other virtual meetings for specific groups of people such as students, the Queer community and more.
One of these specific meetings is titled ‘It’s Complicated,’ and it aims to provide a safe space for people to connect who feel like their grief comes with added complications, big or small. During this meeting you have the opportunity to be able to share your experiences in an understanding environment or you can go to just listen, as many people do. The New Normal highlights that ‘ Nothing is ‘too complicated’ for It’s Complicated and we promise you are not as isolated as you feel.’ We believe that this is the most relevant meet-up for suicide relate grief and you can find out more information about it here. It is hosted virtually once a month at 7:30pm UK time. You can find out information about all of these meetings here.