Community Counselling Cooperative

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT!

Are you a sky gardener in Byker? Someone who lives in a flat or apartment and greens small spaces such as a balcony or window boxes?

Whether you’re just starting out or have years of gardening experience, the National Trust would love to celebrate the creative ways you're bringing nature to life in small spaces. Enter their Sky Gardening Challenge 2026 competition and show them what’s in bloom on your balcony or the veggies you’ve grown from seed.

There are up to 15 prizes to be won, including:
🌼 A day out at the National Trust
🌱 £200 gardening vouchers
📖 A photo book featuring the finalists

📅 Enter by midnight 16 August 2026by sharing your gardening story online with photos or a video and commentary. You can also enter by post.

Find out more by searching Sky Gardening Challenge 2026 or visit http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/.../sky-gardening

With smartphones stealing our attention, we’re picking up fewer books than ever. A novelist shares her eight-week scheme to get you back into the habit

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A project to give NHS staff a voice through creativity is the subject of a short film

Not long now to book your child onto the JMC summer school in Aug! This has been made possible with thanks to funding from the William Leech Charity. Email: [email protected] for more information and to book, children must be booked in.

When I heard Dr. Lucy Hone had written a second grief book, I thought, "What else could she possibly say?" Her Resilient Grieving got me through some of the darkest days of my life after losing my friend. I had already learned her three strategies: accept that suffering is part of life, focus only on what you can control, and ask yourself "Is what I'm doing helping or harming me?" I thought I'd already found what I needed.

But then I picked this one up. And I realized I had been grieving one specific kind of loss, the death of my friend, but completely ignoring the dozens of other losses I was carrying.

That's what this book is about. And I had no idea how much I needed it.

Resilient Grieving was written in the wake of Hone's daughter Abi's death in a car accident. This book was shaped by a different kind of heartbreak. Over the years after writing the first book, Hone spoke with thousands of people facing life's toughest moments, not just death, but all the other "living losses" that go unseen: the loss of identity, relationships, roles, health, safety, or certainty about the future.

We grieve so much more than death loss. Divorce. Infertility. Estrangement. Job loss. A diagnosis that changes everything. Moving away from a place you loved. Losing a friendship. Watching your parents age. Hone calls these "hidden grief" losses because society rarely recognises them, leaving people feeling isolated and unseen.

Reading that made me stop. I thought about my divorce three years ago. The loss of my identity as a wife. The loss of my in-laws, who I'd loved like my own parents. The loss of my home. The loss of the future I had imagined. I had treated each of these as separate crises, not as grief. But they were grief. All of them. And I had never let myself mourn any of them fully. I'd just moved on, or tried to.

This book is organised around twenty transformative questions, derived from Hone's previously unpublished research. It gently carries you from the rawness of early loss—"Why am I so tired? Who am I now? Will I ever feel happy again?"—to a place of growth, meaning, and renewal. Each question is a chapter. And each chapter feels like a compassionate conversation with someone who has sat exactly where you're sitting.

5 Lessons That Hit Me in the Gut

1. Living losses deserve to be grieved just as much as death.
This was the biggest lightbulb moment for me. I'd never thought of my divorce as grief. I'd thought of it as a failure. Something to get over, to move on from. But Hone says, "Grief is not confined to bereavement". Diagnosis, divorce, estrangement, job loss, these are losses too, and they deserve to be treated that way. When I finally allowed myself to feel the grief of losing my marriage, not just the anger or the relief, but the actual, deep grief, something shifted. I stopped fighting it. And that's when I started healing.

2. You're not broken. You're responding to a broken situation.
I'd been telling myself I was "weak" for still struggling with my divorce years later. But Hone reframes this entirely. Your grief is a natural response to loss, it's a sign that you loved, that you cared, that you were invested in something important. You're not broken. You're human. And that simple reframe helped me stop beating myself up.

3. There's no "right way" to grieve.
Hone is outspoken about the inadequacy, and even potential harm, of Kübler-Ross's Five Stages model of grief. Grief isn't linear. It isn't tidy. You don't go through stages and then emerge cured. I wish someone had told me this years ago. I spent so long feeling like I was "doing grief wrong" because I'd cycle through anger and sadness and acceptance all in the same hour. But Hone says it's messy, unpredictable, and deeply personal. And that's normal.

4. You can't control the loss. You can control what you do next.
This is the heart of Hone's entire approach. She teaches you to "focus ruthlessly on what you can control" and ask yourself regularly: "Is what I'm doing helping or harming me?". I started applying this to my grief. I couldn't control that my marriage ended. But I could control whether I isolated myself or reached out to friends. I could control whether I stayed in bed all day or went for a walk. These tiny choices added up. They didn't fix anything, but they kept me moving forward, one small step at a time.

5. Growth can coexist with loss.
Hone's research into post-traumatic growth shows that positive psychological change can emerge from struggling with highly challenging circumstances. This isn't about toxic positivity. It's not saying "everything happens for a reason." It's saying that alongside your pain, you can also discover strengths you didn't know you had. Deepen relationships. Find new purpose. Live more intentionally. I started volunteering. I reconnected with old friends. I started therapy. None of this made the loss go away. But it gave me something to hold onto alongside it.

I finished this book feeling like I'd finally given myself permission to grieve everything I'd been carrying, not just my friend’s death, but the marriage I lost, the future I mourned, the pieces of myself I'd let go of. Lucy Hone writes with a rare blend of scientific expertise and lived experience. She's been where I am. She's lost a child. She's had to rebuild her entire life. And she's not asking you to be "strong" or "positive" or "resilient" in some abstract way. She's giving you actual, research-backed tools to survive. And more than that, to eventually, maybe, thrive.

Her TED talk, Three Secrets of Resilient People, has been viewed over nine million times and is ranked among the Top 100 TED Talks of all time. I think the reason it resonates so deeply is that she's not a guru on a mountain. She's a woman who lost her daughter and had to figure out how to keep living. And she's sharing what she learned.

If you're carrying hidden grief, the kind no one sees, the kind you don't know how to name, read this book. Let Lucy Hone take your hand and walk you through it. You don't have to do it alone. And you don't have to do it perfectly. You just have to keep going. One question at a time.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4wHbEmf

Enjoy the audio book with FREE trial using the link above. Use the link to register on audible and start enjoying!

And tonight’s conditions were even better than expected, with 22 men out walking together, including 5 new faces joining us for the very first time. That’s what it’s all about fresh air, good conversation, a few laughs, and a warm welcome for everyone who turns up.
The weather might change… but one thing never does is the support, the friendship and the welcome you’ll receive.
Just turn up. Walk with us. You’re welcome here.
💙 Our walks are totally free.
📅 Every Monday – 7:00 PM
📍 Meet outside Greggs, South Shore
📮 NE24 3PL
📍 What3Words: ///causes.adopt.thing
No registration. No need to book.
All men aged 18+ are welcome.
💙 Because the best forecast isn’t what’s happening in the sky… it’s knowing there’s always someone to walk beside.
Community EveryStepMatters WalkWithUs

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Have you noticed that some local bus shelters now have ‘living roofs’, covered in plants to create a mini habitat for pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and other insects.

Around one-third of bus shelters in North Tyneside have been refurbished - and at no cost to the council. That’s thanks to a contract with ClearChannel UK who are installing and maintaining the upgraded shelters and then generating revenue from the advertising space on select shelters.

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‘Sea cures’ are not new but the idea that exposure to oceans, rivers and lakes can be medicine for the brain is gaining traction

“People would arrive carrying the stress of their week, then they’d sit down, start making something and, by the end of the session, they seemed lighter somehow."