Our new podcast has arrived…
This week are releasing the first few episodes of our exciting new podcast series on family estrangement. The first episode is available now…
Over the past seven years, tens of thousands of people have written to me personally, and via Stand Alone. These messages are often long and sometimes are incredibly hard to read: they give a lot of detail around the emotional pain, frustration and isolation caused by family estrangement.
There is a lot of thanks coming my way, which is really touching, but most commonly, these messages end with a kind of plea for help — sometimes for personal help from me, but mostly people are asking me to connect them to others in their area. I am astounded by how far the impact of Stand Alone has travelled. We have a strong following in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S, as well as English-speaking countries much closer to home such as Ireland.
I never could have imagined five years ago, that my words, and the messages at the centre of Stand Alone would have created such a global resonance and would attract so many responses. I’m so grateful for each and every one of you who has got in touch to say thanks.
Many of you who live in different countries and far away from a support group have been loyal and engaged followers, and have felt the impact of our advice guides and even, on a very basic level, the existence of our organisation. Those who live closer to home, often wonder if a support group can come to their town, and those who have accessed our support services, often ask me ‘what’s next?” when a support group or workshop finishes.
These two strategic quandaries have often kept me awake at night — how can we support you guys without fundraising zillions of pounds to create an international infrastructure almost overnight? It takes many years and good levels of staffing to grow a charity safely. The quality and safety of the support that we deliver is always our primary consideration when it comes to scaling out.
But we know you need us.
So this week, we are releasing the first episode of our podcast series. And the first episode is available now. We hope this adds something to our support offerings, that almost anyone can access and listen to. For the last two months, we have been working with a wonderful producer, Jay, who has been interviewing members of our community.
The rationale was to make the podcast a supportive presence over the often depressing and isolating festive period but also to be as inclusive and representative as possible around the different estrangement situations that exist in our community.
We are releasing an episode every day until Christmas Day and then seven more in early January.
To subscribe and listen to our podcast click here…
If you want to get behind Stand Alone’s digital work, and support the podcast, we would love it if you donated via JustGiving to help us. Each episode costs £200 pounds to make. You can sponsor an episode by clicking here.
If you want to comment on the podcast, you can follow our Twitter account for some lively discussion! @UKstandalone
