The Lonely Girls Club

Last week we celebrated 6 years of The Lonely Girls Club with a fabulous party (thank you to Chloe from Arlo Marketing for your amazing photography & videography support) 😍 Reflecting on 6 years of LGC - What started out as the brainchild of one very lonely, isolated and anxious 22 year old graduate on a rainy November night, has since turned into a national movement. When I started the community 6 years ago all I wanted was to make a couple of friends myself, I had no idea that my own personal experiences of #loneliness and craving #community & #sisterhood was a problem beyond little old me, but boy was I wrong, and I was not at all alone in how I was feeling. Our first event we started off with 5 girls at a pancake house in Covent Garden (thank you Emily Gorham for coming with me in case no one else turned up) And now, we’re 6 years on and the Lonely Girls Club is a national organisation supporting and championing women across the UK. We’ve got branches in London, Manchester, Nottingham and Birmingham (with more opening early next year) and over 125k community members nationwide. The Lonely Girls Club is the passion project that has well and truly taken over my entire life, there have been incredible highs and incredible lows, but deep down, I wouldn’t change any of it for the world. From working with wonderful brands like kate spade new york, Chelsea Football Club, Snap Inc., Battersea and others, to being interviewed on the TV, launching a book club & walk club, going viral online and so much more. And whilst all of this is beyond the wildest dreams of this little hobbit from the shire, none of it even comes close to being as important as our amazing community members. I’ve spent the last 6 years working to help women around the UK connect, make friends and make life less lonely, and it truly has been an absolute honour. Hearing the stories of the friendships our community members have made, the connections formed, adventures had, the people they’ve met and memories created has been beyond anything I could ever have imagined. Their love, laughter, kindness, wisdom, bravery and support of the community, but more importantly each other is utterly spectacular and being privy to the ways in which women can love and champion each other has been nothing short of inspiring and divine. The Lonely Girls Club really is just getting started, so here’s to the last 6 years and the next 6 years also! I can’t wait to see where we go and what we do next, and share more of our plans to be able to help even more women for many more years to come 💓

As the days get shorter and the nights get darker more people, particularly women, end up spending their evenings at home alone, seeing an increase in seasonal depression, anxiety and of course, #loneliness. But at The Lonely Girls Club we're on a mission to change that! 💪 Creating safe spaces for women to come together to connect, laugh and have fun, and last week to connect with your inner child too, as we hosted a pumpkin carving night at Portobello Pub Co's Westow House. Plus, the night featured some delicious treats from Leah's Buns of Joy UK as all of our attendees got to take home a yummy cinnamon bun too! The winter seasons are something that many dread for a variety of reasons and we're commited to helping people make the best of those times whatever that looks like for them, whilst creating safe and fun environments for them to connect IRL (I probably spend far too much time on google maps checking out where the nearest bus or tram stop, or tube station is, to ensure our wonderful members can get home safely) If you're interested in hearing more about LGC and our mission, or would like to host or partner with us for something fun, just like our pumpkin carving night, then I'd love to hear from you! #community #connection #womensupportingwomen #winterblues #lonely #networking #lonelinessepidemic

Yesterday marked the end of an era as I put on my OOO at Biscuiteers for the final time and said goodbye to a mammoth two and a half years at The Ministry of Biscuits! My time at Biscuiteers was an absolute whirl wind of growth, learning, development, laughter and so much fun, alongside one of the most fabulous teams I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with and be a part of! So a huge thank you to all my colleagues, and now friends, that I’ve had the honour of working with every day for the last few years, your kindness, support, encouragement and many days of fun have been so valued 🫶🏻❤️✨ And what am I off to now? Well, after 6 years running The Lonely Girls Club alongside my full time jobs I’m taking the biggest leap of faith to run the organisation full time! Equally terrifying but exciting and not at all what I ever would have expected when I started the community way back when 🤯 The mission of LGC to help bring women together to find support, connect, make friends and make life less lonely is one that is needed now more than ever and I cannot wait to be able to grow what we’re doing to support even more women in new ways and new places 💪🏻🩵

✨🍂October🍂✨ at Pollen + Grace: 1. Fuelling wellness at The Lonely Girls Club World Mental Health Day event 🌱  2. The newest addition to our lunch menu at Whole Foods Market 🌯  3. Out of the office and into the forest Centre Parcs 🌲🚴♀️  4. Big news is bubbling 🥘✨   5. Keeping uni students fuelled with nutritious lunches at Royal Holloway, University of London 💪📚   6. The whole team hopping aboard to see our salads on London North Eastern Railway  7. Gifting ION - Institute for Optimum Nutrition students our plant-packed lunches at their 40th birthday celebration! 🥗 8. Delving into a fantastic team insight discovery day 💡  9. Shoot day assistant manning our emails for us 🐈

Our Candid Studios Retrobooth got the party started on Friday eve at The Lonely Girls Club halloween party 🩷 It’s giving ice breaker, moment maker, memory you’ll have forever, event elevator and the cutest lil branded keepsake downloaded + printed on the spot. We’re taking this baby with us on the road quite a lot for events in Q4 - but she does have some space in her busy schedj for now! Email me at aimee@candidstudios.co.uk - let’s do fun things together!!! 📸🫶🎞️

The Lonely Girls Club is on a mission to help bring people together in safe spaces and beat the loneliness epidemic 🙌🏻 But, did you know that as part of this mission we also work with & host workshops, sessions and events for other organisations and partners too? 🤔 During Welcome Week (what we called Freshers Week when I was a student on BA (Hons) Fashion, Communication and Promotion at NTU) the Lonely Girls Club partnered with the team at Arts Students' Union at UAL to host a series of friendship bingo nights to welcome in both new and returning students and create safe spaces for them to meet and mingle with others outside of their halls or lectures! The sessions were incredibly fun and filled with a huge amount of conversations, discussions and more, all focused on encouraging the students to meet and have conversations with a variety of new people, to find others with similar interests, passions or hobbies, that they may not usually come into contact with. Thank you to Lauren Whitfield and the team for inviting us in and working with us on such a special and important series of events for your students! Whether it’s your students, staff or colleagues loneliness can meet people at various different stages in life for a huge amount of reasons, and if you’d like to help with this, then we’d love to hear from you! 🩵 Myself and the Lonely Girls Club have some remaining capacity for day time, partnership and facilitation events throughout November & December, plus into 2025 too! So if you’d like to hear more or find out how we can come in to support you, your teams or students, then do get in touch! #freshersweek #welcomeweek #loneliness #isolation #lonelinessepidemic #community #friendship #networking #teambuilding

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This Thursday is World Mental Health Day something that is incredibly important to me and to The Lonely Girls Club, and so we knew we had to do something extra special, but also valuable and helpful for our community this year. So, on Friday evening, we teamed up with Counterpoise to host a World Mental Health Day evening retreat sponsored by the wonderful team at kate spade new york who very kindly gifted all attendees a surprise handbag and handwritten notecard to take home💚 We had food from Pollen + Grace and drinks from XOXO SODA & GoMatcha to keep the girls fed and hydrated throughout our wonderful evening together. The team at Counterpoise, Kitty Alice & Jess, led us through three therapist led sessions focusing on physical, mental and emotional wellbeing to help everyone feel grounded and connected. Events and partnerships like this truly are one of the joys of what I get to do with the Lonely Girls Club in supporting & championing women to connect and be the best versions of themselves, whatever that means to them 🩵 #mentalhealth #worldmentalhealthday #retreat #lonelygirlsclub #femalefounder #loneliness #lonelinessepidemic #connection #community