Normal People Support Group

I'm thinking about starting a normal people anonymous support group.

Members have the right to define normal for themselves but not for anyone else in the group.  You're anonymous to each other, at least at the start of your membership.  If you surrender your anonymity with another member, that's okay.  You can still attend, together or separately, but it is recommended that you come out of the closet about it, for your own good.

You do peer-led programs, activities or projects together, such as 12 steps, meditation, yoga, hiking, book study, nature study, joke-telling, skinny-dipping (peer-led), litter cleanup, gardening, sailing, canoeing, singing, teaching disenfranchised children how to fish, putting Kahlil Gibran in every hotel room, making art together, including music, putting on a play about climate change, or what-have-you things that normal people do.  The normality of the activity is as beheld by the peer leader, and you quietly accept it and have fun, perhaps expanding your notions of normal.

The peer-led things, the anonymity, and the group dynamic are good for you.  You affirm this aloud in unison at every meeting and outing, holding hands in a circle.

The anonymity is to help avoid the stigma of being normal, even more normal than most others.  In the group you can enjoy -- if possible -- a place where you can be non-judgmentally welcomed by similarly frustrated normal people.

You take it all lightly with good humor because you all know that normal exists only from your perspective, especially in the mirror.  That is the guiding principle.  Take your normality lightly.  You affirm it together in unison, religiously, sorta.

Over time, with consistent participation, you may be able to give up excessive notions of your normality, as one might give up excessive drinking, smoking, or gambling, and be freed of the frustration you bring upon yourself.  Amen.

Take your normality lightly.


You'll only receive email when they publish something new.

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