Neighbouring Table: Meghan Markle and Charity Cookbook

neighbouring table: Meghan Markle had helped to launch a bestselling charity cookbook with the women who volunteered there each day, according to The Guardian. The kitchen may have become a byword for resilience and compassion, but that lunchtime Thomson, 55, a quietly spoken and bright-eyed presence, was listening to a conversation at a neighbouring table and feeling that something was not quite right. After the fire at Grenfell Tower half a mile away in June 2017, the basement kitchen had become recognised as the heartbeat of the local community, as it tried to cope with the ongoing aftershocks of the tragedy in which 72 people died. A woman bereaved in the Grenfell fire was sobbing and her friends, sitting with her, though sympathetic, were insisting she dry her eyes, saying that the time for tears had passed. One of the regular attendees, who lost her home in the shadow of Grenfell and still lives in a hotel, explained to me how it had been considered taboo among some women to admit to psychological problems in the two years since the fire. Thomson, who had been counselling some of the bereaved, was prompted by watching that exchange to offer a new type of group therapy at the mosque, the basic message of which was that it was OK for Muslim women to cry in public . The group of about 30 women who started to come along, all directly or indirectly traumatised by the fire, has now met every Friday for six months. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.