About Nightingales – How It All Started

I’m Emily, I’ve had ME/CFS since 2000 when I was only eleven years old. I was born and grew up in Norfolk and was part of a support group back there. I moved to Yorkshire with my parents to be nearer family back in August 2022 and found no local free support groups.

I decided on creating my own group for those with my condition, creating the name ‘Dawn of the Nightingales’ due to it being believed that Florence Nightingale had ME/CFS. A doctor got me in contact with a Social Prescriber who was a big help in setting things up alongside my mum. It was also suggested to add in the condition of Fibromyalgia due to how many have both conditions.

My idea was to provide a platform where people can come together to share their experiences, support each other, and learn how to manage their conditions better. To socialize, chat, laugh and hopefully make friends. For it to be completely free and open to not just those with the condition/s but carers, families and friends.

Our first official meet-up was in September 2023 and back then we only had a Facebook Group online and poster we were trying to place around locally to get in members. Since then our members have gone from single digits to over forty in number. From April 2024 we moved from a small free room in the library we had been using to a bigger location. We now have a website, business card and work is being done on an online forum.

We are still very new, all monthly meet-ups so far has just been chatting and laughing so much there’s been tears. Our hopes with moving to our bigger location, which has in fact two rooms, is to keep one for the chatting and laughter. The other, to have monthly activities like that of games and crafts or someone to come in and talk about the condition/s. Which would be helpful for those newly diagnosed or for members to bring someone along who wishes to learn more.

We hope to have regular online video chats for those housebound or just wish to join in.

There’s talk of organizing outings to areas in Yorkshire, whether that be a zoo, a café, museum, seaside etc. There has also been interest in doing our own book club.

For raising funds to pay for the rooms and website we hope to have either tombola’s or raffles from time to time at our monthly meet-ups. There’s also plans on doing craft fairs, the money of the table/stall going towards our support group and people able to keep the money of anything they sell. People both within the group and those outside of it can have a table/stall. In fact we already have people outside of the group interested in having a stall and one even mentioning she better get crafting!

Timeline of Nightingales

Every support group has to start somewhere and Nightingales started with Facebook.