The Meadowood Fitness and Wellness Department had a great day yesterday! Although we opened up our facilities in varying degrees throughout the pandemic, this time feels different. This time it feels like we are approaching permanence.

What was so normal just a little over a year ago now seems as if it should be heralded with fireworks and a parade.

It has been a long year. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. But throughout all of it, our residents handled the uncertainty, the ever-evolving rules, and the sometimes-challenging circumstances meant to keep them safe with all the grit, humor and fortitude they could muster. In return, the staff offered their very best efforts to keep everyone safe, healthy, and occupied.

We sometimes all went a little stir crazy, I’m not going to lie. But we had a lot of laughs, a lot of cries, and a lot of coming together to survive the Great COVID-19 Pandemic. We thrived and grew stronger together.

Although we’re taking things slowly for safety’s sake, our residents can now sign up for one (or more) of 16 fitness and wellness classes and two special events. They can work out in the cardio room, or the weight room, or swim in the pool. They can eat together in dining spaces and meet with their clubs and committees–in small groups of course.

It feels like we are emerging from a cocoon of sorts. Kept safe in our environment to ride out the storm, we now are coming into the light stronger and more beautiful than ever.

Which brings us to the second dimension of our Meadowell mission – The Emotional Dimension.

The emotional upheaval of the past year, while tough, allowed all of us to work on ourselves more than we normally would have. We worked on staying positive, on helping friends and neighbors through the tough times, and on finding things to keep us busy. We worked on our emotional dimension in particular.

In our model, the emotional dimension is explained this way:
“…Accepting a wide range of feelings in yourself and others is essential to wellness…It is better to be aware of and accept our feelings than to deny them. It is better to be optimistic in our approach to life than pessimistic.”

The Fitness and Wellness Department team did our best to help support this model. From courtyard workouts and traveling, socially-distanced themed happy hours to wellness walks, Zoom activities, televised live exercise classes and wellness check-ins, we gave our all to supporting our residents’ fitness and wellness needs. Gave our all to meeting the emotional upheaval of quarantine head-on.

And while we can now say goodbye to much of our pandemic programming, some of it will stay—most especially the close bonds we all formed with each other while riding out the storm in the same boat. I think we will remember the pandemic as the time we all learned how to be “optimistic in our approach to life” together.

Until we meet…

Donna