Welcome Home, Welcome Back
Well we have successfully moved into our new space. We have successfully started classes back up. We have successfully transitioned into phase 2 of our lock down, our quarantine. The successes sometimes feel far from celebratory. The ups and downs continue. As life appears to be getting easier, the challenges get harder. When I look down at the step ahead, I realize the mountain was a lot higher than I prepared for. Depression is in the air, sucking the oxygen from our breath. Anxiety is surrounding us like a hug we want out of. But every day we get up and we conquer our day. Every day we make it through moment by moment, step by step. These times are not easy, these times are not fun. And we have no guidelines for what this will look like in our near future or our distant future.
I’m just going to say it, this fucking sucks. We are making the best of a bad situation. But nothing about this is easy. As we begin to venture out into public, reemerge from the isolation of our homes, some of us are a little bit heavier. Some of us are feeling a little creaky in our bodies as I yell to snap your hips or lock out your legs. And almost of all us are feeling a little out of our minds. So, as this is a time to move forward and transition, it is also a time to be gentle with yourself and the people around you. We all need that high five we can’t get. We could all use a good ass slap after a deadlift, but we can’t get that either. And most importantly, we all need someone to picks us up, because most of us have fallen very hard. We never knew how deep we could go and still not hit rock bottom.
Here is our right now normal. This will not last forever but we have no idea what lies ahead. We need to give ourselves a break and find celebrations in the littlest things. If you showed up for class at 6:30am, yay, you did great. If you made it through the grocery store without crying, yay, you did great. If you didn’t lose your shit on your kids for leaving the dishes on the counter, yay, you did great (but honestly, they should know better). These are times when the world is heavy and dark, the end is not near and our sanity is getting lost. A smile can go a very long way, even if you are just looking in the mirror.
As an extrovert, this time of isolation has been very difficult. I want to stay up all night having a dance party. I want to watch movies and drink champagne. I want to throw weight around and gossip about life. And doing this alone is not very fun. I am ready for travel and hugs. I am ready for nights out with girlfriends and weekends away with the minis. I am ready for school and work. I am so fucking ready to be around my people. I have missed the energy of teaching. I have missed the long conversations after classes. I have missed smack talking and shit talking.
Moving the business in the middle of a pandemic was far from easy. Actually the physical part of the move will be 100 percent credited to Brent Davis and his crew. I think they moved everything out of the old place in less than two hours. They installed all the flooring in the new place and made it look amazing. This includes the turf, which I thought would be a quick job for me and a friend, but took two professionals most of a day. But the emotional move I was not prepared for. There was no good byes. There was no final workout, which would have been better than any birthday workout EVER. I missed my community. As I closed the doors, I felt alone. My space wasn’t amazing because of the walls that surrounded us, it was amazing because of the people that filled the space. And in the moment, I wanted back in. I wanted to go back to being together.
Lucky for me, the brightness of the new space called me out of the darkness. The empty floors and white walls gave me a canvas to create. The new equipment got ordered, Brent Davis and crew have been checking things off my list, and the space is a place I want go to. I am excited to be opening the doors to our community. Welcoming everyone back with smiles. We all need this right now. We need a place to be with other people. We need a place to get our asses kicked. We need a place that plays inappropriate rap music and might make you sing along. I have missed all of you. I am ready to take a layer off this depression and embrace the next phase, the next step.