A guest blog, zooming and all (Ottawa)

What a great morning of solid songs, Rochester-inspired movement, and seeing you all on the screen, moving together. A couple of things we are grateful for…. We are grateful for the unsurrendered Algonquin Territory on which we moved. We are grateful for fresh snowfalls! Thank you for sharing your morning, your time, your zooming energy with us. We are grateful for each and every one of you !

An update from NPHQ can be found HERE

Now, we wish to share with you a guest blog. Alana has experienced the transition of in-person to zoom, and helped make it awesome, embracing the realities right now. She shares her experience with NP below. Alana has be coming consistently to zoom workouts, coffee chats, active in the conversations about social identities, race and brings a positive spirit to this community. We appreciate her example, her smile, her stories, her creativity and ideas and we want to share her thoughts with you today. Meet, Alana!

To begin, a moment of honesty here: I’ve missed a lot of Wednesday 6:29am workouts since my first visit in September 2017. In fact, I think it was months, or nearly a year, before my second visit to NP! But no matter how long I’ve gone without turning up, November Project Ottawa always welcomes me back with an enthusiastic “GOOD MORNING!”, and this is the reason I keep coming back.

After my slow and intermittent engagement with the community, I started attending far more regularly during a period where the rest of my life wasn’t going so smoothly… I started showing up on most Wednesday mornings. I didn’t have to win any races or get a PR, I just had to get my butt down to Lansdowne or Parliament at 6:30am, and there were people who were going to give me a hug or a high five for doing just that. This sense of accomplishment and acceptance wasn’t diminished by the fact that I’d been gone months, or maybe I didn’t show up at all during the winter. Everytime, I was welcomed by someone (an enthusiastic “good morning!” or a matched exhausted nod), and the simple act of showing up was celebrated, and then we all did a ridiculous/silly/challenging workout together.

Sometimes it was the after workout bagels that gave me the motivation to get down there. Other times it was the excitement of getting a fresh tag on my shirt (who doesn’t love swag?!). Sometimes it’s an outrageous children’s park workout or super fun scavenger hunt. And other times it was because last week, I’d said “see you next week!” to someone I’d just met, and I was truly excited to see another interesting human next week! Every week might have a different surprise – but the common thread here is the community, the people who show up. They might show up every week, or they might show up twice a year, but I’m still grateful for their energy when I needed to borrow some.

Fast forward to 2020, and what’s a stressful job or a complicated relationship in comparison to a global pandemic?! And still – NP is there, as welcoming as always. They were adapting, figuring out how to maintain this community in a time when we weren’t allowed to be together… They were there with the physical activity, and the accepting community, and regular routines – all of the things I know are key for maintaining mental health in stressful times.

The reason I’m still showing up is because I’m so grateful for the times this community welcomed me in and welcomed me back and the positive impact that has had on my life. I’m trying more than ever now to show up (virtually). As a member of this community, I know that I might be able to make a difference by being part of the community that makes someone else feel welcome.

Thank you for sharing Alana. Thank you all for reading her thoughts. If you are reading this, send us a message, we have a special Brooks NP Summit bag for you. If you have already received one of these amazing swag bags, you are AWESOME- we’re glad you’re here- if that is you, pick a buddy to send a message to so they reach out to us can get in on it !

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