What a month it has been! It is early April, just over a week from our press date, and I’m struggling for the words to put on this page.
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. The daily news is difficult to watch/read—the loss of life, the strain on the economy; it’s enough to cause anyone sleepless nights. We at retrofit are feeling the effects too as your businesses have shifted home and even contracted. There were moments in which I and the rest of the staff wondered whether this issue of the magazine would come together.
Most of us are living through the most difficult time in our lives right now. We miss our friends. We miss our extended families. We miss going out to the hospitality venues featured in this issue. We worry about our livelihoods. And there’s no telling when things will get better. Will anything ever be “normal” again?
I’ve been trying to find things to do to ease my anxiety and refocus my mind. I have completed painting projects around our house and been voraciously reading. Yesterday, my two-year-old daughter and I took a livestream yoga class. Clare, my daughter, did one downward dog and then was more interested in tearing apart mommy and daddy’s room!
Although I couldn’t hear everything the instructor said because I had to keep an eye on Clare, I caught something that stuck with me. She said: “Consider this yoga practice as fertilizer that will help grow beautiful things. Ultimately, that’s the situation we’re in as a whole right now.” It’s true, though I’d prefer a stronger word than fertilizer to refer to COVID-19. It remains to be seen what the beautiful things to come out of this pandemic will be. I have to trust that there will be beauty and change for the better.
Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay strong. There’s no doubt we’re in this together. I hope I will have more words to share with you in our July-August issue.