My Journey With Health And Fitness – A Time To Reflect

My usual instructor at my fitness classes is away on vacation. She’s been instructing 4 of the 5 classes that I take during the week and so I am pretty used to the structure. The one she doesn’t instruct is on Thursdays when we do a strength class with a different instructor and that class is usually pretty brutal. So, guess who did the classes Wed/Thur/Fri this week? Yep, the Thursday instructor. Let me just say, three consecutive days of her classes just about killed me. Fortunately there are breaks this week because of the holidays and I am so grateful I don’t have to put myself through that again.

I was looking at memories on Facebook today and realized normally this time of year I post some reflections of things I appreciate from the outgoing year. In looking back I didn’t post last year which would have been due to struggling through the my 1st Christmas without my little brother. I guess that is understandable but I decided I needed to get back into reflecting the good things from 2025.

So what do I appreciate from this year? As always my husband, sister and all of our pets. But I also appreciate the awesome neighbourhood that we live in. And, our friends whether that be our coffee group or those we met through our walking club (trust me those ladies are no longer a volunteer gig, we are all really close now). But I also have friends that I have met through work, the labour movement and volunteering. Two of my work friends I have known for more than 35 years and I was so happy we got to get together for lunch this past week.

I am also really appreciative of the volunteer groups I am involved with. Imagine having the privilege of making a difference in the lives of others. The seniors’ resource centre where I do things such as the tax clinic, senior walking group (see comments above about that group) and facilitating the caregiver support group makes me proud of my volunteer work. But perhaps most of all, Elderdogs Canada without whom many seniors would not be able to keeep their dogs and when those seniors no longer can safely care for their dogs I get to help find the dogs a perfect new home. Just today I received an amazing text thanking me for finding a temporary foster for a dog whose owner was being placed in hospice (she passed yesterday but a relative is keeping the dog). Receiving a message like that makes the work I do so worth it.

Typing this I see that I do have a lot to appreciate and I am glad I took the time to reflect on this past year. I’m hoping I have just as much to appreciate next year.