Hi Everyone!

As we crawl into the cooler months of the year, dusting off those comfy cardies, fluffy winter blankets and knee length socks, I wanted to wish everyone a very safe and snuggly winter.

The Alive4Life Team are busy at work preparing to maintain a safe winter wellness centre and safe practises for our valuable support workers and amazing clients. We want to assure you that we are very focused on keeping our operations running safely and consistently to continue to provide the best and most versatile services to our community. COVID-19 has been a very steep learning curve for us all and I for one and quite proud of Australia for stepping up the way we have, protecting our communities and ‘flattening the curve’. I think Flattening the curve will be a catchphrase for years to come, who would have thought!?

I believe the popular consensus is, that as we begin to transition back to normal, it will most definitely be a new kind of normal. One glaring point I have noticed personally is how strange it has been to stand so far away from people I have known and loved for years. To be wary of touch and feel so distanced from others as we go out to do normal things like shopping. Barriers have been placed between us and people serving us at counters. Masks are being worn, hiding the smile of passers by and making ‘hello’s’ and ‘goodbyes’ difficult to hear and maybe not even spoken so much lately. It is a vastly different social climate than the one we enjoyed, just a few months ago. And boy do I miss those hugs, those person to person sales and friendly smiles from perfect strangers in the street. For me, I have taken away how much we all valued and relied on our social way of life but how little we ever really noticed it’s meaning to us as a part of a community until it was attacked by COVID-19.

Since our social connection was compromised, I have noticed we have made so much more effort to connect in other ways. Zoom, more phone-calls to friends and family we never usually have enough time to call, Bin night outings on Facebook, smiles and the mutual acknowledgement waves between neighbours who don’t usually speak to each other, but finally know they have something in common between them. And that’s the most important fact about the way Australia and New Zealand have tackled this virus and why it has done more to strengthen our communities rather than decimate them. We changed the way we see this pandemic into something we all have in common. Something we share that we stand against together. We might disagree individually on the small facts like the COVID App and playing golf but not going to the beach; But as a group, as a country, we are all taking the hits on the chin and staring this disease down with our Ocker comedy and resilient culture. We stepped right back up after bushfires devastated our beautiful country and soldiered on towards the COVID-19 battle without hesitation.

The new normal is looking like it will be filled with continued family friendly practises. Like working from home when we can, sitting by the fire in our backyards and eating sausage sangas. And hopefully – Zoom Meetings in my business jacket and pyjama pants. We have seen the horrors in other countries and have more than enough of those same stories here in Oz, but there are plenty of great lessons and new attitudes that have arisen too. I would love to hear what positive stories you have heard during these unprecedented times, or experienced. Please feel free to share so that we can collaborate snapshots of hope, positivity and resilience within our community.

Take Care Everyone!!