I used to make a daily walk a priority. As I had gotten more and more busy over these past few years, I would find every excuse I could to not walk. I'm too tired, I'm too out of shape, I have a heart condition, etc. My husband tried to encourage me, but I ended up taking offense at his not so "gentle" suggestions. He stopped after a while. Up until the past four weeks of this Quarantine, I would come to the end of the day and realize I hadn't set foot outside of our house at all! Not even to get the mail from our mailbox. Yikes. Lauren has been temporarily living with us and she kept asking me to go for a walk. I kept telling her no, until I decided that for my mental health, I really needed to get out of the house at a minimum, once a day. I am so incredibly thankful to her and her persistence, because we are now on week 4 of our family "walks!!" The first week or two, I had to come home and lie down after our walk because I was exhausted. I have slowly built my stamina up and don't need to do that so much anymore. Dominic's private speech therapist has built his speech therapy into our walks. He has to find three things he sees on our walks and write them down in a spiral notebook. During his weekly Zoom sessions with her on Saturday mornings, he is able to have a conversation with her about what he saw on our daily walks. Pretty cool, huh? For consistency and routine purposes, we aim to go at the same time, 11:30 a.m. Lauren asked me recently if I was going to continue my walks even after the Quarantine is over. I told her YES!!!
Yay for persistence!
ReplyDeleteThis week I have been taking lots of walks to rail trails and reimagine creeks and arboretums and up hills that would have terrified me a year ago or even at the beginning of this year.