Run Together : COVID-19

Stay Socially Connected

Fly Girls UK - Stronger Together

On Tuesday going on information by our governing body England Athletics and Public Health England we suspended our social meetings, run activities and so forth until April because of COVID19. It was disheartening to hear that the epidemic would cancel our meetings until further notice and social distancing is the order of the day. Our members had recently returned to join the Spring Season Sunday meetings after long-term injuries and were looking forward to exciting expeditions along the canals and further afield.

Over the years members have made friends and bonded and also made Fly Girls Wellness Sunday morning activities their routine. In the same vein, emerging writers and others who attend the writing workshops for wellbeing enjoyed the benefits of meeting each other and new people to share writing and discuss topics they write about in a trusting space. So the news of postponed activities hit everyone hard.



Some of our wellbeing groups have WhatsApp groups to inform of our activities, meetings, future workshops, and relevant information. Social media messaging can be an influx but members who wish to converse regularly during the self-isolation period are finding the sharing of video clips, updates, and guidance useful. This will be the way forward and one of the few ways to form a human connection for conversation as we are becoming remote and distant from each other.

We run together as a group but jog independently on our own paces and peer writers' work in solitude tuning into their own thoughts when writing but at these trying times we see how we need to connect and co-depend on each other.

If the opportunity is not for face to face and or in a community space, we'll all be leaning towards and relying on social media connections. It's a time like this that we see the importance of strength in togetherness, as we are told to isolate we know how much we need each other and what really is important in life.