Celonia’s Covid Story

What I learnt after COVID is that you can train in the house. That’s a very good lesson, and it took time for me to realise. Also, my diet changed. Before COVID, I was eating out a lot, and I was eating everything I could because, in my head, I was like, I’m going to train anyway. Then COVID hit, and it forced you to stay in the house. You had to cook. So that’s something I would keep from this COVID period. It gave me good habits and a positive relationship with my food and training.

I tend to believe that everything happens for a reason and that nothing comes to you by chance. The experiences you go through form who you are and help you know who you are. So if I could go back, I don’t think I’d change anything. It’s because of all that that I am here. It was during COVID that I started my pole journey. I bought a random pole in the house because I couldn’t find a way to do fitness. So if I were to go back in time and wish COVID away, I would never have started my pole journey or had a pole family. Yes, it was stressful, and there’s a lot of trauma that COVID came with, but it’s because of all that that we’re here today.

I was always a house call trainer before COVID, so I was still doing house calls during the pandemic. When COVID hit, business grew since everyone was at home. Business was really good in 2020, but in 2021 my depression set in. Business went down because people realised that even if you were fit, you’ll die. So they stopped training. The only thing that changed is that I moved out of the gym scene and came into more personalised sessions and studio sessions. It was a very easy transition for me to start the home training since people would give out my number because my business before COVID had been there for about two years, so some people had my number though they had never used it before. I’d get texts and calls like “Hi, I’ve had your number for a while,” or “Hi, I got your number from so-and-so; I hear you do house calls.” And the good thing with yoga is you just need a mat. So it made it easier. It was beautiful.

During the pandemic, I lost my aunt and uncle at the same time, and I didn’t know how to handle that grief. One day I was called and told, “your aunt is sick, and she’s passed on.” I get another call a few days later, “your uncle has passed on.” Dealing with that was really hard. They had just gotten their COVID jabs. The funny thing is that they were fine until they were not. Then their health just kept going down until they needed oxygen. They were in their 70s or 80s. I mean, we were praying for them to get better, but… You know we tend to think of our family as immortal, and then it hits you that they can also pass on. It’s also sad since I had to watch their funeral online because attendance numbers were limited. Around the same time, I also lost someone who’s been in my life for a while. So that was really harsh for me. I’m still dealing with all that somehow, but you know you never get over grief; you just learn to live with it.

Also, as the last born and a mama’s girl, not being able to go home as often as I wanted was heavy. Because my job requires me to go to people’s houses, it meant I might carry COVID with me; therefore, I couldn’t go home as much as I wanted.

My pole journey is the new thing that happened to me at that time. Pole makes me feel alive and gives me some sort of strength and power. It came at such a good time because it was my therapy then. It’s something I could turn to. I would do it all the time; I was obsessed with it. Any time I was trying to run away from my feelings, that’s where I’d go. So my pole journey, the short eight months that it has been, was my silver lining.