Taking a Pause and Catching our Breath

The Growing Club CIC‘s founding director, Jane Binnion, talks about taking time to breathe and adjust to the changes of the last 18 months.

In August, I came back from a lovely week’s leave with a nasty chest infection. I became frustrated and was aware I was not feeling grounded. 

I felt a general pressure for a full-steam-ahead approach to rebuild the economy, and all our core courses were set to start in September, but something just didn’t feel right. Being dragged along and pushed into things does not allow us space to be authentic. We all have to find our own pace, and I felt strongly that we needed to press pause. 

For all of the “post-Covid” talk, the reality is, that as a nation, we are still not well. We have not recovered from the effects of the pandemic. Even putting aside the fact that each day, approximately 38,000 people are testing positive for Covid, many people are still very tired, emotionally and physically. Many are suffering from the trauma caused by the last 18 months, and so it is not surprising how many of us are feeling out-of-step, less resilient, and close to burnout right now. 

At The Growing Club, we have always said we will do things differently if we need to, and not just get caught up in trends if those trends look like they could be harmful to women and their families. We knew that back-to-school would mean lots of illness, and childcare still falls primarily to women. And so, we have decided to get off that runaway train and delay starting our core courses until October, thereby allowing children to settle back to school and parents to take a breath. Things are still unfolding and we all need a wee bit of time to regroup, and space to make decisions that are right for us. 

We absolutely do not want you caught up in should or must regarding your business or employment needs. What we want is to encourage you to slow down and we invite you to spend time talking to us about what you want and need to enable you to make good decisions for yourself. We invite you to reflect and join our courses if that feels supportive for you this term.

And, in the meantime, we are still delivering a wonderful programme of interesting short skills workshops. Plus fun plans too: our wonderful social enterprise turns five in October and we are having a birthday bash of speakers, networking and cake on the afternoon of the 21st. You are all invited and you can book in here for that event.  

See you soon,

Jane