There has been so much going on these past two weeks, but I have definitely been so grateful for the experiences that have come from all of the events. To start, I will write about the Health Aging Project that I am currently writing this blog at. Mira, Kyla Marie and I are hosting an Inter-generational Writing Circle at the Mira Mesa Rec Center. We have a lot of community members here with us with a really great variety of about 17 folks of all different ages from 9 years old - 75+ years old. We have four prompts for folks to write about and walking around, I can see that everyone took a different direction from each other. Many doodled, others incorporated the drawings into their writing, and others wrote pages of pages. It was really heartwarming to see the ways in which folks were also opening up to show others their writing by displaying it, or simply talking with much passion about the direction that they took it in.
From the feedback so far, the event was a great success, and many say that they would hope to participate in something like this again. The best piece of feedback came from Susan, an elder from the community who responded to the workshop through the Facebook post I made to host the event – she said that she enjoyed this opportunity and wished that there was more like it and hopes to see more being put on like it. This warmed my heart and nearly brought me to tears with how happy it turned out. I hope to be able to move forward with working with the senior center and provide more volunteer time to continue to be able to foster these types of events. I was also especially thankful for my family and the peers that came to support the event – it was really heartwarming because it was like a collision of two (or three if we are counting the connection to the larger Mira Mesa community) worlds.
My second reflection comes from the Love, Connect, Care event. This event was hosted at Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center and has been put on for years. It was a great event and it really made me thankful for the chances that I have been able to take through this class. I talked to a wonderful man named John, his outfit was notably adorned with blue accents. I learned he is a musician, and his favorite color is orange – two things we talked about extensively. He was the first person I was able to have a sit-down conversation with. As a token of appreciation for the conversation, I gave him one of the hearts that the folks in charge of the art center had folded and contained within it was a little clownfish sticker – the color coordination of the orange folding paper and the sticker was too good to pass up.
After this break, I went back to my station, the plant center. A lot of folks had stopped by to grab a little plant, either composed of fully fake flowers, or a succulent cutting adorned with the little flower buds. Carolina had the awesome idea to make a flower bouquet and we also ended up adding the origami hearts and stickers onto these and passed them out. I felt really rewarded by being able to help people who stopped by, cultivate their ideal plant centerpiece – whether that was in a terra cotta pot or in the bouquet format. There was a man who stayed a while with us, make premade bouquets and chatting about many topics. It was heartwarming to hear that he specifically held time aside to make it to this event and I was cozy in his company. I think in all, these two events have been highlights of the last two weeks and really helped me reinforce the compassion that I hold in my heart and my ever-growing desire to uplift and share in such small, but meaningful moments with people. In a way, I feel like I am relearning some family values that I have stepped out of in my time being in college. I definitely feel the impact of this class in the relationship that I have with my grandparents, and I am sure that it is going to move to shifting my relationship with my parents as they get older as well. I am so deeply inspired.
From the feedback so far, the event was a great success, and many say that they would hope to participate in something like this again. The best piece of feedback came from Susan, an elder from the community who responded to the workshop through the Facebook post I made to host the event – she said that she enjoyed this opportunity and wished that there was more like it and hopes to see more being put on like it. This warmed my heart and nearly brought me to tears with how happy it turned out. I hope to be able to move forward with working with the senior center and provide more volunteer time to continue to be able to foster these types of events. I was also especially thankful for my family and the peers that came to support the event – it was really heartwarming because it was like a collision of two (or three if we are counting the connection to the larger Mira Mesa community) worlds.
My second reflection comes from the Love, Connect, Care event. This event was hosted at Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center and has been put on for years. It was a great event and it really made me thankful for the chances that I have been able to take through this class. I talked to a wonderful man named John, his outfit was notably adorned with blue accents. I learned he is a musician, and his favorite color is orange – two things we talked about extensively. He was the first person I was able to have a sit-down conversation with. As a token of appreciation for the conversation, I gave him one of the hearts that the folks in charge of the art center had folded and contained within it was a little clownfish sticker – the color coordination of the orange folding paper and the sticker was too good to pass up.
After this break, I went back to my station, the plant center. A lot of folks had stopped by to grab a little plant, either composed of fully fake flowers, or a succulent cutting adorned with the little flower buds. Carolina had the awesome idea to make a flower bouquet and we also ended up adding the origami hearts and stickers onto these and passed them out. I felt really rewarded by being able to help people who stopped by, cultivate their ideal plant centerpiece – whether that was in a terra cotta pot or in the bouquet format. There was a man who stayed a while with us, make premade bouquets and chatting about many topics. It was heartwarming to hear that he specifically held time aside to make it to this event and I was cozy in his company. I think in all, these two events have been highlights of the last two weeks and really helped me reinforce the compassion that I hold in my heart and my ever-growing desire to uplift and share in such small, but meaningful moments with people. In a way, I feel like I am relearning some family values that I have stepped out of in my time being in college. I definitely feel the impact of this class in the relationship that I have with my grandparents, and I am sure that it is going to move to shifting my relationship with my parents as they get older as well. I am so deeply inspired.