A young mother tree viewing the Shenandoah night sky
I was 15 years old in 1985. I wasn’t worried about my grandparents having Alzheimer’s. I had never heard of kids with Diabetes. There were no students “on the spectrum” in my high school. Allergies were pretty unusual, and things like anxiety, depression, and ADHD were foreign words. In fact, I really don’t remember more than a couple kids challenged by obesity, and things like addiction and suicide were far and few between.
All these challenges are known as “chronic conditions” as they last for more than one year, affect multiple parts of us at the same time, and span mental and physical domains. We also know that in the 80’s, there were many fewer cases of other chronic conditions like auto-immune disease, arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, certain types of cancers, hypertension, Parkinson’s, post-partum depression, etc.
In fact, the statistics show that 1985 was a tipping point year, as 11% of the U.S. population had a chronic condition. Over the next twenty years, it increased five times, reaching 56% by 2005! The U.S. government stopped reporting the statistic around that time, but it is commonly understood that it is in the 70%-80% range today.
As I grew from 15 to 35 years old during this unprecedented explosion, I was brought up (and caught up) in what I like to call a chronic condition vortex – a culturally-driven reality so deeply entrenched that it was hard to see how our life was changing for the worse. In retrospect, it is clear that the cumulative change we experienced over the last fifty years has been nothing short of stunning. It’s been a grand social experiment with some amazing benefits, but it has also failed as it relates to our overall health; and it’s become obvious that traditional healthcare and pharma are not only “not the solution” but that they are actually part of the problem!
While a silver bullet solution does not exist, there are patterns and 80/20 causal factors that are now proven to be underlying drivers, and they have to do with trauma, accumulated stress, environmental factors, and lifestyle choices. To address this requires a parallel “self-care” paradigm that is necessary to complement the conventional “health-care” system. This dual yin-yang paradigmatic shift integrates the reactive, disease-oriented, sick care conventional model that dominates today with a proactive, holistic, durable, personalized approach directly related to an individual’s journey.
Taking the power back into our own hands, with the right education and the right tools, is the only way to collectively lift ourselves out of the vortex. Beautifully, this “self-care revolution” is actually happening all around us right now. A McKinsey study recently reported that 82% of consumers consider wellness a top or very high priority. Within this trend, vacations are increasingly becoming a delivery system where people are investing in themselves as part of this revolution. Wellness tourism has become the hottest subsector in hospitality, growing at a 16.8% CAGR from ’22 to ’27 when it will exceed $1T (Global Wellness Institute, 2023).
These trends are based on a scientifically proven understanding that each individual can dramatically transform at any stage of life -- that there is a plasticity in our mind, body and spirit -- and that this results in the ability to participate in regenerative cycles that naturally happen as we age. Because transformation is an experiential versus intellectual process, we need nature-based places with holistic infrastructure and sacred spaces for people to heal, expand, and become the visionary change-makers this world needs.
Simply Shenandoah is just this -- a revolutionary wellness destination that completely reimagines the traditional resort and spa experience by delivering transformational experience. As we build this business (while humbly pulling ourselves out of our own individual vortices!), we are staying true to the vision that we have been incrementally sharing with you over the past five years.
With twenty visionary investors and an amazing community and ecosystem of partners, we are immensely grateful for those who also see this mission and are patiently waiting for our final financing milestone so we can start construction.
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