Still Here W/Roe

Cadre fam, Cadre fam, good morning, good morning. Happy Tuesday. I am downtown right now, walking the streets, heading into the office. Good morning. It is a good day. It's a good day. Today, it's my first day as a 36 year old adult. It feels wild, I'm not gonna lie. But good morning. So coming to you today, yesterday was my birthday, turned 36, cool, had some fun stuff going on with family. All the things, right? Before I get into it, I like to start my days with the check-in, right? See where we're at for the day, for the week, for today.

One through 10, where are you at? 10 being it's the best day ever. Life couldn't get any better. Might play the lottery because we might win. One might be I didn't want to get out of bed today. Life kind of sucks right now. One to 10, where are you at? I challenge you. Today I'm at about an 8, but I'm tired. I'm tired, right? Drop your number in the chat. So I'm at 8 today. It's my first day as a 36 year old. Yeah, it's my birthday. Yesterday did some fun things, had some family come over and I'm drained y'all, right?

I'm drained. And today what I want to talk about is the way that we show up for people and how there's a lot of people in our lives that are there. When we're going through seasons, we might not always realize that they're there, right? And I'm speaking from experience from my situation. So if you can relate, cool. If not, maybe you know someone that's going through something similar, right? So for me, coming through addiction, substance use, all these different traumas, all these things, right?

I have a tendency of when things get hard, I push people away, right? Not directly, but I tend to isolate, get inside my head. I pick up a new project to focus on and I get so locked in it because I'm trying to distract myself or, you know, cope with what's going on with something positive. But by the time I come up and look for air, it seems like there's nobody around. It seems like everybody's gone. I might feel lonely, isolated, but the whole time I created those situations, right? That's something that I've been working on.

So something that was a positive, working on a project, taking a project on to help navigate my stress, my anxiety, whether it's slight depression, these things were good, but I locked in too much to the point where some of them just distracted me, kept me away from friends, family, all these things, right? So I had some jobs coming up, traveled around the state for the last few months. and didn't get a lot of time to spend with family and friends. So this year for my birthday, I was like, what?

Instead of picking some place to go and spend a bunch of money and play games and do all that, it's like, what? I'm going to create a safe space at my home and have people come over for a fire, kind of campfire style. You ever know the campfire theory? where people can come and go. Some people pull up a seat for 5, 10 minutes around the campfire and they go on their way. It's not that they left you. It's not that they came late, they came early. They came at the right time and they showed up in the space and time in your life when they were supposed to be there, right?

That's kind of how I believe about family and friends. So I created that space for them to come do that. I'm like, hey, this is a campfire style birthday. I have food, I have some games, but come as you wish. Stay for 5 minutes, stay for an hour, stay all night. What was it, create intentional time for you guys to just exist and I can spend time with you. And that was really cool, right? I did that, but what I realized is there's a lot more people in my life that care about me, that show up, and that are willing to create time and space to come and spend it with me, right?

And I forget about that during the times that I'm struggling, I might have some seasonal depression going on. And we get stuck in our heads. I don't know if you can relate, but I do and I forget that there's a lot of people there, but sometimes I have to be the one to create the space. But when I'm suffering from anxiety or I'm swamped at work and life is just heavy, it's a little bit hard sometimes to push myself out of that rut and create a space even though it can feel like I'm adding on to things that I already have going on that are challenging, right?

So I create that space, even though it seems like it might be challenging. Friends, family come in and do something chill and I feel rejuvenated. I feel refreshed. And it's crazy because the very thing, the idea of setting that time to be intentional with them will give me anxiety, but I know that's the very thing that's going to help me. And I got a good refresher of that yesterday. Family came, came in and out, shared some time and space around the campfire, had some good food, shared some stories, life update.

But the thing was, it wasn't one specific conversation that happened, one specific game or food. It was that we spent quality time together, intentional quality time. And that was awesome. And it made me remember that there's a lot more people out there that are willing to be there for us, willing to support us, willing to help us, but they don't know what they don't know. So I challenge you today. What is one thing that you're going through or you're struggling with that you wish somebody in your life would know?

What's one thing? It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be crazy, but what's one thing that you're like, I wish somebody knew about this? I challenge you, take that one thing and share it with one person. Share it with one person. It doesn't have to be everybody. Share it with someone that you trust or someone that you're trying to build trust with. Take a shot. Sometimes I'm a big believer when it comes to sharing and opening up with people. Sometimes it could go right, sometimes it could go wrong.

But we got to fuck around and find out sometime. That's all I got for you guys. Have a good day today.