Sail on in for encouraging words about caregiving.
The speaker welcomes the audience, shows a handmade ocean-inspired necklace, and introduces herself as Speak Wonder (Kathy Joy). She also mentions live timing, recent lunch, and that she's on her patio to set a casual tone.
Kathy describes living in northwest Pennsylvania near Lake Erie, highlights local parks, beaches, harbors, and lighthouses, and uses a small boat prop from her home to set up the talk about steering.
She introduces the topic of words and their weight, comparing the tongue to a boat's rudder and explaining how speech can steer conversations toward calm or calamity. She likens supportive people to harbor pilots who guide vessels safely to port.
Kathy recounts a real-life awkward conversation in which she caught herself, pivoted from confrontation to curiosity, and successfully steered the discussion into calmer waters, reflecting on the value of leaning in with interest.
She transitions to the power of saying 'sorry,' describing how she wrote encouraging messages during COVID and later penned a piece titled 'Sorry' about the relief and courage that come with apologizing. She urges acting on remorse for your own relief, not for controlling others' responses, and connects apology to realigning a rudder.
Kathy invites viewers to more cadre content, explains how to explore the app, announces the next Harbor Pilots session time, thanks the audience for walking alongside one another, and closes the session with a blessing.
Hello cadre. Speak Wonder is in the house, in the app, in the atmosphere, and with you. I just realized you can't see my beautiful necklace. There it is. This necklace was made by an artisan, all from things that she collected from the ocean. Shells, parts of sea creatures that had descended were no longer useful to that creature. and different things. Look at this. So cool. One of my favorite pieces of artwork that I wear around my neck. Hello. Hello. Send me a heart or a thumbs up for where you're from and I'd like to enjoy this visit together with you.
If you're on the replay, hello. My name is Speak Wonder in the Cadre. My given name is Kathy, Kathy Joy, and I'm so happy to be with you. Normally I do not go live at 1230 Eastern. I go live at 1130 Eastern, so I might be capturing a different audience than normal. I will default to my regular time starting next week. This is just the way it worked out for today. Didn't know if I was going to be able to go live, so I kind of slap myself together. Anything in my teeth? Had some sushi for lunch. Anyway, I am out on my patio.
You can see from my backdrop that the leaves are peeking here in I call it the lower New England state of Pennsylvania because I feel very much New Englandy here, but I understand I'm not really part of that cluster of New England. I'm in the northwest section of Pennsylvania. If you look at a map, you'll see this square and then what I call a chimney. That's the upper left, which is northwest, and that's where I reside happily near Lake Erie. beautiful lake. We have Press Isle State Park. It's free admission if you're ever in the area.
Do come and visit. We have 11 beaches. We have a harborside that is just stunning. There are still some boats out in the harbor these days. Hey Randy. Hey Davis, good to have you. It is a beautiful place to be situated. near a lake. I think water is very calming and there are times when I just drive my car to, usually to the harbor side and watch the boats as they go through. I am a boat oriented person. Matter of fact, I have a little prop. I grabbed this off of my entrance to my home because I want to talk about steering the boat today.
Yes, it is entirely, completely, 100% idyllic to live on a lake. Absolutely. We have at least four lighthouses in the area, none of which are working lighthouses anymore. They do exist as museums and places to visit and astonishing views from the top after you achieve the spiral staircase going up. Words. Today my topic is words, the power they carry, the weight of them, the heft of words as they emerge from our mouth. And I'm going to give you a real world recent example of the weight of words because they have the power to encourage or discourage.
They have the power to cause a rift or mend one. Words can be gossip or they can be life-giving. Words can go sideways or they can straighten up what's going on. They can make it right. And the unique thing about words is if you issue words that you regret, you can apologize. And I'm getting to that part too, the power of sorry. But first, the power of words. I liken words to a rudder. Your tongue is a rudder. It's similar to the one underneath the boat. When you steer it, you are, you know, a sailboat particularly, you are engineering the ship, the vessel, the catamaran, the sailboat to go a certain direction.
And that rudder has to Make that adjustment and then you go in the direction that you want to go. So it is with the tongue. We can be in the middle of a conversation and your tongue, the rudder, will determine how that might go. Sometimes remaining silent, remaining still is the answer. And sometimes remaining silent is not the answer. because your silence might convey something. It's a lot to unpack, words. It's a lot. On Caregiver Day, I want to emphasize the importance of words and how we place them like a rudder on a boat, how it will send us in certain directions.
It can head us for the open sea and calamity if a storm is brewing. and it can also steer us into safe port. That's why my template for the cadre on caregiver days, Thursdays, my template or my point of reference is harbor pilots because in the harbor in Erie and all the Great Lakes and the ocean ports around our globe, there are men and women who actually steer a small boat out to the cargo ship or the big the big vessel, the pleasure boats, the cruises people go on. These pilots don't know that local harbor necessarily.
Many times they don't. And so they need the harbor pilot to motor out, climb a rope ladder, mind you, get there to the steerage and safely manage the boat with the unseen things in the harbor. It might be a sandbar, it might be rocks, it might be currents that only the locals know. And so they're the ones with the expertise to get you safely to safe harbor, to respite, to disembark and have a little rest before you go back out to the open waters. That's why I like to call my talks harbor pilots among us because insofar as you have somebody walking alongside you as an encourager, as a mentor, as a friend, as a buddy, as a sister, brother, mother, dad, the one to whom you're giving care.
So long as you have that, you have a harbor pilot, somebody guiding you safely, and sometimes you are the one piloting. Real world example happened just yesterday. I was in this conversation with a delightful friend who has a very I call it, I told her this, I said, you have a very elastic brain, meaning that it stretches to accommodate what's being talked about. She's super smart and she has just this ability to pivot and adapt to what's being discussed and to contribute to it in such a creative way.
And so we were talking and we quickly realized in a certain moment, which I would define as awkward, where we realized suddenly we were at polar opposites. Logistically, spiritually, we were at polar opposites in this certain realm. And suddenly there were words that were going to spill out in disagreement. And I think it's okay to have the passion to hold your position and declare it, but that was not that moment. And I was able to catch myself. I was able to pivot my rudder, my tongue, and I said, what?
Philosophically, I don't think I'm on the same page with you, but tell me more. Tell me more about this. I leaned in with curiosity and genuine interest. And it steered the boat safely into calmer waters where the conversation continued. Had I allowed some of my initial thoughts to spill out, it might have gone quite differently. There are times when my rhetoric is not in place and I am not paying attention and the words do spill out. Yesterday was not one of those moments. And as I get older and more mature, I'm learning to lean in rather than pull away.
So much value in that. The power of the apology comes into play with words. Years ago, well, it was during COVID when we were sequestered in our homes and apartments and places of safety. We were behind Zooms and computers and different ways of getting the work done. My boss reached out to me and said, Would you consider sending an e-mail of encouragement to our employees? Once a week would be great. It became daily because there was a need. There was a need for connection. And I was so thrilled and honored to be able to stand in that gap and write some words of encouragement to my comrades, my coworkers, my colleagues.
And we missed each other. And one day it was September of 2020, we were still in lockdown, but we were starting to, in dribs and drabs, go back to the office. And I wrote this to the group, and I wonder if it'll carry some value for you. It's titled simply Sorry. Today, a broken link, a wholehearted apology, an opportunity to reconnect. Tomorrow, amended fence, a surge of laughter, a new beginning. You know that rush of relief you feel when you apologize? It's a powerful breeze, a liberating sigh, a drink of water in a parched desert.
It's the getting there that is difficult, the odd niggling feeling that wakes you in the night. It's the recognition of something broken and you want to mend it. Too often, it's a slow, simmering, deep, quiet awareness that something is not quite right. And too often, you feel that pinch of remorse. When you feel that pinch, that's your prompt. That's time to act. For me, it was a slow simmer. Finally, I wrote a letter expressing my sorrow over lost time, lost connections, forgotten dreams. The simple act of saying sorry has summoned deep levels of strength.
It has pulled up courage I didn't know I possessed. Maybe this is the source of some of our stress lately. The unspoken words that get pushed to the shadowy corners, pushed by pride, by anger, by procrastination. Don't worry about the response from the other party. That's not on you. Focus instead. Focus instead on the weight that no longer bogs you down. Notice a soft, buoyant flutter. Kind of a new bounce to your step. By saying this one simple word, sorry, we can rise above our tension to a great calm.
This simple, sacred act is less like a word and more like a wingbeat. With extreme trust, we can lean over the chasm, spread our wings, and soar. The power of one word to realign a rudder to steer the boat in the direction it needs to go. It can right a wrong. It can mend a rift. It can open a door that's been closed for a while. I ask myself at the same time as I ask you, is there someone who needs to hear that word over their head? Sorry. And again, the response, that's not your responsibility.
Your obedience to the compelling need to issue an apology. That's what matters. Yeah. Might be with a kiddo. Who knows? The power of words, they do carry weight. There's more cadre on the way today. I hope you'll tune in either live or on the replay. And there's so much content in the conversation stream. and you can just go around the app is so user friendly you can go to the different categories and see what's going to hit you where you're where you need uh some administering what do they say um it'll scratch you where you're itching or like a former supervisor used to say to me are you picking up what I'm putting down The cadre contributors are putting down some things, sending life out into the cadre sphere, and we get to go in like this marvelous smorgasbord or a really exquisite charcuterie board and sample and taste and move on and see, okay, what's here?
Oh, that's what I needed today. Yeah. Thank you for joining me. Harbor Pilots will resume again next week at 11:30 AM Eastern. And I'm enjoying it so much on my autumn seasonal backdrop here that I'll probably be here again unless the weather turns. Bless you. Thank you for walking alongside because we are all walking each other home.
