Things We Aren’t Supposed To Talk About - Being A Caregiver

Good morning, friends. Hello. Happy Thursday. It is Shannon from Cadre. Good morning. I will tell you, I'm on Nyquil a teeny bit, so giving you a heads up. This hopefully will be a coherent livestream, but I definitely wanted to be here today and talk with you all. Welcome to Caregiver Day on Cadre. We are here today to talk about things we are not supposed to talk about, which means, as a caregiver, it's sort of the hard parts of life that come with taking care of others. They can be difficult to talk about out in society when you don't necessarily know if someone else can resonate with what you're saying.

So good morning. So today, for those of you who don't know me, if it's your first time here, my name is Shannon. I am not a clinician. I am not a mental health professional. I'm a person who lives with anxiety, CPTSD, and I do have a son with autism. So I see some of you are joining. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So I talk about my life experience as a caregiver in hopes that you can see some of yourself in this and feel less alone. Okay. So, you guys, today we're gonna talk about caregiving, but we're gonna do.

Oh, good morning. Speak wonder. I'm so glad to see you. Today we're gonna talk about caregiving, and we're going to talk about it in terms of a pie. Okay. So good morning, everyone. Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad you're here. Okay, so we're going to start today thinking about being a caregiver as a pie. So the first thing I want you to do this morning is I want you to take 15 seconds, and I want you to think of your favorite kind of pie. Okay. If you don't like pie and you need to manifest your pie as a pizza, that is acceptable.

If you're like a salty person, you can go pizza, and that's great. But if you would write in the comments, what's your favorite pie? What's your favorite pie? Colleen is here. I know you love pie, and I love that about you so much. So just write like if you would imagine your favorite pie, I will. Gosh, for me, I love a good french silk pie. I love a good banana cream. Those are. Anything that's just full of sugar is beautiful to me. So whatever that pie is to you, good morning, Jules. I want you to think about standing at the head of a table.

French silk all day long. That's correct. French apple Darrell. That's amazing as well. I mean, listen, there's not a bad pie. So I want you to imagine standing at the head of a table and you have folks around you, right? And you have that pie in front of you. You've got your lemon meringue, your triple berry whatever it is, and you're standing there and you're ahead of your table, and there's people sitting at your table. And everyone wants a piece of pie. Of course they do. It's pie. It's Steph's apple pie.

Why would you not want that? So your job as a caregiver and my job as a caregiver is each day as we stand at the head of that table and we look around at each of the people that need a piece of what we've got to give, we have to figure out how much each person gets, right? And so as a caregiver, we might have a lot of people sitting at that table. You may have, my son's 14, so I have, like, I have a school sitting at the table. I have his therapist, his social worker, his ASD. All of those folks are sitting at the table.

I have family sitting at the table, right? Grandparents, cousins, people who have an investment in you and your family's well being. You have clinicians sitting at the table. So as you're a caregiver for whatever, you know, whatever you're going through, again, for me, it's my son with autism. I have a lot of clinicians at the table, right? I have his primary care doctor. I have ot speech. All of those different folks, I have my partner at the table. They need a piece of pie, right? So you understand the metaphor each day as you sit at the head of that table, and you have to say, like, you get a piece and you get a piece and you get a piece.

You have to decide how. That's right. Speak, wonder. Speak, wonder. You're beating me to my message, which is you need a bigger pie, and there isn't one, right? Your pie is finite. Your pie is this big. Your pie is made up of whatever the people at Lunz put into pies, because I don't bake. It's finite. You can't make more out of it than it is. And so I think as caregivers, we look and say, God, this person needs a big chunk, and this person needs a big chunk, and you look at how you're going to distribute that pie around to all the folks who need it.

And so I want to say a couple things about it. Number one, because it is finite sometimes, and I'll speak particularly to a clinical piece. Now, sometimes you're going to sit in a meeting with clinicians or with a group of people who are helping your child, your loved one, and they're going to say, and you need to do this, and you need to do this and you need to do this and you need to do this, and that's a lot of things to do. Right? And as a caregiver, you want to give them that whole freaking piece of pie.

And you're going to say, well, God, yeah, of course I want to give them this and this and this and this. And in reality, there's a bunch of other folks sitting at the table, too. So I'm saying this today to remind you that there's only so much of you, as a caregiver to go around, and there will be people, just like there are at your real table, who want a huge piece of pie. There's gonna be someone else who says, oh, God, just give me a sliver, and you're gonna give a sliver. And that might be enough that day.

But I also wanna remind you that you, as a person who's standing at the head of that table, needs sustenance, right? You still need a piece of that pie. You need to be able to stand on your legs, and you need to be able to be there to serve the pie to everyone else. And you're not going to take a piece every day. And I guarantee that all of you on this call right now, on this call, on this live right now, have given all your pie away. I guarantee it. I know it. Because if you're a caregiver and you take care of someone you love, you will do that, because that is who you are.

And there are going to be days when people get a little, a smaller piece of pie. And that's going to have to be okay. There's going to be a day I'm going to. I'm always my hand and say, I'm probably going to have one today. I have a call at ten with my son's care team, and they're going to talk about all the things we need to do for him. And in reality, I can't do all those things for him. I just truly cannot because I still have other people at the table to serve. So I want to remind you all that we can't make bigger pies always.

The oven is only so big. And just as you think about every day, and I'm doing this myself with you right now, as I think about every day. I'm saying I have this much to give. It's finite. It has edges. Right? And so I just want you to go into each day knowing there's never going to be enough pie. There's just not. Because everyone loves pie. Of course they do. And that's okay. And you don't have to give it all away every single time. And you cannot. And give yourself the grace of that country. Apple pie.

I think I got it right, Daryl. Lemon meringue for Jules in season. Berry pie. Apple french silk. All the pies that you all said. Give yourself the gift of your own piece because you deserve it. And everyone else will be okay. You can give them another piece tomorrow. Okay, so I'm gonna give myself a huge piece of pie today. I may manifest it through a piece of Dave's hot chicken. We just opened one by me, and that's gonna be great, too. That's gonna be my piece of pie today. But, you guys, whatever that needs to be for you today, whatever that piece of your favorite pie is, I want you to eat it.

And I want you to know that you deserve it. Because if you can't stand at the head of that table every day and be the person who takes care of everyone else, then none of it works. Thank you guys for being here. You made my day. I'm glad that you're all here. Thank you for being a part of my life. You're making it easier for me selfishly. And I hope that you all feel seen and loved and heard as we navigate being caregivers together. Have a beautiful day, you guys.