Family Ties

Well, hey there, Cadre. Happy Thursday. If you don't recognize me and you're a regular Thursday livestream attendee on caring for those who care for others day. I'm a newbie on Thursday livestream day. So thanks for letting me join the the party. My name is JC Lippold and I really appreciate this opportunity to be in your space, in your day, wherever you are, whatever is going on. Donna, I hope you're having a good day. It's rather late in the, in the live stream scheduling day. You will see Doctor Evan, who is in Sydney, actually Sydney, Australia.

So you'll see him later tonight, but please check out our friend from Mac earlier on today. I just saw Colleen. Hop on, Colleen. You can rewatch their livestream, Shannon's livestream earlier. m. Central standard time. Hey, Russell. Hey, Jules. Nice to see y'all. And that seven amish central standard time livestream is called what is Cadre on Tuesdays? I do. Hey, Tiffany. Nice to see you, my friend. If you have not yet check out Tiffany's livestream on Sunday evenings. It is divine and all of the energy and by golly, another new contributor in the Cadre sphere, Paella.

Good afternoon to you, too. So this what is Cadre live stream. I always like to think the more special something becomes to us, the more we have to turn outward and think about the people who have yet to be in this sphere, just like my new friend, Lindsay. Hi, Lindsey. Nice to see you. This is Lindsey's first live. Everybody give some snaps for Lindsay. Lindsay, it's nice to meet you. My name is JC. So I would love to thank you. To think of Cadre, the more that you become of it, become a part of it.

As an outward facing clique, you find something special, you turn outward and go, hey, person who's not here yet, let me ask you questions on what you don't understand yet and help you find Cadre in your sphere. So that's what we do in that seven Amish livestream. We give some time to go, hey, here's the way to think about the thing. So Thursday, I'm here, and I'm so grateful to be here. My name is JC, and this is Caregiver day. The title of this livestream, you see is family ties. And if you are an old millennial, give or take like myself.

Family ties is not just a phrase like the ties that bind. No, it's a wonderful sitcom from a whole different planet, it seems, right? Family ties was a sitcom in the eighties with this wonderful midwestern family, three kids figuring out how to. Both of the parents were very much of the generation of hippiness, right, of moving from boomer ness into this next world. And then all of a sudden, their children are looking at the world through a gen x lens going, hmm. They have this wonderful son named Alex P.

Keaton, played by one of my favorite humans, Michael J. Fox. And he is a conservative, wonderful suit, tie wearing teenager, republican voting, different perspective child in this family. But like every sitcom from that era, and I think for the rest of time, we got a glimpse into family. And there's something about sitcoms watching other families attempt to family that, at least for me, makes me go, hmm. m. Central standard time, I'll spend some time talking about the ties that bind from my perspective, but also to open up a space for you to go, huh?

This is something that I live with. So I am, as I said, an old millennial. I have six gen x siblings. I have a baby boomer mother and a greatest generation father with a family with adopted kids and half siblings, all living in one big house and shared bathrooms and shared bedrooms. My oldest sisters had to buy their own shampoo. And me being the baby of the family. Ah, all the stories. All the stories. But I want you to think today about how that family that you are a part of, whether you are still in active, like those ties are still alive and firing, or whether you've wonderfully, consciously chosen to, for whatever reason, to walk away from some of them.

Those ties that bind connect us into stories about who we are. So I'll say I am wonderfully close to four of my siblings, the four closest to me in age. And we've been together, all five of us, four times in the last 30 years. I always joke, but also I'm not kind of joking that we're so close because we don't mess it up by spending too much time together. I'm the baby. I'm the one who didn't leave Minnesota. The other six are all around the United States, even my parents. I moved them down to Florida every six months and then moved them back up here.

But in that space, I feel wonderfully connected to the reality of the people that are a part of my story who would be a part of my sitcom, even though we don't spend a lot of time together. Now I have a mother whose dream was to have a big family who would always come together for the holidays, who would always kind of be in that space of an earlier generation of sitcoms, where there'd be the big tree in the full house or the spring flowers in the full house or the table filled with food and the full house.

And that's never been the case for my family. Yet. We've gotten in the routine of using something like this, a phone. And for my, especially for my mother. Cause she loves it. We do holiday zooms and we sit on screen for a bit and we brady bunch it up and we remind each other that our family is very much our family. We have stuff. I bet your family has stuff. But as we embark on this family ties livestream together, I invite you to think, what are the things that make your story unique? Each week, I'll poke, I'll raise an idea, a thought, and then I'll use space to go, hmm.

Yeah, you know what? I'm spending some time shining some light, engaging in conversation. And maybe through that routine and that habit, good stuff grows from it. If sitcom television teaches us anything, it's that as we move through a story, as we move closer to and further away from the tension, from the thing, from the event, even though Danny Tanner may not sit down at the end of your bed and, you know, some music starts playing as everything wraps up in a 22 minutes episode, you have the capacity to say, here is how I see my story.

And those ties that bind teach us things. Russell says distance makes the heart grow fonder. At least that's what my wife tells me. But I'm Ching. No, but that's so true. I really, really believe the last time that all five of us were together was for my wedding. I'm the one person in my family who's never been divorced. And my joke there was always, I'm the one person. I've been divorced because I've never been married. Well, now I'm married, and that's still the case. But it was really special for all of us to be able to come together again at that moment.

And in that moment, it's like, oh, yeah, we can be together, but we don't have to be. So as you maybe share some thoughts, some questions, some things that maybe this episode in your day brought up, at the end of each episode, I will sing a popular 1980s or 1990s sitcom theme song. So you have a little bit of thinking time. So since it's family ties let's go there. Think about what dust has stirred up in today's little moment. Feel free to type in the chat and I'll raise those comments afterwards.

I bet we've been together for a million years and I'll bet we'll be together for a million more oh, it's like we've started breathing on the night we kiss and I can't remember what I ever did before what would we do baby, without us I always thought it was what will we do baby, with Alex? No, but it's without us what would we do baby, without us and there ain't no nothing we can't love each other through what would we do baby, without us everybody shall allalala there's nothing like a theme song that seems too perfect and too fairytale ish to remind us that these songs wrap up the stories of conflict, of resolution, of fight and makeup.

So Marisa says, as an only married to another, almost only our family is small. We've created a family of friends. Yeah, Marisa, you know this about me. I always talk about people you don't know yet. The world calls them strangers. I call them people you don't know yet. You know, I'm a gay individual living in 2024. Um, it's a little bit easier for us now than it was yesterday. And the day before. And the day before. But the idea of chosen family is really important for people who may not have a family of their own.

So on this caretaking day, who do you care for? Who do you care about? And who are you innately tied to? That makes sometimes that caring relationship worthy of stories told on the biggest of screens on the Netflix for seasons at a time. I'm really excited to share some time and space with you on this incredibly special caregiver's day. So as I mentioned, you'll see Doctor Evan from Australia later on this evening in the states, in states time. Otherwise, I'll be back on Saturday for personal development day.

But if this is the end of your day at Cadre, tune back in tomorrow. Grief and loss day is just around the corner. Everybody have a good one.