Family Ties

Well, hey, everybody. How are you? Happy Thursday. Happy Thursday afternoon in Minnesota. Maybe it's still Thursday midday or Thursday evening, or who knows? Maybe it's Friday. If you are in a different part of this planet earth that we are on, I see that Miss Stavart 2018 is right here in this live stream. You wanna know something funny? It's not funny at all. You wanna know something interesting? When I was a 9th grader at Champlin Park High School, my advisor, the first teacher I had in high school, was Miss Nancy Stafford.

So thank you, Miss Stafford 2018. You just gave me a wonderful little memory back to an earlier chapter of my life. Hello, fellow humans. Hello. Speak wonder. Hey there, Christine 7337. I hope you are having a great day. Jules, good afternoon to you as well. I believe Christine 7337 is my good, near and dear friend who is new to the Cadre sphere just this week. So if that is true, everybody say hey to my friend Christine and welcome them to the Cadre sphere. This is family ties. So on Thursday, here in the Cadre sphere, we talk about caregivers.

Do you know that there's over 50 million unpaid caregivers in the United States of America? And that's not to say that only, hey, Steven. Nice to see you, my friend. Not to say that it's only people in the United States that are here in the Cadre sphere, but I just think that that's a striking number. You don't sign up to be an unpaid caregiver. Whether you are a caregiver of a child of yours or a parent or a spouse or a friend or a neighbor, that all of a sudden something happens, or you say, yes, I will care for you.

So all of a sudden, whether by choice or by circumstance, if you are the caregiver of someone, or if you are in a family, or if you are in a chosen family or you have friends, we care about one another. So when I jump into livestream on Thursdays, I talk about the non chosen family that I have. I am a wonderfully proud millennial. I'm an old millennial. I'm born in 1982, the year of Billie Jean, the year of Cal Ripken Junior, the year of ET, the year of Annie, the year of cats. I am the only millennial in my family.

I have six gen x siblings, boomer mother, greatest generation father, and family ties. If you're like me, I know it as a sitcom, a situational comedy, a television show, but also, I know it as the phrase family ties, the ties that bind. So that's what this livestream is all about Jules, Annie and Katz, one of the biggest Tony ward battles of all time. Don't get me started, my friends. I am a fool. Lost my train of thought. I literally totally just lost my train of thought. But I will tell you this, the ties that bind when it comes to family is really interesting.

So I speak about the generational differences in my family because even though I'm the youngest, I am in a lot of ways the care giver and the caretaker of my parents by choice, but also the way that I kind of feel called to be the one who in a lot of ways will be the one watching my parents age and choose to give up and be there for them. I'm the one who still lives in Minnesota, where they live in the summer and spring, and then I move them down to Florida and then I move them back up here. So in this family ties livestream, I talk about I'm family a little bit.

Why? Because whether you are close to or far from, whether you are estranged from, whether you have good or bad history and memories with, we all are biologically born individuals, we all have energy that connects us to. And the power of sitcom television helps us go. There's something about 22 minutes stories that we consume through television, whether we want to or not, that makes us go, ah, so let me tell you a little story about this past weekend. For the past couple of years, I've taken my dad on a minor league baseball trip somewhere.

A couple years ago, I took him to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that's his hometown, for a day out. Stayed overnight, different hotel rooms, drove back last year, drove up to Duluth, Minnesota, different hotel rooms overnight, drove back this past weekend, did a trip down to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, this time, did a couple extra little activities, stopped. So Thursday night baseball game, maybe it's Friday night. My memory's kind of playing some tricks on me lately. I think it was Friday night, Friday night baseball game and Saturday morning, stopped at my sister's in Coralville, Iowa, drove across the drove across the state to Algona, Iowa, stopped at my brother's and then drove back Saturday night.

So I was able to do three really cool family things. Baseball game with dad, allowed my dad to visit with my sister and me allowed my dad to visit with my brother and me. Drove on back. And by golly, amidst the family time and the baseball time and the moments when all of a sudden my dad broke into some political conversations where I'm like, what are we talking about? And the moments where I got to hear some really cool family stories. All of a sudden, me and my dad got to experience my sister's nonprofit, which she started about twelve years ago.

It's all about taking a kid outdoors. My sister started her, she's a wetland specialist and had her own company for the last 27 years. Then my brother recently moved from Connecticut to Iowa and he feels like he's in heaven. Just a lot of things falling in place. Finally got home and it's just like, I love these trips. I hate these trips. And I feel like sooner or later I'm not going to be able to do these trips. And a lot of times you go, no, you're supposed to appreciate these trips. It's supposed to be great and perfect.

And there's ways we're supposed to experience our family. From the outside looking in. Here's how you're supposed to do it when you're experiencing it, even kind of do it yourself. Here's how you're supposed to do it. Then you give yourself the grace a little bit, grace your feet, faith your eyes. And all of a sudden you're driving those last couple miles home. You go, yeah, I'm glad I did it. So here's the reality about my family. I always kind of put the headline, I'm the millennial six gen x siblings boomer mother, you know, greatest generation father.

Here's the reality. My dad was married, had two adopted kids. My mom was married, gave birth to three, they got divorced, got married, had me and my brother. So technically, I only have r1 brother. I have three half siblings. Well, technically five half siblings, but the two that my dad had who were adopted, they kind of were already old enough that they didn't disown the family. They just kind of chose not to be a part of the family. It wasn't until I was 16 that I realized that the three that my mom had from the first marriage were only my half siblings.

I was like, oh, my gosh. So I often say, I'm talking fast on purpose right now. It wasn't till I was 16 that I realized that I had three half siblings. So often I tell the story this way. I have r1 sibling, but I often say I have one of five emotional siblings, but technically I'm one of seven siblings. You get the point. Family's what we make of it. From the outside looking in, from the inside looking out. So often I always say I'm kind of like Joanne. Full house. In a lot of elements of my family.

I always kind of feel like I'm the person who lives in the basement. I'm the one weirdo. I'm the one musician. I'm the one artistic guy. I'm the one feeler. So, yes, speak wonder. You got me figured out. On Thursdays during the family ties livestream, the piano's always here waiting. Because we can't call a livestream family ties without singing a classic theme song to wrap things up. So have you been wondering when we would do full house? So I think so far, we've done family ties, we've done perfect strangers, we've done all in the family last week, so you can find those sing alongs last couple of weeks.

But here's a little full house to wrap things up. But, hey, before we do a little sing along, if you're one of those people who goes, gosh, I need to do family the right way. Screw it. Do family the way you do it. If you have some ghosts and demons, if you're hurting, if you're struggling, if you're going, gosh, I need to do it the way you're doing it. And if you're wanting to do it differently, do it differently. Whatever happened to predictability? The milkman, the paper boy, the evening tv? Why do they always sing these songs so darn high?

Everywhere you look everywhere there's a heart a hand to hold on to everywhere you look everywhere there's a face a somebody who needs you right here in the Cadresphere everywhere you look when you're lost out there and you're all alone a light is waiting to carry you home everywhere you look everywhere you look dibba da bop da da. Right? That's why we do this casualty fear thing. Whether you got things figured out or whether you don't, it's okay. Cadre. We're bringing together professionals and peers to create a community with resources to show you there's a whole lot of ways to wellness, and each one of you are a part of that.

Have a good one, y'all.