Things We Aren't Supposed To Talk About

Cadre, good morning. It is Shannon. Happy Thursday. It is 09:08. Welcome to Cadre. Welcome to Caregiver Day on Cadre. You know, friends, it's 09:08 here at Central Standard Time in St. Paul, Minnesota. As a human who wants to share their lived experience in hopes that you will feel less alone in your journey as a caregiver. Alright, so today I'm talking about friends. Friends. And I'm talking about friends from the role of a caregiver. So my. So there's two parts to this. I think there's one apart for me, my friends, my caregiver friends as a human.

And then there's also as I care for my son and his social life, you know, friends, his friends. Jules, good morning from sunny Boston. So for those in the cadres sphere, Jules is a long time, a longtime Cadre friend. And she is. We got to meet her in person a couple weeks ago, and it was amazing. So good morning, Jules. Okay, so friends. So friendship, it's important, right? And also, I think as a caregiver, in my experience, sometimes what you want to do when you're in the midst of caring for someone is you want to curl up on a ballot and sort of, like, hide.

Right. Because it's a lot. So I'm in a situation right now where I'm working on this in two ways. One, for myself. As an adult human, I am seeking, intentionally seeking friendships. I am out in the world trying to find friends on behalf of my son, who is 15. And for those of you who don't aren't familiar with autism, it's a social emotional condition, or I don't know the disorder diagnosis. And so sometimes friends can be hard. So my son has a lot of friends. He has friends. I shouldn't say a lot of friends, if I'm being really honest.

He has two really close friends, but beyond that group, it can be hard for him. So part of my intention this summer as a caregiver is to sort of shore up the friend groups in service of him so he can have more connection and then in service of myself. So last night, I texted with a friend, a woman who I have known for a while, and our friendship is developing. And she had said a while back, she said, let's get our kids together. And my initial reaction was, right. It was a little bit of like, yeah, let's get our kids together.

It's social anxiety, right. Even though I am friends with this person in the context of my full self as a human professional, working mom, et cetera, we have that in common. When you get into that caregiver side of you and revealing that to others and then revealing sort of what's the right word. When I'm building a community for my son, it can feel scary. It can feel difficult to go out and extend out into the world and say, hey, you want to be friends with us? Do you want to be friends with this crazy thing that our life is?

Do you want to be friends with all the parts that come along with being part of this family of folks who live with autism? And it can feel just. I can't think of the word vulnerable. That's the word I'm looking for. It feels vulnerable because, as you all know, I know some of you on here speak wonder. I see us here, Jules, Colleen, you are caregivers, and so you know the messiness that comes with that. So if someone wants to be friends with you or if you are extending and seeking friendship with others, it can be scary because you know how messy it is.

So I guess today I want to encourage you to take a step to that, both for yourself as a caregiver, to show up, make friends, meet friends, even if it's a messy version of you. And that's the truth of my fear. You know, I did make a date with my friend last night, and we are going to meet in a couple weeks with our kids, and we are going to see what happens. And I can promise you that I know her life is messy. I know my life is messy. And I think it's in that showing of the mess to each other and knowing that, like, this is it, man.

This is life as a caregiver. This is going to be messy. If we can show up with that messiness and still be our whole selves and be unafraid that that person is going to walk away from it, that's where that true connection is going to come. By the way, as I say all of this, I'm 100% self talking myself into this as well. Well, it's an intention of mine as a person. It's an intention of mine on behalf of my son. And I encourage all of you. I'll let you know how it goes. I'll report back in a couple weeks.

But I encourage you guys to, if you're willing, do the same. Right. Because we're showing up for each other here in our messiness. I'm showing up right now again. I feel like every time I see you, I have my hat on and I'm not yet ready for the day. And that's the truth, and that's my messiness. But I think the more we show up as ourselves, the more true connection can happen. So I'm believing in that. You all make me believe in that when you show up here every week. So, yeah, that's my thought of the day, is seek that connection and know it's gonna be messy and see what happens.

Cause we're all messy. All right, the rest of the day here on Cadre coming up soon is my friend Colleen Lindstrom, sandwich generation. She is a caregiver to a mom with dementia and her son who is 17. We've got speak wonder coming up. Kathy Joy is going to come up and talk to us about share her perspective. We've got our beautiful Matt clinicians, Minnesota Autism center here in Minnesota. Obviously they're going to come up with their clinicians and share their clinical point of view. We've got Miss Shannon Paul, JC Lippold.

Right? So we've got all the people. So thank you for being here. Continue to come back. We're here for you. Join our community groups. That's one more thing. Now I'll give a little plug for Cadre. Head over. We have a web app, so if you go onto your browser and put in Cadre, I think it's Cadre IO app, you will see our web app. And now we have community groups that you can engage. All right, friends, have a beautiful, beautiful day. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being my community, and we'll see you here soon.