Harbor Pilots & Spilled Coffee

Okay, everybody, come on in. Come on in. I'm gonna give it another minute. Nope. Here we are. It's 11:00 it's the 4 July. Good morning from Erie, Pennsylvania, where it's 11:00 eastern time. Eastern seaboard, eastern standard. I am speak wonder, your harbor pilot tour guide on caregiver day. Interesting, isn't it, how the 4 July this year fell on Independence day. Thank you for joining. I know picnics are being planned. Maybe you're going swimming. I happen to have a very sequestered day. Not by design, but nothing's on my radar for 4 July today and I'm taking it as a gift and a blessing and a respite.

I saw a mom who, I'm her caregiver, saw her a couple of days ago, visited with her, and today is a day to chillax. Let me see. I'm going to show you my faithful companion. That's Gracie. Say hi, Grace. Oh, Gracie. Oh, yeah, give me the kisses. Gracie's my corgi companion. She lives with me and I love her. She's a rescue. Good morning, Jules. Phippsburg, Maine. Schrendia. Schrendria. Schrendria. Hello. Hi, Jules. Hi. Thank you for coming into the Cadres fair on caregiver Thursday. I got to listen to our gal Shannon this morning and I love her topic every Thursday on caregiving, the things we're not supposed to talk about.

And she talked about this morning in her live that we should look at our people as people, as whole people, not just people with needs or demands or needing lots of repetition to get through life. And so her message today is, you know, caregiving and looking at the person as a gift and a blessing and not just a chore. Things we're not supposed to talk about. Thank you, Shannon, for bringing things to the surface that we're all thinking and we need validation and we need encouragement. So I invite you to go back and replay the live from Shannon's staff today.

So today I'm going to talk about spilled coffee. What's in your cup? This is my favorite mug. I use it practically every morning. And I am a coffee girl. I have a blog. It's coffee with Kathy. Imagine that. And I just. I love coffee. I have learned to drink it with nothing in it. That was a learning curve for me. But I wanted to nix the calories that come with creamer and sugar and learn to drink it black. I kind of like it. It took a while to like it. I thought I'd never part ways with my beloved creamer.

But I did. So, a couple of fun research items before we dive into the harbor. Pilot talk today about spilled coffee cups. One is, did you know where we get the phrase cup of Joe? Well, I like to look up origins of words and phrases in the english language, and this one's kind of neat. On Independence Day, July 4, it comes from the navy, according to the World Wide Web, the Navy. Okay, so Josephus Daniel, known as Joe, was the us secretary of the Navy between 1913 and 1921. And so, at that time, the navy was kind of a party group, really.

So booze was free flowing, recruits were getting kind of rowdy, and Secretary Joe pulled it all in and banned alcohol on ships in 1914. So the sailors were stuck with their go to beverage, which was coffee. They called it a cup of joe, and that was meant as a disparaging reference to the secretary. A cup of joe. It stuck from there, and that's what we say. I've often said, I'd like to have a cup of joe, and didn't know it's our origin. Now I know, and so do you. So, okay, you guys, we're holding a cup of coffee.

Someone comes along and bumps us. My analogy is, we're in a boat navigating the harbor, and the water has got really choppy all of a sudden. We do know that lakes and seas and bodies of water can be very. What's the word? Impetuous? Tempestuous. They can be unpredictable. And so, as we go through our day of caregiving, things come up, and we have to figure out how to manage that. And sometimes you get bumped on the elbow. You're. You're just minding your business. You're holding your coffee, and boom, someone bumped into you, and you spilled your coffee.

But really, is that what you spilled? You spilled what's in your cup? It might have been a cup of tea. Hang with me here. It might have been a cold beverage. It might have been an adult beverage. And it's built. Hmm. Here is the symbolism. Ask yourself, what's in your cup? You know, we get annoyed. I get annoyed. I get salty. And someone bumps into me, and I say, oh, I spilled my coffee, and I'm mad because something came along and shook me and caused spillage. Well, I'd like to step back and ask, what's in my cup?

Is it gratitude, or is it. Grr. Is it joy? Or is it depression? Not throwing any shade on any of this. It's just what comes out of us when we get bumped. It can be a choice. There can be bitterness. There can be a victim mentality. Not this again. Not me again. Why me? Why me today? That often spills out. Let's be honest. But life provides the cup, and we can choose how to fill it. So I'd like you to join me in my journey to fill my cup with more gratitude, more forgiveness. Lots and lots of patience.

I would love patience to spill out. When someone jostles me in the choppy water of the harbor, I would like forgiveness to overflow. I would like to have maybe some words of encouragement for someone, for myself, maybe a spirit of gentleness, spirit of humility. What comes out of your cup when you are bumped and jostled in the choppy waters of life? I'm going to take it a little bit further. Thanks for staying with me. I love analogies and symbolisms and metaphors. So on a practical plane or level, how do we fill our cups?

With the good stuff. With the attributes that we want. The personality that we desire to display to the world in an authentic way. It's okay to be real. It's perfectly normal and completely human to have emotions and to display them. Particularly when we get bumped. However, we have some things at play. You were born with a unique personality. We all were. We all have something that came with us at birth when we made our entrance into this world. I have a one month old grandson, and already the comments are being made in the family that, oh, he's so laid back and he's sleeping through the night.

Are you kidding me? He's just easygoing. It's like we're identifying his personality already. And we are. We're noting his attributes. The child doesn't speak. He's just learned how to focus on objects and people's faces. And yet we're learning to know Oliver very soon. We're learning to identify his attributes. But I digress. Isn't it funny how grandmas always find ways to brag on their grandkids? I just found my little portal. So how do we fill our cups? With the good stuff. We come with a personality bent or a way of being in the world.

And then as we continue into the world and become who we are, our cups get shaken up, they get added to, they get taken away from, they get emptied, they get filled, they get split, build. And these are what we call life experiences, or what I call life out in the harbor, the harbor of change and roiling, muddy waters. Sometimes, sometimes smooth sailing, sometimes chop. So we, you know, we navigate in our own personality. That's authentic, that's real. That's who we are and that's who people expect us to be.

So how do we learn to manage rather than suffer from what's in our cup, how do we learn to manage that and manage it well and grow from it and become strong? We can be intentional, you know. How do we respond when we get bumped into? We choose. Not every day is going to be a day of thoughtful choices. Sometimes we can be preemptive and choose. We all go through seasons. Absolutely. And the seasons of caregiving are hard. It's relentless. Some days what's in your cup is bitter. I don't want to miss anything.

So I've got just a few things jotted down here. I love how these wonderful Cadre contributors here on the sphere talk right to the camera the entire time with such eloquence and such encouragement. I still need a few notes. I think that's okay. Some days what's in your cup is bitter. It's black coffee, but extra grounds have been mixed in making it more bitter. Can you mix in some things like creamer and something sweet? Well, I don't anymore, but maybe you do, and that's cool. This is for the symbolism here.

Nothing wrong with creamer and sugar, but you can add that in, metaphorically speaking, sweet things, cooler things to dilute the bitterness that's in your day, especially when you get bumped and you know, your coffee, just your contents of your cup spills and it spills on you. We can choose to immerse ourselves in a positive environment. And guess what? We have Cadre. When I discovered Cadre some months ago, I didn't realize I was having full immersion into a place of safety, an environment of encouragement and a passover.

People that come alongside me and they get me and we can talk in the stream. Jules, it's all good. Thank you. We can converse together spontaneously when we're on the live. I love to go back and replay my favorite streams and the ones I've missed and those 1 minute deals that drop in. I'm still learning to navigate the Cadre sphere, and it's just great fun and always fulfilling. And so to surround yourself with a positive and safe environment is to enter the Cadre. There are many other resources.

Jewel says sometimes the person who bumped you was bumped themselves. A chain reaction. Thank you. Absolutely. Absolutely. What do we see when we're offended? I see the offense, but how about looking at the human being behind the offense? Yeah, they got bumped, their coffee was spilt, and the bitterness overflowed onto me. Thank you for that reminder, Jules. Thank you so much. Positive environment, the quadraphere. A counselor, a psychotherapist, a best friend. An adult beverage. Within reason. They have calories, too, man.

So anyway, I'm just looking at the stream here. I'm so grateful for y'all jumping in on the holiday. Taking a nap is a good way to reset, restart, fill your cup. Letting others pick up the balls that you've dropped. We've heard some talk about that recently on the Cadre. I've heard some creatives coming on live and on the replay saying, listen, you can't do it all. You're not meant to. When you drop a ball, you're giving someone an opportunity to pick that up and carry it. Let them. Another way I've heard it said recently is, oh, your.

No is somebody else's. Yes. No is a complete sentence we've learned. And when you say no, you're opening the door for somebody else to say yes. Perhaps it's their season to step in and take up that task that you've been carrying. Do you like my anchor pillow? You see that? Isn't that fun? You can see why I love harbor pilots and harbors. All things harbors. And I live by a lake, a huge lake, one of the great lakes. So when you dilute the bitterness with these things, what spills out will be more patience, a little more long suffering, lots of love, humor.

Something we should all add to our cup is water. I get this at the store. This is called flow. And, I don't know, it's probably backwards. I love this stuff because it's got alkaline and electrolytes, and the packaging is sustainable. It's recyclable, so it's all good. And it's. It's really smooth. I just love this stuff, so I drink it straight up. But the suggestion here today is to pour it into your cup and dilute whatever's there. Because when we add water, we get clarity. We get a chance to see things a little better, and it dilutes the strong feelings and emotions that are itching to spill out.

Reaching out to your friends here and friends in your own circle of influence. Another way to freshen your cup and remove some of the bitterness that might spill out when you get bumped. So, in summary, adding water softens bitterness. Adding water clears up the murky parts of your emotions. And it doesn't invalidate your emotions. No, but it helps you notice them when you get bumped. As Jules pointed out, it helps you notice the person who bumped you. And to speak compassion into their lives or even to demonstrate it wordlessly.

Life provides the cup. You choose how you're going to fill it. So after adding water to your cup every day, it'll keep you fluid and flowing and ready to navigate the choppy waters and also the smooth waters that await you. Because every day is kind of a mix in the harbor coming up today in the Cadre July 4 comedy through the chaos with Shannon Paul. And Shannon adds real humor. She's a funny lady and she adds humor to her cup. And I see laughter spilling out of in her last live last week, she was chatting with her boy who she caregives and it was funny.

They were having a funny back and forth. Shannon approaches the spills of life with a lot of humor. It spills out, you can see it and it's for real right in the midst of the struggle. So she comes on at three live. If you can't watch her, then do the replay. I really invite you to do the replay. Family ties with JC. That's at 05:00. You know, JC adds elements of surprise and insight to his lives. I'm forever surprised. The outward facing click, the thin space failing forward. I'm not getting that completely right.

But he suggests that failure is a positive. He cast light on things that that I usually see as negatives. And it's really cool. It helps me reframe some pictures. Do join JC for family ties. He helps us pull up to the dock and secure our lives with the strong salty ropes. Yeah, I got a poem coming. Yep, I wrote it down. I caught some words, caught them in the air and pinned them down to the paper. And I'm gonna read it to you in just a moment here. In fact, it's time to read the poem. And that's how I will end my talk today.

Thank you again for joining. Catch me on the replay or any of our Cadre speakers. And our Cadre contributors are also the community that tunes in. You guys add so much content and thank you again. So here we go. Let the sea spray. Let me start again. This is what live is. Very organic. Let the sea salt spray your face. Toss and tumble through the choppy waters. You have seasoned veteran harbor pilots. Let them sing you home. Let them merge the bow. Let them align the stern. You can pull up to the safety of the dock in your favorite harbor.