Things We Aren't Supposed To Talk About

Cadre. Good morning. Happy Thursday. Welcome to Caregiver day on Cadre. My name is Shannon. Take my glasses off so my reflection isn't there. My name is Shannon. For those of you who I have not met, I'm actually part of the Cadre team. I work at Cadre full time. I am not a clinician. I am not a mental health professional. I am a human with lived experience in many things. I'm also out of breath because. Because I just. Okay, I'm gonna breathe for a second. I just ran to get here. In typical me mode, if you know me and I'm wearing a hat and I look like this, it means that I am running to get somewhere.

Okay. Good morning. Speak, wonder. So I am Shannon. I am not a clinician. I am not a mental health professional. I'm a human with lived experience raising a child who's on the autism spectrum. He actually also was recently diagnosed with asd, or, I'm sorry, adhd, as well as anxiety. So we've got the threesome diagnosis, which is amazing. I myself also have generalized anxiety disorder, which is, you know, something. Something to deal with. And then I also have CPTSD myself. So I have all the things when it comes to mental health stuff that's happening.

Good morning. Stuff. Irwin, nice to see you. Hope you feel better soon. Okay, so do we have any Taylor Swift fans out there? Tell me in the comments, you know, put some hearts out there. If any of you do you know that she is in her ERAS tour or she's wrapping up her ERAS tour. Okay, I see a heart. So at least there's one out there who is joining me in my sort of like, adolescent, you know, Taylor Swift vibe. Good morning, Jules. Okay, so Taylor Swift is in her ERAS tour, and so she's going through all the different eras of her life and her music life, right?

So she's doing all of her albums. So I today am also in an era. It's a little less sexy than Taylor Swift's eras, but my era is the caregiving era, which you all. I don't understand, but the specific album, if I had to play one right now, or if I had to play, you know, entitle, the title of my album in this era might be the era of the Dirty House. Okay, so my era without the sequined purple dress or whatever she wears on her on her stage is the Dirty House era. Okay, so what does that mean? So if you are caregivers, and I'm guessing you are, since you're here on Caregiver, Day.

It means that we have a lot to do and it means that we're not always going to get everything done because we are also moms to other folks, our non neurodiverse children, we are spouses to our partners, we are employees, right? We have to pay for everything. We are maybe dog owners or cat owners. So we take care of those people. We're friends, we're aunts, we're uncles, we're all the things. So what that means is we're not going to get everything done. And this comes to mind for me. Actually it came from mind for me yesterday as I was in my shower and I was like, oh my gosh, the shower really needs to be like deep cleaned.

And I felt bad about it for a minute, right? Like I was like, you know, whatever my house is, it's clean. It's not, not clean to be, but it's not the way that I kept it at a different point in my life. And I, for a minute, and to be fair and honest, for more than one minute, I @ times feel shame about that. I want my house to look beautiful. I want my house to look like it used to look when I had more time, when I had more resources, when I had all the things and I could do that. But in this era of my life, I have decided that that is not my priority.

That my clean house, this isn't my clean house era. This isn't my perfect meals on the table era. This is my, the part of my dishwasher is broken and my house is imperfectly clean and sometimes so is my car. And that's the era I'm in. And I'm guessing, Stef Irwin, you are in the dirty house era too, right? And I think for us as caregivers, I want to encourage us to say and to know that that's okay, that everything is an era. Everything is a time, everything is a season, everything is a moment. And I remind myself that with my son, and for those of you who have watched me for a long time here on Cadre, we went through a rough patch last year when he was in his 14 to 15 year old age.

He was getting, he was growing, he grew a foot. I mean he's, he's 15 and he's 6 3. And all of those hormones created behaviors that scared me. Right? He was, he was just behaving in ways that were not him. And I was like, oh my God, is this my new normal? But the thing was, it was an era. And I'm grateful to know that now I'm grateful to be on the other side of that. And his dad and I talk about that and like how we got through it and how grateful we are that it's over. And so I'm reminding myself today and then obviously reminding you that this is an era.

Your dirty house, Jules. You're in the dirty house era. You guys, we actually have a club, so I feel like maybe we should just make those little friendship bracelets and then it should say like dirty house era. So I don't know, I'm not crafty. If anyone else out there is, go for it. Let's create those. Let's just, let's get that going. And the Caregiver Cadre sphere. But it's an era and shaming ourselves for what we're not doing right isn't helpful. And it makes 1000%, oh my God sense, a thousand percent sense that our houses are going to be dirty right now because we're taking care of others.

Steph Irwin this morning, who is a caregiver for a son who is neurodiverse and her entire family as well. And I believe her mom was talking this morning about how she was sick this week because she's been taking care of others and hasn't had the chance to take care of herself. And I think when we think of the order of importance, our dirty house is always going to fall at the bottom, right? If our health and our loved ones health and being there for each other and laughing and living is on a list and then they, you know, the clean shower, I all day long, I'm gonna pick all the other things.

Dirty house hour club, baby. Thank you, Steph Irwin. So yeah, you guys, I hope that helps you today. I'm self talking myself. Obviously a lot of my lives end up being that for myself. I wanna give myself that grace so that when I do go take a shower today, which I will, I promise someday I'm gonna show up on here and you guys, I'm gonna be like, I will actually, maybe I'll be in my Taylor Swift full sequined purple outfit from her era tour and I'll surprise everyone. But I'm just trying to remind myself that when I get in my shower today and it's not perfect, that that's okay.

And that the other things I'm doing matter more today. So that is what I have for you today. Friends continue to join us here at the Caregiver day on Cadre Gilbert's joining us. My little dog. And we go back and watch stuff for everyone if you haven't watch Speak Wonder. Coming up, Kathy Joy, she's amazing. We have our Mac clinicians joining us and actually tonight I'll be back at 8pm CST Central Standard Time doing a live Q and A with Jen Dieterich. Our friends at Mac Midwest Minnesota Autism center, they do serve the Midwest.

They're going through a rebrand right now. We're going to talk about essentially like when is the right time for intervention which is always, there's always a time for intervention. So if you have people in your lives who need to hear that in a loving way, join us tonight on Cadre at 8pm so we love you. Thank you guys for being here. Jules, Steph, Irwin, everyone else here, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love seeing you. Thanks for being a part of this dirty house era club. We'll see you guys soon here again in the Cadresphere.

Bye, guys.