Comedy Through The Chaos

Oh, hello, hello, hello. And Happy Thursday Cadre community. I am Ms. Shannon Paul and I'm only a minute late. I'm giving myself credit for that. I am actually sitting in my car, which I know a lot of our contributors do, and we're getting very accustomed to seeing contributors, not only on this app, but in a lot of our app, talking for men on their side, their car. So I feel very on trend. If you're joining us live today, as I said, I'm Ms. Shannon Paul. Welcome to Ms. Shannon's Comedy through the chaos here in the Cadre sphere that we do at 2pm Central.

Hello. Hello, Jen. Hello. Hello. Hello, Junk food junkie. Sorry, everybody was a minute late. I am sitting in my car outside of my gym that I go to here in Crystal, Minnesota. It's one of the things that I try to do as often as possible, even as a caregiver. Hello, Jules, you know, hello. And so I try really hard. Speak Wonder, good to see you again. I hope that you are feeling better than this morning. If. If anyone was blessed enough to see Speak Wonders live stream this morning she mentioned that she wasn't feeling well.

Jen, hello to you as well. And so I hope that you are feeling better and you've gotten a chance to go and get some more ice chips. Lovely, lovely. Speak Wonder. I send you all kinds of health and warm wishes. So it's interesting that I go to this gym and it's a women's gym, it's called Cake Body and I think that that's interesting. And I. It's usually like small groups and so you get to know each other really well. Yes. Onions. I'll talk about onions in a second. And one of the things that I love about this gym is that you do get to know each other very well.

There are a few men that do come to this gym, but it's mostly women, so it's nice to be part of that community. And the other interesting thing about this particular gym is that it happens to be. I'm glad you're feeling better. Speak Wonder. It happens to be one of those gyms where it's like both ends of a spectrum and both of them require strength, but they're doing different areas and different things that we deal with. So it's called Cake Body Fitness Studio and Pole Fitness Gym. So there's the front rooms that have like all these weight machines and these really heavy weights and barbells, and that's the part that I of hang out in.

And then in the other part of the gym There's a bunch of dance studios that are like what you think if there was pole fitness studios, which takes a whole different variety of strength. And I have not been doing that. I am out of my I go wear really tall heels and try and swing around things phase of my life. I am in the strength for a purpose thing, which is something I was able to talk to my trainer and the person that does these group fitness classes here because she's, you know, that person that also is trying to really make sure that you have the strength that you need and what you're doing.

So I've talked to her about some of the situations I've had with my kiddo. So for those of you who are joining me for the first time, I happen to be blessed to be the mother of an adorable 16 year old kiddo who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. He's also incredibly strong and officially taller than I am and weighs quite a bit more than I do. And so when I'm here strength training, I'm thinking about it not only from the perspective of a perimenopausal woman who is like trying to figure out the best way to maintain her health and her bone density and all of those things, but also what can I do to maintain my situational awareness, to be in a situation that if I need to provide some sort of physical intervention to make sure that my son is safe, what can I do that as well?

Which is I think an interesting thing that we think about from the position of caregivers. So what can I do if I needed to? If you, for those of us who were in that sandwich generation, maybe you're in a situation where you're helping care for a loved one that needs assistance bathing or standing or those things. And so just kind of the additional weight that we carry as caregivers is something that I hope that you feel honored when you speak to all of us here as contributors in this realm on on Thursdays.

The other thing I was thinking about and I, I brought this up before and it kind of goes back to being an interesting onion. There's probably lots of things about me that you could guess from what you've seen here in the Cadre sphere, but you wouldn't necessarily know long term. And that goes back to what I had said earlier this week when I was on with jc, our friend and we were doing our Cadre live kind of little get to know you thing that we did Tuesday morning. You can look for that replay. But talking about the different layers that we are and the kinds of onions that we are and that you pull all these layers and you get to see a lot more about people.

And one of the things I wanted to talk about today is the concept of what is a mess and if messes are in your best interest or not sometimes. So I'm going to bring this story up and it's interesting because I was talking to my. It's what, what sticks with you as a caregiver and what you just kind of rush past because unfortunately I had an aggression spike in our house for the first time in months. But that didn't really like, we got through it. I was so glad he did a much better job of self regulating and bringing his light switch back on than he had in the past.

So, like, cool. The thing that seemed to throw me off most this week is earlier this week I was downstairs doing his laundry. I still need to do my laundry, but I was doing his laundry. So while I was down there doing the laundry, he was upstairs messing around. And by the time I had come back upstairs, which, you know, of course didn't seem like that long, but it doesn't take much, he'd gone into my room and dumped out all of my dresser drawers. So like just clothes everywhere, just a pile of clothes.

And if you look in, I put a posted, I posted earlier in our community, in the parenting community about this pile of clothes that I was surprised to come up and find, which I think is interesting. It's like, what about what was in my drawers? Did he feel the need to go here and do that? Like what? You know, I don't think he was looking for anything. I don't know he's doing. He just willy nilly went through and emptied, you know, four of the six drawers on my dresser. And at first I was like, come on, buddy.

And I did a giant sigh because this was on Monday night. I was a giant sigh because I didn't want to deal with it. And the thing that I did next is I realized that I had been meaning to go through these drawers for a couple of months. Like, you know how you have the best of intentions to go through and actually organize? You know, what I do is I'm not minimalist by any means, but I do try to go. This is the amount of things that I'm willing to have and I have a space for these things because we have a modest sized house.

But, you know, I think that that's being a good steward of our current resources. And then I kind of go, well, you know, if I'm going to get anything new, that means this. Today is the day of difficult choices. And I'm donated. I happen to donate it to thrift stores here in Minnesota that support the Autism Resource center, which is a great resource for a lot of our families here in the Twin Cities. So I try and do that. So exactly. Speak Wonder Giant side. It was like. I mean, it was almost cartoonish in nature.

It was the most. Like, you could see the sigh in my shoulders and just. Okay. And then it made me just realize that although it was a mess right then, it was something that I had meant to deal with. And because it wasn't actually a mess yet, it was an inconvenience. It was crammed in. It was making things fit. Because it wasn't an actual mess, it was easy for me to continue to put it off. It was. I'll get to that later. It never was a priority. Even though it was something that I wanted to do and I knew that it would be in my best interest to do and actually support some other people to do it.

It didn't get to the status of being a priority because it wasn't actually a mess yet. So after I finished sighing what I did, because that was Tuesday night and I wasn't gonna. I mean, sorry, that was Monday night. I didn't want to deal with it. I pushed it all off of the bed onto the floor. I rearranged my mental emotional schedule for Tuesday night and said that that would be when I deal with it. And I pushed it all into a pile over on my bedroom floor and I went to bed and I got up Tuesday and did all the things that I needed to do.

And then I got home on Tuesday. I got him settled and then I went to work. And so I made myself some tea. I got everything out. I even got expend a little extra time like backing the little dust bunnies out of the drawer because they're already empty, so I might as well clean them out all the way. And I, you know, ended up filling three bags of things that I got to donate to other people to make space for my actual things to be able to use them appropriately to save myself time because they weren't so jammed in there and crumpled and wrinkled that it was more work to use them than to just shove them back in the drawer.

And then this morning I dropped them off at my, you know, my thrift store of choice and hopefully they get to go and bless somebody else. So I tell you that long story to encourage you to sometimes give yourself a moment, a giant sigh to reframe, because I could have come in there and been, like, super frustrated, and all of that stuff would have been completely valid. It's like, geez, I'm trying to do something for you, and look, you make more work for me. But thank goodness I was able to reframe my mindset on it and go, all right, you, via the universe, are helping me do something that I had planned to do.

Now I get to make it a priority because I knew I didn't want to keep doing come in there every day and see this giant pile of clothes. That's not how my anxiety works. That'll just make it worse. I could only sleep in there one night with it looking like that, but it. It was that reframing. So if any of you have any examples about that, we would love to go ahead and see it. You can go ahead and leave a longer comment later if it resonates with you. Sometimes that life actually provides you a mess, but that mess is actually something that ends up giving you the opportunity to create more alignment, to actually clear some space that'll give you more space to do something else.

It actually might give you what you need, as in an adjustment in your time schedule where it's like, well, I guess I have to take care of this now. And hopefully it's something little like that, because, yeah, I could have put it off. You know, I could have been right now. It's funny how our brains also occasionally go to catastrophizing. I'll be honest with you. The first thing I thought before I got to the giant side when I saw this pile was to not even go through it. Just to take all of the stuff that he had dumped out and put them all in just garbage bags and give them to somebody else and let it be somebody else's pull problem.

So that's real talk. I was like, okay, maybe I'll just not deal with this. But that sigh allowed me to reframe and to reset and to go. This will be fine. And so now I am in my version of Marie Kondo realness. The drawers look great. There's a reasonable amount of stuff in there. I actually came across some stuff that I'm like, oh, wait, you bought this shapewear or you bought these undergarments? You bought, like, stuff that'll actually make my life easier. And. And real talk, you can't tell right now because I just came out of the gym.

I will look cute. I will look more cute now because the Cute stuff was all wadded into the drawer. So give yourself some time and luxury to reframe. When something like that happens. I know that in the midst it quite often looks like, oh my gosh, I do not have the wherewithal, the energy, the adrenal capacity to deal with this, but possibly it might actually be something that's good for you in the long run. So if that's something that aligns with you, feel free to let me know. Go ahead and, go ahead and tap that screen.

Leave some hearts in the chat if that's something that I hopefully gives you a little bit of peace on some of the mess that might be in your life. And I'm also going to give you license to say here's the thing that I bought this week weekend. Thank you, Jen. So yes, I appreciate that. I am back to dovetail into the idea of reframing. Also, what are you describing as a mess and is it as big of a big as a mess as is the reality of the size of your mess? As big as you are allowing yourself to think maybe it really is a little mess, but because you have so much stuff going on, it feels insurmountable.

Maybe it feels like I can't possibly deal with this so I'm just gonna bag it all up and trash it all when really it's a smaller mess but you've letting yourself get so at capacity that you're not able to see it. I bought myself a sign. I was at an event this weekend and they had a couple of local artisans and so I bought a sign that I put up over the doorway when I first go into the house and it says welcome to my definition of clean. Welcome to my definition of clean. Because there are lots of days that if somebody else walked in there, especially if it's one of those HDG HD TV shows where they're trying to like sell my house.

My there my definition of clean would not be there. But for me I'm like, you know what? This is clean. And it's also happy. It's happy for me and it's happy for my kiddo because some of his things are out and these are the things that he's using. So welcome to your definition of clean. Welcome to your definition, hopefully of a small mess and giving yourself that space to be able to exhale instead of calling it a giant sigh. I believe I will be here next Thursday at 2pm Central live to hang out with all of you as we continue to try and support each other as caregivers.

In this space. Regardless of what kind of care you are giving, we hope to be here for you and continue to build this community. As you can see, there are always a wide variety of contributors that not only support one another are here to support you. Feel free to go back through and see all of the great content that came out today and you can see what a champion Speak Wonder was because she actually joined us even though we know she wasn't feeling well. So thank you for that Jen Velli. I appreciate everything that you are doing over there talking in our sober but not somber space as well.

Go and check them out. We know that when we are having these discussions on mental wellness that there is a lot of Venn diagram overlap and so we hope to encourage you to tap into different spaces when you need them and then if there's something that we are not providing to you, that is why we are going to continue to grow this space. So feel free to let us know. So friends, go out there, worry about your little messes and big messes and be the wonderful layered onions that you all are. I'll see you next Thursday.