J.C. Lipold reflects on grief, community and sharing hard stories, explains how to join topic communities on Cadre, and recounts a Mother's Against Drunk Driving event where a speaker shared her experience of losing a brother to a drunk driver.
On Fridays, we often talk about grief, loss, about the hard stuff. There are communities here in the Cadre sphere, communities for each contributor. You can join as many communities as you want, or as few.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to emcee the Mothers Against Drunk Driving Law Enforcement recognition event. A woman shared a story about when her brother was killed by a drunk driver. One of the best gifts you can give to other people is sharing what you need to share.
The original recording is always the best, isn't it? That's a Casio keyboard, y'all. Kick it in. Try and keep your hair up to the sky. Love us. They may cause you tears. Go ahead, release your fears. Stand up and be counting. Don't be shame to cry. You gotta be. You gotta be bad. You gotta be bold. You gotta be wiser. You gotta be hard. You gotta be tough. You gotta be stronger. You gotta be cool. You gotta be calm. You gotta stay together. All I know. All I know. Love will save the day. Good morning, everybody.
Honey, how are you doing? Nice to see you. Happy Friday. If it's not a happy Friday, that's okay too. C. lipold. If we've never shared time and space together before, thank you for the opportunity to spend some time with you right now. T. North. Jen Varale. Honey, how are y'all doing? I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad you're here. I know what I know and I care about you. So that's why I show up to share, to hold space and time, to offer thought and perspective, to remind you that you're a candle by being your mirror and maybe be a candle myself.
So you can reflect on things that remind you that you are alive and that you are a verb and not a noun. On Fridays, we often talk about grief, loss, about the hard stuff, about the proof that you're loving, that you're doing the things. As we place all of that together, I want to remind you that there are communities here in the Cadre sphere, communities for each contributor. So, like, if you love Jen Varale's content, you can follow Jen and then Jen's content will move up in the algorithm and it'll be what you see.
You can join as many communities as you want, or as few. You can join communities around topics like grief and loss or parenting or professional development. All the. All the different ideas, right? So if you go up in the corner, you'll go ahead and see the little three lines and you can pull down and go into each of those hashtags and if they interest you, follow them. The reason I bring that up today is we know that grief and loss is one of those things that often isolates us. Yesterday I had the opportunity to emcee the Mothers Against Drunk Driving Law Enforcement recognition event.
350 people who spend their lives attempting to get people off of the roads who can hurt themselves, who can hurt other people. And a lot of times create life shifting, life altering moments that really really ruin other people's lives. There was a woman that I got to present and hand the mic off to yesterday named Nicole. And Nicole told this story about when her brother was killed by a drunk driver. She walked through it all, every. Every moment of it, which still many, many years later, 20 years later, those moments still keep presenting.
She shared about those moments that keep showing up and how people will ask her, hey, are you. Do you have any siblings? Her brother is, or as she now shares, was her only sibling. So she went from being someone who wasn't an only child to being an only child. And she. She shared about how for the longest time, she would say, I. I had a brother, but he. He died in a. In a drunk driving accident. She shared how when she was writing his obituary, she needed to write that he accidentally died or died in an accident, a car accident, because if she didn't, people would assume since he was so young, that he must have taken his own life or died by suicide.
She came to the place in the conversation where she shared, you know, I just started saying that I'm an only child. But she saw how uncomfortable she made other people by sharing her truth, by sharing her reality. And her grief and loss led her to going, I don't want other people to be uncomfortable because of it, so I'm going to lie and keep my truth inside. Now. There are times that we always have the opportunity, for our own sake, to share what we want to share and not share what we don't want to share.
She wasn't talking about that. She was talking about, I'm going to not share things for other people's sake, for other people's comfort after she was done. A lot of my life is getting to speak after people share moments like that. It's not a fun thing. It's a beautiful opportunity and a gift that I. That I receive to hold space for people after moments, before moments, in the midst of moments. But those are the hard ones, because what do you say after someone for 20 minutes, rip the. Rip themselves open to share the hard stuff.
And I thanked her. I thanked her for not making us be comfortable in this story because there's 350 people who spend their lives day in and day out, getting people off of the roads who may end up doing to other people what this drunk driver did to her brother. And she. She smiled, she nodded, and everybody in the room was like, yep, we're doing here in the Cadre sphere is destigmatizing the stuff that we think we're supposed to hide. So if you're in the grief and loss journey, and as my friend Kelly Grusclog says, if you love somebody, you will grieve.
So if you're not grieving yet, you will be. Don't hide that stuff because you think other people need you to hide it if it's good for you in the moment of going. Well, right now, I need to not expel energy in this way. But one of the best gifts you can give to other people, and surely that you can give to yourself is sharing what you need to share when you need to share it, feeling what you need to feel when you feel it. You gotta be y'all. There's no other choice. It's this fight that we live in.
This world, the fight of life is going, what do I need when I need it? How do I give myself that? The cool thing is your body's on your side. You have a mind that thinks curious things. You have a heart that feels intuitive things. You have a voice that can speak truthful things. And you have a being, a body that can be present. That's enoughness. Y'all have a great rest of your Friday. I'll see you tomorrow morning, 8am for a little enoughness talk. Have a good one, y'all. You gotta be strong, you gotta be wiser, you gotta be hard, you gotta be.
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