Harbor Pilots

I believe we're live. Hello, you guys. Welcome to Cadre. I'm your girl Speak wonder and I miss the radio days. I was a DJ in another lifetime for about 20 some years in Denver, Colorado. And I loved that little on air light that would come on when we went live. The show Amar is here at Muffy M A F F E. Hello everybody. I love our Cadre names. There's Nikki, there's Jules. Welcome in, welcome in. Great to see you. I'm coming to you live from the shores of Erie, Pennsylvania on the beautiful Lake Erie.

And I'm out on my porch and maybe you can hear some of the ambient sounds of the birds. And there are construction workers across the field. Progress is progress, but I don't have to like it. They're putting in a gas station and mini mart, but it's not right up next to where I live. It's further away, but I can hear the hum and the roar of the excavators. I'm looking across a wild field though, on the other direction and there are just tons and tons of Queen Anne's lace. And I see some. Some people call it lupine, some people call it sweet pea, the purple flower that grows as a weed, I believe.

And it's just gorgeous. Summertime has its own magic, doesn't it? So. Hello, everybody. I'm trying to think of something to put in the comments. Maybe the word freedom so we can underline, even though it's going to be redundant. We can underline this month's theme for July in the Cadre sphere, which is Freedom. I'll do a plug right now for a noon event. It's a live conversation with Nikki Mullet on Freedom around the arena of finances. That's at noon Eastern. Not going to translate your time zone for you because I'm not good at that.

I usually get it one way or the other too early or too late, but it's at noon Eastern, which is my time zone. I. I love my patio. It's a whole additional living space in good weather and I have a couple of nice rocking chairs. There's a little. One of those little tikes play houses for my grandkids. Those things are so sturdy. I've had it for about three years plus and I think all houses and apartments should be made of that stuff because they're indestructible and they hold up in any weather, so.

Oh, it smells good out here too. Just smells like summer. Lots of greenery. If you can see some of the. I don't want to move this too far, but I have a real nice sidey yard. Don't want to make you dizzy either. I feed the birds and the other critters that like to climb into the bird feeders, such as squirrels and chipmunks and the occasional raccoon. I think in the background under the American flag, you can probably see my little patio frog. Let me get to the topic of today. Freedom, of course.

And thank you for writing that in the comments. The word freedom, and I love the emphasis. Freedom makes me think of Kevin Costner in that movie whose title I'm going to forget. Remember when he's like leading the troops? It's a war movie. Come on, somebody help me. Freedom. What's the name of that movie? It's an epic movie. I wouldn't watch it for a while because seemed awfully violent, but war is violent. Whole other topic. Thank you. Love your yard. Thank you. Me too. I put in the topic for harbor pilots.

I don't know if it actually was captured on the promotion for my talk today on freedom to drop anchor. If you've been with me for any amount of time on the Cadre, you know that on caregiver day Thursday, I love to talk in nautical terms. Probably because I decorate with nautical items. I have little paper boats that I make to decorate with and to gift to people. I have an anchor on my living room wall. And I love the idea of harbor pilots. Very briefly, a harbor pilot is a real job in harbors all over the globe where this pilot speeds out to the big vessel in a little motorboat, shimmies up a rope called a Jacob's ladder on the side of the vessel, gets at the helm, the wheel, and takes over for steerage into the harbor.

Because the harbor pilot, who lives there and knows the waters understands where you're going to find choppy waters or sand bars or hidden things beneath the surface that need to be navigated correctly. And isn't that a metaphor for life? And for the caregiving scenario, we need our harbor pilots. We need our friends, our colleagues, professionals, family members, anybody who can join our team of support as we support our loved one. In the caregiving picture, we need the ones who understand the waters, who know where it's choppy and where it's calm, and those lovely, lovely harbor pilots, the people who will get you in to safe harbor.

Today's topic is the freedom to drop anchor. To just let that anchor hit the bottom and hold you still, hold you still and have some respite. Freedom for respite. Respite Nikki, I love that you're enjoying learning about harbor pilots. I like to drop little gems and little tidbits of information about their job. It's really something. And I've actually interviewed a harbor pilot. I should bring that up again. That was from last year. He was amazing and had a treasure trove of stories. And Nikki, you live on the harbor too.

Isn't it great? So Dropping Anchor the Freedom to do so I just submitted an article to a magazine that's targeted for seniors and it's called Silver and today it's called you are not Invisible. I'm not going to bore you by reading it to you, but I am going to share with you a poem that I put within the body of my essay about you are Not Invisible. So when you drop anchor and take a respite, remember that you were seen and understood and loved. And maybe you needed to be reminded of that today. I think sometimes, without inviting it, we feel invisible or irrelevant, perhaps marginalized.

For whatever reasons, we just do. I invite you to drop anchor, sit a minute, and think about the important encounters that are small but important. And these are times when you are seen and understood. The poet Danusha Lamaris says it well in her poem Small Kindnesses. She writes, I've been thinking about the way when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers say bless you when someone sneezes a leftover from the bubonic plague. Don't die, is what we're saying.

And sometimes when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly we don't want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee, hot and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pickup truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other now, so far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, here, have my seat. Go ahead, you first. I like your hat. Beautiful poem, Small Kindnesses by Danusha Lamaris. It certainly captures the small encounters that amount to big moments. Holy, sacred moments. Fleeting, perhaps a one and done with a stranger, but oh so important. We don't necessarily notice those moments until we're willing to drop anchor and sit for a while, look up and look around, meet the eye of a stranger and say, here, have my seat.

I like your hat. The freedom to drop anchor, sit in the stillness, notice the sacred in the moments, receive and offer small kindnesses. That's what I have for you today as we bob and wobble and navigate in the harbor. Blessings on your day. See you next week on Harbor Pilots. Be well, continue to be amazing. And thank you, Cadre. Thank you, Cadre Sphere and the founders of Cadre for making this community so that we can drop anchor and be with one another at any given time throughout the days. Cheers and salutations and land ho.

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