A reflection on caring for those who care for others, using the household dogs' grief and shifting roles after a loss to explore how caretaking changes and adapts.
Cadre: I hope the world that you are existing in right now is one that you can find yourself in. We are always where we are with what we have. I'm gonna talk about caring for those people who care for other people. And I think we can learn a lot from stepping outside of our species for moments.
Caregivers out there, you may feel quite often when things change that you need to change in all of the ways. But be prudent. You don't have to be everything for everybody. And you can still be everything youneed to be.
Hey, Cadre, how are we today? It is Thursday, still in August, and the world that I'm in right now looks. Looks calm, looks present, looks peaceful. But as we know, if we go one step to the right, one to the left, one forward, one back, everybody's world in which they're existing is a little bit different. So I hope the world that you are existing in right now is one that you can find yourself in, because that's where you are. My undergraduate work was in kind of the study of belief, the study of why people believe, what they believe, how they believe and all those things.
There's a piece of scripture that says, where the tree falls, that's where it lies. And I love that because there's nothing profound to it in. In actuality. But in our reality, people go, wow, that's deep. Where the tree has fallen, that's where it lies. There's nothing profound about that. We are always where we are with what we have. You can go ahead and say the mind is. The mind can take us to different places and mind over all those things, but in reality, we are where we are. So I hope that where you are right now is a space that you can root into.
Obviously, if you're signing in to join your friends here in the Cadre sphere, you're doing that bold act of saying, here's where I am, and that is enough. So I'm going to dive in for a moment. I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad you're here. I know what I know, and I care about you. On Thursdays, a lot of times, you see people jump in and talk about the act of caring for others. I'm gonna go a meta experience today, and I'm gonna talk about caring for those people who care for other people. And I'm even gonna take it out of people and I'm putting it into dogs, because at the end of the day, I am more dog than I am human.
And. And I think we can learn a lot from stepping outside of our species for moments. So my oldest pup passed away on Sunday. So now the younger brother, the middle dog, is the oldest in the house. Now, unfortunately, they didn't get to. I always like doing in home euthanasia. So then other animals and all the energies in the house can go, okay, this being is now no longer in body. And then the change in the brain happens. But unfortunately, Hamilton didn't get to go in the house. So Jefferson and Willow are kind of still in the.
Is he coming home? Okay, maybe he's not coming home. There's a lot of people having big feelings. Maybe something happened. So there's that, that dissonance. But Jefferson, who has always been the supervisor and the manager of the space, Jefferson cares for everything and everyone and pulls people to where they're supposed to be and reminds people of things. So in essence, Jefferson is the caretaker of the house. And now where Jefferson used to take care of Hamilton and Willow and, and both of us, he's going, well, how do I care?
How does my caretaking change? What do I need to do and who do I need to be in order to to do my job? And there are times I'm seeing Jefferson go, I'm trying something different and it's hard and it doesn't feel right, but I feel like I'm supposed to do something different. Here's an example. So Hamilton, oldest puppy, now dead. Willow, youngest puppy, they always loved getting their ears cleaned with these kind of spa smelling wipes together. So Hamilton and Willow would sit on the rug and we'd clean their ears.
And Jefferson did not. Jefferson's kind of touchy. Jefferson's kind of like me. Jefferson's leave me alone type of creature I am too. So Jefferson would always stay far away whenever the ear cleaning would happen. Ever since Sunday when Hamilton died, Jefferson's been like, okay, I need to have my ears clean now because Willow needs someone to do this with. And you can just see him sitting there like, I don't want to do this. The first couple of days, I'm like, yeah, okay, Jefferson will clean your ears too.
And then I realized I'm like, Jefferson, you don't need to clean your ears. Like, you don't like doing this. And for you to take care of Willow, you don't have to change who you are and where your resting state is in order to do a good job. So now all of a sudden, Jefferson now sits next to Willow while she's cleaning her ears. And that's the journey. He sits, he watches, and that's okay. Caregivers out there, you may feel quite often when things change that you need to, you need to change in all of the ways.
There are changes that you may absolutely have to make that you want to make, that are hard to make, but you choose to make because you see that you have to do it. But be prudent. You don't have to be everything for everybody. And you can't be everything for everybody, which is why sometimes it feels so less than or so never enough. So wiggle in the middle. Ask yourself. Do I have to do this thing? The answer is, yeah, I have to do it. Okay, do it. But one out of every 100 things, you may go, I don't have to do this.
And you can still be everything you need to be. So it's a lesson from Jefferson today. Hope you're doing good.
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