Harbor Pilots

Hello family. It's 11 o'clock Eastern where I reside in beautiful Erie, Pennsylvania. We have a sun-shiny day. I'm just skipping a beat from the lakefront. I feel blessed to be able to say that. I visited one of the beaches last evening. My name is Kathy Joy. My cottery handle is Speak Wonder because I'm something of a troubadour and a poet. My theme, if you will, is Harbor Pilots as we think of the picture of safety for this month of September in the cotter sphere, of all of us in boats sailing side by side from what might be a calm sea or perhaps a rough one coming into port together, having each other's backs.

Today is Thursday caregiver day. Hello Rick. Good morning. TBMC has joined. And to have you. This is a picture of my mom June. She's in the blue. And that 's her sister Jeanette, my aunt Jeanette who is no longer this side of heaven. This was Family Reunion several years ago now. Mom has aged and become dependent physically and in some ways cognitively as well and she lives in a care home. And I was talking with Rick on one of your platforms on resilience. And I shared about how much I love my mom.

I adore her. She's a treasure. And I love having her in my life talking to her on the phone. I have many colleagues and friends who have not had their mom or dad for some time. And I treasure that I still do. And also she tries me crazy. Yeah. So I was telling Rick and I'm telling you today that when I walk into the room, I become her 12 year old daughter. I'm a 60 something and autonomous have been living on my own for quite some time. I could drive a car. I can get dressed. But when I walk into mom's room at the care home, I am 12 and I should not miss curfew.

And have I taken care of this and have I done that. And it is her go to mode because I'm her baby. I'm literally the baby. There are three of us grown children. I'm the youngest. And it drives me nuts. And yet that's how it is. And Rick, you mentioned careg iver fatigue, a term that I had not really necessarily heard that way before in so many words . And it was validating. It helped me breathe a little easier to know that there is a fatigue connected with caregiving, whether it is hands on, helping with all the stuff or whether it is more cerebral as in taking care of administrative stuff.

I take care of all of her finances. And I'm the person that the nurse calls if there's a health issue or whatever. And so it's like I'm always on like I'm carrying a beeper and I'm always on call. Please. I'm not complaining. I am so happy to still have her. My momma, Junebug in my life. I'm so happy that I can go see her and maybe occasionally FaceTime because she doesn't know that technology, but there are a couple of nurses who will take time to help her with it and show her my grands, her great grands on the phone and have meaningful conversations with her.

There's so much that's life giving to being a caregiver. And at the same time, there's a poll, there's a fatigue and we need to create space and safety for that. Today in my promotional for cadre, I said that I would talk about a forest bath and a primal scream and a circle of safety. I may get to that, but I have something I'd like to talk about first. I feel like there's been a shift, like a wrinkle. A wrinkle that has come into the universe and my heartbeat has been recalibrated. It beats, it thumps differently.

It thumps differently, you guys. It's like it's health beat and I don't know if it's going to thump the same ever. And you know what this feels like? It feels like 9/11 all over again. And here it is 9/ 11 on the calendar. We lost Charlie Kirk. And I have to talk about it. And I will talk about it, especially considering our theme in the cadre sphere of safety when the unthinkable happened yesterday, when he was assassinated, shot down, cut off at the age of 31. You may not know who the heck he is.

You may be googling him right now. It's Charlie Kirk, K-I-R-K. All I can say is we need restraint, we need kindness. The cadre sphere is already brimming with these attributes. Let's rest in those and feel safe. We need what we already have in cadre, kindness, generosity, decency, decent behavior toward one another. We have that. Let's embrace it. Lavish love, lavish affection for who we are, our differences, our similarities, our struggles and our triumphs. We have access to this every day and in many forms on cadre, which is continuing to emerge and grow and thrive.

Thanks to the leadership and the folks tuning in, the contributors, it's organically unfolding into something that is special becoming even more of a treasure. And I'm glad to be along for the ride. I'll just say this and I'm going to read it because it's on my heart. So I wrote it out. I want to say no matter where you land, ideologically, no matter where you stand in your God-given right to have your own opinion, regardless of your vote, your political bent, no matter how you land as a person of faith or a skeptic, for the sake of the grieving today out of respect, out of decency.

We need to agree on this one thing, these facts. These are facts. These are like bullet points. This is like hard news, you guys. A life was stolen. A patriot was silenced. A regular guy named Charlie Kirk, who invited great conversations on college campuses, even at the table of his enemies, has been removed from any further conversations, any continuing influence or healing. A college campus is changed forever in Utah and a widow named Erica put her children to bed, her small children to bed for the first time without their dad.

These are the facts. I couldn't not mention it on cadre. So y'all, I'm choosing to honor Charlie Kirk's legacy and pray for his widow Erica and show kindness to my mom, to my brothers, to my friends, to my dog, and to strangers. Showing kindness, we sure do need it. We sure do need it. A safe place to land. I've described cadre as a blanket fort, a place to both retreat and advance. By that, I mean, we can land softly in under the table with blankets draped and feel safe and warm and have a cup of hot cocoa, maybe with mini marshmallows in it.

And we can feel comforted, consoled, seen and heard, noticed. But it's not just a retreat, cadre. It's also a place to advance from. It's a place to gather our wits about us and reset process and then emerge a little stronger, a little more courageous, and a whole lot more compassionate. cadre is a retreat and a place to advance from. We come in for sustenance, we go out with courage, with intention. Primal scream therapy. When I was a newly minted window, yeah, I'm looking out the window and I see birds and forgive me, but I have a cup of Pete's coffee sitting on the counter and I'm just going to hop up and get it.

Thank you. One moment. Thank you. Don't go away. This piece, y'all. Best coffee ever. This is called the sun something sunshine mist or something. And I drink it straight up black. It's so good. I didn't want it to get cold. Thank you for your indulgence. Rick says it's good and important to talk about these things especially in the compassionate way you do. Thank you, Rick. It is important. We can't go through this day without mentioning the devastation and the loss. It doesn't matter if you knew the guy.

Doesn't matter if you have to Google him. Charlie Kirk. 31 years of age gone. Back to the forest bath and the primal scream. That's what I started with when I decided I needed my copy. And here I am distracted again because it says on my mug, grandma established 2021. I'm actually called Omar and the way my daughter and son were announced that they were having a baby. It was December 2020, so it was Christmas. And this was my Christmas present. And I read grandma. I thought, oh, that's nice. What's this?

It took me a hot minute to figure out I was about to become a grandmother . And then later I would be called Omar, which is German. If my husband were still living, he would be Opa. He was German. I carry on that legacy in his honor and memory. Omar. And I get to see my grands today. Tilly and Ollie. So when I was a newly minted widow, my friends came to my place of work. They had permission to basically kidnap me. Spirit me away to the woods. They had asked my board of directors. I was a director at a senior center.

And they had contacted the board and said, can we just take Kathy? We feel she's returned to work too soon. And we just need for her to have a day. And it was agreed upon. And I was snatched away. Didn't know where I was going. They said, hop in the car. Three devoted and wonderful friends who are still in my life this moment. And they said, well, first we're going into the ancient forest, which is the Allegheny Forest, and to a place called Heart 's Content. It's a lovely name for some wild lands in the hills of Pennsylvania in the Allegheny National Forest, Heart's Content.

As I recall, Linda was driving and she kept driving and we kept going up the mountain, woods and woods and more woods. And then she stopped the car. And then one of my other friends, Pat, she said, okay, Kathy, we're all getting out and we're going into the forest. I said, cool? Okay. You know, I was along for the ride. And I felt and was comforted by the fact that they were ministering to me in those moments and offering me some consolation in the midst of my desolation at the sudden and unexpected loss of my husband, Roger.

So we went into the woods. We formed a circle. I think it was Pat first and then Linda and then Val and then me on their cue, I started screaming. We were all screaming, like feral cats, like wild things and it was cleansing. It was amazing. We held hands. As I recall, we sort of gripped each other's shoulders in this tight circle of safety and we screamed, guttural, loud, ugly screams. This wasn't even as pretty as elk bugling screechy screams just from the depths. Later, I remembered Linda had just been divorced.

She was screaming from her loss and her disappointment, her betrayal and her shift in her future. Grief takes many forms. I remember Pat had lost a job. A job she loved was laid off. Her primal screams were primal and cleansing and necessary. We all had something to release. And it was as though you guys, it was as though the forest canopy was embracing us, was looking down on our circle and encircling us in a place of safety and respite and yes, to a degree, escape and escape we did and scream we did and it wasn't weird.

It was something I'd never done before and haven't done since and learned later that some people, therapists and friends like mine call it primal scream therapy cathartic. You should try it. When I said forest bath, what I mean by that is I believe it 's Japanese. I should probably look that up, but it emerged from a different country than ours and that is the act of walking in the woods. It's like bathing in the green and the foliage and being encircled and embraced and surrounded by the beauty that is the creation of our creator.

Breathing into your lungs, the wonderful, wonderful oxygenated air that emits from these trees and flora and fauna, a forest bath. So next time you go walking in the woods and someone says, hey, what you been up to? You can say, well, I've been forest bathing. Hey, why not? Rick, am I still on here? Could you send me like an emoji or a heart? I just sometimes I get a little freaked out, wondering if I'm still alive. I think I am. Yeah. So here it is 17 past the hour. I think I'm supposed to go 15 minutes.

But I have a poem. Of course I do. I have a poem to read to you. It is not mine. This is by Edwin Markham. And when I googled it, because I wasn't terribly sure, even though I've memorized it, I wasn't sure if I had all the lines and I wanted to be absolutely certain. And whenever I can, oh good, I'm still on. Keep going. Hey, Andy Mack. So glad to have y'all. You're the best. Do you love my earrings? These are for dog moms. Because I have a little corgi who's asleep over on the sofa. Oh, Suncatcher.

That's the name of my copy. Pete's P-E -E-T, if you want some. Pete's Suncatcher, the best. So at the top of the Google search, it says classic poem. That's so cool. As a wordsmith, a word nerd, I love knowing that a poem that I committed to memory is actually a classic written by Edwin Markham. This is about circles . It's about safety. It is about my mom. When she annoys me, when she assigns my 13- year-old persona to me and morphs back into the day when I was a school kid, and that bothers me, I can envelop her into a circle of compassion.

If you know somebody who is feeling unsafe, unsure, uncertain, perhaps is grieving, perhaps it's the person that you are caregiving, has some anxiety, you can draw a circle around this individual. This poem says it so well. And let me read it to you. It's titled, Outwitted. Outwitted. He drew a circle that shut me out. Arctic rebel. A thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle that took him in. Let's not build walls. Let's draw circles. Let's envelop. Let's encourage. Let's invite.

Let's settle in. Let's be together in a way that is safe. I'm writing down your email right this minute. I mean, I could probably go back and look. CDER and Gmail. Thank you. I need to mention this to the wonderful designers and executives of cadre. It wouldn't be great, you guys, if we had a way to message each other . I think it's called sliding into our DMs. My daughter calls it DMs. You guys, I am definitely in the over 60 crowd because I feel like I'm losing traction with some of the terms and terminology that comes with technology.

Let's draw circles, not build walls. Let's draw people in even when and especially when they shut us out. You're the best. Andy , you have asked about that. Let's keep putting our thumb in their backs and figure out a way to have instant messaging. But in the meantime, I have your email and I want my package . Rick Andy Mack, who else logged in here? We had. Early on we had someone. Anyway, it 's so great to have you. Pete's coffee is great. We've suffered a loss and we need to draw circles. And primal scream therapy is sometimes the best thing you can do.

Grab a friend , take a forest bath and above all, make sure you have a circle of safety. We'll see you next week on caregiver Thursday here in the cover sphere.