Comedy Through The Chaos W/Miss Shannan

Hello and Happy Thursday Cadre Sphere. I hope that you are doing well. Just to bring you up to speed, your blue hued friend. I'm Ms. Shannon Paul. I'm a comedian, corporate speaker, voice actor, event MC and benefit auctioneer who hubs out of the great state of Minnesota. I happen to be sitting in a parking lot right now in the city of Golden Valley, Minnesota. In case you are wondering. I am leaving a fundraiser that I recently did. Hello. @ Andi Mac. You'll like this story. Leaving a fundraiser.

Hello Christina F. Hello. Good to see your name in the chat. Good to see you. Welcome in. Just left a fundraiser where I was the benefit auctioneer at mc. Hello Rick. I was the benefit and auctioneer for an event here in Golden Valley, Minnesota at a country club for an organization called Haiti Outreach. And Haiti Outreach is an organization that supports the people of Haiti in a very specific way. What they do is they come in and they not only provide infrastructure and training, but they help them build sustainable water reclamation facilities.

And so instead of just coming in and building or digging a well or doing those things, they train the Haitian people in those communities to be able to not only hello Rick. Not only to be able to put in the well and provide that infrastructure, but they train them to maintain the water system once they're in there. So it's not one of those situations where once the well goes down, there's no one there to repair it or to water treat the, to treat the water or to test the water and see if maybe there's something that is harmful to the community.

And so they do the entire thing where they provide the resources for the Haitian people in the community to be able to do this. So I was very happy to be able to support them and help them raise some funds over the lunch hour and to encourage some more people and to educate some more people on what it is that Haiti Outreach does. They've been around for 28 years, I believe, so they do have some staying power. And it was a very rewarding thing to do this morning to bring you to the stories that I often share, especially here on these Thursdays for comedy through the chaos where it is caregiving or Thursdays.

I also am the proud parent of an adorable 17 year old son who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. And so this morning as I was trying to get him off to school, he was very much in full teenager mode, like kind of just doing that whole thing where it was like how many blankets can I put on my head? At the same Time and. And just really just cocooned up in his bed, which has kind of been his MO For a while in this particular aspect of his teenager. Dumb. And so some days I have a lot of time to be able to go, all right, continue to be a burrito.

And some days, like today, I'm like, I gotta go to work. You gotta get out of the. You gotta get out of the bed and get it moving. And I'm glad we were able to do it. But I thought about this yesterday as well. And yesterday here in the Twin Cities, it was a gloomy morning. It was a gloomy day. Very much one of those days that if you had the option to stay in bed, he would like to stay in bed. It's like, I feel it. But we still were in a situation where I needed to kind of get him to eventually start moving.

And so in my role, I'm talking to him, I'm trying to get him moving, and he's just not completely grumpy, but definitely not in a, yeah, there's going to be any sort of forward motion happening. And so I told him, you know, I told him, I said, I get it. It's a gloomy day. And so when I said, it's a gloomy day, he perked up a little bit, peeked out from under the blankets a little bit more and was like, it's a gloomy day. And I was like, right, it's a gloomy day. I said, but it's not going to stay gloomy.

It'll be better. And it seemed like, at least in that situation for him, that me just being able to name it, that acknowledgement that it was a gloomy day and that it is the kind of day that if you had the luxury of staying underneath all the blankets that you could find, that you would. If that choice was an option take, just wasn't something that we could do for a long time. But acknowledging that it was a gloomy day gave us the ability to go. Even though it's gloomy right now, doesn't mean that it's going to stay gloomy.

That those clouds eventually will pass. Eventually that sky will be blue, or at least some variety of it. Hey, Speak. Wonder. Good to see you. And it may not look as vibrant as my. Thank you very much. I'm feeling very onion like today. And although it may not be the clearest of skies, you will eventually have that transition. And that is one of my favorite mindfulness practices that I use personally, is that ability to zoom out and think about the concept that at any given time, if you're looking up at the sky and all you see is clouds, if you zoom in, yes, you're going to see more cloud and that cloud will look like it would never possibly pass.

But then if you're able to zoom back out going, there may be patches of blue, there may be patches of white, there may be patches of gray, but there's other things. And to be able to see that there's going to be motion and that you will move past whatever it is that you're dealing with at the. At the moment and trying to figure out a way to remind not only myself, but my kiddo that things will continue to move. And you're right, it is gloomy right now, but it's going to be different. It may not be better.

I don't like to always tell them that things are going to be better because that's a very fuzzy concept to talk about anyway. But you are going to feel different than right now. Right now you feel like you have to sit here and play. Play burrito in your bed. But later you might feel like. I do feel like hanging out with my friends. I do feel like doing some of the work that I have at school. I do feel like tapping into whatever the difference is. But naming where you are right now gives you that ability to continue moving past that into the next step.

So I was glad I was able to share that with him. I was glad that he was a little bit more, oh, successfully in forward momentum mode this morning so I could make it to this event. I do. I will be honest with you. Like, I, I think I look pretty good, but I wasn't in a position where I was able to do my makeup at home. So I have a kit that I carry, can carry with me that has all my stuff. So this was literally me getting to the event that I said I was going to get in, walk into at 10:30am Central.

I got there at 10:15 and, and then got my, my travel makeup kit and threw some makeup on in the car. And for what it was at this luncheon, at least I look like I tried. That's it. You just gotta look like you tried. And you know, back to the concept of things changing here. I'll spin you around. Yeah, See, we do have blue sky today. So those clouds did pass. Even though it didn't necessarily seem like that was going to be the case yesterday morning, they did pass. So what is it that you have in your life right now that it would behoove you to Zoom out a little bit.

You know, is there something that you're so focused on where the frame is right now that if you were able to name it, oh, thank you. Speak. Wonder if you're able to name it, would it give you that ability to go, yeah, but it might keep moving. Things will be different. Being able to put a title on it sometimes gives us that ability to go, and here's where it is at this moment, and then allow it to keep moving and allow it to keep passing and allow it to be part of the chaos that eventually we will go through.

It doesn't have to be perfect at any given moment, but it is something that we could go, all right, it will eventually blow away. I'm glad that that was a lesson that we got to talk about in our household. I'm glad that it's something that we get to talk about. And explaining to a kiddo who's on the autism spectrum, the concept of impermanence is actually something that makes more sense than some of the other abstract concepts that I talked to him about. He does seem to get a little bit more of, okay, I did like the way that it was, but here's the way it is now, and that I'm very grateful that he has the ability to grasp some of that.

Yeah, he does longingly look back on things that he likes, you know, and want some things to stay the same. But at least I have the idea, the. The ability to talk to him about how. Well, sometimes things look different. Yeah. That packaging and that thing that you wanted, it looks different now. That thing that you like to eat. Well, we're eating something different now, or it came out a little bit different this time because those things are continually going to be in motion. And explaining to him that that is the nature of things.

It's not all the. Always the easiest one, but it's also something that's probably hard for a bunch of us as well, is to sit there and go, as much as I loved a thing, as much as I would like to anchor myself to whatever that thing was, it's gonna keep moving. And if it's not moving, then maybe I'm the thing that's moving. And so that ability to go, all right, constrained movement happens in so many different directions for us. It's complicated. It's complicated. So if you could think about that throughout this week, I would appreciate it if you could think about some things that, if you.

Once you put a name on, might make it easier for you to sit there and allow it to pass I would appreciate it. And just in general, I appreciate all of you. This as I said before, is usually my busiest month. And so to be able to anchor back to this community, to know that I'm able to share community and resources and ideas and all these things with all of you that are here, I am incredibly grateful for we do encourage you to continue to let us know how we can support each of you in this community, how we can give you more information, more resources, more touch points so that when you are in the midst you have something that you can fall back on until you are able to find the type of support that is most what you need at the time.

Whether that is a physical care provider, whether that is a mental health provider, whether that's a good friend, whether that's us knowing that those things are all in your toolkit. We are grateful to be part of that. So let us know how we can continue to grow that I will be back here on Saturday morning at 10am Central for the parenting edition of this thank you Andy. I'm grateful for you as well. Thank you Speak Wonder. I appreciate you. I, I, I, I appreciate being one of your self harbors and I appreciate you as well.

You give me such amazing pearls of wisdom and there's such a, a steady, steady force in a world that is continually swirling. So thank you for sharing as well and same thing for you Rick as well, you know, and it's always, always grateful to see your name pop up in the ch. Thank you to all of you who are helping us build this community and letting us know what we can do to support you. When and where is important. When, where and why and how it is. It is important to all of us. So we are going to continue to work on that.

We talk about that all the time, all of us contributors here in the Cadre sphere. So speak Wonder, I'mma check you out in the replay. I missed you because I was talking to the Haiti outreach community, but I always appreciate you darling. So all of you, I am off to pick my kiddo up at school and get him landed before I head off to whatever our next adventures are. So I hope that the day is treating all of you well. If not, I remind you, shame on it, not shame on you. And I'll see you guys back here on Saturday morning.

Be well everybody.