Comedy Through The Chaos: Parenting Edition

Hello, hello, hello. And happy Saturday to you, Cadre sphere. I am Ms. Shannon Paul. Happy to be joining you for the Saturday edition of Comedy through the Chaos, our parenting edition. If you're not familiar with me, I'll just bring you up to speed. I am a variety of word related things like a comedian, a corporate speaker, a voice actor, an event MC and a benefit auctioneer. I'm also the proud parent of an adorable 17 year old kiddo who happens to be high support's old on the autism spectrum. Hello, Luke, good to see you.

Hello. Happy Saturday in this chilly, chilly environment that we choose to live in. So hello everybody. I think when I noticed when I went out to check in the other room, I think we're at minus five, I think we're at minus five, five below here in the great state of Minnesota, so happen to be joining you from the inside. You know, we're pretty hearty. My kiddo and I were pretty hearty, but I don't think even he wants to go dead. Hello. Speak Wonder. How's it going in Eerie? We have five below right now here in Minneapolis, which is an adventure.

It's an adventure. So happy to be joining you for this edition of Comedy through the Chaos, our parenting edition. And as we've been continuing the conversations of reflection and those things, it's been an interesting process for me because as I mentioned before, I have to have a very 30 degrees and eerie. Oh yeah. Yes. It's balmy there. It's practically the Bahamas. Good for you. Speak Wonder. Yeah, not so much in Minneapolis. But as I was thinking about the concept, like gratitude is something I'm really good at.

Gratitude. Having a gratitude practice, having a compassion practice. Yeah, I think we're technically too cold for snow today, but we got plenty of it last week. So the gratitude practice, the compassion practice, that's something that I find easy to move into those realms. The concept of the reflection tap dances on that line of rumination with me quite often. So I have to be a lot more careful when I'm navigating that. And I always wonder what that is like as far as when other people are doing it.

Like if you find that conflict of reflect, I mean that concept of reflection, challenging on your side, because it's something that I definitely find challenging on my side. And this week I had two reasons to do it because not only is this something that we're processing here in the Cadre sphere, it was also something that one of my other overlapping word related things went into as well. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with a national storytelling organization and podcast and show that they play on NPR called the Moth.

And so the Moth story story slams, which are international. In fact, there's locations all over the the United States. They also do it in they have some in England and some in Australia. I believe they are these monthly different story slams where they encourage people to come and tell stories. Enjoy your word. Thank you very much. So they I, I was a, I, I, I, I say I was a writer, but that's what I got in the store, how I got in the standup comedy. I'll tell you that story one day. Speak Wonder.

So regarding the story slams and the moth, thank you. I'm glad you love the Moth. I am fortunate enough to be one of the rotating hosts here for our Twin Cities Story Slams. And so the way that the Moth works is that you get an opportunity to tell a five minute story, beginning, middle and end, something that is true, something that is your own story and they want you to do it with no notes. So. Well, if you come to the Twin Cities, I'll be happy to invite you. And the way that it works is that they do have a different theme every month for the moth.

So they have a different theme every month for the Moth and you can always see that on their website ahead of time. So it does give you time to Prepare what your 5 minute story with the beginning, middle and end. And hopefully it's something true in your story. You have time to prepare that. So our theme, because I was hosting it this last Wednesday and the theme was Family Matters. Oh, I'd love to have you come out. So yes, I'd love to have you come out. I'll tell you ahead of time. I got all my dates for 2026, so we could plan ahead.

Love to have a cup of tea with you, friend. And if Luke's still here, we'll make sure that Luke hangs out with us too. So the thing that's great about the moth, as I said, is that it gives you an opportunity, especially if you are a writer or a storyteller, to use that prompt to come up with a different story every month. And that's one of those things, is that I choose to, I like to be on your bucket list. So the way the Moth works is I, as much as I can, I try to make sure that I prepare a story even if I'm not going to be at that moth, because it's been a good writing prompt for me as a storyteller and as I'm trying to write different things.

It's just been something I do all the time, whether I'm going to be telling a story at the Moth during that edition or not. But this week I was the host. And when Wednesday's theme was family matters and my variety of storytelling, I always try to make sure that there is humor in it. But also because of the way that the Moth works, it's also good to have some sort of moral of value, a point, some lesson that people can walk away with. So falls very much in alignment with what I do with comedy through the chaos and what we do here in the Cadre sphere and with the theme of family Matters, I found it very difficult.

And part of the reason why it was difficult is that when I was thinking back over stories that I could tell from my childhood or young adult or any of those things, it was really hard for me to find a story that I thought made sense for the Moth for a couple of reasons. One, you only have five minutes. And so many of the stories that I thought back because of the complex relationship I have with my mom and there and what happened when I was a kid, there's a lot of, like, adjacent trauma. There's a lot of layers.

There's a lot of things. And it's very difficult to explain any of those stories to in a way that would be impactful for an audience in five minutes. There's, like, too much to impact is what I decided. The other reason is I didn't want to just focus. Like, the. The first flood of memories that I had were all this negative stuff. Just negative, negative stuff. Stuff that I spend a lot of time working in my mindfulness practice on, but also stuff that I worked on in therapy. Not stuff that I can easily go, hey, everybody, welcome to the Moth.

Let me tell you the story about why I have abandonment issue. It's just way too complex. But when I started thinking back, the last story that just popped to mind that was just truly positive, like, of an experience of my mom and I sitting around doing something that I just truly thought was fun. It was my mom and I playing Jax. We used to play Jax and Speak Wonder. You'll probably know what Jax is, Luke, if you don't know what Jax is. One, it's probably because I don't think a lot of young men play them.

And you might be a little bit too young. But for anybody watching in the replay, if you're not familiar with Jax, Jax was a game where you had these little. Sometimes they were rubber, but Usually they were like metal or aluminum. Little mini spikes. Little spikes. Not dangerous spikes, but spikes. These little things. And you would scatter them in front of you, and then you'd have a rubber ball and you bounce the ball, and then in between bounces, you would scoop up a certain number of spikes, you know, kind of thing.

And that was the. That was the joke. The. The joy of this game is playing jacks. I remember playing jacks with my mom before my sisters were born. So this memory, though, was from when I was probably five or six. And that really stuck with me that I had to go all the way back to being five or six years old to find a unencumbered and unburdened joyful memory of hanging out with my mom. And I find that disappointing. Yeah, I grew up playing Jax. I appreciate you Speak Wonder. It was fun. Now, I might buy some that they feel like that's something that would be very soothing for me to do, you know, these days.

So that really was something that weighed on me that I had to think that far back to find a happy memory. And the thing that I did appreciate about that fact is that that's something on that list of things that I do completely different as a parent and something that I don't necessarily spend a lot of time holding my. Holding my mom accountable for that things, but I do hold myself accountable to go, I don't want my kid to have to go all the way back to when he was five or six to find a happy memory.

I'm glad that I am actively working with him now to have things that come on a regular basis, to have positive rituals and positive interactions that hopefully he can think back and go, remember that cool thing that I did with when I was 17. And hopefully they will continue to do that. So you can go, here's this cool thing my mom did when I was 20 and all these other things, and that is really good to me. And it brought me. So the way that I ended up telling the story is I did bring back. Bring up the fact that I had to go so far into my personal archives to come up with a good memory and how I'm very happy that now I know that that's not the case with my kid.

And so I talked about, and you've probably seen some videos here in the Cadre sphere of some of weekly family spa nights which serve twofold. One, he's a teenager, and I don't think we have conversations with teenagers enough about how just washing your face is a good deal to Wash your face. Just wash your face. You'll feel better. Go wash your face. Wash and moisturize is good for you, especially when you're wearing with hormonal changes and wearing all this other stuff. Good washing of your face will do you some good.

And it also is something where I'm trying to make sure that he has some of these healthy habits and, and rituals so that it's not work like it's not an afterthought. It's something that he just does. And if it's just something fun that mom and, you know, mom and him do, well, hopefully it's something that he sticks with, you know. And so we've turned it into a little fun game that we do where we sit there and we wash our face and we talk about our stories. Our stories. And usually, I mean, we don't watch, neither of us watch soap operas, but we still do watch a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine.

And if you are familiar with, with Thomas and his friends on the island of Sordor, it's might as well be soap operas. I mean, they. Thomas is quite often in his feelings. Thomas is in those feelings. And when he goes into those feelings, the entire island of Sodor gets thrown into disarray over his feelings, his feelings, his egos, some slight that some other engine did. So that's what we do is that we wash our face. We'll do some masks of a variety of different things. And I was, I was happy to be able to share at the moth the variety of different masks that we use, where we have our green tea, our moisturizing ones, we have our turmeric, our turmeric brightening mask.

We also have our one that has it said rose water and rose hips. And I don't know where the hips of a rose are. I don't know where the hips are, but it's quite aromatic. So I'm presuming that it is a curvy girl, this rose, just like me. And yes, oh, Thomas, Thomas. Thomas has got layers on layers and plants on plants. Layers and layers and plants on plants. And so that's what we do is we talk about those things, he and I, my kiddo and I. And it's fun for me and it's fun for him. And it's also very useful.

So I was happy to be able to share that story and to share this particular thing that has helped guide me to help continue make those memories, to focus on how we can have those joyful memories. Memories in an authentic way. Not me, faking it, not me clouding my emotions or doing something else, but making sure that I keep front of mind that what I'm trying to do is provide these for him. Because that would be one of the things that as a parent that I would feel lacking if I got to the end of this journey and felt like I didn't have enough of those opportunities with my kid.

That would be something that bothered me more than whether it was about money, whether it was about what school he got into, any of that stuff. What would bother me is whether I was able to make those happy memories for him to look back on as he aged. So, yes, Thomas is a wonderful mentor for to young people experience their big. Absolutely. And the other thing about those big feelings, I like that he is so emotive. And that has helped my son on the spectrum really learn to be more emotive and to go through some of the emotions.

Because one of the first ways he would communicate with me is that very intense ch, like, because Thomas, Thomas goes from hey to and so I saw, I saw my kid be able to mirror that. So it was very helpful. Helpful. And then the next thing is that he learned what the word cross means. So he come up to me to go, Thomas is cross. And I go, ooh, that means that something might be percolating in there for my kiddo, you know. Thank you very much, Sweet Wonder. I appreciate you, my friend. I appreciate you.

And I hope that this was worth the. The shortening of your visit at one one of our big box stores. So I hope that this was worth you coming home. And you know what I would like to leave you with as the prompt, if you're watching this now or watching this in the replay, is the thought process of me going, well, when's the last happy memory that you have as an adult, thinking back to your childhood and then being honest with yourself and saying, well, do you want to do something different as a parent, as a caregiver?

Do you want to leave a different, you know, lasting legacy of happy memories for that, for the people that you're around now? Because that's something that's in your control. We can't go in a way back machine, a time machine, a tardis, depending on how you want to talk about your timey wiminess? We can't go back and change some of those patterns that we had when we were going through them. Ah, good. I am here with your pocketbook. We can't go back and change some of those patterns for us. But what we can be is the person that we wish we would have had when we were younger.

And that's what I really focus on now is going, you know, I would have liked to have more of these as an adult. I wish that I had more of these opportunities. So by gone, it, I'm going to make sure that I do that for my kiddo. So that is my. My charge and my word to you. Think about that. Think about one of the happy memories that you have as a kid. And then without imprinting that, just go, what? Well, can I make sure that there's more of that feeling, more of that emotion for the kids that I am currently raising or the people that I'm caring for?

And I encourage you to do that because that's actually good for your soul as well. Not cap. Not copying, not going back and trying to recreate, not harboring this information and going, oh, it has to be like this. This is the most joyous time of my life. So it has to look this way. Nothing that I'm doing right now looks like the way it looked when I was a little kid. I'm not saying, hey, buddy, you need to come here and play this game that I used to like when I was your age, But I can't go, what can we do right now?

That when you look back on it, you can go, yeah, that was a good time that I had, and my mom was there. So think on that over the week. Give yourself some space to reflect without rumination. Give yourself a little homework assignment to find some joy and some fun and some humor and something that you can do with your kid outside of all of the stress. Add that into your. Your. Your routines as much as possible for us. I have some good memories growing up in a single mom household. Yeah, I mean, my mom was a single mom, too, so she worked her a** off.

She worked her a** off. And so that I really appreciate. Appreciate all the work that she did for us, but there was also some. A miasma of mess somewhere back in there as well, which I give her grace for, but I choose to not take that forward into this next generation. So take what you need, don't do everything else. I'm gonna look for Jacks. I bet you we could find them online. So do that for yourself. Figure out what the new version of that is. Figure out what you can do as you go forward. For us, it's this weekly, you know, version of going and washing our face.

And we do it together, and we make sure we do it. It's every Sunday night. I make Brenner. We do Sunday night Brenner, because he really is a fan of pancakes and bacon and often asks me for them when it is inconvenient for me to make them, like when we're about to leave the house or do something. So I make sure that that's one of the things that we do. So think on that. What are those positive rituals, those positive things that you can work into your routine? Where I can stay in this mindful moment with the people that I care for, with my kids, that I can do for all of us.

That's not in a position of stress, but in a position of happiness and joy and something you'll be able to carry for. Yeah, breakfast for dinner. I'll have to chime in one of these days when we're doing our breakfast for dinner. So we'll be doing that again tomorrow night. Since it'll be Sunday night. We'll for sure be doing breakfast for dinner. I will for sure be with you. I shouldn't say for sure. We'll focus on it. The plan is to join you on Thursday for another edition of Comedy through the chaos at 2pm Central.

Hopefully I will check in with you. I believe it's 8:00pm 11:00am Central, my time. Speak Wonder so I'll look for you on Thursday as well. And I hope you have time to put all of your stuff away appropriately. And I'm glad that things are appropriately warm there and that the snow does not bury you too much. Speak Wonder so thank you so much for joining me. If I find some jacks, I'll make sure I'll pass it along. So we'll work on it. And next time we do our family spa night with our new mass, I'll make sure I share that here.

So be good to yourself, everybody. I hope that the day treats you well. If it doesn't, shame on it. Not shame on you. And I'll see you back here soon. I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.