Community Live

Foreign. Welcome in to the nightly community lives. Jen Varale here. It's my little top to my Cadre candle, which I have lit. Didn't even realize I needed to like pre post this that I'd be doing this tonight. So hopefully we have some joiners. Hi, Dr. Jessica, thank you for joining. Yeah. Wednesday, February 4th. All day today. I thought it was the 3rd of February. I'm just, I don't even care. I'm just so happy to be through January. January was a hard, hard month. I know in my growing up years even.

Even though, like living in Minnesota, I embraced a lot of the cold. I would go ice fishing with my dad and different things. But yeah, January has historically just been a really hard month for me personally to kind of navigate. And so, yeah, the last, this particular January has been extremely challenging. I live in Minneapolis and south Minneapolis. So welcome in anyone joining. Let me know where you're logging in from and secondly, let me know how you're feeling tonight. What kind of support do you need?

Maybe you don't even know that. Maybe you're just like, I'm here. And that's amazing. That's, that's amazing. I truly today. So I did a sauna this afternoon, which always resets me. I just, it's like one of those things like get myself to the sauna, put myself on autopilot, get myself there, and it's literally a mental health reset for sure. Hi, Emily. Junk food junkie. So good to see you, Christy. Welcome in, everyone. Hen. Okay, Junk food junkie, I see you're saying good evening, Hen. Do you know how many times I sign off on my emails and I write hen instead of Jen and like I quickly correct it, but I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know.

The J must be next to the H key on the keyboard. I've never even actually looked. Yeah, you're logging in from Maryland, Junk food junkie. Okay. Yes, I know that. That's right. Yeah. So we're just holding space as Cadre contributors and showing up in whatever way we, we can for our community. And I would say, I think the last time I came on a nightly live was just over. It was probably eight days ago. And isn't it crazy how time. I feel like so much time has passed in the last eight days. It feels like it's been months.

But also I feel like time has also moved really slow. Like I have sort of an impatience with what's happening in our community. And like between protesting and trying to get enough rest and Supporting my family of a daughter that, you know, I'm always checking in on who lives locally here. It's just feels like every day is like a new challenge of what to get up to, what to do, how to, how to. And it looks different, it looks different when your community is in crisis. So yeah, I'm just wondering if we all want to just take a deep breath or two together.

That actually feels really nice. We can be in silence together. And that, that can be a community, an expression of community. So thank you for being here. Yeah. Oh, junk food junkie. You always bring the humor. I, I love how you're saying it seems like Christmas was yesterday and now we're upon Valentine's Day. It's literally crazy. I noticed at my local store, store, my grocery store where I shop, they even have Easter decorations up. It's just the fast pace of everything and I'm one of those people, like my daughter and I were laughing.

I literally, if it's someone's birthday, I literally swing through the local gift shop or store and pick up a card on my way to the birthday party and maybe a present. I even do that for Christmas this year. I did this Christmas. I, I don't know what my deal was, but I literally shopped like Christmas Eve morning. So I'm a last minute girl. So like seeing Valentine's Day stuff and Easter stuff around us just, it makes me just like be like, can we just be in the present? Can we just be in the present?

Ah, yeah. Everyone's kind of echoing the same thoughts. Good to be through January. Not that we ever want to rush anything in life, but I don't know, something about flipping the calendar over to a new month feels like a fresh start in some ways. And ironically, I had lost my 2025 planner like three weeks ago and hadn't given it much thought other than, oh, I probably have some passwords and things in there that and some personal information that I don't need. Just anyone who might find it somewhere to know about me.

So today I was at my co working space and I was like, gosh, I wonder if I left it here. And sure enough, the 2025 planner was there. I had left it there, so that was returned to me. And then I also just pulled out a new planner that I just happened to get on January 31st. So this month, this month of January, due to everything happening in life and community here has just been like, everything is off. Routines are just completely different and off for me and I feel unsettled all the Time every day and.

Yeah. Oh, President's Day is coming, so you need a new mattress. Is that when they do, like, the push for mattress sales? Yes. Yeah. Winter blues for sure. I'm kind of feeling like. I think it's also just because it is so dark in Minnesota right now, I just feel also, like an added layer of just feeling stuck, just feeling stagnant. No matter, like, what I'm doing to try to move things forward, I'm still feeling this, like, hurry up and, like, let's have things happen. Let's. Let's change what's happening in this situation right now in Minneapolis, in.

In my career. All these things. Every. Like, if you took a little wheel and drew out all the areas of your life that need attention right now, I feel like every one of them do. And it's just kind of a little feeling of just being a little stuck right now. How's everyone else feeling? How are you feeling about February? What's your outlook? Oh, that is a wonderful stat, Christy. We gained 70 minutes of daylight this month. Heck, yes. Oh, my gosh. My mom, forever in my life, I don't ever check daylight saving stuff because she will start talking about a good month in advance.

It's coming, it's coming. We're gonna, you know, gain an hour this spring and fall back this fall. And she keeps me on track with that. But, like, right now, we know what was it? December 20th, 21st was the shortest day. So then we always calculate how many days we are out from that. So the. The last time it was as light as it is now was like ten weeks ago, two and a half months ago. That feels like progress. That feels like progress. And my mom's always so optimistic about it. She's like, you know, March.

And I actually think it's that March 7th weekend where we have daily. I don't know. She'll let me know. Oh, I just stopped talking and need to breathe sometimes. Yeah. Presidents take time to get new appliances, mattresses and a new car. Oh, everyone's just. Yeah, life, like, that's another topic too. Like the. The life going on. And despite being in community and in crisis and everything that's happening in our neighborhoods, it's. It's such a dichotomy to be like, you know, business, life, things still continue, yet we have to allow time to sort of process how the events in the Minneapolis community right now are changing people.

And I just want to touch briefly on that because, I mean, it's one of the reasons we created these evening 8 o' clock check ins because they're just open. There's no agenda other than to just be like, come here, breathe. Be in community. Sometimes the nighttime can be a hard, a hard time to get through. Like when you're in your day and moving through it, I can sort of, you know, move through things and process and sort of stuff, stuff things down right. That I just, in my day, I don't always have time to deal with.

But the nighttime is hard. So that's why, you know, we like light a candle and come together in community. I think it's great. I hope you guys all enjoy these, these times. We carved out a half an hour and I do want everyone to, you know, chime in, like you're doing. Thank you so much because obviously I can't invite you in to also talk. So, um, yeah, so my question is just, you know, how is February looking for you? What are you excited about? What are you maybe feeling stuck about or need some support around?

Yeah, yeah. What was I going to say? I had a whole conversation about. Well, we went, we talked about daylight savings. Um, I think. Oh, and then just the normalcy, like during, during the day, like what people are experiencing. So one thing just in conversation, I think this was at the yoga studio where we were just noticing that the hypervigilance of, like, what's going on has caused us to perceive many threats. I had someone today tell me he went over to his neighbors. His neighbor had been out of town for days and he went over to bring, you know, his mail and there were some chocolates that arrived or something that he had for his neighbor.

And he went to knock on his neighbor's door and the neighbor, the neighbor just freaked out, thought it might be ice. And he's, you know, my friend was like, I never even thought to text him or call to say, hey, I'm coming over. It just was, you know, this is what we do if he travels and vice versa at. And to like bring that amount of anxiety to someone because you're knocking on their doors. A neighbor and a neighborly thing. I hear that all the time. All the time. I hear of neighbors, though, on the upside, meeting neighbors that have lived in the same area, the Same neighborhood for 20 years, that have never met each other and because of just vigilance in the neighborhoods, like, you know, being ready with your whistle and watching everything, that it really has started more conversations and support.

And we are, I feel like as a community, we're very organized. One of my friends does so much in this space and you know, organizes taking food to families in her community that need it, that aren't leaving their homes. So. So it's a heavy lift every day. And I've noticed too, just like in my apartment, I overlook a very busy neighborhood. And I'm always sort of checking and listening. Normally things happen in the parking lot. People are honking horns or there's little altercations that are fairly harmless.

But now I'm listening to all that, and I pop up from my desk and I will go over and check out the situation and. And I'm making some crazy assumptions based on what's going on in this climate. Like looking at, you know, two black vehicles, SUVs parked close together outside of a Italian restaurant, and like, nothing. Is it just, like I said, just a exhaustion from. Just a general hyper vigilance that I feel. Yeah. Christy says Minnesota warmth is on the horizon. I love that. And if you can't get it, you know, from being outside, you can get it in the sauna.

You guys probably are. If you know me, you know that I sauna quite a bit. And that's where I get my warmth. That's how I've learned to embrace north over the last six, seven years, is being in the warmth of the sauna, being in community there. So that's. That's felt good. And I think, yeah, just talking with my, you know, entrepreneur community and my co Working spaces over the last week, everyone's, you know, trying to do what they can and nothing is prescripted for us. I think one of the biggest things I'm noticing right now is that we are looking to our corporations here.

We have so many Fortune 500 companies looking to them to, like, step up and do things. So that's been really interesting to see. Yeah. And just generally, yeah, being on high alert of surroundings, which is a good thing, actually. It is a good thing to be just very aware and take breaks when we need to. Definitely, definitely doing that. Yeah. February for me. So since I prompted that question of y', all, like, well, how's February feeling? If you follow, like the Chinese New Year that is not coming into, like, day one of the Chinese New Year, believe is February 17th.

So we're still sort of rounding out Shedding the Year of the Snake, which is like, just, you know, shedding things that no longer serve us to make way for the Year of the Fire Horse, which is coming up in a couple weeks. And I'm just sort of like, you know, eager to see if some of the dynamics around, you know, my outlook Personally shift if things in our community start to change. I mean, everyone's asking that when will this end? And the impact of ICE being in our neighborhoods and the trauma and also the economic impact.

I mean, that's what I'm seeing over the last week. Local reporters like, you know, interviewing restaurants who, you know, have been around for 20 years and are faced with just a lot of questions. So it's very destructive and hard for the community to kind of even feel like there's an end in sight. We don't know. We don't know what it looks like. So staying in it while, you know, trying to live our lives, find moments of joy amidst all of this. No playbook. No playbook. I mean, Covid, George Floyd.

We have some incredibly challenging things we have been faced with and we've created resilience and we know to rest. But at the same time, this feels uniquely. It's just. It's different. It's different. It has its own challenges. So. Yeah, so February, I am hoping it really starts to turn to the positive for me personally, in my attitude. I don't know, like, if you all are feeling that similar and in terms of like this time of year. But like you said, hey, we have Valentine's Day and for a single girl, I'm just like, I think I'm gonna just do.

Yeah, I'm gonna do Galentine's day on the 13th. So I have big plans for that day. Oh, bye, Christy. Thanks for chiming in. Big plans for Galentine's day. I love it. Who knows what I'm doing on the 14th? I'm, you know, who knows. But surrounding myself with some of my girlfriends doing. And it's a Friday this year, doing actually a couple saunas that day. And two events that I'm attending. One is called purpose fueled Community and another one is it's a team women event. So. And then I'm also guiding sauna that night for all my girlfriends at a brewery.

Actually, we're doing a non alcoholic mindful drinking conversation. So that's. That's something to look forward to and I hope you all have something to look forward to. Yeah. Junk food junkie says feeling sorry for the school children there in Minnesota. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, my kids are grown adult, you know, children, they're out of the house. They're 20 and 22. But yeah, for sure. There's our school children. You know, children in our communities have had to deal with so much at home and at school.

Yeah. Well, we continue to, you know, stay in and support People in all the ways that we can. It's, it's, it's a lot right now. Do any of you have candles that you like to light? Junk food junkie, I feel like you, are you a candle person? I can't remember. You've mentioned some special things on your lives that you really enjoy that bring you joy. Oh, card making or cards sending cards. I can't, I can't recall for sure. Some. I, I'm just curious. My, my mom would always be like, no, do not like candles.

Shoes, terrified of them. That she would forget to blow one out and cause a fire. So I'm very, you know, living on the wild side here. Lighting a candle and it's actually a really great candle. Vanilla scented, I believe. Yeah, that's what I'm smelling. So yeah, I just happy to hold space for you all tonight. I kind of like the idea of continuing these community check ins. Maybe instead of a half an hour, they're you know, 20 minutes or so. Oh yes. Speak. Wonder is that person with the cards. That's right.

I'm sorry. Thank you for correcting me. Yeah, I feel like these could potentially go further. I think we were committing to doing them for two weeks straight. So I think we have another three or four nights of holding space in this way in the evening. Yeah, yeah. Food for thought. Yes. Junk food junkie. You're Tuesday food for thought and I am Tuesday, the sober, not somber hour. We've been talking a little bit about sobriety in times like this too. In times of crisis and really being true to what you need for self care.

So I would hope that for all of you tonight. I really, like I said, night times can be. In the evening can be a little more challenging. I think that's when you know, the thoughts of overwhelm can easily come in. And also if that's when you're consuming media, social media, which I do, admittedly I do and I try not to, but it is the time when I feel like I need to catch up on what's happening. So just, just watch her watch social media consumption and media at this time and you know, take care of yourself.

Oh yeah, you do have a, a candle. Junku Junkie says I have a candle. One that smells like a fire burning in the fireplace. Oh, that does sound amazing. I'd like to like have a candle that like kind of captures this, the smell and the sense of the wood burning stove in the sauna. We can make that happen. That would be great. Be like the sauna candle, sauna scent. All right, everyone. Thank you for tuning in tonight. Be well, take care of yourselves, and we'll see you at a future Cadre session. I am sure of it.

Good night.