Comedy Through The Chaos

Hello friends. Happy Thursday to you. If you are wondering who I am, My name is Ms. Shannon. I'm a variety of word related things like a comedian, a corporate speaker, a voice actor, an event emcee and a benefit auctioneer. I'm also the proud parent of an adorable 17 year old, soon to be 18 year old kiddo who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. And I'm happy to be joining you here in the Cadre sphere as one of your contributors. I have on a very shiny suit today because I'm in the process of emceeing one of my favorite events that I do throughout the year.

It's a conference called the Minnesota Tourism Conference and it's with Explore Minnesota Tourism and I really appreciate being able to join them. I've done this, this is my sixth year doing this particular event. And so I am not at home in the Minneapolis adjacent suburb that I normally live in. I am in the great city of Duluth, Minnesota. So it's about a and a half hour drive north of where I normally live. And so it's been a very interesting few days. This is one of the things that as a caregiver ends up being one of the most stressful things that I do for a variety of reasons.

So it's not really, I mean, I think a lot of people would go, okay, you know, Ms. Shannon, you have this complicated job and that's probably what stresses you out. And surprisingly it's not. It's a lot of the caregiver and caregiver adjacent things that I do that stresses me out when I'm in a situation like this. Because for an event like this where I'm out of town, it was a lot of prep work, you know, so that my kiddo could be as comfortable as possible, but also from a safety perspective and so that his backup caregivers also had the information and resources that they did me, trying to make sure that I was leaving a calm environment, an environment that had the resources for them as well, making sure that it was a safe environment for them and just doing my best.

Because this is something really different, you know, for my kiddo. Because most of the time, even if mom's working mom's home, you know, it's not like I spend a lot of overnights out. And so that was where a lot of my caregiving anxiety has been over the last couple of days is what is it going to look like when I'm gone? And so as far as coming back to a lot of the themes that we talk about here in the Cadre sphere, that was me doing what I can and then figuring out a way as a caregiver to trust.

To trust that I had done the best that I can to trust my kiddo to be able to like big kid up and do his best to be appropriately calm. I don't expect us to be perfectly calm but to figure out a way that he's, you know, to trust that he's going to be able to do his best but also to trust the backup caregivers that I have, which is usually I have a personal care assistant that hangs out with them part time and my sister that hangs out with them a lot more and is the primary person that kind of slides into that slot when I'm working, especially when I'm doing an out of town event like this and just trust that, you know, they really are doing their best to make sure that he's taken care of and then trust that I'm going to do what I can to make sure that I don't make it worse, you know.

So it was pre shopping for some things and making sure that that was set up, sending, making sure that some groceries and some other stuff got delivered and then like even like today, making sure that when I wrap up I do go and take the time to like okay, I made sure last night I was well rested, reserving some energy, even like some dumb stuff because I have to drive home after this. So there was a bunch of desserts on the, the table. Just so you know, Ms. Shannon does not do well with mid afternoon sugar.

So this is tea. Just so you know, I don't, I also don't coffee so don't hate me, you know, so just knowing myself and going, yeah, you know what's going to make it a harder drive for you when this is already kind of a long day. And so doing my best on both sides to also trust myself that I set things up as well as I could trust my kiddo, trust his backup caregivers and trust the universe to go, you're going to figure out a way to be okay and things cannot, even though they may not be perfect, they're going to be fine.

And I think that's what a lot of us as caregivers are really navigating right now. I was just talking to my partners here, which is why I'm a little late today, was talking to them and we've been talking about how over the last few years what we've been saying and especially since I work with people in the Tourism industry, the. It's been resilience. We've been talking a lot about that because we have been having these conversations since back in 2020 when there was the COVID shutdowns and that talking about renewal, talking about resets, all of these rewords and how I think we had hoped that we had moved past a lot of these rewords by now and we'd be back into whatever those 20, 19 normal things have kind of rest.

We used to rest in and there. And it doesn't seem like that's the case. And for me, it's actually very comforting to be in a group full of like minded people like this that are like, you know, we've been doing this for a while and I think we just have to admit that we're just gonna have to keep doing this. It is gonna be a lot of continuing to figure out how are we recovering, what are we recovering for? Because if anything else, I think we've learned that there may always be something, there may always be a new thing that throws you off, that puts something in your way that makes things very complicated, that make things hard that you have to recover from.

So reminding yourself that you do have the ability to recover and then also figuring out a way to maintain your energy to do those mini resets, to refuel yourself so that you can do that. Because the reality is we're probably going to have to recover over and over and over again. You know, just like anytime that you work out or anytime you do anything where you're stressed, you need to give yourself time to recover. And that's something that we definitely need to be able to do as caregivers is going, where do I have that energy?

What fuels that space? What puts us back in that position where when the next thing that stresses us happens, we're like, okay, we can get this through and then we can recover. And that also means leaving yourself time to do that. So for me that meant, you know, I don't have a lot of stuff on my schedule tomorrow because not only will I be recovering from being out of town, and that might just be very pedestrian things like doing all my laundry and unpacking stuff and putting stuff away or who knows, washing my car, because I don't know if you've done a lot of road trips, we just talked about the greater American road trip here and how people are back to doing road trips.

I don't know how you are. Maybe you do a lot of road trips. And you know what will make a car really dirty? Drive it long distance. So if that's something that you need to build into your time, please do give yourself time to recover, whatever that looks like for you. For me, it doesn't necessarily mean sitting still because that is not how my anxiety works. But it does mean finding things that give me time to reset. Resetting for me is part of my recovery. So give yourself time to ask yourself that question.

What does recovery look like for you? You know, what does recovery look like for you? Because it's going to look different for all of us. So we are going to wrap up here. We have one more keynote speaker before the end of the day. I think I'm going to put on a different shiny suit. I had a different shiny suit on today. Not that you need to be party that conversation, but that's something that I'm excited that I get to do. I do plan to join you again if you watch me in the replay. I do plan to join you again on Saturday at 10am Central for a parenting edition of Comedy through the Chaos.

It probably just because I will be doing that from home. I can't guarantee that you'll have any sequence pretty people. I can't. I can't guarantee that. So a very, a very sequin less Saturday morning event is what you can expect but it is another opportunity for us to get together in community here in the Cadre sphere. Please always let us know what else we can do to make sure that we are providing resources and perspective for you. That is one of the wonderful things about being here is that if you see me, if you see jc, if you see speak, wonder if you see Rachel, if you see, you know, all of us, it's a variety of different ways that we contribute and so hopefully that helps you out wherever you are, you know, wherever, whatever moment that you need something you can pop through here and say who's talking to me in the way that I need to be spoken with right now.

So hopefully I gave you a little bit of better of that. So I will check in with you on Saturday on how I ended up recovering from this road trip and I'm also excited to let you know that I'm pretty sure my kids are going to be okay until I get home. So be kind to yourself. I hope that the day treats you well. If it doesn't, shame on it. Not shame on you. Talk to you soon. Cadre friends.