Ms. Shannon Paul mixes comedy with candid parenting reflections about raising an 18‑year‑old on the autism spectrum, highlights crisis supports like Nexus Family Healing, and discusses building community scaffolding for families.
Shannon opens the session with warm greetings, explains her multiple professional roles, and introduces her autistic 18-year-old child. She frames the talk as the parenting edition of 'Comedy Through the Chaos.'
She recounts attending a Nexus Family Healing gala, outlines the organization's group homes and crisis-intervention services for teens and young adults, and emphasizes the importance of these services in her state.
Shannon stresses building an ecosystem of supports—friends, family, paid staff, and funding—before a crisis hits, and shares her personal experience as a single mom who worked to assemble and train a care team.
She encourages viewers to start with one small task—rearranging the home, beginning a caregiver search, or outsourcing chores like laundry—to gain breathing room and long-term sustainability.
Shannon closes with light-hearted remarks about daily life, directs viewers to the Cadre Sphere and to contact her for deeper tips, and announces when she'll return for the next session.
If it happens to be morning where you are. Hello, Mary. Good to see you in thread. Appreciate you. Hope that Saturday is treating you well. If not, shame on it, not shame on you. Hey, everybody. I am Miss Shannon Paul and by trade I'm a variety of word related things, including a comedian and a corporate speaker and a voice actor and emcee and benefit auctioneer. And by heart, I am the proud parent of an adorable 16 year old, not 16. What am I thinking? The proud parent, adorable 18 year old kiddo who happens to be supports on the autism spectrum.
He is in the other room and he is my heart and I'm his voice and I love him. So I'm happy to be joining you for this parenting edition of Comedy Through the Chaos. So we talk about a lot of chaotic things and hopefully can anchor back to something that's a little bit humorous to help us get through. That is always the goal. As I mentioned, a variety of the things that I do by trade, as a benefit auctioneer and event MC, I'm very fortunate that I get to support a lot of organizations and nonprofits when they are fundraising and having events for that.
So last night, I was at an event for an organization called Nexus Family Healing. And it was their gala supporting the efforts that they do. And they have a variety of group homes in Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Maryland, and I'm forgetting all of them even though I read it last night, forgive me. And what they do in addition to having these group homes, they work on foster service and support for teens and young adults who are going through mental health crisis. And so they can do emergency services at schools.
They can come into your home and hopefully try to get there within an hour or if there's a situation where a teen actually needs to find a home, they can do that. And at least here in the state of Minnesota, there's not a lot of organizations that are doing services like this, especially crisis services and those emergency interventions for our young people so that they can stay in homes. And so I was very happy when they asked me to do this because there's a lot of reasons why I resonate with this organization.
And I think a lot of us as parents even if we're not to that point right now where we feel like our kid is close to being in crisis. I think it's also good for us to keep in mind that that's an entire ecosystem that it takes time to build up. I was talking to some folks at the event last evening, and I happened to run into some people that I know. He's another special needs parent. And so we were talking about how we had kind of put off putting in some of that scaffolding for ourselves until it was almost too late and going, well, if I really needed something, who would I call?
And I think that that's really something that we need to think about as parents. And sometimes that means building up that ramp. Some of us are very fortunate that we have friends and families in our close circles that if anything happened, we can make that call immediately. But for some of us, I mean, I'm a full-time single mom, I'm fortunate that my sister often can step in if I needed something in an emergency situation. But I had to start thinking about that a few years ago and work in the practice of finding staff, finding funding for me to be able to pay that staff, to get them trained in, to come up with the way to put up with the inconvenience of having somebody that you don't know in your house.
And that was something that I'm like, you know what, to be able to make sure that we are stable in the future, I need to work on this now. And I'm glad that I did, because now I'm to the point that I have a lot more, just the ability to exhale sometimes when I'm leaving, because I have over time been able to build up his care team. And that means that I have more time to take care of myself. And that has been well worth the trouble. And I know a lot of times we put things off because we're so busy doing and we're like, I'll get to it, I'll get to it.
And then unfortunately it ends up thrust upon us when we didn't expect it. 'Cause isn't life weird like that? The way that it's like, Hey, I'm gonna give you this now, even though your plate is already full and you really can't take another thing, it'll give it to you now. So I encourage you to start on it today. One little thing, one little thing to move it forward so that you'll have that more peace. If that's rearranging your house, rearranging your schedule, starting the search. starting to go, what would it look like if I needed to hire somebody to help out with some things?
How would I figure that out? And sometimes, like I said, for me, it was even like figuring out the finance side of it to be able to get to that point. So I understand it could take a bit. And so start today, even it's just one little thing this week. One little thing. If it's, you know what, just to give myself a little more breathing room, I'm going to start taking my laundry to one of those places where they wash it and fold it myself. It doesn't matter. Doesn't have to be huge. It just is something that you deserve and something that'll give you more sustainability as we continue to stay in this parenting journey.
So I am very happy that today, although it is still going to be a robust day because this is a busy time season for me as far as I said career wise, I get the joy of dealing with that pile of laundry over there. Isn't it sassy? It's just looking at me going like, you think you can handle me? Yes, I do. I do. I will conquer that mountain after you and I finish talking. So Hopefully you have something to conquer today as well. We also encourage you to stay here in the cadre sphere and poke around to find a lot of the to find all of the contributors that can help support you in the ways that you need supporting.
You also have the ability to reach out to us directly. So if I'm ever covering anything and you're like, okay, well, you mentioned that you started working on this on ramp. How did you really do it? And if there's anything that I can ever cover more deeply, always please let me know. I would love to make sure that we stay in contact and I can give you some tips and trips on how I managed to navigate some of the chaos that we have in our life. So I appreciate all of you. m. Central back here in the Cadre Sphere.
In the meantime, as I said, I hope that the day treats you well. If not, shame on it, not shame on you. We'll see you soon.
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