A weekly conversation about the messy, meaningful reality of caregiving, told with humor, honesty, and the occasional slightly ridiculous life metaphor. Come laugh, reflect, and leave with a little more grace for yourself and the chaos we’re all navigating.
Miss Shannon introduces herself, her work as a comedian and speaker, and her family, including her 18-year-old child on the autism spectrum and their cat, establishing context for the talk.
She explains that the session is about caregiver energy and advocacy, describes the emotional tension of doing too much or too little, and introduces a rough start to the school year despite expectations.
After school staff changes that she felt undermined supports, she considers staying quiet but ultimately decides to advocate for her son to protect his supports and help him learn self-advocacy later.
She describes calling an all-hands meeting to realign supports, outlines what she asked staff to focus on, and frames advocacy as balancing immediate care needs with long-term stability and caregiver sanity.
She encourages viewers to suggest topics for the cadre sphere, explains ways to contact the team, and offers resources to support caregivers.
She promotes the upcoming 'Comedy Through the Chaos' parenting edition, offers a friendly sign-off and parting encouragement, and closes the session.
Happy Thursday to everybody out there in the cadre sphere. I am Miss Shannon. By trade, I'm a variety of word-related things, like a comedian and a corporate speaker and a voice actor, an event MC, and a benefit auctioneer. By heart, I am the parent of an adorable 18-year-old kiddo who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. I am also the parent of an adorable giant house panther named Luke H. Skywalker and today I'm joining you here in the cadre on what is often our caregiver Thursdays talking to a variety of topics regarding giving care to somebody that you find important in your life.
For me it happens to be my kiddo and I thought I would talk to you today about The energy it takes to be a continued advocate for the people who we give care for. me, that also comes with the am I doing too much or am I doing too little guilt that I have to constantly try and balance. And often do balance successfully, but not always. And so what we've been dealing with this year is for the first time in many years, we did not have a what I considered a smooth start to the school year, which was extra frustrating for me because I felt like I had very good headway and a good plan in place following setting up his IEP for this year.
Hello, Cole, good to see you in the chat. And so I was very encouraged. As we were wrapping down last year regarding my son's individualized education plan, it seemed like the team was on board. We had some good things that would work towards his independence and his variety of being able to have self-autonomy in a way that would make sense for him and also provide for his safety. It seemed as though we were going to be able to start this school year off and running. And unfortunately, that has not been the case.
They made some changes with his team at school and I'm sure they had their reasons, but I do not feel like they were things that most supported my kid. And so honestly, a little piece of me was like, don't make waves, just wait and see if it works itself out. And then I thought about it more and I said, no, your kid. And if you self-advocate, or sorry, if you advocate for him now at this point, it'll help him be able to self-advocate for himself later. Like, start. doing what you can to right this ship before it goes even more awry.
Like do what you can to get his supports back in place in a way that you deem appropriate for him before things continue to get dysregulated and it gets more complicated for him. I think that that's a lot of what we have to do as caregivers as well is to figure out when it's appropriate to press in and also give ourselves license to go, you know what, I'm gonna get into this situation now instead of doing the polite thing and letting things continue to just move along as they are. And I'm really happy that I did that.
And it was, hey, I think we need to have and basically an all hands on deck meeting so that things don't continue to go diagonal and end up worse. And also, I felt good after I had the meeting so that I was able to sit there and go, here's what we really need to focus on, and here is me being realistic with his staff and his team to go, if we don't get this settled now, it's going to be worse for him and all of us in the long run. And that's the reality. I think a lot of us are balancing and juggling as caregivers is figuring out how we can get the most care for them now maintain our resources for them for the long term to set them up for success as best as possible and to do that in a way that everybody gets to maintain their sanity because sanity feels nice doesn't it and it's something that we don't always get to rest in like I'm looking at my teapot because I'm about to go put these tea grounds out in my garden after I finish talking to everybody here in the cadre sphere.
But we don't always get to steep in it and enjoy that warmth. And so it's time for me to be able to get him back into being able to steep in warm water like the beautiful set of tea grounds that he is. And it's something that I'm going, you know, I'm not going to feel guilty about staying on things on his behalf and my behalf, I'm going to feel a sense of honor that I am able to do this and trust myself to help set things up for the most successful outcome. So I encourage you to do that too if there's something that you've been putting off, if there's some complex conversations that you could have with the team of people that help you support whoever it is that you're giving care to and for.
Do that. Don't sit on it. Don't let it keep you up at night. Don't feel like, oh, I don't want to make waves. I don't want them to assume that I don't think they're doing their job. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with you going, okay, Here's what we need to make sure that things continue to move on successfully for as long as possible. So have those conversations sooner rather than later. And speaking of conversations, we encourage you to always let us know what kind of conversations you would like to have here in the cadre sphere, because we like to provide a variety of information to you.
So you can always contact us directly, always ping us in the chat. Go ahead and e-mail people at your leisure and let us know what you'd like us to comment about, communicate with you on, provide as a resource so that you can have it at your little fingertips when it's ready. So we always appreciate being part of it. m. Central. So in the meantime I do hope that the day treats you well and if it doesn't shame on it not shame on you. Go plant some seeds everybody.
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