Harbor Pilots

Good day to you. Hello from Harbor Pilots on Thursday, Caregiver Day in the cadresphere. Luke has joined. Hello, Luke. My name is Kathy and my cadre handle is Speak Wonder because I like to write, I do poems, I love haiku, and I have a few books as well on grief and recover joy. I love to bend words into poetry. And so Speak Wonder is the name I go by in this community. Caregiver Day. It's amazing where you find pithy, meaningful quotes. I was watching TV one night and it was, it was some movie, I really can't even tell you, it was a movie that I was watching so that I could sort of unwind from a long day on my feet.

And sailing into my awareness came this line. It was delivered from a mom to a daughter. I do remember that in the scene. And the mom leaned into her broken, fragile daughter who was having a crisis. And she said, Honey, to be human is to be beautifully flawed. To be human is to be beautifully flawed. There's so much in that statement. It gives us space and permission to be human, organic, gritty, real, to unfold in the human way in which we do, which is fraught with mistakes, with unseen barriers or portals into the unknown.

And we manage the best we can in our flawed state. Nobody waltzes through perfectly. If they do, I want to know the secret. In fact, that's why Cadre is here. It's a presence here in your world. And I'm glad that you've chosen it because semantics are limiting, aren't they? This is a health and mental wellness app and it's so much more. so much deeper. So many nuanced ways of feeling heard and seen and cared for, cherished. And I'm glad you're here today. I'm glad I'm here. And my theme on most Thursdays is harbor pilots because I love to talk about being in safe harbor.

And the metaphor is being out at sea just like a sailing vessel would be. navigating waters that are unknown. Caregiving is that, isn't it? It's some waters that we're familiar with and some choppy new ones that come in to the fray and we have to figure out what to do and how to do it. And so we have harbor pilots, other sailing vessels, other human beings who are beautifully flawed, who have, I'm just going too far with the metaphor. I was going to say they have They have holes in their ballast.

I don't even know if that's meaningful in the nautical world. But anyway, people who are doing the best they can and we're all leaning on each other and caring for each other as we sail into port, into safety. So let's embrace that phrase. I'm going to repeat it. To be human is to be beautifully flawed. I mean, y'all, that could be on a bumper sticker. Love it. It's frame worthy. So I want to embrace that with awe and reverence and respect and giving space for what we call the human condition, the art of being, the sometimes joyful, sometimes grief-stricken and always wondrous.

experience of living life in this human realm. I want to share with you this really cool thing. He's not there now, but I think I have a hummingbird scout. Yesterday in the bank line, a fellow enthusiast who loves hummers and I were lamenting the fact that we both hung our feeders out as of Mother's Day for the hummingbirds. migrating through and resting here in Northwest Pennsylvania resting nesting and um eating the nectar for a few months time we haven't seen them yet and she and I were talking yesterday about the idea that possibly it's just been cold it's been a cold rainy spring and The hummingbirds have not come around.

But guess what? 10 minutes before I went on this live, I saw a hummingbird and my friend in the bank lounge bank line told me that hummingbirds in their community have scouts that go first and they scout out the food supply and then they go back and tell their family and their community. There's food at this house in Erie, Pennsylvania, there's nectar and I find that curious because hummingbirds are known for being territorial and combative and they like to hog the whole thing. So a really smart scout would just find the source and stay there.

But apparently in the bird community, in the hummingbird community specifically, the scout reports back to the group where the food is. So I think I had my scout, you know, he had the iridescent brilliant green breast and the fluttering wings. And it was so cool because I just had been thinking, wouldn't it be nice if I saw my first hummingbird on Cadre Day for me on Caregiver Day when I go on my live stream? And it happened. And I'll be watching for him and for the others who come in. So talking about brokenness today is kind of where my heart is in the caregiving picture.

And by brokenness, I don't mean devastation or loss. It can mean those things. But I mean serving others in a way that is imperfect. And so I found this, as one does, on Facebook. And it says, we don't call our cars broken when they're out of gas. They just need to be filled up. We don't call our phones worthless when they're out of battery. They just need to be plugged in. And the same goes for me and for you. You are not broken. You are not worthless. You are worth healing. And you, you my friend, are worth rest.

I can't possibly know what your caregiving picture is like and who it is that you're serving and caring for and looking out for. being an advocate for, being a mentor to. perhaps even working and earning money on their behalf for their care and keeping. So many ways in which we are caregivers. I just came from a wonderful weekend with my mom, June. On May 8th, which was last Friday, she turned 95 years of age and we had a card shower. And I want to report to you that we got more than 95 cards. The goal was 95 and maybe a little spillover.

I had said to my brothers, wouldn't it be nice if we got over 100 cards? And they said, yeah, that'd be really cool for mom. At least 95 would be excellent. Well, guess how many we got? 232 birthday cards for June, also known as Grandma June, also known as Junie Bug. or Junebug. What a blessing. What A windfall. What an avalanche of greetings. Many of our card senders from all over the nation sent multiple cards. My nephew Justin, who lives in Florida, he had his work crew. He is a foreman on a construction site and his work crew got in on it.

So mom said, I don't know these people. I said, yeah, but they know Justin and they know you're having a landmark epic birthday. And so they sent cards. And these folks, at least in Justin's work crew, sent not one or two, but like 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 cards a piece. And you know, to save money on stamps, because you know, stamps are not cheap. They would put all the greeting cards in an envelope because they wanted to boost the count. I thought that was so cool. And it happened all over mom's church.

Many of the parishioners sent more than one card. My church in Erie, the same, sent multiple cards. One card was plenty. That's all we were really asking for. But if you wanted to send more, that'd be great. As a result, we have this great big, probably the hugest available three ring binder with the plastic clear sleeves filled with greeting cards. so that my mom, June, can browse them leisurely and look at the front of the card. Some have flowers, some have birds, some are funny, funny, funny.

Some have dogs and kitties. And then she can flip the clear plastic sleeve to the other side and read the greeting and the person who sent it. 232 birthday cards. for her 95th birthday. Amazing. And then of course we had Mother's Day in the mix last weekend and I had a nice Mother's Day. My daughter who's local to me made sure I got these flowers and she also sent what she calls a survival kit because I sometimes help with my grandkids. So the survival kit is like a spa in a box you know with the fuzzy socks and the the eye mask and the hand cream and the emery boards and the soaking tablets for the tub and a bottle of wine it's my recovery kit along with the flowers We don't call our cars broken when they're out of gas.

They just need to be filled up. And we don't call our phones worthless when they're out of battery. They just need to be plugged in. The same goes for me and for you. You're not broken. You're not worthless. And you are worth healing and rest. There is something I want to read to you. This is called Tide and the River Rising, and it fits beautifully in my template of Harbor Pilots. So please indulge me. These are the lyrics to the song Tide and the River Rising, and the subtitle is Oars, O-A-R-S, as in.

Come on, get your oars. It's going to sound like a love song, but this is a love song to the family. Come and get your oars and row, my darlings. Come and get your oars and row. We've got tide and the river rising, so come on, get your oars and row. Come up on your feet and walk, my babies. Rise up on your feet and walk. We've got arms reaching out to catch you. Haul up on those feet and walk. In the morning, call my name, my darlings. In the morning, call my name. We grow old, young, we birth, we die, and somehow rearrange.

Some live and change the world with grace and a vision and a strength of mind. Some rise from trouble, some lend a hand, and some keep trying to find, watch that little boy go a-walking, my loves, and watch him as he learns to run. Watch him as he rounds the corner. Out of sight, then tumbling back in our arms, he comes. When it's time to say goodbye, my darlings, when it's time to say goodbye, we'll live on in the old and the young ones dreaming down a quiet line. We'll live on in the old and young ones dreaming down a quiet line.

Again, the song title, Tide in the River Rising, or as I like to call it, come on, get your oars and row. Today we have Carrie Heimer coming up later in the cadre, the pressure to be the calm one. What's it like when you're expected to be the steady rudder, the calm one? How do you maintain that without bursting yourself? Also we have today Miss Shannon Paul, Comedy Through the Chaos. Her brand of humor is so unique. And so directly beautiful and relatable. Yeah. Remember. Hi, this is Mundra Trier.

I was just about to give my benediction. My device is saying things. Remember, my friends, you are more than a caregiver. You're human. And as a human caregiver, you are somebody's safe harbor. You are helping another human navigate their way into less noise, into the familiar waters of home, and safety, and tranquility, and calm. See you next week on Harbor Pilots with me, SpeakWonder.