The Gratitude Vibe

Hi, Cadre Sphere. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Come on in, say hello. I'm always happy when it's Wednesday and I can be with you. I hope you all are having a warm and cozy day. It is a little chilly here in Minnesota, so we are fighting the cold, but I'm Christy Larson. Come in, say hello. I'm happy to be here. I know I missed you last week. I was in a different time zone for Thanksgiving and got completely mixed up. So I'm glad to be here with you today. Hello. Hello. Good morning. The witness has joined.

I love it. I'm excited to have you. I'm just warming up my hands. Junk food junkie. Hello. Hello. Good to see you all. Like I said, I missed some of you last week because I was in a different time zone and I got completely thrown off. I also had to reschedule due to travel. It was just a. A weird week for me last week. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I am Christy Larson. I'm happy you're here. I'm happy I'm here. Always excited to be with you and really, really grateful for this community. And I know you all probably feel exactly the same.

I am just blown away by the support and the love that is in this community. So I wanted to kind of start with the gratitude vibe, right? And I. I'm kind of thinking about it because we're winding down a year, and when 2025 started, it was really, really hard for me. We were just closing down the company that I was working for or the school that I was working for, and it came with a lot of grief. A lot of grief. It was really, really hard. It was the most favorite job I've ever had and probably will ever had.

It was the community I longed to be a part of. I loved being. It was the people that I loved working with. So there was a lot of grief there, right? You lose your favorite job, your favorite people that are surrounding you every day outside of your family or your support groups. And the community was awesome. We had just an amazing alumni base and amazing people in it that were supporting each other and loving each other and living just amazing values every day. And so there's a lot of that. That kind of.

When you lose that or when you feel like you're losing that, it's really, really hard. And that's how I started my year, right? That's kind of how the year started for me. And that's really hard when you start a year that. Where you're feeling that. That weight and that heavy and that. That that grief that comes with losing someone or something or things not going as well as you want, when you kick off something new where it's supposed to be exciting and fun, yeah, it's really hard, too. But as I look back on that, I also feel a lot of gratefulness and a lot of thankfulness and a lot of love for the experiences that.

That I have. I think, you know, with grief comes the remembrance of all the good things that were part of that. And I. I look back and I think I haven't really lost a lot of that, right? I still have a lot of those relationships. I still connect with the team that I was part of, and we meet at least once a week, if possible. So I gained them as friends, and I kept that community. We kept that community alive and well. And that is. That's something I'm really, really grateful for. I'm really grateful for the fact that that community and those people are there every time I need them.

I also learned a lot about myself. I had the most. When you lose a job, right, you're thinking you're losing that paycheck. You're, you know, not being able to support the way you once. So I felt very, very lost. And I really felt like what I learned from that experience was the support that I got from my husband and my family and my community and my friends and the people that were around me was. It blew me away, right? They were there for me. They were cheering me on. They were not pressuring me to find the next thing or do the next best thing, which is.

I'm blessed for that, right? I'm blessed that I was able to have enough financially to support and to help and to still contribute to the family and the relationship. But also knew that, you know, I. I wanted to be picky. I'm getting old, right? I wanted to be picky in my next job. And so having that support was really, really helpful, and it taught me to be grateful every day for those people and that support because it's. It's not something everybody gets. And I felt really, really blessed and really lucky to have it.

I, like, I was always a cheerleader for other people, so it felt good to have people cheering me on. I'm also. This year came with Cadre and the Cadre sphere and the fine, fine, wonderful people of the Cadre sphere, which I'm so thankful for. This year also, I started a new job, right. Which I'm also very grateful for and very, very. Yeah, junk food junkie. When I retired, each morning I felt Like, I lost a part of me, but as time marched on, I discovered new things to do with myself. Yes. And that actually is kind of a bittersweet thing.

Right? You think about it in terms of you're losing something, but also you also learn how to refind or find new things that you maybe didn't have time to do. I had watched a video on somebody who had been laid off, and they found more time for their music production and to be creative in that space, and they, you know, kind of rekindled that love. So it does. It does definitely come. I love that comment. That's. That's a great comment. So, yeah, started a new job, learning a lot. I started at the end of August, and so it's still fairly new.

I'm still learning, but grateful for the people around me there and the support that I'm getting in my new job. My mom went through a health scare, had brain surgery. Came out of it better than we ever expected. She's 78 years old, and so, you know, when. When you're old, it'. It's tougher to recover from those things. But we were able to travel for Thanksgiving with them. And I am so thankful. Some of you have been here with me before where I've talked about this, but so thankful for the healthcare workers, the doctors, the neurosurgeons, the janitors, the just the people in health care and the love that they give to or have given to my mom and give to others as well.

I'm so thankful for that. Like I said, I'm thankful that we were able to have Thanksgiving together and we were able to travel for that, be with family for Thanksgiving. A blessing in and of itself. Right? The witness says, I love my job so much. I was so happy to go to work. Yeah. I became disabled from working with lead and chemicals at my job. I miss it. I'm so grateful for the experience. Yeah. Yeah. You feel that loss, man. I tell you, it hits you hard. And honestly, it doesn't for me this year.

It hasn't gone away. I've actually hit that. That moment probably every single day of grief, just in terms of something happens or a memory sparks or I get a text from somebody that I worked with or one of the alumni reaches out with a job seeking question. Right. And it re. Sparks that. That joy that I had and that love that I had. And. Yeah, it. It doesn't go away. Yeah. It's been years. Gosh. Gosh. Yeah, It's. It's this. It's grief. Right. It's it's that love that you had for that. But, yeah, Thanksgiving, I mean, you know, this is a time to really be thankful and have gratitude for all of the things that have happened throughout the year.

And so as I was thinking about talking about the gratitude vibe, I was thinking about all the things that have happened this year and kind of where it started and where it ended and how grateful I am for all of the things that I have experienced this year and know that 2026 will be new things. And some of them might be wonderful, and some of them might not be, and that's okay. This morning, I was on Instagram and I saw a post about a mom who had. Was videoing her teenage daughter. You might have saw it.

It's probably gone viral by now. But she had asked her what she remembers, if she remembers what Christmas gift she. She got last year. And the gal, the young teenage, was not sure. Right? She looked at her like, I don't remember. And she said, from you? Are you wondering what gifts I got from you? And she's like, the mom's like, sure, yeah, like, whatever. Whatever gifts you got. She says, I don't remember any of my gifts. And the mom said, where do we go on family vacation this year? And she said, lake Tahoe.

And remembered it like that. Right. So it reminded me that that Instagram post reminded me of that Maya Angelou poem. That is, I've learned that I wrote it down so I can remember and say it correctly. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how it made you feel. And all of those things that I talked about were things that made me feel one way or the other. Right? Grateful, grief, love, support, all of those things. And so when I think about this year, I still remember every part of that community, every part of that support.

I remember when people reached out when I wasn't feeling great, and that's how they made me feel. And I think that that plays into that grief. Yeah. I can say it again. Absolutely. Like I said, I wrote it down. It's Maya Angelou that quoted it, but she said, I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. It's pretty strong, pretty good quote. Love it. So for you all today, Cadre Sphere, I hope you take a moment to really think about the things that have happened this year and the things you are grateful for, the things you learned, the things that helped you Grow and the people that surrounded you with the love.

And I will tell you, if nothing else, it is this community, this Cadre sphere community. We're cheering you on. We love you. We want you to do wonderful things. And if you don't, that's okay, too. We're here for you, right? No, I didn't see what you said about co workers. I am so sorry I missed it. The hardest thing is not seeing and talking to your co workers on a daily basis after you became friends at work. 100%. 100% junk food junkie. In fact, that was probably the hardest thing for me was the people I was surrounded with and all of a sudden not having them as like, your people, right, that were with you every single day.

We all know we spend so much time with the people that we work with, and if you love them, it's hard to lose them. And that's the thing. I actually was right before I got on here, I had 12 text messages from a couple of my old co workers. We were all in a chat together and they were. They were going off on my phone and I was actually in the middle of doing something for work and I was like, oh, my gosh, the phone is blowing up over here with the co workers. I actually am spending Saturday and Sunday with them.

So I'm really excited to be. Be able to do that. But it certainly is hard to lose those people and not necessarily lose them, just lose the opportunity to connect and see them every day. That's probably been the. The hardest part. But yeah. So think about the things that have happened this year and think about the things you learned, how you grew, the community that you built or didn't build, the people that surrounded you or didn't surround you. Right. What do you want to bring with you into 2026?

And really think about that and reflect on that and be grateful for good things and bad things that happen to you because you learn a lot, not only about yourself, but about how. How what it means to you, you know? So take care, Cadre Sphere. Be well. I appreciate you being here and take a little time today to be grateful. Y' all have a wonderful Wednesday. I can't wait to see you till next Wednesday. Enjoy. Have fun and be grateful.