Sunday Serenity: The Power Of Community

Good evening, everybody in the Cadre sphere. Happy Sunday. My name is Jason Lennox and I'm your resident recovery champion. Sporting the recovery road gear tonight and showing off the tree. Don't let this get too far because I haven't wrapped any of that, but I got a lot of presents coming in, so it's coming together. We got just a couple weeks left until the big day, Christmas one that many people celebrate and I get excited about. I was just with my younger cousin. We were taking a ride back home and stopped and had an acai bowl, believe it or not, it's about zero degrees here right now.

So why we were having the frozen bowl, I don't know, but that's what we did. And one of the questions in the nautical bowl is they have this little jar and it has all these questions. And one of them was, what's your favorite holiday? And we both said Christmas. So anyhow, it is that time of year and excited to be coming at you a little bit late here. Sorry things got a little bit mixed up here today, just in terms of the schedule, but here nonetheless, I wanted to chit chat a little bit about community and the power of community.

I just don't think community is. I think we most of the time underestimate the power of community and who our people are. And I like to live by kind of the threes. Hey, good evening. Speak wonder. Good to see you here. The three things that make a difference most and that are most critical on any mission, kind of life, journey, professional journey, and those three are the who, the why and the what. Who being our people, the why being our purpose, and the what being what kind of impact are we having?

Hey, good evening, Luke. It's good to see you here as always. So community and community. Just the power that's there. And in that order, who, why, and what. I think is the significance of those three in my life. Who matters? Who matters more than anything because at the end of the day, we do this thing in this life. We have reasons that we do it, we have our purpose, we make some impact. We do all those things back. I would always escape to this little coffee shop. This little coffee shop was MOCA Coffee.

It was in the northwest part of Rochester. The reason I'd run there is because, well, a few things. It was just my way of kind of escaping from all the. Everything that was at the hospital, but also from the kind of a face that I had to put on, if you will, because the rest of the family was incredibly distraught, understandably, we all were But I did everything I could to hold that face and be that person and kind of be the grounded one within the group because somebody needed to be there and do that.

The doctors were looking for someone who could make decisions, things like that. So I'd run to this place and I would let it out and then I would study. And when I started studying my brother's condition and what had happened and all the, you know, all the things that were involved, all the factors, it didn't look good. It really didn't look good. They had what they called a median survival time, which is the time at which half of the people who have that kind of condition are gone. And for everything that he had going on, they didn't measure that number in years, they didn't even measure it in months.

They measured that in weeks, most of the time. So as I was reading through, that made it a whole lot worse. It just was not in a good spot and I didn't have a lot of people that I could run to because again, I'm trying to play the grounded person. Fast forward. He was fortunate to undergo some testing and had a genetic mutation of this form of cancer that made it very treatable through a targeted therapy. It's a medication, it's an oral pill, takes it once a day, it's a chemo med, but it doesn't kill all the rest of the cells.

So they had some promise with this and they put all their eggs into that bas. We were down there last week, 11 months later for some follow up scans. He does these every one to two months. And it was. I was at the same coffee shop when I got the letter from him. He just sent it over. It was the chart notes. Because what happens, they do these scans and then they set up the appointment, but usually in between, sometimes a few hours, sometimes a whole night, we've gotten really good at reading those things.

We sent it over and instead of median survival time, the three words I saw were complete metabolic response. Which is the doctor's way of saying we don't find any cancer, we can't find it, we can't see it, there isn't any cancer on the scans head to toe. And what was really fascinating again was being in that same coffee shop. But the reason I bring this up and the reason I bring it back to community, first of all, it's just something that I couldn't be happier about. It's something that I just feel like I'm sharing with the close ones.

And it's just coming out here because it's an incredible story of community. And so I want to tie it back to that, because when this happened, when my brother got sick, you know, there were a few of us, and we did everything we could to be there, but it took a community to make this happen. So my brother was out of work, his wife was out of work. They were doing this thing in and out of the hospital. And financially, they were really worried because they kind of, you know, each have their jobs. They don't have a ton of money in the bank, and it's just there's a lot going on, and now they've got all these added costs, and they're not working.

So I went to the community. I went to my network, I went to my people. We hosted a fundraiser. Over the course of a few months, we raised almost $100,000 for him to not have to worry about. And I got to tell you, through my people and the network, I have, I watched that fundraiser, and I watched people donating, and there were people who never even met this man donating a thousand dollars, $1,500, couple thousand dollars. It was absolutely astonishing to watch. It was all the power of community, that really the doctors are doing what they're doing, the medicine is doing what it's doing.

But that community factor and what people show up and do and how people help emotionally, financially, all those things is a huge reason that he's not only alive today, but has those kinds of scans. And I think it's. There's an incredible parallel between that and the life that we find in recovery. The people who are willing to show up for us, and we have nothing when we need it. Most people are just willing to show up and give for no other reason than to help or because they're one connection removed from something like that, and they understand and they get it, and people want to help in the times of trial, tribulation, sorrow, all the things.

So I was making the correlation there. Just the ways in which my life was given second chance because of all the people and the people who had no reason. They didn't really know me from the next person, but they just showed up and they just helped. They just were the community. They were the people that gave me a different viewpoint on life because I walked into recovery with no kind of hope. I kind of slid backward into it. I just didn't want the pain that I had in the jail cell. So, yeah, I'll go to treatment.

But when I saw the people show and I saw those people who worked in treatment and I saw the other people who were going into treatment do what they were doing and just try to help out for no other reason than to help out. I started to have a different perspective on life and how people acted and what humanity was about. And that's actually what turned me into such a grateful person. These people who don't even know me are doing this. And the same is true for my brother and his situation. People that and didn't even know him were contributing.

And it's transformed the way that he looks at people and how thankful he is for people. So it's just everywhere. It's in life, it's in recovery, it's in mental health, it's in physical health, it's in all these other diagnoses that we get. And this community, our community. And that's what Cadre is all about. That's what we're doing here. Creating a community where people can come and they can feel safe, they can feel heard, they can feel supported, they can make sure that we support right. So we're doing, as contributors, we try to share with you the realities of our lives so that you can connect and you can feel like, hey, we're not in this alone.

This is exactly what Cadre is about, is the community. And community is such a difference maker. And I believe strongly community is actually a lifesaver. So it saves a lot of lives. I attribute that to my brother still being here. I tribute to my own recovery. So none of this happens, none of my life is here if it's not for a community like this and the people like this. So I'm grateful that you all are here and I really, really encourage everybody to think about that. In the communities we are in, what do we do?

How do we show up? How do we create community, how do we be part of community? And of course, how do we lean on community? Because the reality is, when I had struggles early on in my recovery, I didn't want to go and talk to people because I felt like it was a burden and people were very good. The group of people that I hung out with early in recovery said, look, if you're struggling with something and you don't go share with someone near you, you're robbing that person of an opportunity to help you, which in turn helps them and you don't give them that.

So, you know, stop thinking about it as the burden and start thinking about it as people in community just want a chance to support each other and to support other people and to be there. And that's what I try to show up. So give them that chance. Also be that chance for other people. It's again, what we're doing here at Cadre, all about the community. And I'm just grateful for this community, for Luke, our fearless leader here that's created something very special. So community means the world to me.

And I am grateful for each and every one of you for being part of it. Until next week. We'll see you soon.