Still Here W/Roe

Good morning. Good morning, Cadre fam. Let's see if I can turn this thing down. We got the music going here. Let's see if we can change this down. Good morning. Good morning. Give us. Give it a few seconds to let some people roll in. Happy Tuesday. It's Tuesday, February 10th. Let me make sure I got that right. Tuesday, February 10th. The weather's not bad outside today. I'm rolling in the morning listening to Nick Hustles, which is a completely. All AI generated artists, all the composing, the voice, everything.

And he touches on a lot of real subjects. You can tell it's someone behind a computer just making up songs about anything. And it sounds really good. But anyways, good morning. For those of you don't know me, my name is Rolando. I go by rose612 on Instagram. And I'm still here. Been through a lot in life, been a lot recently, and still here, still kicking, still thriving throughout everything that's going on in the world, life. And today. I kind of just wanted to speak about some real life situations and things that are going on in my life right now.

Been dealing a lot with grief and loss, with family. Had a close family member that passed away or overdosed. It hit a little close to home. Because of my past with addiction, it just. It hits a little harder when it's something that I've escaped or have put in the work to make sure that it doesn't happen to me. And it hit close to home and then also a little bit of trauma as well, of being back around a lot of family. That's always a. A crazy time sometimes, right? Especially when everybody's grieving.

Everybody grieves in their own ways. And some people grieve in ways that I've escaped and try not to grieve anymore. Right. So, yeah, grief, right. It's interesting how everybody handles and processes grief and loss. Right. For me, I never really learned how to process it. I think my. My coping mechanism was to ignore it and make myself busy. So then that way I don't have to deal with him. At least that's so I thought after being in addiction for so long and being. Being in addiction, coming out of it, being a peer recovery support specialist and being just exposed to both sides of the addiction spectrum, you come across a lot of death.

A lot. I stopped counting deaths at 65, and that was probably about three years ago. And there's been a lot more since then. I'm just like, you know what? I don't want to put a number to it anymore. I'm tired of counting. And it's interesting that once this death keeps happening, especially when it's overdose, when it hits close to home, I have a more of a. I wouldn't say callous, but more of a desensitized response to it. Right. I think more logically, I think more with my head than my heart, because my heart's gonna kind.

It's been hardened a little bit, right? Not. Not hard. I wouldn't say hardened, but I've got. I've. I've gained a lot thicker skin when it comes to dealing with death because I understand it. It's just been so much. So I have to it push myself to experience, to feel the emotions to feel. I have to create space, right? And that's one of the things that I. That stuck out to me this last week as I was consoling family. It's like, hey, you know what? Even if you're struggling with addiction, even if you're struggling with, you know, things in life that are challenging, no matter what your coping mechanisms are, good, bad, or the ugly, I challenge you.

All right? I challenge you. This is for you too. This is what I say to family. But this goes for you. If you're listening and you're dealing with life, things, and you're a human, this counts for you too. But if you're going through something, no matter what it is, yeah, it's good to be around family. It's good to be around friends. If you go to the gym to cope, if you go. Some people hang around their friends, family, some people drink, some people smoke. Whatever your advice is, I challenge you.

Take 15 minutes, especially if you're dealing with current things that are happening that just happened today or yesterday. Take 15 minutes to mourn, to grieve, and allow yourself, even if you have to set a timer. I set a timer before. All right? This 15 minutes is an intentional, protected time to grieve and mourn, whatever that looks like. If I have to cry, I'll cry. I have 15 minutes to get it out today because life goes on, right? I have 15 minutes to be sad, 15 minutes to journal. No music, no texting, no phone.

Put the dog in the kennel if you got one. But take that 15 minutes to be alone with yourself, to experience your feelings and emotions. For me, that 15 minutes begins the healing journey. Until I take that 15 minutes to sit and be alone with my thoughts, my feelings, the situations that are at hand. I'm distracting myself. I'm looking for things, topics and people and Other people's problems distract myself from the things that I need to be mourning or grieving over. Whether it's the loss of a loved one, a friend, a job, a breakup, whatever it is.

We're human. There's. There's several things. There's a lot of things that come with, with life, but a couple of things that are, I've had to radically accept. With death or with life comes death and comes hard, hard times. That's a part of the human experience. But one of the good things about the human experience is we get to experience those feelings. Good, bad, and the ugly. We get to grow from them. That's how we get tough, that's how we get stronger. That's how we get strong enough to help the next generation, the people that haven't dealt with the things we're going through.

That's how we evolve as humans and build that community, build love connection, and evolve emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Yeah, it sucks. We're gonna cry sometimes. We might even ugly cry, like profusely. Tears just running. But that's a part of life. I like to. I'm a silver lining, optimistic type guy. It's like, you know what, those tears that we're experiencing, those are a gift, in my opinion. It's a gift. There's a lot of people that aren't with us no more, that don't have the gift, that can afford to cry, that can afford to go through life's challenges.

We go through challenges, but there's always the other side. Right before every bright day, there's a dark night. That wasn't a Batman connection either. I'm a Batman fan, but with dark times come sunshine, right? So that's what I've been thinking about lately. Lately as I try to be there for family. My family, they did a native style tradition. After the death, they start a fire for four days, four nights and five days, 24 hours. Someone has to man the fire. And family cycle in and out, bringing food, coming and sharing stories, consoling each other, mourning together.

And that was such a powerful experience, right? Because a lot of times when someone dies, you go to their house for a couple hours, console family. You see them at the funeral or at the wake, and then it's on to the next thing. But this created an intentional space to mourn with each other, to support each other, to share stories, to share laughter, to share anger, to share come together as a collective. And it was so powerful was the actual mourning process together instead of people mourning individually.

And that was super interesting. But Even within that, I had to take that 15 minutes aside to go mourn in not isolation, but almost in a space of preparation, to be there for other people, to be there for myself, to still show up, to work, to still show up and be a member of the community, of the gym, all these things. It's all right. 15 minutes. That's my challenge to you. If you remember anything from anything I said today, 15 minutes of intentional time to navigate, deal with, and experience whatever you're going with, going through, whether it's anger, a loss of a job, sadness, depression, breakup, what, even if it's a death, whatever it may be, I challenge you.

15 minutes. Set that timer. 15 minutes. Process, think, feel, emotion, journal. And I promise you it will help you. 15 minutes. 1 5. Or is it this way? But that's what I just wanted to talk about. I preach a lot of, you know, growing transformation, you know, grit, go to the gym, lift weights. Only this. Only the strong survive. Like, okay, yes, those things are all true. But some of the strongest people still take time to heal themselves, to mourn intentionally, to be there for themselves before they can be there for anybody else.

And that's my challenge to you. Because on this human experience, this human journey that we call life that we're on, we're going to have hard times, we're going to have struggles, we're going to have sadness, we're always going to have joy, we're going to have laughter, we're going to have fellowship, we're going to have community, and we're going to have great platforms like Cadre to share those experiences with, with each other, and we learn from each other, and we. Iron sharpens iron. So that's what I got for you today.

So remember, 15 minutes, whatever your deal, even if it's just anxiety, whatever it is, take 15 minutes. I challenge you. I'm going to say it one more time. 15 minutes. I lied two more times. 15 minutes. Because you deserve that intentional time to heal, to mourn, to navigate. Anything that you're going through. You can afford 15 minutes out of your day if you say that you can't. Show me. Show me the data on how much you scroll on social media. We're just gonna go for the jugular anyways. My name is Rolando.

I go by ro rose612 on Instagram, and I am someone who's overcame a lot. Addiction, jails, prisons, overdose. And I'm still here. We are still here. Everything that we've ever been through in life, we still made it to this moment in time. We're still here. We still got some fight left us in us. And there's better days coming. Guaranteed. It might not always feel like that, but they're coming. We're still here. I'm still Ro. I gotta get to work. Thank you for sharing the space with me. There's a countdown.

Three, two.