Some people are only comfortable with you when you’re struggling. These are not your people. On this edition of Harbor Pilots — some gentle ideas on how to identify the supportive humans in your storms.
Good morning comrades. I love being in the cadre as a consumer, as a contributor, as a human being on a real journey. I'm coming to you from my tiny house near the Bayfront or the harbor of Lake Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania. I want you to hear the birds ong. You just heard the birdsong from my cuckoo clock. I have my window open. I wonder if I can just show you a little bit of what's going on out here. I think I frightened them away because I opened the window, but as we progress today, you will hear them vying for position on the suet, blocks and on the feeders.
My name is Kathy. My cadre handle is Speak Wonder because I like to speak words of wonder, words of contemplation. And I like to say words of nurture and encouragement. I like to write. I have published some books and I like to write poetry as well. Sometimes I bless you with a haiku. Today is not that day. I feel like I'm just coming up for air. I've gotten gobsmacked the last few weeks with losses. And those take a while to process. Before I get into that and into my topic today about choosing your people, I want to say also that my template or my I hate to use word branding, but the thing I love to talk about on cadre is harbor pilots.
And you'll see that as part of my title. You like my hat? A little bit of a hippie chick vibe today. We're in that wobbly in between where we're having a spring thaw or winter thaw. Spring is 29 days away. And we're having that curious fog that happens when the warm air hits the cold snow as it is melting. And so our temperatures have spiked here in north western Pennsylvania up into the 50s after a brutal relentless months long winter of being in the deep freeze. I'm talking single digits and below zero.
And we've come out of that. We've gotten now the mud and messy snow, the dirty gritty snow that is melting. My dog and I walk out to the barn on the property several times a day. And she comes home, you know, with her feet needing to be wiped off because of the mud. And then they're predicting snow this weekend. But it's not Armageddon snow. It's just snow. It's just snow. And we will navigate and we will be fine. Puncetani Phil, of course, saw his shadow on February 2nd, which meant six more weeks of winter.
So today is a day to lift the sash and let the air in . And hopefully during my live broadcast, and maybe you'll hear it on the replay, there will be birds song. Yeah, they really fluttered away, because they're not used to hearing me open the window. It's been such a dark cold winter, but today is mild, temperate, little hits of spring to come. I am not able to see if you are here. That's why I'm not interacting with anybody. I found that out last week that when I'm live, I'm not necessarily seeing hearts or comments.
But please put them there because I will see them when I go back in. I so appreciate you. I really do. Gobbsmacked is a good word for when you feel like you just came up for air from a death. And then there's another one in this scenario. That's what I'm talking about. And we have all dealt with loss. In fact, that's what my books are about is grief and recovered joy and how to have joy in the midst of processing a loss because it can take a long time. And everybody's different. And as we've often heard here on the cadre and other places, grief is not linear.
And it's personal to each person. Yeah. I talked about this in my live last week, which I had titled bearing witness, which is to stand beside somebody, hug someone if they're a hugger, offer a cup of coffee or tea to someone who is grieving. In this most recent case, I traveled to Columbus, Ohio to be with a colleague and a friend who I went to high school with. And she and her husband lost their son, who was 42 years of age at the time of death, bearing witness simply being there and beside and showing up showing up in the grief.
No sooner got home from that road trip and that celebration of life service than I heard from the sister of one of my dearest closest friends that I've known for decades that she had, she had died from sepsis, which in my friend's case was poisoning in her bloodstream. And it had just gone too far before they detected it. And it could not be mitigated or treated or corrected. I think some people who have that condition, while it's very difficult and squ ishy and could go either way, if you get it in the beginning stages medically, it can sometimes be fought and the person comes around.
In this case, my friend did not. And it was unexpected. Their death is imminent. And you have that ambiguous grief. I've heard that term, have you ambiguous grief? And that can be grief around the loss of a loved one that feels imminent or the loss of a job or the loss of an expectation. Perhaps you're calibrating your life into a new season. And so you're letting go of things that are good and that you hold dear, but you need to release them in order to receive what's next. And that's a type of grief work.
I will be going to that memorial service in March next month, exactly the time when cadre contributors are traveling and gathering in Minnesota. And I was going to be a part of that, but it's the same weekend. And I need to go and be with her family. Today I'm not so much talking about grief as choosing your people. In the Harbor Pilots template or picture, I often refer to the vessel or the ship coming into the local waters. And in real life, there is a job called Harbor Pilot where the local person who 's hired to help the ships come in actually is on call and hops in a boat.
And when the ship comes in, it's almost always, especially a cargo ship or even a pleasure boat that's traveling through, almost always the person who's at the wheel doesn't know the local waters. And so the Harbor Pilot goes out in a smaller vessel, climbs up the rope to the wheel and takes over for the captain, becomes the captain for that short length of time in Harbor to bring them safely to the docks, to get the ropes on and to make sure everybody is well and safe, secure. And the Harbor Pilot alone knows what's beneath the water, knows the hazards, the sandbars, the waters, the way they shift and can avoid a certain disaster that a stranger might not know about.
In the same vein, a Harbor Pilot in your life is a person, an individual or a group of people, your Bible study, your pastor, your cadre people, the people that you go mini golfing with or bowling or the people you pell around with during Super Bowl or the Olympics, your tribe, that's the group that you love to have around you. And during my recent waiting through difficulty and loss, I've taken a good look at who is around me. And I love my Harbor Pilots. I love those who sail out to my vessel and gently get me into safety.
Because many times as probably happens to you, you 're in a situation that you're not sure how to navigate, so you need your people, you need your Harbor Pilots, you need your friends who will travel over to you and guide you safely into safety, rest, respite, recalibrating, recharging your batteries, so that when you go back out to the open waters, you are equipped, you are nourished, you are encouraged. Today, I'm talking about people who you might need to weed out. And I'm talking to myself more so than you, because it's come to my awareness that I have people who I refer to as border bullies.
And these are people who come into the harbor who only are there to criticize. Do you have people like that? They give unsolicited advice. They're lovely human beings. But perhaps the way they deal with life is to dole out advice. When you haven't asked for it, it's not always welcomed, is it? It's a little ouchy. And rather than push back, myself, personally, as a people pleaser, I listen to it. Because there might be something of value there. I don 't reject it unless it's delivered in a harsh way or a way that is humiliating or wounding other than that.
I'll take your words of advice, your wisdom, and then I will sift them through my grid and keep what's worth keeping and let the rest float away. So getting to this quote right here, one of my mentors, one of my gurus is this woman called Tik Tok Momma. Tik Tok Mima, she's grandmother and she just has all these wonderful things to share. And she said this one day, and I wrote it in my journal. She said, some people are only comfortable with you when you're struggling. That's stuck. That's stuck somewhere in my subconscious and it followed me through the day until I wrote it down.
Some people are only comfortable with you when you're struggling. Do you have that person, that individual, those persons in your life? When I say weed them out, I don't mean ghost them or delete them. Only if that's called for at some point. But what I'm caution ing you to do is to exercise caution, tread lightly, listen carefully, use what's worth using, but maybe not share with that person the details of your heart. There are unsafe persons in our world who are lovable, who are worth loving, but not worth sharing the core things of our heart.
We need to figure out who is, who is the person we can be safe with. This is Parker Palmer. And I printed this out and it says, the human soul does not want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed. It wants to be seen , heard. It wants to be companioned exactly as it is. When we're in a place where we're absorbing some difficult news or navigating a new route in life, for somebody to just come alongside and witness, not give advice, not fix and not save, but simply to witness, that 's a gift.
That means that person or that group of people are willing to be with you while you figure stuff out, not compare, not tell their own stories, which is very tempting. We love to do that, don't we? I think some people would say, well, that's what a conversation is. When you tell a story and then I tell mine, not always, not always. Sometimes a conversation is silently witnessing. It's a conversation without words. It's discerning, what is needed in that moment, which is sometimes just listening. This is my quote and I wrote it in Purple.
Listening is a radical act of compassion. Listening while it seems passive is actually radical. It's counterintuitive and it can be refreshing to the person to whom you're listening. When we listen, we allow them to paint the campus. We're not adding splashes or color or landscape. We're simply listening as their palette becomes populated with color and texture and their own brush strokes. Listening is a radical, radical act of compassion. During my recent griefs and losses, which I'm still processing, I have had the treasure and the blessing of harbor pilots or people who come alongside and witness silently.
They will say words of comfort. They will ask if I'm okay. One friend brought me soup. And there have also been people who don't usually even show up in my life. I don't usually see them unless I'm struggling. I don't know if that's something you've experienced, but when someone comes around only when I'm struggling or down or feel kicked in the stomach, that's not a harbor pilot. That's somebody who only shows up in difficulty. It's not balanced. It's taking a certain pleasure in my pain. Let's be careful around people who only show up when you're struggling, who only show interest when you're grasping to breathe and to come back up for air.
You can discern. Your gut will tell you. Guys, we ladies have an edge over you. It's called women's intuition. When we listen, it leads us well and accurately. Grab yourself with people who will be with you in your pain, who will offer advice only when you ask for it, who will do the kind and radical act of listening, and who will show up in your joyful times as well as your sad ones. Those are your people. This is what we see every day on cadre during the live conversations at the replay and during the chats that we have, the constant chat that you see on cadre.
These are the things on my heart today. Thank you for bearing witness to my pain, for being interested in me as a whole person, as one who celebrates joy and who languishes in sadness. It's an odd mix, isn't it? Being human. And we need to do this thing together. And we need to learn and grow and watch and care. And eventually, at the end of each day, find ourselves moored in a harbor that is welcoming, that is safe, and that says, come in. Come in. Let's lean in together. You want to talk? You want to walk?
You want to be quiet? There are probably ways in which you have shown up for somebody that are immeasurable, that you'll never get feedback. But that have sent ripples of kindness and compassion. Bless you for that. Those are my thoughts today on Harbor Pilots, caregiver day. It's almost too heavy and close. And it's for another cadre. But my mom, Junebug, to whom I'm a caregiver, is showing signs of slowing down. It feels imminent, but it might not be. I've gotten calls from the nursing staff at the nursing home saying, mom's okay.
However, we're seeing this and we 're seeing this and they're all signs of decline in her body. Not ready. And yet, I understand what's going on. Take good care. You're fabulous. I thank you for being with me today. And I'll see you next week on caregiver day. I forgot to look at what's coming up on your schedule for the cadre. But there's so much good content. Most often on Thursdays, you 'll hear from Ms. Shannon Paul comedy in the chaos that's coming up on caregiver day. And there are others that are on your cadre app.
It's such a welcoming group of people, the cadre. And I invite you to have a good rest of your day. I'll see you next week on Harbor Pilots. [BLANK_AUDIO]
