Miss Shannon Paul greets viewers and briefly lists her professional roles and personal hobby as a budding plant mom to set context for the talk. After picking up her son, she describes a rough but improved afternoon and credits skill-building and support from his care team for the better outcome.
Miss Shannon Paul greets viewers and briefly lists her professional roles and personal hobby as a budding plant mom to set context for the talk.
She explains the timing clash between her usual livestream and an important IEP meeting for her son, revealing the guilt she felt about missing the stream.
She decides to prioritize her son's IEP meeting over the livestream, cancels the stream, and reports a productive meeting outcome.
After picking up her son, she describes a rough but improved afternoon and credits skill-building and support from his care team for the better outcome.
Using her lemon tree as a metaphor, she reflects on how small setbacks don't mean failure and connects this to her child's emotional processing and growth.
Shannon talks about avoiding doing 'all the things' and plans to pare down projects over the summer to be more present and help her son more effectively.
She outlines immediate tasks for the day, plans to return for future streams, asks viewers about their summer plans, and engages with the chat.
She thanks viewers, offers kind send-off, jokes about summer heat and makeup, and signs off with encouragement to be kind to themselves.
Hello everybody. Happy Saturday to you. I am Miss Shannon Paul, a variety of word related things, including a comedian, a corporate speaker, a voice actor, and a vet emcee and a benefit auctioneer. I am also a budding plant mom, and so I'm disappointed that my lemon tree lost this today. I don't know why it thinks it's shedding, so I will determine whether I need to give it more water or leave it alone. So that's always a hard thing. Does it need more water or am I over watering it? I am also the proud parent of an adorable 18 year old kiddo who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum.
And so I'm always happy to share with you some of what's going on in our life from the version of comedy through the chaos because we use comedy and humor to get through some of the difficult things in life. I was supposed to join you on Thursday, so I am going to do a little full disclosure moment for that. Thursday was one of those days where I was trying to do everything all at once. m. m. Central on Saturdays. And this Thursday, or last Thursday, what ended up happening is that his care team at school was available to work on his IEP, his individualized education plan.
And so they're like, okay, we can do it at two o'clock. And I'm like, yeah, I can do it at two o'clock. And then I started the guilt immediately of, but you're supposed to do your live stream. You're supposed to check in with your community. Hi, Andy, how are you today? I was just talking about why I wasn't here on Thursday and the guilt that came from that. So I'm sitting there and I'm trying to figure out how to do all the stuff. Like, well, maybe they can start the meeting and talk amongst themselves for a while while you do the livestream on Tuesday or maybe I should try and get them to move the meeting on Tuesday even though I know that it's kind of complicated to get everybody together.
So I'm thinking all this stuff and finally my brain goes, stop, do the thing. Get out of this analysis paralysis of trying to do everything all at once, which you know you're not gonna be successful at. Do the thing that you need to get done, be fully present at that, work on that, because this next year, it's gonna be my son's senior year, and so we're definitely trying to set him up for success before he moves into some transition programs and other things. So I've been doing a lot of thinking about that, and now I have an opportunity to work with the other people who have been thinking on that, and I was about to blow it up because I felt guilty.
So I did what I needed to do. I canceled the live stream for Thursday. I had a good meeting with his care team. I'm glad that we got it. You know, at least some things kind of settled so we can figure out. what's gonna be the main goal for next year and how I can over the summer to help set him up to be able to do some of the things that we wanna do moving into the next year. Thank you so much for that. So we got that done and then I went to pick him up and bring him home and he had kind of a rough afternoon, Thursday afternoon.
I'm not exactly sure what's going on with his internal ecosystem, but the thing that I am sure about is that it was, hello SpeakWonder, good to see you as well. The thing that I am proud of regarding our very complex, unpleasant afternoon on Thursday afternoon was that it was proof that some of the things that we put into play, that I put into play, that his care team has put into play over the last few years did give him a better skill set to be able to work through things. And what turned out to be a really really difficult hour was only an hour when there could have been times in the past when it would have been worse.
So I'm really glad that he managed to work through that and get back to regulation and we were both safe. And then by the time I needed to leave for a work event that I was doing Thursday evening, he was calm and he was happy and he was able to hang out with his staff member while I could go to work and help a wonderful organization here in the Twin Cities raise some money. So I now will bring that back to what's going on with my lemon tree. Sometimes it's really difficult to go, okay, am I watering it too much or am I not giving it enough attention?
And you get stuck in the loop when you see one thing start to go wrong. Just because you see this one leaf doesn't mean that the whole plant is going to fall apart and die. Sometimes it's okay, what you're doing. That's the right thing. But maybe today was just a day that it needed to shed. And my kiddo's been in the same thing. Some days, there's just some days he needs to work through all of his emotions and work through some stuff. And I have to acknowledge that helping him do that thing, work through that hard thing is what we've been working on all this time.
And you know what? He's getting better at it and so am I. So that is the plan for right now is to continue working on some things give him some more autonomy, give him some more skill set to. Be able to work. Through these things on his own. And I think that's very difficult for a lot of us. So I just wondered, I thought I would ask you and print it out to the community, you know, what's that thing that you've been trying to live doubly regarding where you know that you can only do one thing. So you're trying to do all the things so nothing gets done well, nothing gets done in a mindful manner where you get to be fully present at it.
That was how my last week was. And I had to sit with that and give myself time to go, no, you're allowed to do a thing at a time and get that right. Such a complex lesson to have to remind yourself over and over again. So that is what I'm going to really work on over the summer is that I'm paring down the number of projects that I have during my slower season, thankfully, so that we have time to work on some kiddo things, but then just do some things that are going to fuel both of us is what is going to be the recurring theme of our summer of 2026 is doing things that refuel my kiddo and I.
So I'm looking forward to that. So I'd love to know what you were looking forward to as well as we move into the summer. Hopefully you have some things on your agenda that will, even though they may sound small, like ours sound small, just catching up on some of this stuff, but they are very important to you. So it's always good to see your names in the chat. I hope that you were doing well. Lovely Speak Wonder. I need to catch up on your post from last week. I also need to read a bunch of the articles.
Andy Mac is good to see you in here as well. If you are in a region, yeah, paring down is very difficult for a lot of us because we tend to try and do, as I said, all the things all at the same time, which is not manageable. I am going to go and help him get prepared. He does seem awake enough that when his adaptive personal trainer gets here at 11 o'clock, they may actually be able to do some things and see how that goes. And I do hope to plan. m. Central. Things seem to be. paring down enough that I'll be able to do that and not have to be in two places at once again.
But I appreciate all of you. I'm always glad that I get to share and see what we have going on with all of you as well. This is what we're trying to do is build my post was so comical. I want it. I you know what? You can always borrow it. Comedy to the chaos colon speak wonder edition. So that's what I'll do. There is lots of things and I think that that's also good for you to be able to realize because that's a lot of what we do is Find ways to anchor to the humorous things that we do even throughout our lives so that we don't only anchor to the negative things so That is how we are going to continue on this week.
I am going to figure out absolutely speak wonder I'm gonna figure out how to get my hair to be a little less voluminous because it's humid today and I have to do an outside event later this afternoon and it's 80 something degrees. So I am happy for the warmth and the not winter, but this has to do something. So I always appreciate you. I'm looking forward to seeing what you have posted. I'm looking forward to continuing to check in with everybody and see how we can all grow together throughout the summer.
And it's gonna be great, it's gonna be great. Even if it's great with a small g. I'm good for that as well. So, good to see everybody. Enjoy your weekend if you are able to. I hope that the day treats you well. If it doesn't, shame on it, not shame on you. Thank you very much, Beek Wonder. I'll take that. I'll do that. So, and I'm not gonna put on all my makeup 'cause it's too hot. We're gonna have to deal with some of the naturalist. So, I appreciate you all. Be kind to yourselves and we'll see you back here next Thursday.
