𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐭𝐬

All right, you guys, it says it's 11:30. And there goes Gracie, my dog. I don't know. She barks at anything and nothing. Ah, hello. Hi, I'm seeing some people joining. Come on in. This is what we weekly call Harbor Pilots. My name is Kathy, my my. handle for the quadra sphere is speak wonder because I love to speak wonder into a waiting world. I also enjoy alliteration. Speak wonder into a waiting world. I use my pen, use my voice, and I use my little electronic keyboard, which incidentally my four year old granddaughter thinks is a toy.

So I hide it from plain sight whenever she comes to visit. This is old school typewriter, which is Bluetoothed to my laptop so I can type away. Yeah. Hello. I have a question for you today, Caregiver Day in the cadre. Perhaps the most soul-searching, mind-boggling question you will be posed with today. And the question is, What's on your charcuterie board? Don't worry, I'm leading to something. Thank you for the hearts. Charcuterie. It's French for a branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products.

In my case, meat, cheese, grapes, strawberries, popcorn, cheese. Did I say cheese already? Lunchable snacky things that you would put on this board and eat in bite-sized pieces. Charcuterie board. What's on your board? I told you it was a deep dive into intellect. And here is where the symbolism comes in. I'd like to ask you today because it seems to be something I need to hear and perhaps you as well. I want to ask you if you could maybe reduce your workload to bite size pieces, just like this lovely charcuterie.

Make your plate more digestible by making the portions smaller. Maybe in your push to do and be and plan and show up, you're losing a bit of yourself. I'm thinking that not all days are meant for problem solving. Some are meant for resting. Just, I don't know, kind of ruminating, thinking, being available for what might come to you in the quiet. Yesterday when I was doing dishes, a very ordinary task after dinner, I was happily watching the sunset outside my kitchen window. And then these rays of light came in to the window, just streaming in as they do on a sunny day at sunset.

And I was able to get my soapy hands out of the water, dry them off, grab my camera phone and take a picture. And I'm going to post it later in the chat that we have here on CADRE. Back to your charcuterie board and bite-sized pieces and taking a day apart. Maybe today is not that day. Maybe today is very task oriented and very problem-solving oriented. Perhaps tomorrow you could have a rest day, a recovery day. And as I love to do, I have found a little essay. Read this to mom on the phone last night.

Mary Ann Byrne is the writer and it says be true to you. I'm just going to let these words speak for themselves. Do not exhaust yourself in an endless effort to meet the expectations of others that were never yours to begin with. Each concession may seem small, noble even, but over time they hollow you out, leaving behind a version of yourself that is palatable to everyone and known by no one, including you. Gradually, you begin to lose sight of the person you really are, not through one great sacrifice, but through a thousand subtle adjustments, the softened opinion, the swallowed need, the instinct to be easier, quieter, more agreeable.

You begin to confuse survival with kindness, self-abandonment with grace. The world rewards your compliance, and in doing so, it teaches you to shrink. But there is a cost to this constant accommodation. The body remembers what the mind tries to justify. Fatigue settles where joy once lived. Resentment grows where generosity used to flow freely. You start to feel like a guest in your own life, performing a role rather than inhabiting a truth. At some point, you may decide to stop performing your life and start living it.

Be true to you. Mary Ann Byrd identifies herself as the be true to you spirit of a hippie. I'm going to pull away one bite-sized piece that landed well on my palate. And that is, the world rewards your compliance and in doing so teaches you to shrink. One tasty nugget out of that platter of wisdom from Mary Ann Byrne, the hippie chick who writes about real life. I'm so glad I found her. Wish I'd have written it. Mary Ann Byrne did. And it's for us today. Sure, you can have a plateful or a charcuterie of snacks, but take them in bite-sized pieces and be good to yourself.

Additionally, I wanted to share something from a mental health coach on another platform, and she said something about the pace of peace. Alexa, softer. I feel like that piano music is trying to drown me out. Is that better? The pace of peace. She says you do not have to push or force or level up in order to be committed. So many times in our human way of processing what's around us, We think, I think, that if I don't level up, if I don't push, if I don't have this drive to succeed, then I failed, or I've plateaued, or I've somehow come to this when in fact I'm still committed.

I'm still committed to my writing projects. I'm working on one now that I'm so excited about but it seems very slow in process. She calls it active recovery and what she means by that is getting a pace going so that in your peaceful times when you have the blessing of enjoying those or when you actually schedule them in your times of peace you are still committed. You're still doing that thing, that project. Maybe you're still ruminating or composing that letter that you want to write or thinking about that phone call that you really need to make.

You're still committed. It doesn't mean that you're dead in the water or you've come to a halt. To me this was A small pivot that became revolutionary for me today when she said, again, you do not have to push or force or level up in order to be committed. We can still be true to who we are and step back a little bit. We can still see what's on our plate, but receive it in smaller, digestible, bite-sized pieces. I didn't say a lot about harbors today because that's just part and parcel of my talks usually.

But if you're new to this, if you're meeting me for the first time or after a long time perhaps here in the cadre, I love to talk about harbors. I live in Erie, Pennsylvania. and I'm about a 10-minute drive from the waterfront. I could be down on the bay about 10 minutes, and I can be in the wondrous glory of the peninsula, which has 10 beaches, no, 11, 11 beaches, and of course the harbor side. And there I am on Lake Erie. I will likely be there today because my friend called and said, it's a wonderful day to take a drive.

I'll pick you up. I said, yeah, after cadre. So after my cadre hat comes off, figuratively speaking, I'll put on my sun hat and my glasses and we're going for a drive and we'll look at the lake. Harbor pilots is my way of saying we're all in the water and a harbor pilot by trade is the person who goes out in his or her boat to meet the larger vessel, climb up the rope ladder, and take over the helm or the wheel because likely that person who is navigating doesn't know the harbor, doesn't know what's under the water, doesn't know where the rocks might be or the tides or the pools of danger.

And so we guide each other into safety. We guide each other thoughtfully, carefully to safe mooring so that we can tie a rope, have a bit of a respite, and when we're ready, climb back in the boat and go out to sea. Harbor pilots are among us. These are our friends. Our cadre mates are our harbor pilots. Your friends in real time, in your world, so to speak. are your harbor pilots. And that's what you are to them. Yeah. We tend to put ourselves in pigeonholes. We say, I'm a parent, I'm a wife, I'm a mom, I'm a sister, I'm a caregiver.

And above all, I'm a harbor pilot. As a caregiver, I help steer my mom into good decisions that her 95-year-old self is trying to figure out. I help steer her toward activities at the nursing home so she can have social time and be reminded of how funny she is and how delightful she is to be around. I am her caregiver. I am her harbor pilot. I have a granddaughter. I'm her OMA. I'm also her harbor pilot. Yesterday, when she was in my home, I had to steer her away from things that she shouldn't be messing with because toddlers are innately curious and they want to try things and eat things and grab things.

She's a good kid, very well behaved. But they are soaking up their environment. And I had to steer her away from a few things just to keep her safe and to keep my things safe. Let me love you and leave you with the pace of peace and repeat again and echo the essay I read, saying and reminding you, you do not have to push or force or level up. in order to be committed. You're still on a good track. Rest is still activity. It's intentional recovery. It's intentional small bites, places to be a noticer instead of a doer.

In order to notice, we need to put down our flat screens. We need to abandon the remote. We need to be intentional, don't we? The world is striving for your attention. The infinite amounts of data that come your way with alerts and dings and text tones can be overwhelming. So put it on Do Not Disturb. I mean, I'm not telling you what to do, but do what is helpful and useful for you. Maybe a walk, maybe some light piano music on your device, and certainly and always engaging with the Quadrosphere.

Dr. Charisse is coming up later, and we also have Comedy in the Chaos, with Shannon Paul. And then later on we have Jen Varalli, Sober, Not Somber Hour. It's all to come yet today. Consult your quadres schedule. I'm on Eastern Time. Some of y'all are on Central and others still are on Pacific. What's on your charcuterie? Enjoy what's there. Savor it, experience it, and take it in little, digestible, bite-sized pieces today, I ask you. Hi, Emily. I can't see quite everybody here, but thank you so much for stopping by.

And I'll see you next week in the harbor.