When the Light is Withheld: The Perplexity of Humans Who Keep You in the Dark.
Kathy opens the session with personal introductions, a little about her setting and music, and explains her recurring 'harbor pilots' metaphor for mutual support. This orients viewers to the episode's theme and tone.
Kathy invites listeners to reflect on relationships where people refuse to communicate or celebrate, defines the idea of 'withholding', and uses a flashlight/camping metaphor to illustrate the isolating emotional experience. This helps viewers recognize and name the problem.
She offers possible explanations—new boundaries, personal storms, needing time to craft a response, and differing paces like artists versus instant communicators—encouraging listeners to consider alternatives to assuming neglect. This reframes the behavior and reduces personalizing.
Kathy suggests doing nothing unless there's danger—waiting with watchful hope—and reads a compassionate piece validating caregivers who keep showing up despite exhaustion. Viewers receive practical advice plus emotional affirmation.
Alright, we are live. I'm a radio girl. And I like to call this my weekly radio gig on the Cadre. My name is Kathy, if we haven't met. I like to call myself Speak Wonder here in the Cadresphere because I like to write and read and collect. beautifully written essays and poetry and novels and short stories and memoirs. I love being in this space with you as a contributor, as somebody who receives truth and wisdom and nurture and encouragement. If I had to describe CADRE in one word, it would probably be encouragement with a capital E.
I'm in my now sunny little apartment near the shores of Lake Erie. You can see back here the sunshine coming in my window. I found a place out on my porch earlier where I could sit and just let the sun hit my back. It was beautiful. Somebody's saying good morning. How are we? It's Chrissy. Christy. Christy Larson. Thank you for your latest contribution. I got some great things out of it. Thank you. It's good to have you here. Go see Christy on the replay if you didn't see her live. You know, there's such sun coming in my window that there's a glare on my screen.
It's a beautiful thing. Do you like the music? It might not be loud enough, but it's the right volume for me so I can concentrate. It's the piano guys. I love their stuff because it's all instrumental. Much of it is pop music and it's interesting what you hear in a piece of music when there are no lyrics or when the lyrics are not present, just the music. Okay, you guys, four days ago on Monday, I looked at my little Google calendar and it said, Put in topic for this week's cadre. I do this every Monday so that I can look ahead to what I'd like to contribute on Caregiver Day Thursday.
I always talk about harbor pilots and how they are among us, how we are in a symbolic harbor of life, and we have these other motorboats coming toward our vessel to assist us in how to care for people, how to set boundaries. how to rest intentionally, how to retrieve your creative juices, all the things that we learn from one another. And I see that as little boats in the harbor intentionally motoring toward each other to help them find safety at the docks and rest and respite so that we become better equipped to pull up anchor and go back in the harbor or back out to the open sea eventually and all the adventures waiting for us.
It really is good to see you. You look good. You do. So I wrote in my preparation notes The perplexity, which is very hard to pronounce alive, the perplexity of humans who keep you in the dark. You guys, I have no idea what I was thinking, where I was going with that. So this morning when I opened my laptop and rediscovered my topic, I thought, hmm, I was so absolutely confident and sure on Monday of this topic and now I really have no idea. Note to self, write out your intentions when you pick a topic, because they might slip away from your awareness.
Life is lifing, as always. And life got very lifey this week. And I dropped the ball on my topic, but I picked it up this morning, and here's what I have. Because this is life in real time. Hello. I'm going to quit messing with my phone. I think you can see me. There's Brianna. I'm going to quit trying to adjust things and just get to the topic of combo conversation. I want to ask you a few questions. You don't need to put it in the chat because it's kind of a multi-layered question, but it's something that I want to see if it resonates with you when I ask it.
Is there someone in your life who refuses to communicate or listen? Basically I'm asking, is there someone withholding the light from you? Maybe they are refusing to give you love and affection, someone who normally would give you those things. Maybe they're refusing to celebrate when you share some good news or good fortune and they're really not participating in your joy. Is there someone who withdraws from seeing your own visible emotional pain? And if this is happening, I found a psychological term on Google called withholding.
Those of you who are mental health experts in the field who have lots of letters beside your name, you know what withholding is. You could describe it a lot better than I. I'm a layman. I'm a lay person in this world of navigating our mental wellness. But I do bring with me experience. I think that counts for something, yes. Withholding, so the poet in me decided to draw out that word and describe it. Withholding the way I experience it is keeping me in the dark. Withholding the light. And it's...
perplexing. They're not shining their light. They're noticing the darkness I'm dwelling in in the moment, but they're not bringing a flashlight. It's almost as though we're out camping and we got lost on the way back from the latrine to the tent. We got lost. Your friend is right by your side and has a flashlight in their pocket. but they're refusing to illuminate the path. It's kind of like what it feels like in my experience. Keeping the light from me. And it does make you feel a little bit isolated or not understood, not cared for, not left.
But I wonder if something else is happening. I wonder if there's something else going on. Maybe we could pause for a beat and consider what might be happening. For me and possibly for you as well, my first go-to response is me. What about me? I need the light. I can't find my way back to the tent. There are sticks and logs and things that I might trip over. I need you to put some light on this. But what if we took another beat and said, what's going on? we won't have to verbalize it but if we consider what might be going on with that individual, that family member, perhaps the person for whom you're giving care, that friend that is not shining the light.
Well I came up with some things. They're all plausible explanations. Like maybe they're creating some boundaries for whatever reason. Just establishing some boundaries that are new to you. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, right? Maybe they're caught up in their own storms and they don't have the capacity to reach for their flashlight and illuminate your path. They're caught up in their own dark storms right now. Maybe they're carefully working on and crafting their response to you. You ever have a question linger in the air for a week, two weeks?
A question that you think deserves an answer and you're not getting one? It could be, it could be that the response is coming. And you know, it's a true fact that we live in a world of texting and IM-ing and Even emails are so quick to land at our laptop. That's great that we can have quick responses, but there are some of us in this world of texting and instant messaging and even we can do voice to text now, which I've discovered and I love it because it's quicker. But in this world of automatic gratification in the communication realm, There are still those of us who are watercolor artists and we're painting a landscape.
We're finding the lines, filling in the mountains. Those piano guys are really playing some specifically energetic music right now. I hope it's not too loud. Hey, pop in a little thing or a little message if it's too loud and I will ask my device to quiet down. Yeah, so I guess that was my final point. In this age of instant responses, there are still landscape artists, there are still people who use their oils or their watercolors or their crayons. They have a slower way of coming up for air. And all this time you might think you're being ignored, you are in fact being thought of and cared for and deeply loved.
The response is simply not as quick as you would like, and that has to be okay. That has to be all right. So I guess in today's cadre, my friend, I'm advocating for those people that have been withholding light from you. I'm trying to shine a different light on them that perhaps says They're going through their own storms. They're creating boundaries. They're painting a landscape. They have a beautiful response, but it just isn't finished yet. These are all possibilities. Perhaps. My final question after, do you have this happening in your life?
and what might be happening to them. My third question is, what shall we do? I say nothing. I say nothing. I say, unless there's some kind of risk or danger or scenario unfolding, I say nothing simply to wait with curiosity and a watchfulness that has hope in it. Yeah. We wait. For those, and I include myself in these numbers, for those in this group of people feeling unseen, not responded to, I have something to say to you. I read this here on the cadre back in February. And I feel like it needs to be read to you again today.
So over your wounded wooden noggin, I am pouring some words of life because while you might feel marginalized or isolated, gaslit, I am here to tell you that you are still showing up and you matter and it matters. If you need to hear this today, I'm here to tell you. No one's told me the music's too loud. Here we go. This I took from TikTok Meemaw, one of my heroes. She's fabulous, and she titled this for those still showing up. Alexa, stop. I'm getting pulled into the cellos. I love cellos, but I want to read this to you in a bubble of silence.
This is for those who keep showing up while the world feels unrecognizable, for the ones carrying private battles into public spaces, steadying themselves before meetings, before classrooms, before kitchens and hard conversations. The pace of crisis is faster than our nervous systems were ever designed to hold. Grief stacks. Pressure lingers in the body long after the day has ended. And still, you show up. My caregiving friend, you show up. You lead while tired. You care while stretched thin. You offer steadiness while managing your own quiet unraveling.
Some are navigating fractured relationships. Some are carrying loss or illness, uncertainty that no one sees. Some can feel an ending closing and something new gathering beneath the surface. If rest feels incomplete and capacity feels thinner than usual, you, my friend, are not failing. You are responding to reality. Showing up does not require perfection, only presence, only presence. And if today presence looks quiet or unfinished, that still counts. It still counts. Keep your flashlight handy because somebody might need you to eliminate their path.
And if somebody's withholding the light from you, yeah, that's perplexing. There's always a reason. I invite you to extend grace. And caregiver, you're still showing up. You're fabulous. Amazing. Coming up, we have Miss Shannon Paul, Comedy in the Chaos, and we have Rachel Hevacost in Rachel's room. I leave you with a picture of a harbor scene that has gone with me to many apartments. And it's tiny. It fits in my little space. And so I leave you with the thought of harbor piloting and making room for the light, even when it's not shining.
See you next week.
