Quick Bits: Honouring a Helper, New Video Episode with Recovery Queen Deb Borsos, and a Live Teaser

Tim Conrad (timsbits) (00:00)
Weytk Weytkp It's your host, Tim Conrad of the Wildfires, Floods and Chaos Communications podcast with a quick bits update. Last week after two decades with Alzheimer's, cancer took my mom very fast in the end. It wasn't until the last month that I realized she was among my first examples of helping people during emergencies.

Carol Conrad was a Canadian Red Cross volunteer for much of my childhood. She ran the equipment loan program and occasionally helped with emergency response. My memories of tagging along with mom's daily stops to the equipment program are vivid. It was an old school that actor Donald Sutherland once attended and maybe even began acting in the drama club. It still had those old wooden desks and chairs everywhere along with crutches, commodes, beds.

and my favourite, wheelchairs. While mom cleaned, organized, and sent out equipment, I was mostly occupied with rolling around in wheelchairs or on my roller skates. I even started a lifelong relationship with my best man in that building. It wasn't until years later that I realized how much work she did over many years, often without recognition or resources to match it. This was back in the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Volunteer resources were scarcer than they are today. It was beg, borrow and craft. I can recall many who were part of that effort, even if they weren't officially. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. It was in a movie back then.

I don't know about you, but I sure missed some of the moments that finally make sense decades later.

I've realized I'm addicted to helping people in their toughest moments. It's what I was surrounded by as a kid, with volunteer firefighters surrounding us on the street, funeral homeowners next door, and a Canadian Red Cross coordinator, maker and creator, organizer and helper as my mom.

Volunteers, community members, and neighbours, you may be one today, know one, or want to be one. They make a difference. Sometimes they never see the impact of their work. It matters now, and it will matter many years later, such as when there's a podcast heard in over a third of the countries around the world. Thank you to all of the helpers, and a special one with ice cream and strawberries for my mom.

There will be a short pause and I'll be back quite soon. Keep a close eye on the Butterfly Effect Communications channels on YouTube or LinkedIn, as you might see a live broadcast appear.

In the meantime, the recent episode, Nobody Talks Recovery Like Her with artist and recovery queen Deb Borsos, is now available on the Butterfly Effect Communications YouTube channel, and it includes visual aids to enhance viewing.

I'm still looking for your story and guest ideas. Maybe you have an episode in mind or you'd like to share, you know, so jump over to www.communicationspodcast.com. There might've been too many W's there, but whatever. For loads of content and spots to, you know, send reviews or get show notes, all sorts of things are there. A special thanks to those who connect with our guests to give them some appreciation for their episode. Kudos to those who make the effort, as trust me, they feel it. 

Taking those moments while you're on a screen to send a note to someone, well, you choose who. Just make sure you take the time to do it regularly and share the love among many. Those who wish to make a cash donation in memory of my mom, Carol Conrad, we appreciate your support of the Alzheimer's Society of Canada or the Terry Fox Foundation. Thank you to all volunteers out there, all the helpers. Goodbye. Hear me later.