How Accepting Help Is an Expression of Love

“I can’t bring the kids to the library to meet you guys today. My battery died. I need a new one.” I messaged my friend early the other morning.

“Oh no!” She responded. Then she followed up with a lovely offer to come pick us up and throw my kids’ carseats in her giant minivan so we could still go.

“No no. Thank you so much but the girls still have coughs and I have work to do. I’ll just stay in and get that done. We’ll catch up with you later in the week.” I messaged her back, thanking her for the kind offer.

Accepting help is not my strong suit. In fact, I suck at it.

I’m Fine

This is my go to response whenever I’m offered help. “I’m fine.”

I’m totally fine.

Not only do I almost never ask for help. I can’t even accept help from others!

And it just so happens that this same friend had told me this very thing only a couple of weeks ago.

But “I’m fine” is in my blood. 

All the way back to my great grandmother on one side and my grandmother on the other side.

Needing help is shameful.

Someone giving you help always comes with strings.

Getting help from other is always a sign of weakness and inferiority.

Those are the lessons I grew up with, that swirled around me. They were both spoken and implied.

So, “I’m fine.

“Thank you so much, but I’m fine.” “I’m okay.” “I’m good.” And so on.

Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone

A few weeks ago, before the conversation I had with my friend, another friend of mine, a spiritual medium, was in my living room for what has become our monthly channeling circle events. It was my turn to be read by her, and Ingrid’s big message this time was that she (or the universe working through her) could see me basically fulfilling my biggest dream. The thing holding me back, she said, was that I was “playing small.” I needed to go big, and this meant stepping out of my comfort zone.

This would be hard for me, she acknowledged, because there is not much that makes me uncomfortable. I have done a lot, been through a lot, and seen a lot, and I am an extroverted oversharer (that’s a word right?).

What comfort zone?! The world is my comfort zone!

She told me then that I would need to start feeling around for what made me uncomfortable and start stepping out into it.

All along, I was having experience after experience that was difficult for me, like waves crashing over me, and me just trying to stay afloat and maintain my positivity, reaching back for my elated bliss I had so few weeks ago. Where was that joyful Shanna?

Miscarriage. Boom. Food poisoning. Boom. House full of sick people. Boom. Poisoned air after the Central California fires, trapping me and my kids inside for days on end. Boom.

Sexual Assault, on the street, while out for a run in a small, sleepy town.

Boom

What the fuck?

I knew I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what it was.

What was the message I was supposed to be getting from all of this? (Because I am a firm believer that we relive the same cycles over and over until we get the damn point.)

Well, after the channeling circle, I was open to the concept of stepping out of my comfort zone, and then I was groped on the street just a week later.

“Oh my god! Do you want me to come get you?” My sister asked?

“Please let me come get you.” My husband messaged me.

“No. I’m fine. I’d rather walk home and process my feelings.” I replied to everyone concerned. “I’m fine.”

And then it started hitting me, boom, boom, boom, boom.

“I’m fine.”

No. I’m not fine. And even if I am fine, letting people help me would be stepping out of my comfort zone.

Accepting Help

I’m currently reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly in which she discusses shame at length. “Coincidentally, I had just skimmed past a Brene Brown quote a short while ago, before all this started, about asking for help, and at the time I shrugged it off.

“Until we can receive with an open heart, we’re never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”

Oh! Helping is a part of being in a community, and when you let others help you, you are doing them a service as much as when you help them. People want to help. Helping others makes you feel closer to them. Letting others help you makes them feel closer to you. And around it goes.

I had been blocking this part of connection from everyone in my life.

Everyone

Even my husband.

“Can I tell you how glad I am to be able to talk about this with you without your back getting up, without you getting defensive? The idea that my wife will let me help her is such a huge relief to me.” My husband said this to me the other day as I was working all of this out in my head. He’s my muse.

Fuck. I’ve been blocking a part of me from my own husband.

I am still working it out. It is a long, long work in progress for me. I have so many triggers around letting people help me or asking for help that it will take some time to come into alignment with this part of the new, more open, more free me.

I have either been shamed or rejected in my life when I have reached out for help. I learned very very early that I could depend on one person, and one person only: me.

But that is simply not true. And I have missed an entire portion of my self love work in not allowing others into my inner sanctum of trust and vulnerability.

I’m learning that I’m not always fine. That asking for help is actually good for me and the other person, and our relationship, and the community at large that receives the ripple effect.

And I’m learning to say yes to things I am so conditioned to say no to.

Saying Yes

“Can I change my mind?” I message my friend just a half an hour later, still the early hours of the morning. “Can you come get me and we’ll throw the carseats in your car and we’l party like rock stars for a couple hours?”

“Yes! Of course!” She messaged me right away.

“Okay cool. Thanks.” I messaged back.

And then I cried. I let the tears come and wash over me in relief and gratitude and surprise and joy and self love. Not big heaping sobs. Just those tears that come up into your throat and press right behind your eyes. Letting those tears in is the greatest gift I have been giving myself lately.

I am still opening up, there is still more to uncover, and I am doing the good work of living my best life and being my best me.

And sometimes it’s ugly and painful and brutally repetitive.

And other times it’s beautiful and new and collaborative.

“Thank you.” I said to my friend as we sat in her minivan, our kids playing in the backseat, oblivious to my mini breakdown and breakthrough.

“Thank you for offering help. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to say yes. Thank you.”

And the tears came again.

This is my happily ever after.