Learning to Accept Help
We Americans pride ourselves on being fiercely independent, of refusing to ask for help. Our independent nature has driven us forward and unknowingly created a lack of community, a sense of fierce isolationism. In this mindset, we lookout for ourselves, ignoring the needs of our neighbors, worried that if we share what we have, we won’t have what we need.
While this may not be true for all of us, allow me to ask you a question. How many of you know your neighbors? By no means am I saying you must be their best friend, always know every detail of their life. What I am saying is that we should know their names, and let them know we are here should they need help. The lack of community we exist in will be our downfall.
This fierce sense of isolation has created the perception that asking for help is a sign of weakness. When trouble comes, we should have the strength and ingenuity to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Those of us who cannot do this are weak, lesser than, and perhaps deserve the challenges of life. We have lost our compassion, our ability to see the humanness of every person, not the image.
Learning to see past outward images, to not judge people on sight is something I struggle with and am actively working on. Because of where I grew up, a large man, with tattoos, lacking a smile, and playing certain music instantly signals to my brain, trouble. Given the endless summer nights I slept on the floor because of gang violence in Southern California, my reaction is understandable, but most definitely not fair. The image we project is not the person we are. Depending on the situation, fear, uncertainty, and our inability to know what to do next can cause us to present the harder side of ourselves.
And yet, at the height of the pandemic, I found myself in a gym, surrounded by men who appeared to be hard, jaded, and lacking feelings. As I got to know these men, my fears subsided, and I became embarrassed by my preconceived notion of their personalities. These men were the same as me, struggling to find their way in an uncompromising world. Because we don’t fit the image of what a professional or community member should look like, we are overlooked, and we must fight for our place. My mom has always told me I am a scrappy fighter, and my years in a boxing gym taught me that I am a scrappy fighter, and I always land on my feet because of sheer tenacity and grit. Yet I also learned these men were the same as me. They wanted to give back to their community, they wanted to make the world a better place. Their ideas were incredible, and their hearts filled with love.
In this unlikeliest of places, I found myself, and some of my best friends. A few have become family, people I turn to first in times of trouble. These men tell me the truth, they never sugarcoat their words, and because of their purse honesty, I can trust the feedback is real and in my best interest. The life lessons I have learned, practicing bobs and weaves, learning to breathe when I threw a punch and pushing my body to the limit, could fill ten books.
When I finally learned to stop looking at people, to look at their eyes, I discovered a world of under-dogs with more loyalty and love to give than the cleanest cut person I knew. I found some of the best friends I have ever known and discovered myself in this world. My faults were no longer faults, my weaknesses became areas that could grow. Not having to have it all figured out, to be accepted for who I was was the most freeing moment. Many of these people have become close friends, friends who know me better than anyone else. Friends I am proud to call by name, friends I would support through thick and thin.
Yet, even in this world of comfort, a world where I packed extra food to share and made deliveries to people when they were sick, I found myself unable to ask for or accept help. I don’t know if it was my pride that held me back, not wanting to appear weak and needy, or if it was as simple as not knowing how to ask for help. It wasn’t until one friend texted and called, almost daily, asking how I was, that I realized something in me needed to change. Someone, who could see my pain, and knew my struggle. In his own way, he was slowly teaching me to let people in. It was as if he could hear the pain in my heart, understood the pain, the fear to allow anyone in, but knew I had to allow people in, or my heart would harden.
I would never consider myself a prideful person. My lack of grace has forced me to become humble, to accept my bouts of saying the wrong thing or acting wrong as learning moments. Yet asking for help is not something I have an easy time doing. If I was to be 100% honest, I struggle to ask for help because of all the times I have been let down. It’s easy to say that all those times were different people, yet the number of times I have been let down by a vast variety of people far outweighs the number of times people have come through for me. And so my ability to ask for help, to truly ask for help has been weakened.
Rather than allowing myself to become jaded, I simply remind myself of a phrase a hairdresser taught me years ago. You can never expect people to do the same amount for you as you do for them. It sounds harsh, I know, but the truth in the thought process is enormous. We should choose to do for others with no expectations of return actions. We should give for the sheer joy of giving. We should help because we want to help. Once we give, help, listen, and support another, we should not expect that person to do the same for us. The secret is we should invest or do for another because we want to, never as a future investment.
Once I truly understood that phrase, life got a lot easier. I gave what I could and was happy to do so. I helped as I could, and so on. I stopped thinking of interactions as exchanges, as investments in the future. I hoped that by putting positive energy and actions into the universe, I would receive positive energy and actions back. I learned to look for the good in every situation, the silver lining, the hidden moments of beauty, and choose to see those and the returns for the positive energy I invested.
This mindset has served me well. Or at least it did until I was called out. I was happily going along, doing my thing, investing in others, and hiding my pain, my needs, and never asking for help. As the pain in my life began to wear on my soul, it started to show on my face. My smile no longer reached my eyes and my laugh was hollow. I wasn’t worried, most people are so consumed with their issues and their challenges that I was sure no one would notice until they did.
At that moment, as these friends offered help and kind words, I pushed them away. I lied, telling them I was good, just tired. Thankfully, they persisted. They checked in, dropped tacos off, and made sure I was eating. Slowly they wore me down and I allowed them in. The relief I felt from sharing my burden was immense. And in that relief I was reminded of a lesson, sometimes, even in our darkest moments, we must allow others to do for us.
We each grieve in our own ways, we each experience life in our own way, and we must allow others to do for us, even when we just want to be left alone. The people who push in, who are good with the dirty, the tears, and the anger are the people we should cherish and hold close to our hearts. This friend, the one who slowly showed me how to open my heart, accept my tears, and laugh again, showed me true friends do give just as much as we do. He taught me to live again despite the pain and scars, he showed me how to live life to the fullest.
Accepting help doesn’t mean we are weak. Rather it signifies that we are strong enough to know that we cannot walk this path alone. True strength comes from knowing our limits, knowing what we can handle, and asking for help. On the days we just feel like we cannot take one more step, the people who take the steps for us become our strength. It’s reaching out to a friend who you know will text back “I gotchu” and mean it. In these moments, true community and friendship exist, and for just a moment the world is truly as it should be, filled with love and hope.
Sincerely,
Sara O
