“Ancora imparo. [I am still learning.]”
― Michelangelo, at age 87 in 1562
I am still learning. And thank goodness, too. If all I had to go on for the rest of my life was all I know now, I think I’d be in a lot of trouble down the road. That’s the beauty of age, experience, and wisdom, I suppose. It takes life experience to gain knowledge, and life experience only comes with checking off the years.
A couple of years ago, I learned an important lesson that I wish I’d learned much sooner. I learned to ask for help.
A while back, I was working through where I wanted to take this site, while trying to keep my freelance writing jobs going, and thinking about the novel I was supposed to be writing. I was trying to write blog posts, maintain the website, fix tech issues, run a workshop, and keep a marriage ticking along. Finally, I threw up my hands and said what equated to, “I can’t do this all by myself, so I’m not going to do any of it.” I really was ready to throw in the towel.
Fortunately I have a wise group of peers and an amazing mentor who talked me through my angst and convinced me to ask for help. I found an assistant to help with the blog and found a web designer to take care of the site properly. Their help freed me up to do the work I really wanted to do, which is writing posts and developing this community. What’s more, the other work got done quicker and better than if I’d struggled along as usual trying to figure it all out for myself.
The experience gave me pause and caused me to look back at my past and take a close look at myself. Turns out I have never been a person who asks for help. It’s not so much pride that stops me from asking, but more a sense of toughness. “I can do this on my own. I don’t need help.” Now I’m writing it here, it sounds an awful lot like stubbornness, but there you go.
I was also tough (or stubborn) when I was going through the grinder of infertility and later, when I was trying to figure out how to ever make peace with my situation. I never asked for help, even though I needed it. In part I believed it was pointless to ask for help because no one else could really understand what I was going through. I also didn’t want to upset people I knew and cared about, and I didn’t want to put myself in the position of comforting them.
In hindsight, I wish I’d asked for help. I wish I’d taking the chance of confiding in a friend. I wish I’d thought to look for a support group or hired the professional help of a therapist. I would have arrived at my place of peace a lot sooner than I did. But hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and I hadn’t yet learned the value of asking for help.
How about you? Have you asked for help? If so, where have you found it?
I remember asking for help when my father was ill, and I was still going through treatment for a persistent ectopic pregnancy. I did it on advice of my internet friends through an ectopic message board. I was always the daughter who was the primary support (emotionally) for my mother. After much agonising, I reached out to my sisters and said I wouldn’t be able to do as much for my mother when my father was in hospital, and could they help. They reacted as anyone could have hoped, but being me, I had imagined the worst case scenarios! It was a good lesson in asking for help.
Though I’m still not very good at following through on the principle. I need to use you as inspiration, so thanks for this post and the reminder!
I’m so glad that you family was supportive, Mali! That is so important when we go through life’s struggles.
I’m not good at asking for help either. This is partly because I’m a perfectionist and quite particular about the way things are done. And it is partly because I want to be “tough,” as you said and I don’t want to bother others.
But when my husband had major surgery, our Church family simply told us that they were going to bring meals to us. I didn’t think it was necessary, but I am so glad that they insisted. It was such a huge help!
I’ve tried to pay this forward and do things for others even when they don’t ask. And I’ve tried to accept help when it is offered, even if I don’t think I really need it. I suppose that’s what we all need to do. Offer help if we are in the place to give it and accept help when others want to show us love.