Last week in The Sunday Paper, my friend Peggy wrote about "mental clutter." She wrote about false egos, false thoughts, focusing on the soul's attention, and so much more.
But there was one thing in particular in her piece that stayed with me long after I read it. It was about how the false thoughts we tell ourselves—ones like “I’m alone” or "I have to do everything by myself and for myself"—create resentment, urgency, and clutter in our minds.
Peggy's suggestion was to allow your soul to speak. Allow it to tell you things like, "I can rely on others."
As I read that line, I could feel tears well up in my eyes. Asking for help and allowing yourself to rely on others is uncomfortable for many of us. In fact, many women my age were raised with the mantra of "you don't need help" and "you certainly don’t need a man to help you, so show that you can do it yourself. In fact, you must prove you can do it yourself."
I remember my father offering to help my mother carry her bag. She would always respond, "I can do it myself!" Many of my memories are of my mother trying to prove she could do whatever it was by herself. But the truth is, doing everything on her own wasn’t the truth of her life. She built a worldwide social justice mission with the help of millions of volunteers. She had help in every area of her life, but somehow there was shame around the idea that a woman like herself—someone who helped achieve a big world vision—might also need help in her everyday life as well.
Asking for help and accepting help—be when it comes to your own life, your relationship, your childcare, your job, your mental health, or your financial health—well, that’s something we all need some help talking about. At least I know I do.
If someone offers to help me carry something, I need to look at it as an offer of kindness and support and not take it as them implying that I’m weak or that I can’t do it on my own. The truth is, we are all dependent on others helping us. We are dependent on help not just when we are children, but also when we are grown, strong adults.
Gender has nothing to do with it, but sometimes it has a lot to do with the reason why we're not accepting help. Men are stuck in their own boxes. As therapist Jay Barnett so beautifully explains below, men are stuck in their own boxes, and women are also stuck trying to prove they are strong, fearless, competent, and independent.
My friend Liz told me she never asks for help because she doesn't want to be a burden. As someone who considers herself a strong, independent woman, I, too, have struggled with the shame of looking like I need help. I've also struggled with the idea that I can't do it all on my own. When I pushed Liz further she told me, "Well, I have asked my mom for help. And I have asked my kids for help. But not a man."
I know I need help and support every day of my life and in every area of my life. I’m helped by those who publish The Sunday Paper. I’m helped by all those who work at The Women's Alzheimer's Movement, as well as those who volunteer their time, money, and effort toward this important cause. My adult sons and daughters help me in ways large and small all the time, and it took a village to help me raise them when they were small. At that same time, I was balancing work, parenting, and caregiving for aging parents.
I’ve since leaned on friends to help me as I’ve navigated a new stage of life. I’ve leaned on others to comfort me and reassure me when I’ve felt alone. As I stepped back from reading Peggy's essay last Sunday and reflected further on the notion of asking for help, I realized that I’ve already been doing it. I just wasn't seeing it or acknowledging it.
Of course, all of this made me think about my generation of women and what we could tell our younger selves about asking for help. For me, it would be this: Don’t freak if someone offers to carry your bag. It says nothing about your intelligence or independence. Don’t get your back up against a wall when someone offers to help you at work. Just be grateful. Don’t flip a lid if someone offers to help you pick up your kids. It doesn’t mean you don’t have it together as a mother. Don’t shame yourself if a man can carry something that you can’t. Who cares?
Be willing to ask for help if you have lost your job. If you need help with your kids, or if you need help learning how to communicate in this new era, don’t shame yourself. If you need a therapist to make sense of your life at any point, know that your mental health is critical to your overall health. Don’t think you're stupid if can’t navigate the stupid vaccine web portals. Don’t not ask for help because you think of yourself as a burden.
People like helping others. Watching people in Texas help each other during the historic storm was and still is so inspiring. Watching strangers help their neighbors when the government doesn't give them what they need gives me hope. Watching a mom in Boston organize volunteers on her maternity leave to help seniors navigate the vaccine portals was moving.
So, let’s reimagine asking for help. Let’s take the shame out of it. See it as a sign of strength, of humanity, and of your awakening. Asking for help takes strength. It takes vulnerability. It takes courage. I want my daughter to be able to ask their partners for help and receive it. I want my sons to be able to ask for help and accept it without doubting their masculinity. And, I myself want to more openly ask for help in all areas and graciously accept it without some judgment in my head.
No one does anything alone. Not a president, not a pope, not a CEO. So why should a mom or dad? Why should any of us? We should honor all the help we get, and we should also honor those in professions dedicated to helping others. That's what I want in The Open Field. A caregiver who's seen on the same level as a CEO. It's all interconnected. If our democracy is to survive and grow better, we all need help to make it so.
Thank you for helping The Sunday Paper become what it is: a beacon of hope for all of us trying to live inspired, meaningful lives above the noise and in community with one another. We are going to need all the help we can get to realize that vision.
See you in The Open Field.
Love,
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