It’s Okay to Need Help

Have you ever felt like this?  Nobody can tell me what to do. This is just a time in my life when I can’t see or think straight. The more I ask for advice and the more you panic, the more I will burden the people around me. 

During times when it seems like your life is falling apart, your first need actually isn’t a bunch of people telling you what to do. However, isolation and going at it alone is not the answer either.  Choose resolve and a midwife (or two) so that you have a partner as you do the work of wrestling with yourself and figuring out your next move. That same midwife will bear witness as you wail, pout, feel sorry for yourself, and grieve what you thought was going to be your life or situation.   

Zora Neal Hurston once said, “If you don’t speak up about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Part of the strong woman nonsense and myth is the idea that being silent about your needs is somehow admirable or otherwise proves that something valuable. Human beings are not supposed to go it alone. Further, doesn’t going it alone undermine part of the strength of the sisterhood? Relationships are strengthened by mutual vulnerability and there’s a difference between vulnerability and chronic neediness.