Back in the Chrysalis: Asking for Help (Offering 10.3)
Learning to receive when everything is tender.
In the midst of fear, I did the one thing I least wanted to do: I asked for help.
(If you’re new to Eclosion: An Artist’s Path to Power and Peace, start at the beginning. Or visit my Memoir Hub for a full table of contents with links.)
Asking for Help
I may be an alcoholic, but even more so, I am afraid of vulnerability. Fortunately, I had spent the previous eight years in practice. In that time, I learned that the only way for me to heal—the only way I could overcome the shame that I carried with me—was to bring the shame into the light and share it with others who would listen and understand without judgment. Shame can only survive in the dark. I learned that I need other people. I learned how to ask for help.
Shon’s cancer was a new kind of experience—one I felt completely unprepared for. I was incredibly afraid of losing him, of Seren losing him. I knew that I needed to show up for both of them during this time. And I couldn’t show up for either of them if I didn’t first show up for myself.
Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I reached out for help. I asked for help from my closest friends first. They held me with such tenderness. With such love. It gave me the courage to share with others what was happening in our lives. I knew there were countless people who would want to know what Shon was going through. Though I had stopped scrolling through social media a few years earlier as a self-care practice, social media seemed the easiest way to reach many of the people who cared about us. When I did share the news of his cancer, we received a massive outpouring of love.
Reading those responses, their messages of love and support, broke me open, leaving me raw and exposed. This was a new level of vulnerability. A new expansion of allowing myself to be loved. I read the notes until I felt I might burst, then put my phone down and walked into the woods. The movement of my body, breath flowing in and out, the cold air on my skin brought me back to myself. We were so loved. It was a lot.
People were incredibly generous throughout our cancer journey. They gave childcare, rides to Seattle, time, advice, money, food, counseling. They looked after our ducks. They repaired our water lines. They wore masks. They meditated, checked in, and shared their stories.
A dear friend of mine who owns True Self Yoga in town gifted Shon and me year-long memberships—worth several thousand dollars. I felt my chest tighten at this generosity. Like it was too much. Like we weren’t worth it. Gratitude and shame braided together, hard to separate.
Opening myself to receive this support was hard. Where I once would have shut this out emotionally, I allowed the love to come in, right to the center of my being. It was there, with my heart laid open in new and very uncomfortable ways, that I experienced a transformation. By asking for help, sharing the hard stuff while respecting the emotional boundaries and capacities of others, and allowing their generosity in, I discovered a new level of my own self-worth.
Learning to receive didn’t make the fear go away—it did mean I didn’t have to carry it alone.
Where might you let yourself be supported right now?