Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help

It’s no secret that I was extremely ill in 2017. I had surgery that took me through the hell of fighting for my life against septicemia. As if that wasn’t rough enough, I went on to experience a roller-coaster of anything and everything that could go wrong – kidneys failing, liver failing, water around my heart, pneumonia, and my body literally drowning me in the fluid build up that became almost impossible to endure or to control. It was eventually found that the fluid build up was my beautiful and unbelievably clever body, trying to protect me from Abdominal TB!

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Having then spent a total of 4 ½ months in intensive care, leaving the hospital was both invigorating and horrendously scary, to say the least! The journey through TB is rough!! One does not heal from TB overnight. It is a process of daily medication, routine blood tests and in my case, more bouts of vomiting and diarrhea than I care to share here today. Eventually we did get the balance of the meds right and I slowly began to spend more days out of bed than I did in bed. I can still remember the day I changed out of my pajamas for the first time – some five months after having been admitted to hospital! To my surprise, nothing fit. All my clothing was way too big. Without knowing it, I had lost a whopping 33 kgs!

Why am I sharing this journey with you?

I was brought up by a very strict mother. She was a child of the war, and was as tough as nails. There was nothing that you could experience, that she hadn’t already been through. With the shortages of food and clothing, access to medication or medical treatment being as it was through the war and then the great depression straight afterwards, she was extremely self-sufficient. And it’s that self-sufficient aspect of herself that she brought through into her interactions with us – teaching us that the only way to get anything done was to do it yourself. It was only you that you could depend on and if you wanted something, make it yourself.

What I learned from her was that it was not OK to ask for help. Mostly because no-one was coming to save me anyway. And so I learned to rely only on myself and work things out for myself, no matter how challenging, how tough or how self-defeatingly demoralizing!

So when I came home from hospital in 2017, a mere sliver of my former self-sufficient self, I very quickly learned that I had to ask for help. At first, I couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs unaided! I had no choice. Initially I was unable to drive myself and so to get to the doctor for my check ups or to get my medication, I had to rely on my family. And guess what? They did it so willingly for me! I would never have made it through that time, if it was not for my children. And there was so much for me to learn!

I learned that they were beautiful adults who were so very capable of looking after themselves and their families. That they didn’t need me to be there propping them up as I had done so many times over their lifetime. But that it was time for them to allow me to lean on them and for them to prop me up. And it was done with absolute unconditional love.

Not asking for help doesn’t make us appear strong. Essentially it makes us appear ungrateful and stand-offish. Rejecting the love that people want to give to us, through helping us in some small way, is quite offensive and insulting. I would strongly recommend that if you are inclined to reject help when offered, or to not ask for it when needed, that you change your mindset. That you give others around you the opportunity to show their love for you in much the same way as you have always shown your love for them.

Take good care of yourselves and know that you are not meant to be walking this life alone – afraid of taking from others what they offer freely. It’s a privilege to be able to help each other along our journey – don’t be the person who denies someone that privilege.