Three lunches and a training session

Letting people help me is one of the most difficult and most healing experiences of my life.

Let me preface this by saying, I don't want to accept help. I don't want to need help. I hate help.

Which is all really ironic and hypocritical since I love, love, love helping others! Since graduating I have given to charities that matter to me, I have volunteered at nursing homes, educational programs, with young children, and registering voters. I still volunteer monthly with a program I believe deeply in.

There's no way to do this without sounding like I'm so awesome and I know it, but I used to donate more hours than I was required to students. I am always available to my friends who need editing done on essays, letters, or the like. I have written more reference letters than I can count, and used to be everybody's favorite person to help them move. I've carried a lot of couches. I have helped people learn a new skill, helped with homework, and babysat for free.

It makes me happy to be someone's ride, to cook someone dinner, or to buy a friend a drink. It is my pleasure. But more than the things I give what makes me most satisfied are the times a friend needed to talk, needed someone to listen, or needed help with something intangible. I like giving.

I tend to agree with my friend Eric, that no giving is completely altruistic. My experience has always been that when I can look at my day and point to something worthwhile I did (you know, point to it to myself. Not to others. That really would be bragging!) my day feels more rewarding. I give because doing it feels good.

This was never more evident than the day before I moved to Colorado. I had insisted we find a shelter or food bank to give my unused pantry food to. When I found one, I looked at their list of most needed items and saw they also wanted soap, shampoo, and other toiletries to offer their guests the ability to shower. Well, lo, I had a shopping bag full of travel sized toiletries from all my business trips. So I packed those up along with my bags of rice and canned goods. We had to stop what we were doing in the middle of packing and loading and drive a town over to make the delivery, and parking was not ideal. We had the wrong address. It took a hour to make this simple donation. But when we arrived someone dutifully took our grocery bags, but then we had to come inside to make the toiletries drop. The kid who took that donation went RUNNING to the back office, shouting, "Look!  Look! How many showers can we offer with this?!"

I was tired, and sweaty, and had been feeling kind of over-cooked with the moving process. I had fielded three really difficult good-bye meals, and one crying friend (who never, ever cries) breaking down in my kitchen. I was DONE. Stick a fork in me. But that 30 seconds of seeing the glee someone else had to be able to provide for those who had less, to know I played a role in it - that hour kept me going for the additional 12 hours it took to finish loading the moving truck that day.

People feel good when they can do the right thing. People feel confident and happy when they can help. People like to know they did something meaningful, supportive, and contributed to the greater good. There's something to being able to pay it forward. And as my mom says, water seeks its own level. So, I should assume that when people offer me their hands and help openly, it is because they love me and it makes them feel good. I know it can be that way, but often the reaction I have first is warriness.

Although I went out into the world feeling more alone than I was ready for, I. Did. It. How? Ummm, I had help. I had people I could lean on. I talk a good game about being so independent, but you know, it wasn't like I sold a kidney and then took care of myself. I had mentors. I had a family friend who loaned me money. I had friends who read my papers and helped me complete them (granted, this was part of my college's plan - we had to form committees of readers to pass our papers and take us through several drafts. And students who had already "passed" that area could be readers). I had people who hooked me up with a myriad of part time jobs so I could pay the college the sums that no 18 year-olds knows how to come up with and stay registered. I wasn't all on my own.

And that community was such that I could see exactly how to pay that forward. I helped other students get their papers read and passed. I helped students get their portfolios together. I did community service aimed at supporting students. And when I graduated and was working on campus and some student housing burned down, I offered up my extra bedrooms.

So, where did that feeling of "full circle" go? I left that close knit community and small campus and life went fast, and all of a sudden, here I am, nearly 13 years later, stymied by this situation. For a couple of weeks after my lay-off, I was fixated on a conversation I had had at a friends' house in NJ in May. One of them had quit her job the very week I was there. She and her wonderful wife had decided her happiness was more important than another couple of months of salary. And we were talking about my job and I said, "if there was another income in my house, I would have quit already."

And so, when the position was eliminated, all I could think is, "what does a woman with no other income in her house DO in this situation. I'm all alone."

What a ridiculous liar I am sometimes. I was never alone. Within a couple of days, I had people asking if they could be my reference. I've been offered the opportunity to consider a couple of different kinds of part time work. Friends have called to check on me. People who I haven't talked to in over a year have asked to pass along my resume to those they know. And not one, not two, but three people took me to lunch this week.

I had four amazing years of community support and the ability to give and receive help in college, and then 13 years of painfully unlearning that. And the horrible lesson I learned was, "don't trust people who want to give you something. You will be let down. There will be strings attached. It will get messy. You don't deserve anything offered. Keep your guard up." But this week, I had three lunches, and a training session that countered that.

So, the door I had slammed to all of that began to open. I told myself stories like, "well, I took her to a movie once when she was broke," and "I was invited to dinner and said I was going to bring 2 things, but then brought 6 things," or " I help her with something hard for her, and fun for me, every week." and then I shoved that kind of ledger-thinking away and said, "I want to see and talk to this person. I want to keep being positive. I want to keep depression at bay, and not find myself curled up on the couch crippled by the enormity of this story. So. GO. Go out to lunch. Enjoy the time with this person."

Those moments were hard for me. Not because of my friends. My friends are not only wonderful, loving supportive people, but people with the grace to make those lunches about wanting to spend time with me and celebrate my release from bondage. I never felt like I was their charity.

Those moments were hard for me because of my foolish pride, and this false idea that I have that I'm an island. Somehow, in my mind, there are terrible consequences to building bridges off that island. Or letting anyone defy my bridge-less-ness by bringing their boat over and saying, "Hey, I notice you have lots of coconuts here, but wouldn't they go well with rum? And hey, I know how to mix that drink! Wanna have some with me?"

Those drinks healed me. In lots of ways! I literally did have a boozy lunch with one of those friends. and it was simply delicious to talk everything over with her. And while it was water and salads at the other lunches, the conversation and things those women bravely shared with me reminded me that it's a bad goal to try and be an island. My friend, the same one who cried when I left Jersey, the same one who supported her partner in leaving an unhappy job, wanted to NOT have a baby shower. She didn't want a fuss, or silly games. I understood that. But I pressed her and said, "It's not just to get gifts It's because there are a community of people who want to celebrate this with you. those aren't just your fans, but your baby's fans and the people who will be there for you when you need support and love and someone to talk to as a parent."

So, she had a shower. And I was PSYCHED to send a gift. But guess what? All of those people also lined up after the delivery just waiting to give love to them and their baby girl. Love is for giving away.

It begins to heal the bad lessons I learned over the last 13 years to know that people are offering their support and help because they believe in me and think I am a good bet to put what they're offering to use in a positive way. And so, today, I took the next leap and accepted an even bigger gift at my training appointment. It is one that will make me very cognizant of being accountable in this process. With this gift in my hand, I can't just work out, or eat right, or search for a job as isolated tasks. I have no choice but to see this as a process of finding the life that allows me to keep those things in balance; whatever the job ends up being.

So, thank you all. And keep me honest about accepting help and support.