043 - Mini Musing: Learning to Ask for Help
Welcome back to Threshold Moments, dear listener. In this Mini Musing, I’m talking about the community-building power of receiving help.
As we navigate the holiday season and its increasing demands on our time and energy, seeking support is a critical need. And yet, societal expectations and barriers surrounding this essential act often keep us from it.
Join me as I share my own experiences with receiving help and explore the positive impact that it can have on strengthening our communities. And remember, as bell hooks tells us, “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
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Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]
Hello welcome, I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, the podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello and welcome to Threshold Moments.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:43]
I would like to take a moment to reintroduce mini musings. Threshold Moments was intended at first to be weekly conversations with people who are in various stages of Thresholds. And what quickly happened, what automatically happened was this desire to give some background around stages. Phases, theories, support tools that could be incorporated and used as tools so that anyone listening, assuming that everyone in their own ways are in some phase, some cycle of transformation along the lines of trying to help support people through transformations. I have these mini musings and I also have a course called 21 Days of Untapped Support because Jerry Molitor has given the equation that stresses when we have more demands than resources.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:54]
It feels so simple, it feels so clear, it feels so real. And so the idea that we might begin to find ways to perceive more resources, I like to switch it up and say that stability is when we have more perceived resources than perceived demands. And in this 21 Days of untapped support, which is my free giveaway program, day 16 is around welcoming help. And the day before that, day 15, is around saying no, which is, again, just an equally important tool. I'm aware that this episode is going to land right before the winter holidays, right before the December holidays.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:43]
I know that many of my listeners celebrate a variety of holidays during this time. Some people may not celebrate anything. Kudos to you and if you are celebrating something, there's a really good chance that the demands start getting higher. We start to think about end of year work parties, end of year celebrations. It may be family events for Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Christmas.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:22]
There are so many different things. And so for me, my family celebrates Christmas and so then there are Christmas presents and I am a big no to Elf on the Shelf. But some people will do Elf on the Shelf, which means every single day of December they're planning some sort of creative surprise. I'm such a hard note to that. That is my form of health, not for like moral or parenting reasons, but just because it's planning is already an area that drains my resources and so I wouldn't voluntarily add to that.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:58]
Whereas other people that might really light them up and get them excited. So to each their own. Alas, today's episode is on help and welcoming help. It's an area I am still leaning into, but I think I do better than I did five years ago and certainly better than 10 years ago. I think off the top, I also want to say that in many heterosexual partnerships, there might be this thing of like, I'm going to ask for help from the person identifying as female.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:35]
I'm going to ask for help with laundry or the dishes or the scheduling. And that just actually speaks more to our systems in which would say, like, these are your jobs and now you have to ask for help with them. And so I might even put at the beginning of this episode that in certain situations, we can look at what are roles that have been put on us by society that might not be solely ours. And just like assumed that we might be the better one at it in our relationship. The things that are often thought of as like the unseen mental workload that we might sit down with our partner and say here, like the two, the two people, or maybe the partnership is 3 people here.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:25]
Or maybe it's like, I'm, I'm just thinking of all the scenarios. Maybe it's a single, a single parent who, you know, has their parent help me out. And maybe it's sitting down and saying, here are all the things that we need to run this household. What things are you doing? What things am I doing?
Sarah Tacy [00:05:44]
What things do you love doing? What things do I love doing? What do I love, not love doing, but I'm pretty good at and vice versa and figuring it out that way. And I'm kind of just wanting to differentiate between asking for help with things that might not actually fully be yours to begin with, that might actually belong to a partnership. So I'll put that there for that as maybe a little sidebar or a first step.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:10]
And then I thought today I might start, oh, it's so good with this quote by Belle Hooks. She says rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion. Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:42]
I love weaving this idea of healing and communion in with the idea of help. That it might be beneficial for the entire constellation, within friendships, within communities, within households, that when we show ourselves being vulnerable, that when we lean into somebody or something for help, that it might actually help all involved. They see, oh, I could do that. I could ask for help. Independence is cool, but actually leaning on each other and some reciprocity and some acknowledgement and gratitude, this is how deeper bonds could be made.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:26]
It's not all on me. Because in trauma Physiology, there's a sense of isolation. There's a sense that something happened that you felt, that you may have felt helpless in, that you may have felt hurt or abandoned in, and that nobody else seemed to see you, understand you or help you out. I just think it's like for me, there's just that pause moment of a lifetime of thinking that the goal is independence. And in fact, knowing how to reach out for help is part of the goal.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:16]
It's part of communion. It's part of healing and thinking of a time where it was really hard for me to reach out for help. And I just want to say this because I don't know if this falls into the worth category, if it falls into financial resources, but I feel like there'll be people who could understand this. Which was in the 1st 5 1/2 years of motherhood for me as Steve and I did a role reversal. He went from being full time student and me full time breadwinner to let's see literally like 2 days before I had Sophia our first child where he became breadwinner and I became mom and I had no intention of being a stay at home mom.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:03]
I had full intention of incorporating my work life into the mamahood life and I just didn't realize, especially having a baby who was up all night, but also we didn't really like to nap, that the time it used to take me like if on the back end to do work. And like the hours that weren't being paid for. The newsletters, the marketing, they're reaching out, the QuickBooks, the initial building of something, they're reaching out that now I might have to pay somebody $20.00 an hour. It's gone up since then, $20.00 an hour for any time that I was going to spend building a business and feeling slightly financially strapped at that point in our life too. And also having that thing of like, I should be able to do this.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:57]
Moms do it all the time. I see it on the Internet and some people have babies and then they have these huge businesses and feel like I should be able to do this. And you know, having a husband who also felt like, oh, the best person to be with our child would be their mother. And I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew. I knew that actually a wide base of support and my child seeing like a wide community of healthy adults working together, they knew that was the best way.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:27]
And I also had this part of me that has always been like, don't spend anything until you earn it, which is pretty healthy. I feel like at least early on a financial journey, it's like, don't spend before you earn it. And this was like feeling like I needed to earn it. And I want to also say for anyone being the primary parent, it's a bit like being an awesome defender. Not I'm not saying emotionally, financially is what I'm Speaking of an awesome defender where if you're not the best offensive player in the team, but you get the rebounds and you keep the other lead score on the other team down to 0 points, then it's like you've scored 30 points.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:11]
And so I did the math when I was like early childhood, up all night with a baby and then the day started at 4:00 AM or 6:00 AM and sometimes didn't fall asleep till 10:00 PM and then just up all night again. So when I did the math of if I had a night doula each night, if I then had a full time nanny from 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM seven days a week. If there were somebody who made three meals a day and snacks, if there were somebody who cleaned the house every day or at least tried. If there were somebody who was scheduling our lives and booking plane tickets and keeping everything on track and even scheduling help. When I did the math on it, it came out around like $680,000.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:02]
It's multiple jobs. It's multiple full time jobs. And this reminds me, I'm like, maybe this is not useful to say because I'm not saying that there's an obvious way for help, except that if you're feeling like you need help in the situation, you're not crazy. You were never supposed to do it alone. When I think of the village, like being in a village, I think that there was a healer and a shaman.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:31]
I'd like to think like, oh, this is probably where I might. And then I think that there are the people who were the cooks in the village. And then I think there were the people who were just like born to be with children and they just get them in a certain way. And then there were some people who were like mentors and some of these probably crossed over here and there for like teenage thresholds. And then there were the hunters.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:59]
And then there were the gatherers or the farmers who just knew the trees and knew the vines and knew the roots. And there were the warriors and that each person got to be who they were there to be for themselves and the village. But in the way that we now live in a box, in a house, in our own car, we're often asked to play all the roles, know the finance, like be the financial person, be the cook, be the chef, be the cleaner. But sometimes when I just feel into the village, my body relaxes a little bit to know that there's a better way and that anytime I ask for help and when I have the resources to give help, that I'm leaning more into the village vibe. I'm leading more into the village constellation, into the village energy.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:00]
And any small step I can take in that direction is so beneficial for my nervous system, for my body. I think about when Steve and I first started getting some parenting help. This is also so interesting, this idea of like getting help in areas that we assume we should just naturally be good at. And I feel like that includes relationships, parenting, sex. These are all areas where there's like, it's human nature.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:30]
We should be just good at it. We should be natural at it. And we live inside, as Gabriel Monte would say, a system that is broken and that is not healthy. And so when we are confused as individuals, it's not always us. We're living within systems that aren't in our benefit.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:51]
So Steve and I reached out for parenting help and this person is a developmentalist and works more and more with actually the parents nervous system. And he said to me one day, Sarah, if you can be calm, it's such a gift to your child's nervous system. Like you don't have to learn the right parenting techniques when you are happy, your child's nervous system, like they could be in a, they could be cycling out of control. And when you walk in and you're actually happy, their body is just going to start to readjust. It's just going to start to Co regulate.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:30]
And I was like, I'm Mother Teresa. I'm so calm. He's like, but you try so hard. And at that point, it could have been like, well, an F you because I'm up all night and I have two kids and my demands are so much higher than my resources and all I can do is try. But really what I heard and I think what the message was, was that when I, the more I ask for help, the more I build my resources, the more I tap into self-care, then that self-care becomes a basis for family care.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:10]
And so the first episode, Michael Leary, we talked about having a North Star that that could be one of my North stars. I've now found out that even having joy in there as well. So that it's not just about regulation and calm, but you know, the word that the man said before was happy. He didn't actually just say if you're regulated. He said if you walk in and you're happy or authentically happy and if anybody needs motivation to lean into friends to increase resources, then knowing that the people around you will immediately begin to feel safer when you feel better in your body.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:59]
And again, that could be an F you or it could be a North Star or it could be like, oh, I'm there already. And I really see and feel that. I think where I'd like to go now is I'm thinking about the idea of capacity. And I just want to mention this real quick because I, I always want to honor the complexity of things without making them too overwhelming, which is like, if you are in a really hard space in your life and you're leaning on one person and you may say I'm too much for them. If we can uncouple that comment, then there could be like you are not too much and their capacity is too small to handle what you have.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:58]
You are exactly as you are, and they are exactly as they are. And so if our demands are so big that it's either like we don't see anything or we are like a volcano or waterfall of spilling out, are there more people that we could talk to? Little pieces here and there I often mention, like going for a walk, talking to the trees, journaling, this idea that we can reach for help in so many different ways. Maybe we can, if we can afford it, have a psychologist, we could have a spiritual guide, we could have a mentor, we could have our next door neighbor that we just chit chat and Orient with. And like when I say Orient, I'm thinking of like, oh, what's the weather, the date, how was the town meeting like little pieces.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:52]
And then it's going to be less likely that we're going to be too much for any one person when some people are really good. And I'm thinking about like a lot of business women I know, but some people are really good at paid help and not so great at unpaid help. So paid help might be outsourcing someone to do your QuickBooks, outsourcing childcare for the hours that they need to get their work done, outsourcing cleaning, outsourcing cooking, outsourcing anything that's not their like zone of genius. Or maybe they love picking up their kids from school and they love cooking. And so they have somebody get the groceries and, you know, do daytime help with kids.
Sarah Tacy [00:19:41]
What they do, right? Like they get to choose and pick and they're really great. And maybe they have a psychologist and they have all like all the people that they pay. But they might have a much harder time asking somebody who is unpaid to take time out of their schedule, to listen to them, to help them integrate, to come over and cook a meal, to help support them on a launch to on and on and on. Other people would be the exact opposite, perhaps where unpaid help, they're just like in a system.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:20]
They work with multiple people, they get things done, and they would feel guilty or shameful paying for help. Because there might be a should around things, I thought I would close out with some thoughts from Kate Northrop's Do Less book. I reached out to her and I was like, I'm doing this little mini musing on help. And you know, I sometimes can get complex and we've used webs and Kate is so brilliant at taking complexities and bringing them down into like simple three-step processes. And so I asked her if she wouldn't mind if I took a few clips from her Do Less book.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:04]
I want to say that it was really funny because 1 summer, we were on vacation together and I was just in the midst of a really exhausting pregnancy. And she had two kiddos and one of them was a baby. And I was strangely reading her book. I think it would have just come out or I like just having time to sit down. So it's kind of awkward.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:26]
But I was reading her book and I was on the section about how and she came out with her baby on her hip and was like, hey, can I get you a glass of water? My mind first goes to she shouldn't be getting me water. She's the one with a baby on her hip. I only have like 1 kiddo out in this physical world right now. And then I just leaned in and I was like you know what, that would be so great, thank you so much.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:51]
And then I returned to the book and the next line was literally practice saying yes when people offer you help. And I was like, this is awesome, this is awesome that the person who wrote this sentence is right in front of me and just offered me help. And I said yes, I am crushing the assignment. So in these chapters, she dedicates 2 chapters to help. One is identify when you need help.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:18]
And she suggests this might look like when you feel resentful, when you feel overwhelmed, when you're going into martyr mode. I would add that this is could also be like when you notice that you're going into resuscitation mode, which is an earlier podcast, which is this idea that your window of tolerance is getting smaller. Your demands are so much bigger than your resources, and you're noticing things that you would normally say yes to just feel like a no. So this is where you're going to want to ask for more help and most likely give less help. You might instead give your gratitude and give your appreciation. Then she had some of these questions. Does it need to be done? Does it need to be done by me? Does it need to be done now? When I hear this, I think of last Thanksgiving when my husband got really sick. The day before Thanksgiving, we were supposed to go to my parents. My whole family was going to be there. Everybody was bringing a part of the dinner. And for some reason, we picked out our tree at a time where I had to pick up the tree the day before Thanksgiving. And he's sick and he's at home.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:27]
So I'm lifting this tree into the truck by myself and getting all the things and now I'm like, now I have to cook the Turkey and I need to get all the Thanksgiving fixings and I need to go to 5 different stores and I have to do it all by myself. And I was had this momentum about it and I called my mom and she said you could have macaroni and cheese tomorrow. She just reminded me that I had choice. So that like part of help is also just saying, again, no and choice and nuance. And then I had a friend reach out and she's like, hey, I heard about Steve.
Sarah Tacy [00:24:06]
You guys can totally come over our house for all of Thanksgiving or just dessert. And just knowing that that was an option, again, just help me to exhale. Oh, right, we don't have to. And the next day, Steve really felt up to cooking a Turkey. He loves to cook.
Sarah Tacy [00:24:24]
And I felt up for making applesauce and stuffing. And then the girls really wanted to help, and they cleaned the living room and they set the table. And it was so special. And it was just this little dinner with the four of us. But first I just had to know that I had choice and that I could lean into my friends, that I had the option for help, that I was not afraid to take that help.
Sarah Tacy [00:24:49]
But then also the next day, it was just that I got help within my own family and it wasn't even help within my own family. It was again that idea that like everyone took a part that they were good at. Does it need to be done? No. Does it need to be done by me? No. Does it need to be done? Now in that situation, possibly doesn't need to be done. It could be done differently. We are going to want to eat by me.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:16]
No, now, soon. And then Kate said ask for help early, often and kindly. I love that. If we could think of this as like the preparation place of preparation, beginning, middle and integration, then you could think about this as like for me again, so obvious where I'm at in my life. Steve goes away for something.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:48]
Then the preparation might be planning fun things to do with the girls, asking one of the grandparents to stay with us for the weekend, setting up play dates. It might be thinking of really easy meals or a girls night out like possibly a sitter. It just is this preparation of like where can I ask for help so that when I am home with the kids that I am my best self, that I am my happiest self and that then the girls are going to feed off of that. She then says at the end of the day, make a list of things you are already receiving. This very much lines up with episode 4 about the reticular activating system or the reticular formation where when you start to notice or you just say like, show me the things that I'm already receiving.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:45]
If you think that you're not receiving anything. Life is so hard. I'm doing everything by myself. Show me the things that I am receiving that your brain begins to open up to just notice that oh, in fact, there are things I'm receiving already there. I'm receiving vitamin D from the sun today.
Sarah Tacy [00:27:07]
I'm receiving Co regulation from being next to the ocean and with the trees. We did carpooling today and on one way I got to help and on the other way I received help from another family. I am receiving a hug from my daughter or the new kittens or when I walk with my dog I receive his happiness. Tonight my husband made dinner for me and I feel so grateful. So I received the dinner and I received the gratitude that I'm feeling.
Sarah Tacy [00:27:38]
Then I did the dishes and I can feel the reciprocity. So I can notice that there's a giving and a receiving, and then I can begin to enhance that practice. And it reminds me of Dan Milliman, who is the author of The Peaceful Warrior, when he says the secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. The secret to change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. And as we begin to focus on asking for help and what it feels like to receive help, we begin to focus on building a new pattern that is useful, that is community building.
Sarah Tacy [00:28:24]
And when it's community building, then we know it's our way of healing ourselves. It is healing a collective. I feel like this is such a beautiful time. Just to tie that back into the bell hooks quote from the beginning, rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is the act of communion.
Sarah Tacy [00:28:56]
I'll add communion starts when we give and receive from one another. I might as I just ask you if you're near a pen and paper or if you could even just say out loud a few areas in your life or you'd love to receive help. It might be like I want to take piano lessons. I'd love to receive help there. Couples therapy, but also unpaid areas.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:23]
And I reach out to my friend and ask them if they're a carpool or if we could exchange dinners. It's almost hard. Like that one was a little more, that was a little more challenging. I can think like, oh, you know, it, didn't it? I don't know that I needed help, but I can think of when I asked Timothy to come to Marianne's interview to paint what we did it and just asking for that was a layer of help and a layer of support that really helped me to ground in my body.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:57]
And at the end of our interview, Timothy and my interview, when we talked about the possibility of this book launch. And then before I knew it, I was Co hosting a book launch for her, but I was always checking in. Does this still feel authentic? Does this still feel like something that's bringing me joy? Does this still feel in alignment?
Sarah Tacy [00:30:21]
And so there's this really beautiful giving and receiving. And so that would be an example of leaning into unpaid, mutually supportive community and communion. And I will say at her book launch also, that happened at my friend's barn who said I asked for help and she said yes. And then she said that she received something from being there that night and being in that group and another friend who I asked for help and she put together this amazing meal for everybody. And yeah, there was just so much beautiful back and forth.
Sarah Tacy [00:30:59]
And so I'm going to hold that as a possibility of showing up for each other and asking. So going into the closing of this episode with some reticular activating questions, thoughts, inquiries, prayer, May we commune. Show me what communing looks like. Show me a healthy relational field where people can ask for help. People can say no to that help that was asked for, and they could.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:43]
Others could say no to begin with to just cut down on the demands. May I practice reaching out to friends and family and to specialists for their expertise, for their companionship, for the education, for the love, for the support for the Co regulation? May I understand that when I reach out it supports a network. When I reach out, I'm giving as I fill up and as my well fills up. Eventually, someday, it may overflow and network doesn't work on equal reciprocity at every moment.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:42]
But over a lifetime, over a lifespan, may there be title natures of giving and receiving a recognition that we're not alone, that we're part of an ecosystem. May I live into this? May I ask for help? May I ask for help from my guides? May I ask for help from my ancestors?
Sarah Tacy [00:33:08]
May I ask for help from my community and from the earth? And may I give, May I give back generously with my appreciation, with my skills, and with my courage. Thank you all so much. I wish you pause. I wish you choice, and I wish you healthy communion.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:45]
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy, it's very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacy.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you Scroll down to the bottom, subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.