Y’all. Y’ALL.
I just had a massive epiphany and if nothing else, I need to share it with you immediately in case it’ll save you some grief, shame, or just plain time and energy.
As many of you know, I’m working on a book about my grandparents (that’s the smallest elevator pitch with absolutely no excitement)- one of the things I’m playing with right now is to write out whatever memory or thought-adjacent thing that pops into my head while working through their story. It’s like ADD in written form. I’m enjoying it.
I read two letters in succession: one from my great-grandmother (Ella) to her son (my grandfather- Opa), and one from my grandfather’s sister (Patti) to him (Opa). Quick backstory: Ella is Jewish, in Berlin, and the year is 1940. Things are not looking good and she is trying to get the hell out of dodge. Patti is 20 something, living in France, studying at the Sorbonne. Opa is 19, living in Kansas after a grueling but amazing series of miracles allowed him to emigrate as a student to the USA. Ella and Patti both asked him in one way or other: what’s the update on project “get Ella out of Germany”? The current plan was to get her to the US because France (the government, not Patti) had dropped the ball so many times they were losing hope. (Good thing they didn’t waste too much time because we all know what happened to France in 1940… they got invaded…. and Germany set up shop there.)
This pressure on Opa to figure out how to get his mother to safety made me think. I wondered if he was resentful towards his father. His father (August) had done a LOT to help get Opa out of Germany, from paying for him to be smuggled from Germany to Holland to writing just about every political and powerful person he knew to get the odds tipped in his favor for emigration to the US. August’s efforts were heroic and made up a large part of Opa’s successful flight from Germany. The issue was that August (who was living in Amsterdam) was divorced from Ella, and also happened to be remarried to her cousin. (I know- the DRAMA.) SO- I thought- I bet August didn’t feel like Ella was much of his responsibility, and/or he had used all his favors to help Opa. Either way, everyone in the family had unilaterally agreed that Opa was Ella’s best chance at getting out of Germany, and did not hesitate to ask him how he was doing on that endeavor. Did Opa ever wonder why he became the default and no one else seemed to have the job?
I was thinking about how much any of the others might have been able to help, to take on some of the efforts, if they even could, and how in this case it really wasn’t helpful to place blame or even try to figure out who “should” do it. Ella needed to get out. Opa took on the task. I wondered, when have I done this in my life? Just done the thing rather than try to figure out who should do it or why I shouldn’t. I thought about the usual work environment when the lines blur between being a “team player” and just basically doing someone else’s job for them. Then there’s the infamous group project, where I have certainly gone into “get it done” mode despite the fact that certain group members are MIA. Sometimes even in the family unit, we have those moments when we pick up the tab and get the thing done because it needs to be done, even if someone else was “supposed” to do it. In all of these situations, it’s not an easy dualistic divide of whether me doing the extra thing was some great injustice. Sometimes it’s just your turn to pick up the weird old sock that isn’t yours. Whatever, you move on.
I was trying to think of a time when I did this at great expense. When doing the task was an unhealthy, almost unbearable weight on my shoulders. Then it came to me, and along with it, an epiphany. Right after my maternal grandmother died, literally the morning after we returned from her funeral, I was called to the hospital because my (paternal) Grandmother had fractured her back. This began weeks of me spending hours in the hospital room, rehab rooms, and back to her apartment. I had to be her advocate, to provide consent for medical procedures, to argue with administration about her being in a room in December that had no heat (I mean seriously), the list goes on and on. Anyone who has been a caregiver for anyone can attest to the exhaustion. Grandmother had dementia on top of her back fracture, and she couldn’t hear or see well. I was her sole caregiver. And I had just lost my other grandmother. And I had a one year old at home. Friends: I was NOT OK. I fell into a DEEP depression and I am not kidding you when I say I don’t remember wide swaths of time. I learned later that my husband made most meals, did all the Christmas shopping and decorating, and cobbled together child care. I helped in some of that- but not much. (I mean, let me be honest, I don’t do the Christmas decorating ever, but the fact that he did all that and STILL decorated is impressive). I was also mean as hell to him. Depression with no tools, combined with grief and exhaustion = one hot mess of a bitch. We survived, and boy have we learned a million lessons since then.
Here’s the epiphany: other than asking a small group (I’m talking three 20-somethings) to help take care of our son, I asked NO ONE for help. NO ONE. I mean. Let me say it again: I never asked for help. This is not a brag. I am absolutely gobsmacked that I didn’t ask for help. I’m also reeling from the fact that I just NOW realized this. What the fuck was I thinking?! I was thinking it was my job, and I had it covered. “I got this!” was the mantra I sent in updates to my parents. I think I leaked some clues about how challenging it was, but I never said: “hey, I need help, can you come up for a weekend?” Nope. Just soldiered along like a martyr, killing myself and everyone in my path.
I talked to my husband about this epiphany and we talked about why we may not have asked for help: my mom had just lost her mom, didn’t seem right. My Dad was still working and in my mind it seemed like I couldn’t justify asking him to take off work when technically taking care of Grandmother WAS my job. My older sister also had a one year old and a job she had just returned to after maternity leave. My younger sister was in school. My in-laws in my mind were completely unrelated to this scenario, so why would I have thought of them? What a dum-dum move. They could have taken our kid for a week and they would have jumped at the chance! But also, we realized, we would have had to ask for help from people who we don’t normally ask. We had an entire congregation of folks who I’m sure would have pitched in, helped with child care, made meals, etc. Did we ask for help? Nope! Because we “got this.” When our core group of helpers couldn’t do what we thought we needed (even though we never actually asked), we just hunkered down and did everything without thinking bigger.
My pride and absolute inability to see outside myself caused me to isolate and whither. It made things so hard in my relationship with my husband. It put years on my body. It erased time from my memories. I’m absolutely floored by the fact that as many times as I have told this story (in therapy and otherwise) that it NEVER occurred to me that I could have asked for help. And folks- I LOVE HELP. So if I was such a moron, then you really probably are. HA!
Sometimes we think we have to do it all, we assume it’s our burden to bear, our task to do, and it would be wrong to ask of anyone else for help. And maybe you’re right, maybe there is a task that only you can do. But what about all the other tasks? Ask for help for those.
We sometimes think we can’t ask for help because there isn’t any. We’re wrong. There is ALWAYS help. We just might have to accept it in ways that make us feel vulnerable. Like someone making a meal for us when we “technically can” or someone cleaning our house or cleaning our laundry when we “technically can or should.” I think I remember my seminary friends sending me a cleaning Groupon and I was so so so SO grateful, but I would NEVER have asked them for that. Sometimes you have to ask for help and sometimes you might need to accept help that is a little different from what you thought you wanted. Sometimes you need to be explicit about the help. I think when we hate doing the thing (like dishes, folding laundry, cleaning bathrooms), we assume it is also the nemesis of everyone else and to ask them to do this task is equivalent of asking them to sacrifice their firstborn child. We have got to get over ourselves.
It is OK to ask for help when you are just mildly struggling. It’s OK to ask for help when you think it might be hard later. IT IS ALWAYS OK TO ASK FOR HELP! It is not admirable to grind yourself to a pulp on the altar of martyrdom when you have a frickin village. You shouldn’t push your limits or “just this one thing” your way to exhaustion. Just ASK FOR HELP!
I’m yelling it to myself. Because if it has taken me 13 years to realize that I could have asked for help during one of the most exhausting and dark and hard times of my life, then I probably need the reminder.
In case you’re not sure what my point is: ask for help.
Yesssss!