We go about life independent and strong and doing things for ourselves or on our own because we are supposed to be able to handle life. But when life happens – and life is messy as we all know – we need to be able to ask for help and more importantly let people help us.
Here is what is going on with me. Busy life as usual, practice, patients, home, husband, small child… and now a very sick parent.
My dad is in hospital for the past 10 days with a subdural hematoma. A bleed between his skull and brain as a result of being on blood thinners and falling. He alternates between semi coherent and conscious and unconscious, or confused. He was better a week ago but I am told it goes like this. Up and down on the roller coaster of life we go. So he will be in hospital for a while and then likely (hopefully) rehab and then who knows. One day at a time. One day at a time.
Duirng this period I am trying to go to the hospital for a few hours per day and work and continue to do all the things I need to do to build my practice. But there are things I can’t do or don’t have energy for. One of those things is my blog – I skipped the recipe this week (sorry). But an amazing chiro woman warrior friend of mine came up with a solution. Ask for help.
I did this yesterday on facebook – I put it out there what had happened and I asked for help. I said ‘I don’t know what I need but I need help. Please reach out.” My friends immediately started calling, I got offers of babysitting and the casserole patrol has been activated (thank goodness).
I also got something I was surprised by – praise. People telling me how strong I am and how proud they are of me for asking for help. Lets not pull punches here, I am fiercely independent and generally want to do things on my own but I have learned recently the value of asking for help. Human beings are social creatures, we need our social networks for survival. People genuinely want to help but first they need to know you need their help. I read a study recently, or maybe actually it was a Ted talk, saying that the best predictor for longevity and health into old age was food social networks.
So, moral of the story – ask for help. People want to help you. It will be your turn to help some other time. And round and round it goes.
In the coming weeks I will have guest bloggers and recipes from friends on my blog – some will be chiro friends but if you want to participate and send me something to post please do at karenchiro@hotmail.com
All contributors will receive credit and if you have a website a link will be on my blog as well to your site. Google likes things like that anyways 🙂
And thank you, for all of your help and your readership. xoxo