HELP

I’ve spent most of my life trying not to owe anyone.
Not because I don’t believe in community—but because somewhere along the way, I learned that help could be dangerous. It could become debt.

When poverty shapes one’s world, “help” is a loaded word. It can look like love and sound like support, but often arrives with chains titled “terms and conditions.” I watched adults accept help only to have it thrown back at them publicly in jest and harm. I watched others refuse it out of pride, then suffer in silence. Either way, it was a trap.

So, I learned not to ask. I learned to figure it out. To perform calm. To anticipate my own needs—and everyone else’s. It was vigilance disguised as confidence. Hyper-attunement dressed up as competence.

As Resmaa Menakem writes in My Grandmother’s Hands,

“The body always tells the truth. But it often tells it in code.”

My body told the truth through tight shoulders, shallow breath, and a soul-deep exhaustion that felt like a slow disappearance.

In this country—especially as a Black woman—not asking becomes part of your power suit. It’s seen as noble, even virtuous. You are strong. You are capable. You are The One Who Handles It.

But that power suit? It’s heavy. It doesn’t breathe. And it slowly begins to suffocate the part of you that longs to be human. The part that’s waiting for evolution.

Somewhere between one achievement and the next, I stopped noticing my own limits. I convinced myself that asking for help would make me a burden. That it would tarnish the image I had spent decades perfecting. That it would threaten my worth.

But underneath all of that? I was scared.
Scared that no one would come.
Scared that if they did, I’d owe them something I couldn’t name.

As bell hooks reminds us in Sisters of the Yam,

“We learn early that to admit pain is to invite more of it.”

So we hide. We suppress. We survive.
And sometimes, we forget how to stop.

The Yoga Sutras speak of Aparigraha—non-grasping, non-clinging.
Not just to material things, but to ego, to roles, to illusions of control.
Asking for help became a spiritual release.
A loosening of the grip I had on pretending.
A gentle unmasking.

There’s another teaching from the Sutras:
Abhyasa vairagyabhyam tannirodhah—practice and detachment still the mind.
What I once called independence was actually attachment: to image, to control, to being the one who never needed.
True detachment meant being honest—with myself, and with others.

The relief doesn’t come from the answer.
It comes in the asking.

I’ve learned that real love doesn’t keep receipts.
It doesn’t tally favors or turn care into leverage.
If someone is counting, it’s not love—it’s accounting.
And I don’t need any more ledgers in my life.

Now, I practice asking—not because it’s easy, but because I want to teach my children something different.
I want them to know that needing support is not weakness.
That they can ask before they collapse.
That they can feel their limits before falling past them.
That boundaries aren’t barriers—they’re the conditions that make connection safe.

I’m still learning. But now I’m learning out loud.
I’ve stopped confusing perfection with peace.

Sometimes, asking for help is the most radical thing we can do.
Because it says:

I know my capacity.
I trust your love.
And I am ready to be seen

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The Meantime