Dear Mom,

I’ve been looking back at previous letters to you as inspiration for this week’s letter and I’ve noticed something interesting. A few months ago, I wrote about my desire to have more human connections in life. I’ve written a lot lately about my history with loneliness as well as the overwhelming feelings that accompany the act of being an adult. A few weeks back I even wrote to you about my regret of not asking for help when I was younger. I ended that particular letter with. “It is OK to ask for help. You are not alone.” All of these topics coincide.

It’s funny, sometimes it takes the act of writing multiple letters to see the truth. To see the thread that binds the ideas together.

This week I sat down to write about my desire to be more present. To live in the moment and, as you would say, focus on the journey instead of the destination. I wrote a few paragraphs about my goal of hitting 100 rejections this year on my querying journey and allowing myself to learn from each no instead of getting upset that the yes hasn’t arrived yet.

I now see it. I see the connection. The throughline.

I am not alone. I have a community. I can ask for help. And I need to. I can’t do this by myself.

On this journey to one day be a published author, I have managed to find myself as part of a strong community of writers who are on the same journey. So many of us struggle through the lows. The dark days of form rejection after form rejection. The whiplash when an agent we connected with says no. When we get no feedback. No response. No light at the end of the tunnel. But I don’t need to go through it alone. I can reach out to writers for their advice regarding this process. I can take them up on their offers to read my work and give me notes. Or I can simply seek the much-needed solidarity, admitting to myself that I am not the only one going through this, and we are all in this together.

Beyond writing, I’ve also found myself in a strong community of parents through the kids’ school who we can count on and who can count on us. For the first time in a long time, I feel surrounded by the right people. By good people. Strong, kind, compassionate people. And most importantly, people who understand what we’re going through. Who empathize with us. Who see that we need help well before we’re able to see it ourselves.

It’s truly refreshing to recognize that I have a network of humans who care about me. They care about my mental health. They care about my family. They aren’t only invested in my success. I have people in my life, both on and offline, who check in with me. Who reach out to make sure I’m OK. To catch up and follow up and genuinely want to know how I’m doing.

So why does it still feel so unnatural to ask for help? Why do I still feel my chest tighten and my palms get sweaty and my throat shaky each time I seek advice?

I believe this all goes back to my own trust issues. I don’t want to ask for help because I assume that people, no matter how great they are and how much they’ve proven they care about me, don’t actually want to help me. And my assumption is most likely based on my history with befriending people who were in fact taking advantage of me while pushing away the ones who actually cared. I think back to all the friends I’ve had throughout my life. Childhood, adolescence, college. It’s easy to remember the worst of it. The kinds of friends like the one who left me on the side of the road as I was being cuffed by a police officer only months after I had gotten that same friend out of her own drunk driving ticket. The friends who hung around me to have access to my car. The friends who hung around me to have access to my drugs. My money. My body. My inability to say no.

For so long I blamed the shitty friends. The ones who didn’t care enough about me to be there for me when I needed them. But when I close my eyes and think about all those years, I see real friends in the background. Begging me to let them help. The girls in junior high who worried about my lack of eating and told their moms about it? I couldn’t trust them anymore, so I pushed them away. The girls in high school who worried about my emotionally abusive relationship and begged me to break up with him? I brushed them off and pulled away. The friends in college who worried about my drinking. The friends at work who were concerned that my boyfriend wouldn’t let me hang out with them. The friends in grad school who told me my writing was suffering due to my substance abuse.

I cut them all out of my life.

One by one. Until I had no friends left. Until I was left, alone, to rebuild. No wonder I have such a hard time asking for help. It’s as if I feel like I used up all my chances already. No more lives saved up. No more tokens left. I can’t possibly deserve the help after saying no for so long.

Luckily, I’ve been working a lot to overcome these sorts of feelings, and I now know I do deserve help. I know I can trust my community and I know they can trust me.

But I also know that the people in my community have their own busy lives to think about. Their own stresses and packed to-do lists to worry over. They’re not going to offer to help if they don’t know I need them. I must ask.

The old saying of ‘it takes a village’ only works if the villagers know what needs to be done. If I don’t ask for help, then how can I expect it? Most people can’t read my mind.

So, I’m working on asking for help while also not feeling guilty about needing it in the first place. To not feel bad about making someone else go out of their own way for me. And while I’m at it, I’m also working on not feeling the need to say yes every time someone asks me for help. To trust the strength of these relationships enough to know that people won’t cut me out of their lives if I say no one time. Because, ultimately, I can’t give all of myself to my community.

It’s a strange balance for me, to put myself first in many ways yet still show up for others. To not feel selfish when I have to say no to helping someone else and still have the courage to ask for my own favor later. Because I now know that it’s not conditional. It’s not favor for favor in a community. It’s help when you can and accept help when it’s offered. That’s it. There are no strings attached. And if there are, then it’s not a relationship worth fighting for.

I have spent years building my community. Finding solid friendships with families from school. Strengthening friendships through work. Discovering a beautiful group of writer friends online. Reinvigorating old friendships that had fizzled out for the wrong reasons. Now it’s time to lean into the community. To ask for help. To accept it when it’s offered. To be OK when the answer is no. And what I must do above all else is understand that when the answer is no, and someone can’t help me for whatever reason, it doesn’t reflect poorly on me. People aren’t saying no because they don’t like me or don’t want to help me. It likely has nothing to do with me at all.

For the first time in my life, I’m not afraid to be rejected. It’s only part of the process. Same as asking for help from a friend. They have the power to say no but that doesn’t mean they don’t care about me, and it doesn’t mean I should stop asking.

And when the times are tough and I get bombarded with rejections and my imposter syndrome surfaces and the no’s become harder to swallow and I feel like giving up? I will turn to my community for help. Because I know they are there for me, just like I’m there for them.

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rachel