MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
ASKING FOR HELP<\/p>\n
I never learned to ask for help. At age 14, I left home and\u00a0moved to Washington D.C. to \u00a0pursue a ballet career. I\u2019d won a scholarship to attend the Washington School of Ballet, the first of its kind in the United States that offered dance training and schooling under the same roof. I wasn\u2019t pressured to go, it was entirely my choice, because I wanted to be a professional ballet dancer no matter what it took to get there.<\/p>\n
My parents helped me follow my dream. They drove me to D. C.\u00a0in September, 1963, and moved me into a cell-like room in a makeshift dorm,\u00a0McClean Gardens, where I would live for the school year. I wanted my mother to\u00a0stay with me for a week to settle me in, but it seemed she was uncomfortable\u00a0being without my father and they left together. I remember waving good-bye to\u00a0my parents and sitting on my bed, staring at a goldfish that my father had\u00a0bought to keep me company. That was how I felt, like a small fish swimming
around in deep water. A so-called dorm mother who didn’t sleep on site came\u00a0over once in a while to look in on me and the other resident girls who were from\u00a0out of state, but we hardly ever saw her. There were many nights that I cried\u00a0myself to sleep, aware that I had to fend for myself. I was afraid to tell\u00a0anyone I needed help so I was the only one I could count on. I remember drying\u00a0my tears and going to breakfast. I thought everyone else was adjusting better\u00a0than I was, but now I\u2019m sure we were all going through the same upsets and\u00a0hiding it from each other.<\/p>\n
Athletes take pride in their strength, stamina and search\u00a0for excellence. No one can do the work for us, there is no one to ask for help,\u00a0and as a young teenager, I knew I needed to be strong and self-sufficient in\u00a0order to succeed. That sentiment has followed me for most of my adult life, the\u00a0need to feel like I can do it myself, whatever it is. I wasn\u2019t trained to face\u00a0obstacles with someone by my side or to delegate tasks so I\u2019ve had to reprogram\u00a0myself. Being self-sufficient is hard wired in my brain \u2013 a blessing and a\u00a0curse. It allows me to believe in myself and to figure out how to do difficult\u00a0things, but it also makes me feel weak and unsafe when I can’t do something on\u00a0my own.<\/p>\n
I once ended a relationship with a man who could fix\u00a0anything. When the refrigerator went on the blink, I mustered all of my\u00a0strength to heave it away from the wall. I unplugged it and plugged it back in.
No juice. I called a girlfriend in tears. \u201cI pulled the damn thing away from the wall, reset it and it still won’t go. What am I gonna do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo what the rest of us do,\u201d she said. \u201cCall someone to fix\u00a0it.\u201d That hadn\u2019t occurred to me.<\/p>\n
I have a friend who can\u2019t problem solve because she never
learned to use her brain. I have another friend who is fully capable of opening\u00a0jars with lids but she asks her husband to do it so he can feel macho and\u00a0useful. Neither of these are good role models for me, but pulling out a\u00a0refrigerator single-handed isn\u2019t so great either. These days, I\u2019m taking the\u00a0middle path: Do what I can and call someone when I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Childhood beliefs, especially the ones caused by trauma, are\u00a0hard to change, but when they outgrow their usefulness, it\u2019s important to recognize\u00a0it. There\u2019s more than one of us here on Planet Earth because we were each meant\u00a0to bring our particular gifts to the table and join forces with people who can\u00a0do the things that we can\u2019t. It\u2019s a perfect arrangement if we can just let go\u00a0and ask for help.<\/p>\n
Is it easy or difficult for you to ask for help?<\/p>\n
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MY WEEKLY BLOG ASKING FOR HELP I never learned to ask for help. At age 14, I left home and\u00a0moved to Washington D.C. to \u00a0pursue a ballet career. I\u2019d won a scholarship to attend the Washington School of Ballet, the first of its kind in the United States that offered dance training and schooling under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}