Asking for Help is HARD! I have always had a difficult time asking for help. Feeling like if I am able and can I should just do the task at hand without asking for help. Add becoming a wife and a mom to this and asking for help is still really difficult for me. I have a really hard time knowing how to ask for help; what do I need or how can someone help? Sometimes it feels easier for me to do it rather than try and explain what I need help with.
When Brooks was just about a month and a half old I was struggling with Breastfeeding, it HURT!!! I pushed through it and kept going but there came a day where I just couldn’t anymore and planned to reach out to a breastfeeding moms group for help. I can remember crying, as I told my husband that I was going to have to ask for help! I was so upset because I felt like something was wrong with me because I didn’t know how to fix this. We went to a mom support group for breastfeeding but they weren’t meeting that day due to a holiday. Luckily the worst of the pain had past and it got much better from there! But the fact is that admitting the need for help and going to get help made me so upset and vulnerable because of the feeling of not being able to DO THIS on my own!
Growing up, I watched my mom, aunts, friends’ moms do it ALL, you know SUPERMOM, it was all I knew. I have tried really hard and am trying really hard to fight this urge, the need to do it all and ask for help when I feel like I need it. Read that again, TRYING! Just yesterday, BJ asked me if he could do something and I literally said it will be easier for me to do it than explain. So I am a work in progress and this will be something that I have to continue to work at daily!
Why do I feel the need to be perfect and do ALL the THINGS? Because somehow if I don’t juggle the things that need to be done and keep those “balls” in the air, am I failing as a wife or mom? NO! And by all means I know my husband doesn’t think that so why do I put that pressure on myself? I want to be the BEST wife and mom I can be, that is my goal! Often times not asking for help or taking help when it is offered hinders my goal and makes it even harder for me to be the best wife and mom I can be, dropping a lot of the “balls” I am trying to juggle. It’s an expectation that I put on myself and have realized that it is not only unrealistic but doesn’t help me achieve my goal at all. If anything, it gets me further from that goal because I get burnt out, feel run down and tired way quicker than if I share the load!
So I am working really hard to know it is OKAY TO ASK for HELP and say YES to help when offered. My husband and others are more than willing to help me! Even if it takes explaining sometimes, I will explain and say YES when they offer a helping hand!
This excerpt is from a book I am currently reading and I couldn’t say it any better:
““Wonder Woman is the coolest superhero,” he explained. “She doesn’t even have any weapons. She just has her arms and her legs, and she wonders a lot.””
“I don’t want to be supermom anymore. I want to be Wonder Woman. I want to show my kids what it looks like to face the world unarmed and unafraid. I want to show them that the ability to stay curious is the greatest superpower of all. But like any feat of parenting, if I want these ideas to stick, I have to live them in my own life, both privately and publicly, because my kids are always watching. I have to embody Wonder Woman’s ideals not just when I hope to teach my kids a lesson, but when I have a lesson to learn myself.”
From The Magic of Motherhood:The Good Stuff, The Hard Stuff, and Everything in Between
So moms, I challenge you if you struggle with this to also let go of feeling the need to do it all, to be the proverbial SUPERMOM! Ask for help when you need it and be willing to say YES when offered help! Let’s be WONDER MOM instead!