Can I help you with that? – a jar top, a sack of groceries, a heavy box. It catches me off guard – I’m always surprised to find it’s directed toward me. I’ve always been the helper, not the one who needed it.
I am more than grateful for the many wonderful helpers that 
make my very comfortable life possible. Professional and personal, family and friends, neighbors, and of course, the furry ones. It’s just that I’ve always resisted asking for help – preferring to correct mistakes over taking directions, hiding my 
troubles behind a practiced smile. Insisting I’m “just fine” while my insides are screaming for help. Mind you, I’d run out in front of traffic to help someone else…I’m thinking I’m not alone here.
I was taught from an early age to help others. And I know well the joy it brings. But I was not taught how to be helped. It was deep in my family’s psyche, in our very blood; that barring natural disasters or
catastrophic disease, we don’t take help. It follows then, that if you need help, there’s something wrong with you – you’re lazy, you’re not very smart; you’re weak and needy. And you’re definitely not one of us.
Not only was this curious concept fundamental to my family and my community, it was deeply embedded in twentieth century American culture; likely tracing to our pioneer days when survival really did belong to the fittest.
Whatever the reason, I don’t remember any discussion in my family, community, school..anywhere, anytime – about how and when to ask for help. Community support services in our society largely developed in the late 20th century. For example, tutoring, a popular way to gain a competitive edge nowadays, was originally remedial, and therefore, to be avoided. Treatment centers were non-existent. Pre-Oprah, family problems were suffered in silence. And therapy dogs? PTSD? Seriously?
Thankfully, It’s easier for me than for my mother; certainly than for my grandmother, to ask for help. But in spite of our relaxed attitudes toward human vulnerability, I still don’t hear much about receiving help
I’m pretty much making it up as I go. Learning to simply say “Thank You” without a litany of qualifiers and a compulsion to repay. To ask for help but not be crushed by a negative response. Learning to be the source of someone else’s joy of giving.
Like any art form, I’m learning, gracious receiving requires patient, persistent practice. Habits of a lifetime will not go quietly.
Years before Millennials coined BFF (text-talk for Best Friends Forever), we were Friends For Life. (FFL). We were in primary school together.
were clumsy or a basketball star, could or shouldn’t sing, nerdy or poor at math, pretty and popular or not so much… whatever you were. And they still know.
Football Sweetheart beaming on the arm of the football captain at the Prom while you slinked in accompanied by a truculent cousin. You’ll pick up exactly where you left off, like it or not.
daddy’s car all the way home from the lake trying to run back the miles on the odometer? Or the time Jane burned her tongue trying to smoke cornsilk? Or how we used to “Dive and Duck” under the desks for bomb drills? And so it goes until we’re all hoarse from laughing. There is just nothing else like it. 
But there is more here than nostalgia. Our bond was created by an accident of birth that consigned us to the same zip code for our most formative years. We weren’t friends because we chose each other. We were friends because we knew each other. Our parents knew each other. In most cases, our grandparents knew each other. Many of us were cousins. We went to the same churches. We stood in line together for school vaccinations, we rode the same school-bus, went to the same Saturday afternoon movies. We had crushes on the same cute boys, cheered the football team together and wore the same ugly gym suits. Community was a given. We absorbed it like the summer heat. Even when we didn’t like each other, we belonged together. And we still do.