yesterday i did a big thing and asked for help. today i realized i did not once say please.
i was angry at my situation, angry with myself, terrified, and these conditions do not make a good foundation for being polite… but they do make the perfect one for action.
my need of $1350 was met in less than four hours, as a result of the combined effort of myself and twenty five other people. more people are still pitching in. the biggest thing i learned is… they didn’t know.
i didn’t make myself heard and loud until i was on the edge of losing everything. when i did post, you could see that my spirit did NOT want that… my words were dripping with it.
why did i wait so long? why did i give the subtext that i didn’t actually NEED? the short answer is, shame. i didn’t want that part of my life to be so visible, so unconsciously, i was making sure it wasn’t.
and basically shooting myself in the foot by doing that.
when new coaches start out, i’m finding most don’t get taken seriously. it’s assumed that our work is a hobby business and not actually mean to provide for our families. what’s up with that?
is it a “women’s work” thing? is it our clumsy social media posts as we are figuring all this shit out? it is easy for me to get messages saying how inspiring i am. it is much harder to get paid. i’m getting help with that, and it’s working, but these things are slow.
there also seems to be a common assumption that the folks who enter this profession have some sort of something to fall back on, like a spouses income or a Real Job that brings in money. a second car they could sell if it came down to it, or other assets.
it’s also assumed that if you’re poor enough, there are government agencies and women’s organizations and churches ready to hand out cash money to keep you from losing everything. that if you don’t have any other option, the department of families will just cut you a check every month until you’re back on your feet.
there is no such thing, and when there is, the gates to each of these services are kept so tightly that these resources are basically impossible to access. OR, their resources are tapped for the next year and you have to go on a waiting list. or you have to call back every two weeks to check in. or you have to drive a few hours for the appointment. or you have to be ready to drop everything and take a call from an unknown number that probably looks exactly like the bill collectors or scam calls you get 12 times every day— and that call has a 4-to-8 hour window that it could ring and you can’t work that whole day waiting for it. or you don’t get the letter saying to expect the call until the day after you were supposed to get it, and now you have to reschedule for sometime within the next month because they’re weeks behind in processing. or you get approved, but not until weeks after the government-stated guidelines, again because they’re weeks behind in processing.
then there are megacoaches that spread the gospel of If You’re Suffering It’s Probably Your Own Fault, which is absolutely an infection of this entire industry. they’ll pick out thoughts they see in your social media posts that lean towards self-deprecation, and focus their entire approach on that one thing— completely ignoring or disregarding real societal issues that affect you but not them.
i am so, so lucky to have found coaches that get me and work with me to make sure i can move through this world with a little more ease. i can talk to them and they impart wisdom and give me grace because they give a shit. i’m finding that they’re the exception, they are exceptional. in every way. they’re the ones leading the change here and i’m glad to be part of their worlds and to have them be a part of mine.
we have to uproot all this shit. even a tiny bit left in the fertile soil of our minds will regrow over and over into toxic individualism. it’s not my own hard work and grit that got my need met. it was a community of folks who gave a fuck about me, too.
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