Revisiting the Shame of Asking for Help

In my naïveté years ago, I held that this work that I was opened unto would be community-supported. I couldn’t see then how miracles and magic of the biblical and bawdy would be met with more fear than fellowship.

I remember the first time I asked for help after 40 years of figuring out how to do it myself, thinking the only way I’d ever be safe was if I took care of it—whatever it was that needing taking care of—myself. I was an independent woman; skilled, smart & intuitive, compassionate, fiery when necessary and justice focused. And I had a bank account. Until I didn’t and it all went to shit because God popped in and changed my life.

I couldn’t rely on my independence or ingenuity any more so I asked my father to help me pay a phone bill. I learned five years later that I was abandoned by him because that one request fulfilled, to him, the prophecy he made that “I’d be one of those people who relied on everyone else’—when I was days old. When he admitted that his line was, “I didn’t know how you’d make it as a healer.” Think about that for a hot second.

When I began the healing work, following that bouncing red ball of universal guidance, I charged $45 for a three hour session. Clients were the ones that said, “Ingrid, you need to charge more.” My landlord agreed.

Sixteen years have been spent trying to make it all work because community didn’t rally or gather in the way I thought it would. Not that help didn’t arrive, sometimes in miraculous ways that reminded me that my father’s judgment about me was his own and not shared by others but...

The past three years, I have held more jobs than I care to admit in an attempt to become a semblance of that ‘independent woman’. Each one has nearly killed me. They’ve been innocuous jobs, far less than my resume implies, but, each time, have taken me out of the ‘place’ I’m meant to be. Each time, even if I was only in it for a few weeks, it took longer to recover.

“Wait for God,” was a repeated message that kept me on the brink of homelessness because rent is part of life and I couldn’t make it without being clear that God wasn’t going to show up for me in that way. I kept making rent until I got so sick I couldn’t. In a conversation with someone from ND who shared the story about a revered medicine man who died with a shed full of tobacco and knock-off Pendleton blankets as tokens of appreciation and need but couldn’t afford to heat his home, I realized that The Medicine must be contained within community—as must those who are Becoming the Medicine, the next generation of healers and hope bringers to a world that is desperate for their capacities.

So, I’m asking for help again. I absolutely need to get to Massachusetts to help a Becoming the Medicine student. The two of us have worked together remotely for nine months but now we need to be in shared physical presence for the next stage. In addition, I need to get to the Navajo Nation for another student. I need between $3,000 and $5,000 to do so. Time is of the essence for both of these young people. Massachusetts is first, followed by Dinetah.

Someone has suggested that a Gofundme account would legitimize the request for some people. I don’t have a bank account to attach to a Gofundme. I’ve not had a bank account for over six months because that’s one of the effects of poverty.

Another someone suggested that she believes in me, believes me, because, “God knew you wouldn’t squander your gifts and that you’d learn how to trust that you didn’t have to—in fact, couldn’t—do it yourself. You, as a separate, individuated Self, don’t even exist. You don’t have to prove anything nor should you expect God to prove the trust. You just trust and then let it be.”

No matter how long I’ve been in this ‘subsummation’ process, being subsumed by God for God, I still seem to carry the shame of asking for help. I’ve internalized, not a lack of worth because I know mine, but the idea that others can’t see my worth because I ask for help. I don’t have much of an imagination but mine takes me to people rolling their eyes and saying, “There she goes again. Can’t she take care of her own damn self?” To me, it’s an extension of the politico-social thinking that those who need government funded services—such as they are these days—are not worthy beings and my own father’s dismissal of me for following where God led.

The truth, as I see it so far, is that I was made for everyone and that part of the equation of all this coming into full fruition, is that I need help taking care of other people who then learn how their own communities help them help others—that The Medicine grows in that way, exponentially into a renewed way of expression.

Please help. Donate if you can. Buy a painting (or a print!), hit ‘share’ on the socials without measuring how others will judge you for passing it on. Share a story about how a painting has made you feel like being touched by God or reached out in a dream and then your illness was gone. What it felt like to know, for the first time, that you were cherished, perhaps. Maybe this feels too ‘beggy’, maybe it’s just the right tone. Maybe you’ll unsubscribe or I’ll cringe when I hit send. Maybe a lot of things other than me giving up on this idea or on these young people.

The work I do with these young people is *first* for them, then as they grown into themselves, they Become The Medicine for others. As I see it, it’s up to us to show them they don’t have to be ashamed to ask for help themselves and, perhaps, they won’t need to; that their generation and peers will just evolve into the fluidity of community that allows healers and seers to be supported.

Many thanks for letting me natter on as I flop around trying to figure life-stuff out.

Much love to you and yours as we all try to do the same in these wild, untamed times.

Donations can be sent via Paypal to @ingridoliphantllc. I'm glad to share other ways via email at ingridoliphantllc@gmail.com (because scammers will scam with public info out there).