37 friends have signed up on my meal train since May 24th to drop off meals and keep me company since I began my orthopedic surgery recovery in LA.
It’s been very humbling for me.
I have always been fiercely independent.
Asking for help is hard for me. Really hard.
So when I broke my leg and suddenly couldn’t walk, couldn’t carry groceries, couldn’t take out my own garbage, couldn’t get myself everywhere I needed to go—I had to learn.
For the past 92 days, I’ve had to practice saying things that make me uncomfortable:
I need a meal.
Could you pick this up for me?
Could you take out my garbage?
I can’t get there by myself.
If you can’t come by, a gift card for groceries or food delivery would really help.
And the toughest one.
I’m not doing so great.
Could you send me some money to help me cover the essentials this month?
At first, I think I believed I was protecting people by not asking.
Everyone has their own problems. Everyone is busy. I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want anyone to feel responsible for taking care of me.
But I’ve realized there was something else underneath all that independence:
If I didn’t ask, no one could say no.
I was protecting myself from rejection. From criticism. From discovering that someone I thought I could depend on couldn’t—or didn’t want to—meet me there.
I was scared at the possibility that maybe I didn’t actually have any real friends.
But not asking also meant people never got the opportunity to say yes.
And a lot of people did.
I’ve learned that people who love you don’t always intuitively know what you need. They may want desperately to help and simply not know what would actually be useful. They may not have the bandwidth or skill set to anticipate it.
Sometimes you have to tell them.
And telling someone what you need isn’t demanding that they provide it.
It’s giving them information.
This is where I am.
This is what would help.
Can you meet me here?
Then they get to decide what they’re capable of carrying.
A friend once told me this when I said I didn’t want to date because my life felt too messy. I thought I needed to get everything together before bringing someone else into it.
He told me: Mari, you should give someone the chance to know you. You don’t know what another person is capable of carrying.
Not fixing.
Not solving.
‘Carrying’ alongside you.
I understand that differently now.
For three months, people have carried meals and groceries and garbage bags for me. They’ve tripoded pieces of my independence while I’ve slowly gotten my legs back under me (literally).
And sometimes people couldn’t.
That’s okay too. It gave me clarity.
I’m learning that healthy relationships aren’t built by making myself need as little as possible so that I’m easy to have around.
They’re built by being honest enough to say what I need, giving other people the freedom to tell me what they can give, and discovering where we can meet each other.
At the end of September I will close my Meal Train and enter the next phase of recovery. One of the things I want to carry with me long after I can walk and climb stairs on my own again is:
I don’t have to do everything alone just because I can.
And maybe independence isn’t never needing anyone.
Maybe it’s knowing that I can stand on my own—and still having the courage to reach out my hand.
