Gail Atwater LCSW

Let's talk about asking for help. I know, right - eeeeeeeks!!! No, seriously, I've needed a lot more help do "do" my life this past year especially as a homeowner and it's been scary asking for it but life is so much sweeter when you have what you need, even if you have to struggle with a few layers of shame, embarrassment, stoicism or fear in order to get there. I've seen people who need the help and refuse to ask for it and end up being more trouble for the people in their lives. Is there something you need help for and you've been putting off asking? Are you the one who's quick to help everyone else but never ask for help yourself?

I've been talking to a lot of lonely, isolated people lately. In our 50s and 60s our social life and what we need to do to build and maintain one is going to look different from what it did our 20s and 30s and that's OK. As a society, seems like we are so connected in some ways and so disconnected in others these days and we haven't quite caught up to how to cope with (or avoid) that. This is for you.

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

~Louise Erdrich