sigh....springtime....

A friend of mine lost her job in November. She just called me, trying not to cry while she was in line to apply for food stamps. It hurts. It hurts because she is a lot like me. A single mom. A strong single mom. A strong single mom that a lot of people depend on. She’s raised 3 kids basically on her own. She works two jobs to make ends meet. She takes in people until they get on their feet. She’s a helper and a nurturer and now she is in an area that she doesn’t know how to handle or control. I tell her she is not a failure. That the country is in a recession. That jobs are being cut left and right. But she isn’t hearing that. And I know I would be the same way in her place. When you are used to be the go to person, its hard to go to someone else. To ask for help. To say, I cant do it.

I, like many women, tend to put so much on our own shoulders. We tend to not ask for help. We tend to make do or handle it all. Only when it gets truly bad (and sometimes not even then) do we ask for help or reach out to someone to say ‘hey, I’m hurting’. To admit that…means that the world as we know it is done and over with. And that simply can not be.