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Capitol Pill | Help in the neighborhood

(Image: Karyn Schwartz)

(Image: Karyn Schwartz)

We’ve asked Karyn Schwartz, owner of the Sugarpill apothecary on E Pine, to contribute to CHS about health and Hill living on a semi-regular basis. If you’re an expert and want to share with the community in a recurring CHS column, we’d like to hear from you.

I had to ask for help this week.

Not the little kind that happens as a matter of every day — but the big kind that is so hard to ask for, because it means that people will see that you are struggling, maybe even failing at something, and that you can’t actually fix it all on your own.

You are so busy trying to be strong that all you can think about is yourself

I spent a lot of my life too proud to be witnessed like that. I’m fairly certain my attempts at fierce independence never prevented anyone who knew me from seeing that I was struggling; it just held them uncomfortably at bay in moments when I most needed connection. I’ve learned the hard way that trying to tough life out on your own is at best much more difficult than it has to be and pretty damn lonely, and at worst, dangerous, painful and often selfish in ways that you don’t even realize because you are so busy trying to be strong that all you can think about is yourself.

My epiphany came, like this sort of thing often does, as a result of some difficult health problems. After suffering for most of my young life from something that conventional medicine was maddeningly ineffective for, I finally found myself under the guidance of some very insightful holistic health practitioners. These were the first people to offer me any hope that I might someday heal. They were the first to ask me what I knew about my own condition, and what I thought might be making it so much worse at the time. They didn’t promise me that recovery would be easy or swift, but they did promise to accompany me through the process.

It hadn’t dawned on me before that I could ask for what I needed, because I didn’t know what that would consist of or have any faith at all that it might exist. All I knew was that I felt hopeless and very afraid, and somehow I also felt ashamed. I didn’t feel entitled to ask for any special kind of care, and I was certain that to need so much was to admit some unforgiveable failure as a person.

My very first homeopath, provider of the magic sugarpills that changed everything for me, told me that the remedy she was giving me was certainly intended to resolve my physical symptoms, but that mainly it was to help me not be so insistent on my independence, which she understood from listening to my story was the biggest obstacle to my own healing. She reflected to me that I had become so determined to manage life by myself that nobody even knew I needed anything, and she helped me to face the truth that I had adopted this strategy because I did not believe – despite so much evidence to the contrary – that anyone cared about me enough to rely on them when I was in trouble. She knew that what needed to be healed was not just the manifestation of illness in my body, but the certainty in my heart that I had to survive life on my own rather than living in relation to other people who actually valued my presence here enough to lend me their hand. She helped me to articulate what I was really suffering from, and she taught me what it really means to heal.

With time and enormously compassionate supervision, I did heal. I learned new ways to take care of myself, and I learned about medicines that would not only save my life but would become the foundation of an entirely new path for my life. Most importantly, I learned how to ask for help instead of braving it out on my own.

So many people have saved my life; I have gotten lucky more than my share of times, and I have been loved more sincerely and cared for more generously than I would ever have dreamed was possible. I still get overwhelmed by the kindness and real resource that people have offered when I have been honest about what is going on in my life and not afraid to ask for what I need. It’s never easy, but it’s never as hard as the alternative.

So many people helped me this week. You know who you are. I hope you know what it means to me that you are in my world, and what incredible great good fortune it is to be held by so many. I hope I have helped you in kind; I hope you will always be brave enough to ask for what you need.

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4 Comments
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Tee
Tee
8 years ago

So lovely, thank you!

Kario
Kario
8 years ago

It is truly amazing what can happen when a health practitioner asks the individual who is suffering what they think about their own health issues. I had a very similar experience about ten years ago and it was then that I began to become a partner in my own healthcare and started to truly heal. Thank you for sharing this story and for recognizing how difficult and how important it is to ask for help when you need it. That’s a lesson many of us need to be reminded of continually.

Sam
Sam
8 years ago

Beautifully written. Thank you for sharing. This is a good message for me.

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8 years ago

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