Helene Aftermath: Accept Help

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that the best way to make a friend was to request a favor. There is something about the vulnerability of requesting help that touches the human heart.

And yet so many of us seem to struggle with accepting help. Whether it is a fear of inconveniencing another person or social conditioning rooted in extreme individualism, we seem to have difficulty allowing others to give us what we need.

We are in a moment right now, in the aftermath of Helene, that some trauma response models call the Heroic Phase. In the heroic phase, we are capable of extreme efforts, both physically and emotionally, as we respond to disaster and trauma.

From the Institute for Collective Trauma and Growth

It’s important to know this for two reasons:

1) During this phase, giving and accepting help creates strong trust and relationship within the community. When we are feeling heroic we need to give. To give, we need receivers. Heroic efforts to help that are thwarted at this time tend to result in emotional collapse.

2) This phase will end. As we continue to engage in prolonged recovery efforts, our hearts will break again and again and the initial adrenaline-fueled power of the Heroic Phase will ebb. It’s helpful to know that this is coming and to prepare for it. And, if we have cultivated strong community relationships during the Heroic Phase, those relationships will be there to help all of us get through the disillusionment and heartbreak.

So, dear members of this community, if you can give, give. If you don’t live in the area and have resources to donate, here are some wonderful local organizations that are in need of your help (scroll down in the article to see the local organizations). It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so if there is one that speaks to your heart a small ongoing gift would be more helpful than a large one-time donation. If you live in the area and volunteering would help you process your experience, there are opportunities for volunteering here.

But equally important: if you are in the position to receive help, please do. It will benefit the mental health of the person offering help. It will strengthen relationships in our community. And most importantly, the healthier and more resourced you are, the healthier we all are. Because individualism is a myth. What we are is interdependent.

Over the weekend I realized that several of the organizations our community donated to through the storytelling project have come to our aid. World Central Kitchen is feeding people throughout Western NC. Care International is sending resources. RiverLink will be on the front lines of cleaning and healing our rivers. How humbling and inspiring to see, in this microcosm, the way that giving and receiving help weaves the web of community.