Why I Could Not Ask For Help Even In A Medical Emergency. And What That Taught Me About Self-Abandonment.
- thespiralcoaching
- Mar 21
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 23
I Built IKEA Furniture Alone Whilst Heavily Pregnant. It Took a Medical Emergency to Finally Show Me What I Was Actually Doing.
Sixteen years ago I was on the floor of our flat building a chest of drawers from IKEA.
I was heavily pregnant.
My husband was not far away. I could have waited. I could have asked.
I did not.
By the time he came home I had hurt my back and could barely move.
But the chest of drawers was built.
I remember feeling proud before I felt the pain.
And if I am completely honest with you I would probably do it again.
Because that is who I was. The woman who figures it out. The woman who gets it done. The woman who does not wait.
A few months later I became a mother for the first time.
No family nearby. No support network around me. Just me, a newborn, a stack of parenting books I had bought whilst still pregnant, and my husband's football tactics board that I had covered in plans, to-do lists, and things I needed to learn and remember.
I greeted visitors. I cooked. I cleaned. I looked after a newborn. All of it. From the beginning. Alone.
And I called it coping.
Three months in my best friend stepped in.
She did not ask if I needed help. She simply showed up and announced she was babysitting so my husband and I could go on a date.
I let her. Not because I asked. Because she did not give me the option to say no.
That one act of love from her is something I have never forgotten. Because it was the only time in that entire period that someone took something off my plate without me having to pretend I did not need it.
Years after the chest of drawers, I needed a small operation abroad.
I went alone.
Complications arose. I needed a blood transfusion. I waited for hours. Frightened. Exhausted. Feeling terribly ill.
There were at least fifteen people who would have come running if I had called.
I still did not call a single one.
I told myself I did not want to worry anyone. Did not want to put anyone out.
But lying there alone in that hospital, I finally heard what I had been saying to myself for years.
I do not need anyone. I can do this alone. Asking means I am not enough.
That was fifteen years ago, and I will never forget it.
Because that was the day I finally understood that what I had been calling strength was actually something else entirely.
It was a pattern. Built quietly over the years. Reinforced every time I said I am fine when I was not. Every time I built the furniture alone. Every time I greeted the visitors and cooked the dinner, wrote the to-do list, and told myself this is just who I am.
It was not who I was. It was what I had learned. And learning it is always where the freedom begins.
I work with High-Giving Women every day who are living this same pattern.
Women who give everything to everyone and have somewhere along the way completely forgotten they are allowed to receive anything back.
The Receiving Wheel is a free coaching tool that helps you understand exactly where you are closing off and why. It takes ten minutes, and it might name something you have been carrying for years.
Or if you are ready to explore this work more deeply, your first conversation with me is completely free.
Chat soon x
Senem 🌀
Identity Coach for High-Giving Women
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