If we move in similar echo chambers, you may hear many calls to “Ask for what you need.”
This is great, because it’s true: we all deserve to have our needs met. But I want to know:
What lives a step back from need?
As a kid, I spent a perhaps inordinate amount of time considering the differences between wants and needs — I’ll unpack that later — and I still wonder, how can we make that discernment between what supports our survival and what supports our ease?
That’s what I’m practicing asking for this season.
Yes, needs.
But also, simply asking for what might help.
Now, I have a history of receiving more than I give, usually because I didn't realize I needed to make an offer to give and instead assumed that people just already knew, assumed my willingness. That it was a given. Shout out to a few Virgo friends who taught me some tough lessons about this; I'm still working on it.
So how do we -- *cough* I -- ask for help and support while still living in the integrity of reciprocity, mutuality, and consideration?
I’d like to think that a condition of the unspoken communal contract is that we each do the work of personal investigation, discernment, and self-awareness, practice it until we can make a generous decision, even under duress, of who, how, when, and where to call in that support, and to know when it's our turn to show up in return. Sometimes brain chemistry, socialization, the patriarchy, trauma, spicy memory, and more make it really difficult to make these distinctions. And that’s where permission to fail joins the chat, as always, and puts me in mind of our growing conception of the complexities of boundary setting: not only a wall to throw up when we’re activated, but also a way to help us love those we love with more kindness, fortitude, and wellness.
There's a lot to unpack here, but it's Sagittarius season so I leave this letter buttonless. I hope you have people in your life that you trust to have your back, and that trust you to have theirs. It's pretty great.
from New Moon Newsletter No. 10