Asking for What I Need

 There is an inner struggle I am walking through right now.

I believe one of my greatest lessons is learning to ask for what I need.

As a child, my needs were rarely considered.

I don’t remember my mother asking how I wanted my room decorated.

I don’t remember being asked what I wanted to eat.

I don’t remember being asked how I felt.

The message I absorbed was quiet but powerful.

My needs didn’t matter.

Other people’s needs came first.

So I became very good at taking care of everyone else.

It felt natural.

For a long time, I believed I had learned this lesson.

I thought I had found my voice.

But life has a way of revealing the places that still need healing.

This past year has shown me that there is another layer.

I think about the doctor I depended on while searching for answers to my bladder pain.

It took me a long time to recognize something that had become painfully familiar.

I could walk into an appointment with sincere questions.

Yet I left feeling as though my questions had never really been answered.

One day, I told him that the procedures he was recommending frightened me.

I wasn’t refusing treatment.

I was sharing my fear.

His response was, “Then stay in pain.”

Whether he intended it that way or not, those words landed heavily on my heart.

In that moment, I felt something much older than disappointment.

I felt unheard.

I felt as though my fear didn’t matter.

It was a feeling I knew all too well.

For a moment, I wasn’t just a woman trying to make decisions about her health.

I was the little girl whose feelings had so often gone unnoticed.

The difference today is that I no longer have to abandon myself.

I can listen to my own voice.

I can honor my own fears.

I can ask questions until I understand.

I can choose the care that feels right for me.

Perhaps asking for what I need is about more than finding the right answers.

Perhaps it is about finally believing that my needs, my feelings, and my voice are worthy of being heard.

And that may be one of the most important lessons of my life.