Being In Receivership
For years, I've been curious about people who seem to have this figured out from the start.
They unapologetically put themselves first, clear about what they need and unafraid to ask for it. People naturally rally around them because there's no ambiguity, no apologetic energy, just clear, honest communication about their needs. I've learned so much from observing how naturally support flows to and from these people. (I reckon my brother was put on this earth to teach me this exact lesson).
It got me wondering about the space between recognising we need support and TRULY receiving it. What happens in that gap? What does it cost us to live there?
Sitting in the gap of receivership has been coming up for me the last few months, and many of my clients, this had me thinking of you too.
I am constantly in service. In my business, as a friend, as a wife, as a mother (it's not a sustainable way to be) I naturally enjoy giving, it feels authentic and purposeful. But being in receivership? That's foreign territory. Challenging territory. Being a speaker, facilitator, coach, mentor or someone who supports things behind the scenes requires you to be consistently in service to your clients, so no doubt you've felt this too.
Recently, life served up circumstances that left me with no choice but to sit in receivership.
And it looked really different this time around. I had support from someone who coached me through actually asking for what I needed rather than assuming people would know how to meet my needs based on what we were going through. Learning to say "we need support, and this is how you can show up for us" made it so much easier to sit in receivership. Beautiful kindness came in the form of thoughtfulness, gifts, gestures, time, and acknowledgment. It was stunning and beautiful. It was also challenging and weird and uncomfortable to simply receive.
Support: care pack received
Traditionally, I would have immediately tried to give back. But life had it that I didn't have the capacity to do so. I was forced to see what receivership actually felt like when you can't control the flow.
This wasn't the first time life has orchestrated this lesson for me, but this time felt pivotal and it flowed into my business too. It's no accident that I've now been able to recruit and bring in my own business manager, the beautiful Evie - to receive support and help unapologetically, fully embraced in my uniqueness, able to articulate my needs clearly so Evie understands exactly why she's here and the difference she's going to make.
Most of us can identify the obvious costs when we delay getting support. Missing being present for family dinners. Spending Saturday mornings on admin instead of creative writing or thinking. Feeling that familiar knot of stress when the inbox hits triple digits, again.
But there are costs that run deeper. Costs we don't always recognise until much later.
There's the way our identity becomes tangled up with self-sufficiency until we genuinely believe our value lies in doing it all ourselves. The unconscious resentment that builds when we're constantly giving but struggling to receive. The vulnerability we've learned to see as weakness rather than connection.
Perhaps most significantly, there's what we don't see: the opportunities that don't present themselves because we're too stretched to notice them. The innovations that don't happen because there's no space for creative thinking. The relationships that don't deepen because we're always in output mode.
We don't wake up one morning and decide to resist support. It happens gradually, through small choices and learned behaviours, until it feels normal to carry everything ourselves.
But normal doesn't mean necessary. And familiar doesn't mean it's serving us.
The moment I got off the phone to Evie when it was official!!!
Sometimes life creates the circumstances where we have no choice but to receive. Where our usual patterns of immediately reciprocating are impossible. These moments, uncomfortable as they are, can be painfully revealing. They show us what we've been missing. What we've been avoiding. What becomes possible when we stop trying to control the flow of give and take.
The gap between recognising we need support and truly receiving it, isn't neutral territory.
Every day we spend there, we're choosing the familiar discomfort of overwhelm over the unfamiliar discomfort of receiving. We're trading our energy, our presence, our capacity for innovation - all to avoid the vulnerability of asking for what we need. Don't make this gap a waiting room. The question isn't whether you can keep going as you are. The question is: what are you not becoming while you wait?
I'd love you to consider:
What are you holding onto that you don't need to?
If you were clear about your needs, how would things change?
Who can be your inspiration for unapologetically sitting in receivership?
Does your comfort with receivership shift if it's someone providing help (Doing for you) vs support (Being with you)?
Here's to asking for what we need,
Katee
P.S. If this topic is resonating with you, you might like this month's book recommendation - The Gift Of Asking by Kemi Nekpavil A guide to owning your own wants and needs without guilt.
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