I Keep Showing Up for Everyone. Who Shows Up for Me?

Today I was working in the garden when I had one of those realizations that sneaks up on you while your hands are busy doing something else. One minute I was hauling things around, pulling weeds, moving dirt and doing whatever needed doing, and the next minute my brain quietly dropped a truth into my lap that I absolutely did not ask for.

I could really use some help.

Not metaphorical help. Not emotional support. I mean an actual extra set of hands. Another person standing beside me saying, “What do you need me to do?”

Almost immediately, I started mentally scrolling through the people in my life. Who could I call? That was when the uncomfortable part arrived.

I couldn’t think of anyone.

Not one friend I felt like I could comfortably call and say, “Hey, I need help. Can you come give me a hand for a little while?”

And I stood there in my garden thinking, How the hell did this happen?

I Am Really Good at Showing Up

I am a helper. I don’t even know whether that is something I intentionally became or whether life slowly assigned me the position and I just kept showing up for work. Someone needs something? I am there. Someone is overwhelmed? What can I take off your plate? Someone is going through a crisis? Tell me what needs doing. Someone needs an extra set of hands, a ride, a meal, encouragement, somebody to listen or somebody to keep things moving while they cannot?

I’ve got you.

And I genuinely mean it.

Helping people I care about doesn’t usually feel like a burden to me. I like being useful. I like knowing the people I love don’t have to go through difficult things alone. There have been times when I have rearranged huge pieces of my own life to help someone else through a hard season, taking on responsibilities that were not mine simply because someone I cared about needed support.

At the time, it felt natural. Of course I would help. Of course I would step in. Of course I would do what needed to be done.

But standing there in my own garden today, I realized something that hurt considerably more than I expected it to.

When I thought about some of the relationships I have poured the most into, I couldn’t easily remember those same people ever showing up for me in the same way.

And once that thought entered the room, unfortunately, it brought friends.

When Friendship Becomes a One-Way Street

Suddenly I started thinking about other relationships. The people I’ve shown up for. The times I’ve dropped what I was doing. The emergencies, favors, listening, emotional labor, projects and countless of course I’ll help you moments.

Then I started asking the question from the other direction.

Who does that for me?

That is a much harder question.

Friendship isn’t supposed to be a spreadsheet. I don’t want relationships where we’re keeping score. I helped you move three boxes, therefore you owe me exactly three boxes worth of friendship. That’s ridiculous.

There are absolutely seasons when one person gives more. There should be. Sometimes someone we love gets sick. Sometimes they lose someone. Sometimes their marriage falls apart, their job disappears or their life simply comes apart at the seams. During those times, friendship means carrying a little extra weight. Sometimes it means carrying a lot of it.

But I think there is an important distinction I’ve ignored for far too long:

A season is different from a system.

A friendship can go through a season when one person needs more. But when one person is always the helper and the other is always the helped, that’s not a season anymore.

That’s the structure of the relationship.

And apparently, I have built more than a few relationships that way.

Adult Friendship Is Weirdly Hard

Part of this is simply being an adult. Friendship was easier when we were younger. Not necessarily emotionally easier, because good goddess, I have lived through enough high-school-girl nonsense for several lifetimes, thankyouverymuch. But logistically? Absolutely.

Now everybody has jobs and spouses and children and grandchildren and aging parents and houses and appointments and health stuff and financial worries and pets and ten thousand other things demanding their attention. We are all carrying invisible backpacks full of crap.

I understand that. I don’t expect someone to come running every time I decide I want to rearrange the greenhouse, and I don’t believe friendship requires constant availability.

But there is a difference between my friend is busy and my relationship with this person seems to exist primarily because I keep maintaining it.

That distinction matters.

It turns out supportive relationships matter for more than warm fuzzy feelings, too. Research discussed by Harvard Health has linked nurturing social connections with better emotional and physical well-being, while chronically stressful relationships can carry their own costs. That makes sense to me. The people around us become part of the landscape we live inside. They can help soften hard seasons, or they can become one more thing we are constantly tending. Harvard Health has a thoughtful piece about fostering healthier relationships here.

The more I thought about all of this, though, the more I realized this isn’t only about other people.

Dammit.

Those are always the realizations that sting the most.

Why Do I Keep Doing This?

It would be incredibly easy to finish this story by declaring that everyone is selfish and I simply need better friends. But that’s not entirely honest, because somewhere in this equation is me.

I have to ask myself why I continually pour so much of myself into relationships that don’t seem to pour much back. Why am I always the dependable one? Why do I automatically say yes? Why will I rearrange my day for someone else but hesitate to ask another person to rearrange fifteen minutes of theirs for me?

And maybe the hardest question of all: why am I so comfortable helping and so deeply uncomfortable needing help?

Maybe being useful has become part of my identity. Maybe I enjoy being the capable one. Maybe somewhere along the way I learned that love looks like service, so service is what I offer. Maybe saying no makes me feel selfish while exhausting myself for someone else makes me feel generous.

And maybe I have unintentionally trained people to believe I don’t need anything.

I’m fine.

I’ve got it.

Don’t worry about me.

I’ll figure it out.

Those words probably deserve to be tattooed on the foreheads of half the women I know. We say them so often that eventually everybody believes us.

Then one day we’re standing alone in a garden thinking, Wait. Does anybody ever wonder whether I need help too?

Gardens Are Pretty Good Teachers

Maybe that’s why this realization came to me in the garden. Gardens have very little patience for bullshit.

You can want something to thrive with your whole heart, but that doesn’t mean it will. You can water it, feed it, prune it, baby it, research exactly what it needs, move it into better light and whisper encouraging things to it like the slightly strange plant woman you have become.

But eventually you have to pay attention to what is actually happening.

Is it growing? Is it responding? Are the roots healthy? Is this plant simply going through a difficult season, or have you been pouring resources into something that has been struggling in the same way for years?

Relationships probably deserve the same kind of honest observation.

That doesn’t mean immediately ripping everything out by the roots. Sometimes something needs different soil. Sometimes it needs pruning. Sometimes it needs space. Sometimes it needs an honest conversation.

And sometimes, despite all the attention you’ve given it, something simply isn’t going to grow.

That doesn’t necessarily make either person terrible.

It does mean we are allowed to stop pretending the relationship is something it isn’t.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about beginnings, endings and knowing when one season has naturally run its course. I am beginning to realize that those seasonal shifts don’t only happen in gardens, projects or years. Sometimes they happen in relationships too.

Reciprocity Isn’t Keeping Score

I think I have confused unconditional kindness with unlimited access to me.

Those are not the same thing.

I can be generous without making myself endlessly available. I can love someone without becoming responsible for solving every problem they have. I can show up during someone’s terrible season without signing a lifetime contract to be their emergency response team.

And I can pay attention to whether the people in my life are willing to show up when the direction of need reverses.

That isn’t keeping score.

It’s noticing the pattern.

Maybe that’s something I need to start doing more often. Not measuring friendships by grand gestures, because most friendship isn’t grand. It is somebody checking in. Someone remembering. Someone offering. Someone noticing that you’re overwhelmed before you have to spell it out.

Someone saying, “Do you need help?”

And when you finally say yes?

They actually come. THAT is the biggie.

Maybe This Is the Glimmer

Today’s realization hurt. I’m not going to wrap it in glitter and pretend otherwise.

There was something incredibly lonely about standing there and realizing that I have people I would inconvenience myself for without hesitation, yet I couldn’t immediately name someone I felt comfortable inconveniencing.

I don’t like that feeling. But maybe noticing it is important.

Because perhaps the answer isn’t becoming harder. I don’t want to stop being someone who shows up. I actually like that part of myself a lot. Those are the parts of me that make me feel like my Momma’s daughter. I don’t want kindness to become something I ration because other people haven’t always handled mine carefully.

But I do think I need to become more discerning about where I pour it.

Gardens taught me that resources aren’t infinite. Water matters. Sunlight matters. Nutrients matter. Energy matters. Where we put those things determines what grows.

Maybe friendship isn’t so different.

Maybe realizing that I don’t have someone to call isn’t proof that I’m destined to do everything alone. Maybe it’s simply an invitation to look more closely at the relationships I’ve been tending, to notice which ones have roots, which ones are growing, which ones need pruning and which spaces I’ve been so busy maintaining that I haven’t left any room for something healthier to grow there.

Because I still believe in showing up for people. I still believe in carrying someone through a hard season. I still believe there is tremendous beauty in being the person who says, “I’ve got you.”

I just think I’m finally beginning to understand that every once in a while, friendship should sound like that coming from the other direction too.

And maybe this next season of my life isn’t about learning how to give less.

Maybe it’s about finally learning that I am allowed to expect a little tending too.

Something to Ponder

Maybe the question isn’t simply, Who would show up for me?

Maybe it’s also worth asking: Who in my life knows that I need them because I’ve actually allowed them to see me need something?

And then there is the harder part: when you look honestly at the relationships in your life, which ones feel reciprocal, which ones are simply going through a difficult season, and which ones have quietly become a system where you are always the person doing the tending?

I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts on this one. Have you ever realized that you were the person everyone could count on, only to discover you weren’t sure who you could count on yourself? And if you have, did you change the relationships around you, or did you have to change something in yourself first?