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The Kind of Help that's Hard to Ask For, and the Kind of Help You Don't Know You Need
Description
I almost drowned on the Ocoee River. The thing that saved me wasn’t anything I’d thought to ask for.
This is the first essay in the Saturday series at The Difficulty — longer pieces from a series I’ve been writing on Substack called The Descent, about the choices that shape a creative life. Saturday is for the essays that don’t fit the news-cycle pace of the rest of the week.
Today’s is about how hard it is to ask for help — and the deeper, harder thing underneath it: the surrender we resist for years before we know we’re resisting it. Drawing on David Whyte, David Hawkins, and Carl Jung’s “shoes too small” image, with a near-drowning story I haven’t told publicly before.
Closing question: What am I holding onto that I already know isn’t working?
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Saturday Series Intro
01:01 The Hard Word — Help
03:26 The Near-Drowning Lesson
04:52 Two Kinds of Help
06:52 Surrender vs Giving Up
07:57 Shoes Too Small
09:40 Letting Go Changes You
10:46 Readiness and Courage
12:55 Modern Ways to Give Up
14:47 The Question to Ask
15:07 Closing and Where to Find More
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FREE — THE DIFFICULTY FIELD GUIDE
Eight difficulties every working writer faces, and what to ask when each one shows up.
→ crossroadspublishing.group/assets/pdfs/The_Difficulty_Field_Guide.pdf
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WHERE TO FIND ME
Substack — new essays Wednesdays, the Working Publisher news digest Fridays
→ chadprevost.substack.com
The Difficulty — Monday (the why), Thursday (the how), Saturday (essay readings) — wherever you listen to podcasts
→ chadprevost.com/the-difficulty
Crossroads Publishing Group — publishing services, IF/THEN Books, the Iris Blackwood mystery series
→ crossroadspublishing.group
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“The difficulty in life is the choice.”
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com