On Being Friends with Jen Pastiloff

How an old friend taught me that asking for help was the bravest thing I could do

I don’t ask for help very often.

I was raised in an alcoholic home where even the smallest request was treated like a major inconvenience.

I learned very early on that it was better to do it all on my own than to risk experiencing someone’s resentment, discontent, or anger.

Plus I could do so much.

When I had my first son, I tried to do it all. I was Super Sarah getting it all done! And oh man, did I fizzle out quickly.

To the point where I’d end up frozen in parking lots, crying hysterically and terrified about…well, everything that could possibly go wrong.

Reaching out for help with what was later identified as postpartum anxiety was the first step in my starting to change the pattern of trying to do it all myself.

The next thing I did was get help at home in the form of a childcare. As terrifying as it was, all the help I was getting was helping me feel even more whole. “What if I do this with my career?,” I thought. I was beyond burnt out with teaching yoga, having crashed and burned many times in my 15 year career. I was embarking on a new phase of writing more regularly and enjoyed interviewing people.

I’d done partnerships and ambassadorships before and I loved supporting friends,  but I had yet to really ask people to support me. Feeling grounded enough thanks to my mental health team and our childcare support system, I started to reach out to colleagues for collaborations.

It all felt new and strange and incredibly uncomfortable. Then I got the download to write The Yoga of Parenting.

Where in years past I would’ve locked myself in a room and done it all myself, I started to reach out to everyone I knew who could help.

The first person I reached out to was my longtime friend Jennifer Pastiloff. We’d started teaching together in 2008. Texting and calling each other after awkward sub experiences and lamenting about how much time yoga teaching meant driving in Los Angeles. She would send and read me her poetry and I saw the sparkle in her when she shared through her pen.