The Key to Independence is Support  

Jasmine Lamb, President of Mansfield Hall 

We live in a culture that is drawn to metaphors and narratives of rugged independence, self-reliance, and personal success. This can leave us with a strong voice inside of us telling us not to ask for help, trying to convince us that if we need help to be independent it won’t be true independence. 

We hear our students at Mansfield Hall give voice to this belief regularly. If they ask for help, or if they accept help, or if they need help, somehow this will mean a failure on their part. As they move into adulthood, they believe that they have to prove they can do things with total independence. 

Over my years working at Mansfield Hall with neurodiverse college students, I’ve moved away from talking about independence, because too often people believe independence means not asking for help. I’ve shifted to talking about opportunity. How does each of us create the conditions in our lives that increase our potential opportunities and life choices from which we can build a meaningful, engaged, rewarding life? How do young adults harness their strengths and their support to increase their opportunity for success and well-being and a life of their choosing? 

I’m so sorry that the belief that independence means not getting any help has flourished, since it is simply not true. When our students refuse to ask for help or accept help, they usually find their options diminished, their success unattainable. This is not because many of them have learning differences that mean they uniquely benefit from specific supports and help; it is because they are human. Humans need each other. Humans thrive when they are supported and when they leverage help to access opportunity. 

In case you do not believe me, I dare you to keep a running list for a day of all the various kinds of help you have received, whether you asked for it or not. You just are not succeeding alone. It simply isn’t how it works. Even if you think you have achieved unique levels of independence, you live in a house with furniture and walls that someone other than you built, wiring that someone else installed, and food you did not grow yourself. If you are successful in your career, you may have worked incredibly hard for this success, but no doubt you also got crucial help to have achieved what you have achieved. 

You are getting help on a regular basis, I promise you. And isn’t this wonderful, why would we want to live in a world of independence as isolation from support? Isn’t it more fun to be connected, interdependent, and able to achieve incredible personal and collective success through working together? 

I just returned from a trip to Spain where I spent a week with family and friends in the Pico de Europa (Mountains of Europe) a range in Northern Spain. The last day there I convinced my husband we should hike the Cares Gorge Trail. It is a hike between two villages and one of the most popular trails in Spain. Most of the trail is flat, but almost all of the trail is carved into the side of the gorge and so one side has a precipitous drop of hundreds of feet to the river below. There are no guard rails. There are goats climbing along the cliff. 

I’m afraid of heights and standing near the edge of cliffs. This has always been the case. Thankfully, I am not afraid of goats. 

 I convinced myself if this were such a popular trail, it could not be that scary, and as a not very accomplished hiker, I liked the idea that it would not have too much elevation. Clearly some part of me wanted to prove to myself that I could do this, that I was not that scared of heights. 

For the first six miles, terrifying as it was, I was making it. I had a pretty nonstop stream of self-talk convincing myself I was okay, I wasn’t going to fall, other people were doing the hike as well, and they seemed much more relaxed than me, and so it was going to be okay. 

We had started late and so decided not to hike all the way to the next village and turned around at about the six-mile point. I was so sure that the way back would feel even easier and less scary, having already done this much. 

Wow, I was so wrong. 

I was tired, my legs ached not only from walking but from being so tense along the side of a cliff for six miles, the sun continued to be blazing hot. The whole way my husband, Marc, was always near and always checking on me. He did not feel nervous at all in the way I did. But on the way back, he could see I was starting to really struggle with both exhaustion and fear. He gave me his hand for long stretches of the hike. His voice of assurances had to replace my own self talk that had gone quiet, or worse, was feeding my fears. 

The last stage of the hike was a stretch of incline and then decline. As I went up that last hill, I really thought I could not make it. I was so tired, hungry, achy, and unnervingly terrified. My vulnerability had reached the point where I had to will myself to continue and not give up. I remember telling myself I had to finish the hike because I had promised Perry LaRoque, founder of Mansfield Hall, that I would come back and be President of Mansfield Hall. I couldn’t let him down. This sounds so silly and melodramatic and is embarrassing to admit. But this is how tired and scared I had become. 

But I did make it down. And yes, it took inner resolve and strength to do it, but it also, absolutely critically, took help. My husband kept me in sight, kept encouraging me, believing in me, giving me his hand where I needed it. And another hiker, a stranger and woman many years my senior, who was ahead of us, had seen me struggling as she passed me, and so she gave my husband one of her hiking poles to give to me. I had never used a hiking pole and was not sure it would help, but it gave me just the support and reassurance I needed to finish the last mile. When I felt the additional support of the pole I cried, and then cried considerably more when I got to the bottom of the trail and returned the pole to this kind stranger. 

For many, this trail is not scary or tough. For me, it was both. I needed help, and help was there. With this help from others, and with the much-needed accommodation of a pole, I succeeded. I completed the hike. This was my achievement, but I did not do it alone. 

We all will have more opportunities, more success, more thrilling and terrifying adventures, if we open ourselves up to others and what they can offer us for partnership and support. 

As I embark on the role of President at Mansfield Hall, my leadership is only possible because of the presence, commitment, hard work and support of our staff team, because of our students incredible drive to go to college and find their place in the world, and our students’ parents profound trust in us to partner effectively with their students and with them. 

All of us are part of an interconnected and interdependent world. It is a privilege of a lifetime to walk alongside this community of humans who are realizing the power of support and help to achieve our dreams.