Letting Love In, and Finding Gratitude in Unlikely Moments

I have chickens. I used to have quite a few, actually, along with a couple of turkeys who strutted around, sang their hearts out, and sometimes made me question my decisions in hobbies. It was a whole barnyard situation. A charming one, actually. In spite of the “nuisances” and the mess, my bird yard gives me a lot of laughs, peace, and it’s where I like to go to just relax and watch birds be weird.

A few weeks back, I had the unfortunate experience of a pack of raccoons discovering my coop. Over several days, they took my birds out one by one, like they were conducting a slow audit of my setup, demonstrating all the ways I had overestimated my own preparedness. It was stressful, and exhausting, and my heart was breaking harder with each bird I found.

And then came the grand finale.

That Saturday night, they squeezed their fat bodies through a small gap at the bottom of my main coop door. A gap I had recognized. A gap I hadn’t imagined they would be able to break through. A gap I didn’t think I was going to have to address. Little did I know these guys can turn into liquid when they are motivated in the right direction. And their motivation was absolutely pointed toward the ten birds I had in the coop that night.

What I found in the coop Sunday morning was absolutely devastating. They had taken out five of my birds. I had started the week with thirteen. I had five left.

Now, I’m no stranger to backyard bird tragedies. When you have barn animals, things happen. Foxes, hawks, random illnesses. It just happens, and you learn to accept it. It always hurts, but you really just have to not let it get to you too hard, honor your bird in whatever way seems appropriate in the moment, and move on. I’ve always considered myself fairly desensitized to it all. Practical. Tough. Someone who learned a long time ago how to hold the sadness and keep going anyway.

But that week, it really got to me. When they got my turkey on the previous Wednesday is when I really started to become bothered about the whole thing. She was one of my favorite birds: sweet, quirky, always giving me reason to laugh. And that one hit different. When I found her, something broke in me a little different than with my hens.

And now? Losing five birds all at once? I’m not ashamed to admit: it was a fucking lot, man. As I stood there, trying to wrap my head around what I was looking at, it was like the coop was spinning, the air got fuzzy, and I had a hard time catching my breath. I choked back the tears as I turned around to leave, to get some fresh air.

This was terrible. Absolutely fucking terrible.

Once I gathered myself, once I could actually breathe and the air stopped doing that weird spiraling thing around my head, I messaged the group chat I have with a couple of my girlfriends.

I didn’t have a grand purpose in mind. It was pure emotional spillage. I just needed to say it out loud, to name the awful thing I had just seen, to let a little of the grief leak out. I knew they’d be supportive. That part was expected.

What I didn’t expect was for both of them to immediately offer to come over. Naturally, because I’m me, I shut it down.

“No, no, it’s fine, I’m fine, no one needs to come over, I’ve got it.”

And as I’m typing out my refusal, the running list of everything I now had to deal with was already careening through my head:

Clean up five birds
Figure out the security cameras, the fancy ones
With lights and sirens that I had ordered months ago
That I had never even opened
Grieve the five birds
Fix the gap
Bust out my tools
Clean up what the raccoons left behind
Install four cameras
Try not to lose my mind about the five birds
Actually fix the gap 
Cry about the birds I lost earlier in the week
And
And
And

I was already massively overwhelmed and starting to dissociate and it was only 9 a.m.

My friends would not leave me alone about it. Every time I said, “No really, I’m fine,” they volleyed back with some version of “Absolutely not, let us help.” Finally, one of them sent what I could tell was her last and final plea, typed with the emotional energy of someone gripping you by the shoulders: JUST LET ME HELP.

I stared at her message while sitting on the edge of my bathtub. I had been doom-scrolling for at least half an hour. I was avoiding my dogs. Avoiding the yard. Avoiding the feathers and the cleanup and the grief. The list of dreaded tasks was crowding every corner of my brain, one overwhelming thought after another.

I sat there, motionless, staring at her words.

Friends… the thought of accepting this offer physically hurt, and I was fighting it with everything in me. My chest hurt. My throat tightened. I was so uncomfortable I genuinely wanted to crawl out of my skin and run from myself.

But then a thought flickered through me. One of those intrusive, inconvenient truths:

If I say no, I’m not just refusing help. I’m refusing support I actually need. 

And then the movie trailer of what my afternoon would look like if I tried to handle this alone started flickering through my brain:

Me, standing at the coop door, completely frozen with overwhelm.
Me, abandoning the scene every twenty minutes to run inside and distract myself with anything else.
Me, getting nothing done because my nervous system had fully yeeted itself into survival mode. 

And then a second intrusive truth surfaced: by refusing their help, I wasn’t just shutting myself down. I was taking something away from them too.

By shutting it down, I was stealing the chance for them to show up for me, to offer care, to practice love in the messy way love sometimes looks. I was blocking the doorway where connection could walk in. I was choosing self-sufficiency over being human.

Something inside me poked my brain, very gently but very firmly:

Let someone love you for once.
Let them help.

It was such a painful thought.

Regardless, I inhaled, exhaled, swallowed my pride, and begrudgingly typed through gritted teeth:

“You know, that would actually be nice.”

You guys… I don’t know how to ask for help, and I don’t know how to receive help. I really don’t. I haven’t had many moments in life where I was shown that asking was safe, or welcome, or beneficial. Over and over, I learned that doing things myself was easier. It avoided frustration. It avoided disappointment. It avoided the kind of hurt that comes from needing something and watching the world shrug, or flat out being denied.

So I adapted. I stopped asking.
Stopped considering it.
Stopped even imagining it as an option.

Some people get taught that community is a lifeline.
I got taught, year after year, that self-reliance was the safest armor.

And once you’ve been programmed like that, it stops feeling like a choice. It becomes automatic. Reflexive. Asking for help turns into a foreign language your mouth can’t seem to shape, even when you’re drowning and someone is literally reaching toward you.

So that moment — phone in hand, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at a message I was terrified to accept — it was huge. It felt like a tectonic shift inside me. A giant, wobbly leap toward self-improvement and healing. One of those internal crossroads where you can either keep repeating the same old patterns, or you can choose something new and uncomfortable and wildly vulnerable.

And somehow, that morning, I chose the uncomfortable thing.

And you know what? My friends came. At times they helped. At times they directed. At times they simply stood with me, offering their presence while I worked. They became these grounding, steady humans holding space and holding me accountable to the tasks at hand. They sang. They held a ladder while I installed cameras. They burned incense, clearing out the energy from the night before. They helped me bury birds. 

It was beautiful in a way I didn’t expect. I felt safe. I felt loved. I felt supported. I was given proof that it’s okay to ask for help, and even more: it’s okay to let yourself be loved. And there’s a quiet magic in letting someone else love you in the ways they’re able. It’s a gift to them, too.

This experience that could have been just awful, lonely, tragic, and traumatizing became one of the biggest lessons of my year. It was transformed into a nurturing, love-filled afternoon. All because I said “yes.”

What I walked away with that afternoon was an armful of lessons about love, receiving, and letting people in. Lessons I had spent a lot of time running away from. And for that, I will always be grateful. I also ended that day with stronger, sweeter bonds with two women I’m ridiculously lucky to have in my life.

I still miss my birds. My chicken yard is quieter now, a little less full of life. And honestly, it still hurts a bit to go out there.

But I still have five. And I have the resources to add more when spring comes, which… I’m actually really excited about.

I think this year I might even get guinea fowl — those loud, round yard birds with tiny little heads who act like feathered alarm systems. They gossip nonstop, they scream at shadows, and honestly… I think they’d fit right in here.

Somehow, even in the mess of loss and feathers and raccoons and grief, there was a gift waiting for me. One I almost missed. One I’m incredibly grateful I received.

"Being grateful does not mean that everything is necessarily good.
It just means that you can accept it as a gift.”

Roy T. Bennett