On Acceptance

Accepting tough things isn’t easy.   I know with myself acceptance of past things that hurt or I feel were mistakes waxes and wanes in me.  It’s never complete and then there is less acceptance when the inner critic is about and I am engaged with my flaws.  That happened this morning and it wasn’t pleasant.  I wrote about it and got moved to tears but then it all passed.  And it passed quicker when I just opened the door of my heart and mind to it and didn’t fight everything that as unfurling, just witnessed it all as it unravelled like a ball of twine I dropped

My life (un til now) didn’t work out the way I wished.  Along the way there were mistakes, fear stopped me at time embracing opportunities, at times I held on for too long to what was not good for me.  At times I clutched at straws due to confusion.  I had that smash up in 2005 after another attempt to get away and start a new life without the necessary supports around me because I wasn’t used to being supported and felt I had to go it all alone.  It happened on a day I was really angry with a friend who I thought wasn’t listening to me and probably was.  I often miss the lost opportunity but it’s not good even to bore readers with it as it is in the past and I do know there is nothing to be gained by living in the past or those regrets, yet still they have to be faced and felt and the lessons absorbed so we don’t end up repeating them.

Perhaps midlife can be such a struggle for this reason.  We spend a lot of time engaged in the backwards glance and burying the corpse of a past life lived mainly out of unconsciousness of so many things and trauma or lack of support in early years leaves lingering and long lasting effects which take a lot time to work through and accept.  Carl Jung apparently said once that life begins at 40, up until then its all research, so why give ourselves a hard time about it?

I noticed that lately I tend to wake with a lot of this kind of dialogue going on.  I am still in the house I didn’t fully chose for myself but was pushed into.  It’s a sweet cottage with too much garden and I am happy here for most of the time, at least when the critic is not hard on my case and I notice too when I focus on what I don’t like or can’t have then I have no free energy to actually bring goodness into the day and focus on the things in my life going really well for me, such as new friendships, my blog and my dog as well as the things I can change…..Gratitude does make things expand….Self pity can often rob energy from life.

Acceptance is the healing balm for me, even of the things I don’t like.  Acceptance doesn’t have to mean resignation, if I accept a thing is not as I like and I have the power to change it, accepting that I dont like it will free me to make that necessary change.  And then I also have to be realistic and realise if I dont put in the leg work to make it better I will have to accept I will continue to get what I settle for.

Often I think people can equate acceptance with just giving over but for me it’s about releasing and unshackling from those things that drain or steal our power from us.  Believing we can empower ourselves is so important if we want to overcome depression and anxiety which result when we live too much in the past or future (tense) and abandon our inner child to hopelessness and lack instead of fronting up as an adult to help him or her grow, live and flourish.  So just for today Acceptance is on my mind and I am loving the fact that I have it in my heart today.