Yes, this is a time for radical acceptance.
This word keeps coming up. Acceptance of who we are and who we have been. Acceptance of what we feel, the joy and the sorrows. Acceptance of what life is giving us. Letting life be life.
As I reflect on this word acceptance, I am reminded that my most popular posts over the past few months, have been about acceptance.
The post where I reflected on Emory Hall’s exquisite poem, I Have Been a Thousand Different Women, continues to receive an abundance of traffic. The poem, about making peace with all the women we have been, encourages acceptance of all of the ‘me’s’ that showed up over the past decades, the ones I am proud of, the ones I’d like to forget, the ones who suffered and felt joy. All of them.
In Grief as a Companion I focused on the importance of walking alongside grief, honouring it, bringing it outside the shadow. Since publishing this post three years ago, ‘doing’ grief better in our culture has been discussed in many venues.
My most recent post, Worry Wisely, also stresses the importance of accepting the things we can not change.
And finally, a post of Lillas’s from 2017 about the 4 A’s of Emotional Wellbeing continues to be popular. Acceptance is one of the A’s.
And as it often goes, as I am reflecting on all of this, I tuned in to Sonali Karnick’s early morning interview on CBC radio, with author Najwa Zebian, on her new book “The Only Constant: A Guide to Embracing Change and Leading an Authentic Life”. She emphasizes how essential radical acceptance is to embracing change and being authentic.
And then I see meditation teacher and psychotherapist, Tara Brach, noted that her book Radical Acceptance is now 20 years old. She describes radical acceptance as …’the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is’. Somehow this resonates with me in a new way, more than when I read it years ago.
So, I am living with this word and its implications as I go about my day and life. Being with acceptance as best I can.
- Opening artwork called Radical Acceptance by Dominique Hurley
- This interview with Najwa Zebian is a great listen.
- More about Tara Brach and her book here.
Frederick Buechner wrote, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.”
I delight in sharing my thoughts, such as these, in a newsletter, typically every few months. And now and then, ideas show up our Facebook page. Always love to hear from you via email.
