257 Marbles
Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love”
It would be great if the post breakup grieving process were linear and there was the awareness that the acceptance and hope stage were waiting down the street a wee bit. For me, however, the process has been anything but linear. There have been intermingled days of sadness, anger, hope, isolation, and guilt in no particular order and sometimes a few of the stages have appeared in a single day. Yet I realize that I don’t really know what acceptance is. I know what hope is (Marble 347) but what is acceptance? Is it surrender? Is it letting go? Is it the absence of resistance? Is it active or is it passive?
I go to the dictionary to try to find the energy behind the word acceptance. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, acceptance is the “act of accepting” (not helpful) but to accept means “to receive willingly,” “to agree to,” or “to be able to hold.” With these definitions, it has the feeling of going into a restaurant and being okay with whatever food is delivered to me, whether I ordered it or not. I may be a vegetarian but I get served carpaccio (or raw beef). If I’m in acceptance, do I eat the raw beef?
Perhaps I’m not looking at acceptance correctly. Maybe the deal is, at this restaurant called life. we have pre-ordered but sometimes we forget what we’ve asked for so when it arrives, it may not look like what we wanted. Perhaps we have to trust that it’s exactly what our body/mind/spirit needs. But if it isn’t, can’t we boot the chef out of the kitchen and cook up what we really want?
I’m still struggling with acceptance but let’s get back to what I know for sure. What I know for sure is that Ex-man and I have broken up. That is the reality of Now. Nothing can change this reality. What prevents me from accepting this reality is going back into the past “could have/would have/should have choices” and holding onto the future “could have been/would have been/should have been dreams.” But whether the breakup is the result of unilateral insanity, mutual insanity or both of us just being who we are, if I stay in the presence of now, acceptance feels like an easier goal to achieve.
According to the Livestrong website (http://www.livestrong.com/article/129455-seven-stages-grief-divorce/) acceptance is about realizing that the breakup has changed lives in “significant, unalterable ways and that things will never be the same again.” So perhaps it is about the absence of resisting what isn’t in order to accept the ability to create happiness with what is.
Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love”
It would be great if the post breakup grieving process were linear and there was the awareness that the acceptance and hope stage were waiting down the street a wee bit. For me, however, the process has been anything but linear. There have been intermingled days of sadness, anger, hope, isolation, and guilt in no particular order and sometimes a few of the stages have appeared in a single day. Yet I realize that I don’t really know what acceptance is. I know what hope is (Marble 347) but what is acceptance? Is it surrender? Is it letting go? Is it the absence of resistance? Is it active or is it passive?
I go to the dictionary to try to find the energy behind the word acceptance. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, acceptance is the “act of accepting” (not helpful) but to accept means “to receive willingly,” “to agree to,” or “to be able to hold.” With these definitions, it has the feeling of going into a restaurant and being okay with whatever food is delivered to me, whether I ordered it or not. I may be a vegetarian but I get served carpaccio (or raw beef). If I’m in acceptance, do I eat the raw beef?
Perhaps I’m not looking at acceptance correctly. Maybe the deal is, at this restaurant called life. we have pre-ordered but sometimes we forget what we’ve asked for so when it arrives, it may not look like what we wanted. Perhaps we have to trust that it’s exactly what our body/mind/spirit needs. But if it isn’t, can’t we boot the chef out of the kitchen and cook up what we really want?
I’m still struggling with acceptance but let’s get back to what I know for sure. What I know for sure is that Ex-man and I have broken up. That is the reality of Now. Nothing can change this reality. What prevents me from accepting this reality is going back into the past “could have/would have/should have choices” and holding onto the future “could have been/would have been/should have been dreams.” But whether the breakup is the result of unilateral insanity, mutual insanity or both of us just being who we are, if I stay in the presence of now, acceptance feels like an easier goal to achieve.
According to the Livestrong website (http://www.livestrong.com/article/129455-seven-stages-grief-divorce/) acceptance is about realizing that the breakup has changed lives in “significant, unalterable ways and that things will never be the same again.” So perhaps it is about the absence of resisting what isn’t in order to accept the ability to create happiness with what is.
Can you let go of the past to be in the now of post breakup reality? Can you let go of your dreams of what could have been with X and be in the now of what is? Can you accept now while actively making space for more happiness?
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