Self Acceptance

I used to think that self – acceptance was me being accepted by others, now I know it is accepting my self, my wholeness, my uniqueness, my me-ness and none of these are dependent on anyone outside of me.

This has been a long journey, a long winding journey of self-discovery, of self-realization, of coming home. This has been a long journey full of so many emotions, feelings, stories, actions, events and experiences.  This has been a long journey full of support, a vast expansive support system.  This has been a journey of systems; systems of support, experiences, events, actions, thoughts, stories, undoing, unraveling, unlearning, relearning, replacing, recycling, cleansing, clearing and systems of acceptance. Yes, acceptance.

Acceptance of what is. Acceptance of what once was. Acceptance of the unknown, of that which will be. Acceptance of time - that time is needed, time is necessary. That growth takes time. Growth occurs in time. That growth is a marker of time.

Acceptance of who I am. Meeting myself. Knowing myself. Learning what works for me. Listening to my body, listening to its signals to learn what is best for me. It’s not that I don’t listen to folks on the outside, I do. It’s that I have found that who I share what is going on with, who I confide in and whose voice is best for me to hear varies. I have a support system that I can call in, call on to hold space for me to listen, to hear me, to support me, to sit with me.

I find that I am interested in connecting with others who are doing similiar work. Others who are showing up and facing themselves. Who are aware of their patterns, tendencies. Who are real. Who know from experience, who know from living, not from reading.

It is important for to me to note that acceptance is not sitting back and taking it. If you have read any of my pieces here, you know that I have spent a long, long time doing just that. Feeling like I have to sit, to take it, to receive whatever it is that is being thrown at me. That I have to because I am not worthy enough or that I deserve it.

No, the acceptance I am speaking to is that this is unfolding, this is happening as an opportunity to learn, to come face to face with what is here, what wants to be seen and addressed.  What wants to be acknowledged and worked through, dropped, cleared, cleansed, washed away, recycled or as a friend recently shared, composted.

Stuff is not meant to stay. The nature of life is cycles, cycles of changes. Spending time in nature, with nature, watching and connecting with it has helped me see this. NOTHING REMAINS THE SAME. NOTHING.  Change is the only constant and yet we want, what we are taught is to seek in sameness and comfort. And this causes resistance.

What if we were taught to see that nothing lasts, nothing is the same. That things are always growing, changing, shifting, yielding, revealing?

Patterns, yes. They hold the tendencies and the familiarity. Patterns and habits are at the root of these lessons, which show up different each and every time, with new players and environments and familiar scripts.  “What will she do this time?” I hear my team say as they craft and arrange a new opportunity for me to see the patterns that lurk below. And lurk is the right word here, because they are known, the patterns are known to themselves under the surface, they are alive and real, living off the bottom, bottom feeders, taking and accumulating what they can get. It is just that we tend to not look below the surface, to what is underneath, in the dark, little access to the light, so we don’t know what is there. It’s not that we ignore. To ignore is to know and to turn away. When you don’t know, you don’t know. Yet, what you don’t know is known, it is. It is just not seen. It is here, everything is here. Everything, every possibility is here, waiting to be plucked, to be birthed from this void, from this unknown. Waiting to be known. This is growth. This is evolution.

This is the invitation, to grown. To meet yourself. To get to know yourself. To connect with yourself. To make a commitment to your self. To stand up for your self. To love your self. To accept yourself.

Circle. Wheel. Orbit. Revolution. Axis. These are images and words that keep finding their way into my life. On my snack bag. In a song sung from the heart of a colleague. From a flat tire on a car being towed by a truck. From a fallen off wheel replaced by a shiny new wheel. To the image of the world spinning and me wanting it to stop so I could get off. Or the image of me being in a washing machine, a fast spin or a heavy load cycle.  You may know, when you start the cycle, the door clicks and audible reminder that it is locked and set, ready to go not stopping until they cycle ends or you preemptively stop the cycle and what is left is a soapy, wet mess.  This has been me. In a cycle or rather cycles. Started and not going to stop until the work is done, the cycle is complete, what is has begun is ready to end.

It’s the same with a roller coaster ride. You find your seat, get strapped or buckled in and off you go. For this great adventure, this wild ride.  I love rollercoasters. I love the freedom, the laughter, the total surrender to the ride, the trust it will all work out. I do not hold on, I open my arms out wide, giggling and laughing with uncontrollable delight. I feel alive.

I’m noticing that when I choose to get on the rollercoaster, I like it. I am okay with it. The choice is mine, it is one I make. I am all in.  I haven’t gotten on a physical ride when I am not prepared, when I am not ready, although I feel as if moments in my life are like that.  I mean, what is being ready and prepared anyway (that is a whole other piece). What I mean is that I have not gotten on without making the choice to do so, the conscious choice that I am taking the steps to get there, to arrive at that seat.  What I am finding is that when a ride begins, starts to get wild and continues without warning like a washing machine cycle starting, the door locking and I am in it until it ends, I am disoriented. Swirling around in this pull, this force, asking myself, what has happened? How did I get here? Have you felt this way?  Being in something and not knowing when it is going to end? Arriving somewhere and not knowing why? Usually for me, this being in something is connected with a less than desirable experience, again one that I would not choose, not willingly step into, and yet here I am.

This is what I am emerging from, a ride that I did not sign up for. A cycle that played out and no one on the outside could press stop cycle to let me out. And there were moments in this last bout that I would have gladly, gladly walked out covered head to toe in bubbles, tossed, drenched, cycle incomplete because I have no idea when it was going to end. If felt as if it was going on and on and on, never ending. It felt never ending.

Actually, there was a dream during this time when I was wandering in a corridor, I could see the outside, I knew I got myself in there and could find NO WAY out. I was perplexed and confused. I was searching. I was looking. I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was.

This is a reoccurring theme for me. One that shows up again and again. Not wanting to be where I am and seeing visual markers that I indicate as spaces or places in which I should be if I wasn’t here. And this feeling of being stuck, being trapped.

I am softening in this. Acknowledging this. Accepting this.  Trusting that this is where I am meant to be. That it be it, life, whatever emotion, feeling, experience, is happening for me. What I am finding is that when I go looking for meaning, to understand why, to attach reason or a story to it I am actually entangling myself even more. I undo nothing. Rather, I create threads and connections. I invent and conjure up reasons to justify and explain and none of it helps.

What does help is being kind to myself. That means resting when my body wants to rest. Getting outside, walking, breathing, being. Asking for help and turning towards those I trust, whose voice and message I know supports me. And this most recent cycle involved doing a reset with my diet, a shift of what I am taking in, what I am feeding my body. Am I nourishing it or depleting it? In a literal sense and a figurative sense.

Which leads me to ask myself what I am consuming?  What thoughts am I welcoming and entertaining? Which ideas am I following? What stories am I giving my attention to? What am I energizing and expanding?  I have this choice. I have the choice to catch my thoughts, to be aware of the narrative in my mind. And this is the work. This is the work that I can always do, the invitation that is always here.

The work, that it has occurred to me, is my work.

Here is an excerpt from my 95th journal. It is my first entry, written on February 23rd.

And a deer appears.

The tug, the pull is also up + down- higher and lower- spiritual and physical- beyond mind and in mind. Often I feel it left- right, dual, good/bad, right/wrong just how it occurred it is what is playing out on a larger, deeper, vast, more expansive scale. What must be done- thy will be done and when my minds catches on or jumps in it has an opinion- it is annoyed or dissatisfied, irritated, questioning why, why not? Or it likes things over others, has preferences, would prefer this.

How many times have I asked for something and it has not been delivered in the time I want, span I want, way I want

AND

How many times have I received more than I could have ever imagined and envisioned?

It is magic really- get out of the head

I am here to work through this mind.

What is here for me, is for me

Uniquely for me, for I am the

One who can express it

I can take all the time I want and

Need to bring it forth

‘It’ being more than what I am

Already doing.

Which brings me full circle or back to the wheel:

Wheel = momentum and movement

Circle = cycle and continuity

and

Revolution= sudden, radical and complete change

Axis= an imaginary line in which a body rotates

Yes, this is it. This all fits. Shaking free of the powers that bind and hold, the forces that draw me into familiar obits and cycles and finding a new way to move, a new way to be.

Right as Spring is bursting into bloom, pushing through that which once served, that which once had a purpose, to bring forth what wants to be now.

Marveling in this bliss,

Sara