Extreme Acceptance

I tend to hibernate in winter. Whether it’s cold and overcast outside or sunny and bright, winter is that time for me to cocoon, curl up, hide from the world.

Unfortunately, no one told the rest of the world that, and life goes on. So, I wait for it to warm up, feel compelled—typically from some outside force—to get up and start my day.

But what, exactly, am I waiting for?

This time of year, I wait for the sun to come up. I wait for the earth to wake up again. I wait for me to feel like moving, acting, stepping out. I am half of Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object at rest tends to stay at rest. That’s me, in more situations than one.

When my mom was living near me, I relished the status quo. I can’t say it was my comfort zone—we didn’t have the best relationship, I’ll confess—but each day it seemed there was some new challenge to face (avoid?). Oh, how I would have loved life to just stop and wait for my mind to catch up to what we were facing, get a handle on the complications of her situation, feel like making a decision. It never did.

As I wrote about in Running Away from Home my mom’s health was complicated. Arthritis and all the medications that went with it for over 20 years had taken its toll on her body. Along with her lifetime smoking habit, she turned to alcohol to numb her pain, both physical and emotional. Frail and thin, I watched her body fail--crumble--before my eyes.

After her last fall and subsequent broken pelvis, she wasn’t a candidate for another surgery. Confined to her rehab bed, she rejected physical therapy. Knowing her pain and lack of treatment options, we asked about hospice services, but her doctor refused.

Mom had always bounced back, and I always expected her to. I was always hoping, wishing, praying and striving for ways to ease her pain or get her to take better care of herself, whatever that meant. Thinking of hospice care wasn’t comfortable for me, but if she were given that designation, that prescription, that “okay” to cross this threshold, maybe I could have accepted the inevitability of her situation. I could have let go of trying so hard to make her better or pretending that she would ever get better. I never really did.

You may have heard stories of terminally ill patients who, once turned over to hospice care, acquiesce quickly, quietly. Somehow an acceptance of that final step allowed the transition.

I was reminded of my mom’s situation while listening to Rich Roll’s podcast episode with Suleika Jaouad. When Jaouad’s leukemia returned after several years of remission, she knew she had to let go of her struggle and rejection of the diagnosis.

“To fight it, to buck up against that, was going to be a recipe for endless frustration and exhaustion. When you let go of your striving and your fighting and your muscling, things reveal themselves, things that you might not notice otherwise.”

Somehow, I needed someone else to give the “okay” to let Mom go, be content in allowing what was happening. Without that—without someone else’s permission to let her go—I remained frustrated and mentally exhausted in trying to ease her pain.

I wonder what would have been revealed to me if I had stopped bumping up against my need for her to be okay, the pain to go away.

Later in the podcast Roll comments, “You do the thing and then it tells you what to do.” There’s only suffering in the resistance. The pot of gold appears, the “aha” moment reveals itself, freedom emerges after you raise the lone, final curtain draped in front of you and step through. Nothing happens when you sit and stare at it, except suffering and angst.

Sometimes we want life to stop and wait for us. Wait for us to stop wanting our children to never grow old. Wait for everything to be perfect before taking that leap and embarking on that creative endeavor. Wait to take that long desired round-the-world trip until your family doesn’t need you so much. Wait to accept the inevitability of a dying loved one.

But life doesn’t stop or wait for us to accept and understand it. We have to take the next step out of bed, bravely lift that curtain in front of us, somehow be curious through the pain about what life is trying to show us.

What do you need to accept and stop struggling against? How can you be open and accepting of all that life gives you?

I’d love to know.