As you grieve for a family member, a dear friend, or a beloved pet, you experience a variety of emotions. These emotions can lead you to acceptance. Like grievance, acceptance involves a variety of emotions. In the early stages of grievance, you may feel that you will never accept the finality of death.
In 2007, after my daughter, father-in-law, brother, and former son-in-law all died within nine months, acceptance wasn’t even on my horizon. My complaint kept going around, due to the amount of losses. Sometimes I moved forward on the road to recovery and other times I went backwards. It was all very confusing.
According to “How to Accept the Death of a Loved One,” an article on the Live Strong website, you don’t recover from loss until you come to terms with it. The article describes the four stages of acceptance: learning about grief, accepting fears and tears, keeping memories alive, and finding support.
I experienced these stages and one more: dealing with painful memories. We all have things in our lives that we would like to forget, but these memories always seem to linger. An article in “The British Journal of Psychiatry” says that grievance and acceptance are related. The article, “Complaint and Acceptance as Opposite Sides of the Same Coin” by Holly G. Prigerson, PhD and Paul K. Maciejewski, PhD, explains that complaint has statenot stages.
At its core, grievance is a state of emotional discomfort, frustration, and longing, the authors note. In contrast, acceptance “can represent emotional equanimity, a sense of inner peace and calm that comes from letting go of a struggle…” After many tears, grieving, and learning, I came to terms with my many losses. How did I get to acceptance?
First, I believed in myself. He repeated to myself: “I am worthy of happiness.” I recently made this point in a talk he was giving. After my talk, an audience member came up to me and said, “When you used the word ‘worthy,’ it sent chills down my spine and I realized that I was worthy too.”
Second, I sought solitude. Every day, I sat quietly and thought about my life. I meditated before I started writing. I meditated after writing an article or paragraphs of a book. I meditated while planning workshops and talks.
Third, I turned to my occupation, freelance writing, for comfort. You can do this and you don’t have to be a professional writer to do it. Write about your feelings on the computer, in a journal, or in a spiral notebook. When you write about your feelings and thoughts, you are releasing them. If you write regularly, you will eventually find solutions to your problems.
Acceptance may seem far away, but you will get there. Remember that you are worthy of happiness. Incorporate quiet moments into your day, moments when you listen to your inner dialogue and connect with your soul. Put your thoughts in writing. Alone, each step seems small. Together, these steps can lead to acceptance.
Bob Deits, author of life after loss, believes that acknowledgment of loss is the most important recovery step we can take. “It is at this point that you will once again take full control of your life and full responsibility for your feelings,” she writes. Acceptance is more than power; brings you a sense of peace. Acceptance is near and you will get there.
Copyright 2013 by Harriet Hodgson