Tiny Beautiful Things - on Acceptance

Last month, I read Tiny Beautiful Things, which is a collection of advice columns that Cheryl Strayed wrote, under the pen name "Sugar."  It is a unique book since it's a collection of all of these different people's problem, many of which are problems you and I maybe have not encountered.  And yet - her response tends to contain some nugget of wisdom that you can apply to some other problem or issue you have.

Like this excerpt of advice, which is the first of 2 excerpts from this book that I will be sharing this month.  I read it, nodding my head along, feeling like "Sugar" was talking to me.

"Acceptance asks only that you embrace what's true.

Strange as it sounds, I don't think you've done that yet.  I can hear it in the pitch of your letter.  You're so outraged and surprised that this shitty thing happened to you that there's a piece of you that isn't yet convinced it did.  You're looking for the explanation, the loophole, the bright twist in the dark tale that reverse its course.  Anyone would be.  It's the reason I've had to narrate my own stories of injustice about seven thousand times, as if by raging about it once more the story will change and by the end of it I won't still be the woman hanging on the end of the line.

But it won't change, for me or for you or for anyone who has ever been wronged, which is everyone.  We are all at some point - and usually at many points over the course of a life - the woman hanging on the end of the line.  Allow your acceptance of that to be a transformative experience.  You do that by simply looking it square in the face and then moving on.  You don't have to move fast or far.  You can go just an inch.  You can mark your progress breath by breath."

Anyone who has had any in depth conversations with me about 2013 and my unwanted move (and slew of other things that have happened) is probably nodding their head along as they read this, too.  I have been living in Charlotte for 5 months now, and I can't say I've made much progress at all in accepting that this is the path my life has taken.  When a conversation with a friend or family member turns to my move to Charlotte, I am the person narrating my story of injustice over and over again - as if telling people how much I wish this move wouldn't have happened will change the fact that it did.  

But it turns out raging about it doesn't make a dang bit of difference.  The fact of the matter is that I am here, at least for the time being.  But honestly, I have felt that by not accepting it, it didn't need to be permanent.  I felt like accepting it might make it appear as though I wanted it to happen, or that I like it here.

But I know deep down that my inability to "accept" all that has occurred this year is not helping.  Raging against this relocation doesn't change the fact that it happened.  It happened.  I'm here, like it or not.

I don't really know how acceptance is going to come about for me, but I do know that it starts with me acknowledging that I need to find a way to achieve acceptance.  It probably starts with acknowledging that there are things I like about Charlotte.  Things like the small group of friends I've made, the city's selection of GF crepe places, the church where I attend mass, the proximity of the mountains, and the trees that flower far longer than any trees I've seen in the Midwest.

I guess, as Sugar says, it's going to start inch by inch, and breath by breath.

Have you ever been through something you had a difficult time accepting?