What is complete acceptance?

In the course of our lives, we come across situations, which cannot be changed. The outcome has already happened or is inevitable and there is nothing much that can be done about it. The only resolution that we know is acceptance of the situation, and then, moving on. I’ve come to realise that the process of acceptance has a crucial step. And without it, acceptance and moving on aren’t fully complete. And that crucial step is: grieving.

To fully accept we must allow ourselves to grieve about the loss the situation has caused us. The bitter acknowledgement that something meaningful has been lost,  something has changed or something has been taken away. It is only when we allow ourself to grieve for this loss, that the process of acceptance gets its depth.

Sometimes in the rush to accept and move on, we might bypass this grieving. Grieving requires us to sit with the unpleasant emotions and acknowledge them, feel them. And that ain’t an easy job. It requires courage and fortitude to vulnerably accept the loss and grieve. And hence this step is often bypassed. The result is that we continue to carry the hurt and loss within us. And this hurt will find ways to manifest itself. The hurt part of us can keep tugging as an emptiness from within, or we might unknowingly seek some external comfort to soothe the inner ache. The grief will find diverse ways to spill out in our lives.

Complete acceptance, then, is not about avoiding pain but about embracing it as an integral part of the healing process. It is about sitting with our discomfort, listening to what it has to teach us, and letting it guide us toward deeper self-awareness.

Allowing ourselves to feel the pain hurt, grief and loss helps us release the hold that these hurt feelings have on us. Grieving by itself is a journey with many stages. Allowing ourself the time and space to journey through these stages helps to release the trapped emotions. It is not to say that we will be able to live as we used to earlier, as though nothing happened. That is not the goal, nor is it possible. The scars will remain, maybe forever even. But the scars will not carry the intense emotional hurt that the wounds did. They would stay with us as silent reminders of the battles we fought and overcame. That is the process of integration of our new self with our old one. And grieving is an important component that can allow us to release the hurt emotions and to accept situations with more grace.