It's one of the most common requests I get with individual clients.
Help me accept what I cannot.
And with this, my absolute favorite part of being a therapist, starts. I get to have the honor of helping the individual regain their strength, their truth, and their power. Because as soon as those words have left their lips, they have already stepped into that journey. And spectacularly, they are asking me to come along as a guide.
We have such diminished concepts of what we can accept, do, or even know. I have never met someone who thought they could endure the loss of a child, and yet they do. I have never met someone who thought they could conquer chemo and radiation and cancer upon first diagnosis, and yet millions have. We have survived through wars, global crashes, epidemics and even a pandemic. We are so much more resilient than we know.
In reality, we don't know how to do anything beyond this moment, which I think is such a gift from God. That we walk into each day fresh and new, without the answers, relying upon others and our world to help us through. And we create what it now is. And from here, what it is that we can imagine beyond this, and what we follow through with.
It is a blessing that we aren't aware of all we can do. It keeps us soft, needing, and open to grow beyond what has been before. Hopefully it keeps us humble and grateful that we are now also the creator. To decide upon the purpose that we place upon our life,
The irony is that we really don't have much of a choice. It is what it is. We can pretend our child didn't get hurt or that we are okay, but reality remains reality. And lies have a way of failing.
The Serenity Prayer is a pivotal piece of AA.
Prayer for Serenity
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
So, when clients come and ask me to help them with acceptance, they aren't really asking for that. They are asking me to help them see how huge their hearts are and their minds. They are asking me to help them receive their humanity. And for whatever reason, they ask me to be a tiny part in that glorious embrace. It doesn't mean they are happy with it or would have ever chosen this, but that they recognize that this will make them bigger than the circumstance. They will overcome and they have the faith of this in meeting with me. This is what I am to help them own, their very personal faith. And with that. they can find that they have a deeper ability to adapt, endure, overcome and grow beyond than they ever knew. Acceptance is minuscule compared to who they become because of this request and partnership of life and self.
My prayer for them is so much broader than to stop at acceptance. My hope is that they find who they truly are now because of these demands and changes thrust upon them.
It's quite a bit like a mini birth. We come into this world uncertain of what this is and what we will do. And life keeps bringing more and more mini births to us to give us the incredible opportunity to once again be new. To once again astound us at the miracle of simply being.
