How do we handle the hard shit we can't change?

This question comes up a lot in my day to day work, especially after a hard diagnosis or huge life change. How do we handle the grief and pain that we cannot change? Where do we put it? What do we do when we wake up boiling mad at night because we can't get over it? What if the pain is so difficult that we cannot even bear to speak the whole truth of it?

While pain is a part of life, radical acceptance offers an option to avoid turning our pain into constant suffering. Imagine the moments in your life where you find yourself saying, "why me," or "if only things were different," or "why now?" Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience our life as it is.

“Radical acceptance reverses our habit of living at war with experiences that are unfamiliar, frightening, or intense. It is the necessary antidote to years of neglecting ourselves, years of judging and treating ourselves harshly, years of rejecting this moment’s experience.” - Tara Brach PhD

As we free ourselves from “what is wrong with me,” we trust and express the fullness of who we are.

"Recognizing our own inner goodness"

Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion. Carl Jung describes the spiritual path as unfolding into wholeness. Rather than trying to vanquish waves of emotion and rid ourselves of an inherently impure self, we turn mysteriously and vibrantly alive. We are no longer battling against ourselves, keeping our wild and imperfect self in a cage of judgment and mistrust. We simply open and let the changing stream of experience move through us.

We practice radical acceptance by pausing and then meeting whatever is happening inside of us with an unconditional friendliness. Seeing what is true, we hold what is seen with kindness. By doing this we recognize and embrace our hurts and fears.

Just as a relationship with a good friend is marked by compassion and understanding, we can learn to bring these same qualities to our own inner life.

“We are learning to make friends with ourselves, our life, at the most profound level possible” respected teacher of Tibetan Buddhism Pema Chodron when speaking of spiritual practice