The Fluidity of Acceptance

BY KEN BARRINGER

Coming to a place of acceptance that our person has died, or something traumatic has happened to us or we have had a significant non-death loss does not mean we won’t have to engage a new level of “acceptance” at some point. Acceptance is fluid. We must continually embrace the concept of acceptance and what it means right here, right now. Our stories mean different things to us at different stages of our lives. Thus, we need to find acceptance with where we are at in life, even if the loss was long ago. We are continually tasked to accept “I don’t know what it would have been like for my person to be here”, “I won’t know what it’s like to come here and not think of that accident”, “I’ve been working below my capacities since I lost my job, and now I’m too old to be employed to my capacities”.

Grievers can disrupt themselves when they feel like they have worked hard to be honest, truthful, non-avoiding and embrace their loss. Yet here it is months/years later and they’re upset again and don’t know why. “I should be happy because we have _ x_ event happening.” Well, your person is missing from this event and you’re to accept , again, what it’s like not having them here. Unless this scenario applies to you may not be aware of this re-occurring theme, thus you may not ask someone how they’re doing with the loss. In her book The After Grief, Hope Edelman describes the concept of “Maturational Grief”. In maturational grief our loss revisits us in the future often during a life transition moment like a graduation, wedding, birth of a child and we have to accept, again, that our person is not here for it. This may not be a long period of time that we’re in this place or the intensity of what we feel may not be as sharp, yet it’s here again. The idea of accepting comes back.

Additionally, what also comes with losses are secondary losses. While these mostly look like family structure, financial stability, lifestyle, and identity (to name a few), I wonder if there is a place in the secondary loss category for “acceptance”. Because we are asked to revisit the concept throughout the rest of our life there can be temptation to move the loss from primary to secondary over time. The intensity, duration, and frequency of processing the loss shifts over time.

The point here is that we need to be careful not to disenfranchise ourselves (before others do) by pushing away the feeling, apologize for reliving the experience believing we already accepted the loss and I’m not going there again. Our people, events, experiences are always with us to varying degrees. Thus, the concept of life without them we will be asked to always accept. Not, “I’ve reached acceptance and have moved on”. Acceptance isn’t stagnant, it’s fluid.