by Kayla Myers, Family Peer Supporter
June 27, 2023
When I did this month’s webinar on the topic “Radical Acceptance”, one of the comments was on the word radical paired with acceptance. Radical commonly can be referred to a person who is an extremist in their advocacy on topics that are less than traditional. So, the thought was, I understand acceptance in life and as events happen that are less than acceptable, but how I am expected to radically accept these events as something I am putting an “I am okay with this happening to me” stamp on it?
For me, I got to a point in my life where I had more childhood trauma that was unresolved inside of me than I even knew, I was undiagnosed with everything but anxiety, I kept running through the same kind of relationships with different bodies, expecting different results, and having all my life’s events coming to head when I became a mom. I was a triggered, an empty vessel, coasting through life in a numbed state of mind. I didn’t find joy in anything, I was disassociated and couldn’t make sense of what was real or not, and I didn’t feel any emotion anymore. That’s when I had to radically accept change into my life and heal from the things that hurt me to my core. I had to peel every piece of armor I had put on in life, acknowledge the coping mechanisms that I carried like weapons to keep me safe from the unknown, and look at my younger self and adult me in the mirror and say “enough!”. You know how hard that journey is? It’s debilitating. To finally accept that while I didn’t deserve any of it, I put up with it and kept inviting trauma dressed in different clothes back into my life. I was the one in the end breaking my own heart and the very person I was armed and suited up fighting against.
Radical Acceptance isn’t an easy task. It is a mindset to eventually get too be so good at, you don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s being able to check in with yourself, acknowledge your emotions and feelings, and then deciding which way to move forward. It is very empowering and gives you strength. It takes the power back from those that we feel inclined to lend it to, to remind ourselves that our opinion of ourselves is the most important and gives us freedom to choose self-love and acceptance into our life. Then in return, we are being examples to our children, peers, friends, family who are ready to walk the same journey. To say, enough, that chapter has closed. I will not allow what has happened or what will happen, dictate what I am going to do right now in the present.
You know that corny line, life is a gift so live in the present? That is a hard thing to do without a lot of inner work. But it is obtainable. I am living proof. There is another corny line, if I can do it, you can too! Well, I guess what I am trying to say, those corny lines don’t feel so corny anymore. They feel real and empowering. They feel so freeing that I won’t ever step backwards into a place where I don’t feel those very things in my core.