The first day of an alphabet, just for you
Midsummer’s Day, 2025.
It has become really clear to me that, despite my doctorate, all my books, my teaching and my salient lived experience, I am not going to be able to get a big memoir or any kind of book that’s mental-health adjacent to market. I’ve tried too many times. I don’t have a big enough author profile, I don’t have the time or the health to start and maintain and build a massive podcast, I am not a celebrity and I am not demonstrably and publicly expert enough in this area. I have found this particular disappointment a hard one to bear.
But that’s not the end. I decided that, instead, I would just spend a month gifting thoughts on topics that are about looking after you. Please know I am not a health professional and that I speak from lived experience and a lot of reading. Just enjoy these or read them for interest. Please share widely.
Today is the letter A. Let’s make it about ACCEPTANCE.
I cannot tell you of everything that is going on in my life because to do so would be treading on others’ agency. I can tell you that I came from a background which left me with a lifetime of mental and physical health problems and that for a long time no-one believed my story. I am sure plenty still don’t and Dear Lord, it has caused me so much pain and confusion. Into any life may come hardship or suffering, terrible loss, or the long dark night of a soul in a life which had seemed free; now you feel it has no meaning – no core to which you may be tethered.
People endure so much. We cannot minmise the suffering of others right now, though we ought to respond with compassion – which includes practical action. Still, what I am sharing something that has been a fundamental for me. It’s acceptance; radical acceptance, really.
You may want things to be a different way, for your life and circumstances to be different, but there may also be things you cannot change. It took me a long time to realise that the reason I was so tired was partly hyper-vigilance, but partly always trying to fix things I could not fix; to understand things I could not understand because it was not possible to access the information I needed. It’s exhausting. Acceptance is a core practice in meditation, more like being at peace with exactly what’s here, in the present moment. I am also talking about fully coming to understand that if you learn to accept, with as much grace as you can muster, those things you cannot change, you are fighting less. It is simple, but requires practice and for you to remind yourself. With such practice, it is not that you feel less, but, I have found, habits of comparing oneself with others tend to recede and you notice what you do have because you are less focused on what you don’t. I find I have been less fearful, too.
In my case, I knew I had to keep tolerating certain things that were deeply painful, too; also, I’ve had a great deal of loss – and loss in traumatic and frightening circumstances, shaping who I was as a young person. I’ve found that focus on acceptance has helped to still my nervous system. If you’d like an app, then there are some helpful things to listen to on the Calm app from Jeff Warren and Tamara Levitt and I should keep an eye on the vast amount of free teaching that well-known psychologist Rick Hanson puts out there. If you google him, you’ll find meditations, talks and the very helpful JOT – just one thing – which is a free and well-written piece of information to consider every week. It often touches on acceptance
May I suggest a text for you to read? I have found this one of great practical value.
I have much, much more to say, but these need to be brief posts.
Be well, you’re not and were never alone,
Anna x
