Embracing Radical Acceptance

The life changing magic of feeling emotions and the lessons they provide.

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

This week I learned the concept of radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is the ability to accept situations that are outside of your control without judgement. When mastered, it can have the powerful effect of reducing the impact of negative events. The ability to radically accept negative events and find comfort in the uncomfortable is important because, as Yoda says, “fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” It’s no wonder that the last stage of grief is acceptance.

I am experimenting with radically accepting my empathic tendencies. I have been thinking a lot about emotions and the information they convey. My heart is full of emotion. There has been a lot of information to unpack. I cry at the drop of a hat. I used to view this as a weakness. Maybe it was because I was often told as a child to shove it down or put it on a shelf. Indeed, emotion can result in much pain and suffering.

I was wrong. My ability to feel emotion is a gift. That pain affords me opportunity. Thanks to deep personal work this year, I now know that emotions bring the wisdom of life’s lessons. They are messengers that carry information to the brain. With this information, the brain can process the messages they provide, and identify necessary next steps. Experiencing emotion, allows me to identify my needs so that I can heal my suffering. Despite having a heart and head full of emotion that can spill out at the most inopportune time, I deeply and completely choose to love and accept myself.

As I previously shared, I am an unabashed lover of the Harry Potter universe. In addition to song lyrics, I often live life with Harry Potter quotes popping in my head. It helps me to relate to and process life events. Given that the U.S. audiobooks’ narrator, Jim Dale’s, voice has such a calming effect, I often turn to the audiobooks to ground me.

Naturally, I have recently returned to the audiobooks to help me process my grief. My love of the series borderlines on obsession because its central theme is centered around Harry, the protagonist’s, ability to love and feel deeply despite being orphaned at 1 year old, which left him suffering immense pain and abuse at a young age. The series is a story about friendship, bravery, and having the courage to try your strength. It’s the little actions that, when taken in the aggregate, appear heroic, but are really just necessary for survival when struggling through the life experience.

One of my favorite chapters is The Order of the Phoenix’s “The Lost Prophecy.” The focus of this chapter is all about love and loss. It particularly resonates during a period of grief, processing, and emotional regulation. I used to think I was “too emotional” and that this trait made me weak. In the chapter, Harry’s mentor, Professor Dumbledore, attempts to comfort Harry after he watched his Godfather die. While this certainly wasn’t the first death Harry experienced, it was the one that was most personal at that point in the series because his Godfather was the closest to a parent he had ever experienced since he lost his parents months after his first birthday.

Dumbledore’s reassurances to a grieving Harry that “the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength” was a reminder to me during this round of reading that I should celebrate the fact that I am not numb. It means that I have the capacity to experience love, pain, and learn life’s lessons as a result. In contrast, intense trauma can cause our brain to shut down our capacity to feel emotion as a means for survival.

Dumbledore’s words of wisdom are that a person’s capacity to suffer is a reminder that we are alive because “pain is part of being human.” Someone important to me attempted to explain this fact recently. I interpreted it as meaning that I just needed to not grieve or focus on the pain of grief because it is a part of life. Like a freshly grieving Harry immediately after his Godfather’s death, I am lucky that I “care so much” and that I “feel as though [I] will bleed to death with the pain of it.”

A common refrain in the Potter series is “help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” As you know, I have been wrestling with the duality of self-care and asking for help. My intense grief, fear, and pain have led me to first cling to and then withdraw from others for survival as if I suffer from multiple personalities. It was necessary for me to be alone so I could feel that pain, process it, and then take in the lessons that life was offering me. While I stand by the importance of community, it also was not healthy to rely as deeply as I once did on friendships. Now, I know I can return to my true friendships when I am in need of assistance and the pain is too much to bear on my own. However, it is necessary for me to turn inwards and try my own strength so I can take the necessary steps to experience lasting change.

I couldn’t do this work in consultation or close proximity of others. It had to be me. At the end of the series, Harry is on a quest with his friends to clear his path for defeating his eternal enemy. He walks into what he believes is their final battle alone with his head held high, ready to die so that he could save the wizarding world. He radically accepted his fate, which was foretold by the prophecy that “neither can live while the other survives.” Despite the prophecy, Harry had the luxury of choice.

It may bring difficulties, but life gives us a million little choices. While there is an element of fate and I deeply believe that life experiences come to us in response to that fate, we also have the luxury to choose whether to accept it. We can turn our back to it. We can go down our fated path kicking and screaming, or we can accept it willingly and with peace of heart.

In turning to my higher self, I am accepting the gift that fate has to teach me. This year awakened me to the power of my emotions. It is a gift to feel them, despite how messy and uncomfortable they may be. Rather than stuffing them down and telling myself not to feel them, I’ve learned to feel all the emotions: the joy, the grief, the love, the boredom, the sadness, the inadequacy, the anger, the disappointment, and the anxiety, all of it. They give direction for what I need in life.

My strength is my ability to feel the feels. I thank my emotions for the lessons they provide so I can take the necessary steps to support myself. No one can do that work for me. I can talk to others, vent, receive a listening ear, but I have the power within to identify the right steps to take in response.