The Courage of Acceptance

Life inevitably brings us pain -- physical and mental illnesses,  accidents, the "acts of God" noted in our insurance policies -- that we have neither chosen nor wanted. We have no control over the fact of these kinds of events and realities in our lives.

But we're not out of control over how we react to, how we handle life's inevitable pain. Here is where choice begins: when we have gone through and can get beyond our very natural inclination to deny or be angry or give up. Elizabeth Kubler Ross's  On Death and Dying made way for revolutionary and still fresh understanding of how humans handle grief. Her writings have been instrumental in teaching me how to understand, accept and deal with the emotions that come with having chronic migraine pain. (You can read my posts about this, here, here, and here.)

Compassionate understanding and acceptance of our own initial, grieving reaction help get us to a point of energy from which we can make constructive choices about how we deal with the situation.

A person dear to me who suffers from depression recently told me that mornings are his worst times. He'd spent hours after awakening, unable to move under the great weight holding him down. He was

Photo by William Marsh

regularly late to work and losing motivation. One morning he realized if he decided to do one thing -- like feeding the cat or vacuuming the floor -- and made himself get up to do it without planning for or looking beyond that one activity, he could get out of the bed. Getting the one thing done encouraged him to decide on the next thing. One thing at a time, one step at a time, he has chosen a way to combat the depression that could be crippling him.

I imagine his inner monologue on that morning he made a change might have gone something like this: Ok, I'm depressed again. Yet another morning of pain and paralysis. Am I going to lie here feeling sorry for myself? I gotta do something.

And he gets up to vacuum the floor. Seems small, doesn't it? Insignificant, the mundane stuff of an uninteresting life. Yet I believe the creative and constructive actions we take in the face of great pain are the essence of courage, of hope, of believing in the light even while enveloped in the dark.

And it starts with something simple like, ok, I'm depressed again. Acceptance.


Thank you for reading my blog. You can comment below or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Acceptance Opens the Way for Creativity

In a post a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Khalil Gibran verse that has meant so much to me over the years.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was
oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Gibran accepts that sorrow will carve into our being. He wastes no time reasoning or divining why. Before I go on about creativity and acceptance, I want to clarify one thing. I think Gibran is speaking about the inevitable pain -- death, physical illness, mental illness -- things we have no control over. But there are things we do have control over. We make bad choices, we say mean things, we hurt others, we indulge our addictions to the detriment of relationship and health. 

In other words, the sorrows and pain of life come inevitably and by our own choice. I think it's important to make the distinction, to understand that there are some painful matters we cause. It's essential to our mental and spiritual maturity to take responsibility in these cases.

Photo by William Marsh

So where is the creativity in acceptance? For the inevitable hurt of life, acceptance opens the door to creativity by not allowing us to wallow in anger and self-pity and denial -- those things that can either paralyze us or drive us into unthinking action. The peace of acceptance makes more possible the constructive action that arises from reflection.

More about this in my next post.




Thank you for reading my blog. You can leave a comment below, or email me at carold.marsh@gmailcom.

Painful Poetry

PAINFUL POETRY
Original if Awkward Attempts to Find Humor in Pain

This is a reprise of a feature from my first summer with this blog, in which I take popular songs and poetry forms and wrench them into relevancy to a life of chronic pain.


I Have a Migraine (sung to the tune of “I Did It My Way”)

And now, the pain is near,
It’s coming on, of this I’m certain.
My friends, I’ll say it clear;
(Although that’s hard, through all the hurtin’.)
I’ve tried to fake it out,
but comfort I cannot at all feign,
And so, without a doubt,
I have a Migraine!

Regrets, there are a few.
And then again, lots more to mention
I did what I had to do
but here’s the pain, there’s no prevention!
I plan, and then I pout,
you’ll think I’m acting not at all sane.
And, so, without a doubt,
I have a Migraine!

Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
when rabid words from my mouth flew.
But through it all, I never meant
a word I said, ‘twas just a vent.
I am the same, it’s just my brain -
I have a Migraine!

Shut up, don’t say a word!
Or else I’ll snap your foolish head off.
That’s right, that’s what you heard,
So at my mood, you mustn’t dare scoff!
To think I said all that,
And goodness knows, not in a shy way.
Oh no, it’s tit for tat;
I have a Migraine!

For what else is Pain? What can it do?
I feel its pangs, and this day rue
that I will deal with how it feels:
The head that reels, the thrown-up meals.
I see it shows, that’s how it goes,
I have a Migraine!


Thanks for reading my blog. You can leave comments below or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Resource -- Article on Spirituality, Religion and Pain

If you're feeling sorta nerdy one day, this article might interest you. And I encourage you to read it in the context of spiritual/emotional pain as well as physical pain.

Spirituality, Religion and Chronic Pain: Making a Difference in Non-traditional Ways.

The article is a bit in the researched report vein, but relatively easy to read. And it makes a point about meditation I have made before, based on personal experience. This article confirms personal experience with study data.

Photo by William Marsh

Thank you for reading my blog. You can comment below, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com

Gibran's Sorrow and Acceptance

Earlier this summer I wrote two posts (here and here) that took inspiration from a verse written by Khalil Gibran:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was
oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Photo by William Marsh

Since those posts, I've been reflecting about how it can be, that sorrow and pain carve into us a space which can also be filled with joy. I know for myself it doesn't happen automatically. And looking at the final sentence of the verse above, neither did Gibran consider the joy part automatic.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being...
It happens, sorrow does. Disappointment, fear, physical pain, illness, depression and all sorrowful emotions come to us simply because we are alive. Anyone reading this post has intimate knowledge of life's hurts, and religions have spilled lots of ink and blood to try to prove reasons for them -- Christianity's original sin, Buddhism's maya, come to mind. Gibran acknowledges we share this human condition but attempts no reasoning or story, no intellectual device to explain it. What he does is accept it. This is a truth of life, that we will sorrow.

I have found no more realistic and practical reason for discarding old habits that keep me kicking against inevitabilities in life. (For more on my thoughts about life's pain and acceptance, read this post.) It is energy spent in futility and expended at the expense of the constructive emotions and actions that grow out of simple acceptance. Because acceptance like this is not passive, it's creative.

And that will be the topic of my next post.


Thank you for reading this post. You can leave a comment below or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.