Radical Acceptance, in Real Time

We came home from spring break early.

Not because we wanted to, but because the trip we had imagined stopped being the trip we were actually having. Illness was running through the family and nervous systems were depleting as the days went by.

There’s a particular kind of decision that feels both obvious and hard for me at the same time – calling it. Doing what’s best even though there’s a part of me that really, really doesn’t want to. I am practicing letting the version of things I had hoped for dissolve and choosing what’s actually needed in the moment instead.

I’ve been thinking about radical acceptance a lot lately—not so much as a therapy concept, but as something that keeps being required of me when I have other plans.

Because it’s calling to me here at home too, now that we’re back.

I had ideas about returning home energized. I had plans for writing, sharing, and reconnecting. Instead, I find myself moving slower than I want to and focusing on keeping things afloat and orienting again and again to what my family’s nervous system is needing.

And if I’m honest, I am grieving the imagined version of myself that had more capacity this week.

Radical acceptance, as I understand it, isn’t approval or giving up. It’s the quiet (and sometimes loud) acknowledgment: this is what’s here.

This is the energy I have.
This is what my kid needs.
This is what our household can hold.

There can be so much tension and discomfort in the acceptance, especially when part of me wants to be more visible, more productive, and more connected beyond these walls.

I also notice there can be something grounding in not arguing with reality. And writing this, imperfect and unfinished as it is, feels like its own small act of accepting what’s here.