Acceptance

Over on my PTSD blog I wrote about the need to accept your past.  http://ptsd-acceptingcopingthriving.com/2014/08/03/accepting-myself/ A comment was added that acknowledging my past is different than accepting my past since the word acceptance implies approval.  I agree, few people want to approve of a harsh and brutal past.  I believe the word acceptance rather than acknowledge is a perspective I was introduced to by Dave Pelzer.  I haven't written about him for awhile.  Dave Pelzer is the author of a Child Called It.  He wrote about his brutal childhood and survival.  KavinCoach asked me to read this book to see my reaction to the abuse Dave suffered.  I followed him through several more of his books. The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave continued his journey through his teen years and into adult acceptance of himself.  One of the events I read of his life was he was when asked in a seminar if he wished his childhood was different.  His answer was etched on my heart as a goal to achieve, he said, "I like the man I am today and I would not be that man without those experiences."  I set this as my goal.  I wanted to feel so positively about who I was as a person that I would not just acknowledge my past but accept my past as the needed ingredients of making me who I am today.  The first step of acceptance is acknowledgement.  The next steps are what I make of what I acknowledge.  I can not change my past.  It is carved in stone.  Mine looks like lattice work since there are many missing pieces.  However, it is my past and gave me a very different perspective on life.  It pushed me to the very brink of suicide but I turned back with a thread of hope.  The hope if I stayed alive I could be different than the shell my abuser wished to create.  I could defy my past and chose a different path then the one set out for me.  I didn't need to embrace my past or cling to it.  It is what it is and helped shape the woman I am today.  I don't approve of abuse, not any of it, but I accept that it happened to me and I can shape my future into something beautiful because of it not just in spite of it.   



“To help yourself, you must be yourself. Be the best that you can be. When you make a mistake, learn from it, pick yourself up and move on.”

 Dave Pelzer quote