Holding and touching your baby for the first time can be one of the most powerful experiences of a lifetime whether as a birth or adoptive parent. Feeling the baby’s soft skin and tiny body nestled against you is an unforgettable experience that lives inside us. From those early days parents discover what pleases and displeases the baby. Parents learn to pay attention to the baby’s needs to sleep, to eat, or to be changed. Our baby teaches us to be in the moment in order to notice and respond to these cues. This is a skill which has to be learned and relearned throughout the stages of parenthood as things rarely go as we imagined. As Ellen Galinsky teaches “our dreams are in a constant tug-of-war with realities.” …
As Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005) points out, we accept that no one controls the weather. He uses the metaphor of sailing to point out that good sailors will avoid storms if possible. But if the storm cannot be avoided, good sailors batten down the hatches and ride things out, controlling what is controllable and letting go of what is not.
From the perspective of mindfulness, acceptance means seeing things as they actually are. For example, if you are having trouble going to sleep, you accept your difficulty. If you’re overweight, this means accepting this as a description of your body in the present moment. Acceptance requires a willingness to see things as they actually are. This frame of mind then makes it more likely to be able to figure out what can be done and what needs to be let go of. We may have to go through intense emotions, such as denial, anger, shame, or depression to progress to terms with what really is in our lives.
Tara Brach (2003) describes this willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as “Radical Acceptance” and a moment of genuine freedom. The root of our suffering in life is longing for things to be different from the way they really are. Seeing this clearly then frees us to begin seeing our choices about what is possible. Radical acceptance is a quality of awareness when physical or emotional pain arises. As opposed to trying to push it away, we may recognize fear, for example, and notice that our thoughts are racing, our breathing speeding up, and that we want to run away. Acceptance does not mean liking this fear but rather being kind and loving to ourselves in the moment to moment experience. Although this way of thinking comes from Buddhist thought, psychologist Carl Rogers had a similar insight when he stated, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
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This excerpted from my book, Autism in the family: Caring and coping together.
References
Brach, T. (2003) Radical acceptance: Embracing your life with the heart of the Buddha. New York: Bantam.
Gallinsky, E. (1987). The Six Stages of Parenthood. New York: Addison Wesley.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005) Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness, 15th-anniversary edition. New York: Bantam Dell.
Related Posts:
https://drrobertnaseef.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/autism-acceptance-and-beyond/