How to Find Liberation Through Acceptance

SAN DIEGO — “I just talked to the neurologist,” my brother, a doctor, said in a crackly voice. “She’s got Alzheimer’s.” His words hit me like a truck, even though I knew their truth in my heart long before we talked; I had anxiously noticed our mother’s rapid cognitive decline for months. I wanted to believe that her memory lapses were normal for her age, a result of doing too much, or that I was being overly concerned. But, as her symptoms worsened, the truth became undeniable, and the medical results confirmed our fears.

My mother’s diagnosis highlighted a crucial choice point:

Although I had no control over the progression of her disease, I did have a choice regarding how I could  respond to it. I could choose to deny her condition, continue with life as usual, and, in doing so, avoid my aching heart, none of which would cure her or serve her. Or, I could tenderly accept this new reality.

This juncture, of choosing how to proceed with an unwanted circumstance, was all too familiar in midlife. I faced it when my doctor told me to retire from running, after 40 years as a jogger, because my knees were bone on bone. I faced it when my oldest daughter, Tara, opted to go to University in Europe, knowing she would likely (and did) stay there. And I faced it when my mother-in-law became wheelchair-bound, fully appreciating that this would also impact my life.

In all of these situations, my instinctual response was “no, I don’t want this!” My mind quickly tried to find alternative solutions to facing reality – maybe my knees will be OK if I just run fewer miles, what if a summer abroad would satisfy Tara’s wanderlust, and perhaps there’s a new treatment for my mother-in-law’s condition. My “fix-it” solutions were also helping me to avoid my feelings of sorrow, fear, and lack of control over each circumstance.

But rejecting these realities was like trying to run up a downhill escalator. These were all happening, regardless of my efforts or feelings about them. These futile attempts to change the unchangeable were not helpful or sustainable. In fact, I became more frustrated, anxious, and disempowered.

The alternative? Acceptance. But, not the “throw-up-your-hands and say okay!” kind of acceptance. That’s like a coerced “I’m sorry” without genuine remorse. I strived fora more mindful, gentle acceptance. An acceptance that included engaging with these challenges with open-minded curiosity and heightened awareness. An acceptance that gave me space to feel my myriad emotions with bounds of self-compassion. An acceptance I later came to call “embracing.”

When I hung up the phone with my brother, I chose to embrace my mother’s medical reality. I put my hand on my heart, allowed the news to sink in, and compassionately acknowledged “This is hard.” In the ensuing weeks, I researched dementia and attended support groups, both of which helped me to better understand and communicate with her.Embracing my mother’s diagnosis enabled me to access a depth of compassion for her and for its impact on my father, compassion that would have been impossible to muster had I continued to resist her condition. Most importantly, embracing allowed our time together, during the last years of her life, to be sweet rather than frustrating.

There are so many aspects of midlife that most of us would rather reject – our physical changes and decline, unexpected caretaking demands, emptying nests, hormonal chaos, and increasing losses of friends and loved ones, to name a few. Though embracing life-changing tides may not always feel good, it is ultimately liberating, spacious, and empowering. To me, it’s a better choice.

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Dr. Shayna Kaufmann is a clinical psychologist, certified mindfulness meditation teacher, decades-long Zen practitioner, and Founder of Embrace the Middle—a company dedicated to serving women in midlife.