Radical Self-Acceptance

I’m sitting down to write to you on a Tuesday. It’s February and has been so warm that my daffodils think it’s time to make an appearance. They’ll surely freeze before it’s time to bloom. When I say “my” daffodils I mean the bulbs I managed to bury a few inches under the sandy not-soil of the tree pit in front of our row home.

New years resolutions are far behind us by now, but the sentiment of making goals for the new year still clings to me like sticky spider webs. I don’t have much wisdom to impart except to say that it’s bothered me this year to read and hear about all the ways we should make ourselves new, better, brighter, kinder, more environmentally friendly. Especially as someone who is unabashedly in favor of the self-help aisle at the bookstore, resolutions have always appealed to me as a new-agey opportunity to reflect and shed some old skin. This time around the sun though, I don’t want to change.

How many times have we sat and listened to a friend describe the way their partner has wronged them? We assure them, again and again, no matter how hard they try, they are’t going to change that person. I can’t help but think that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t change myself. This is not to say I can’t learn to be better, more accepting, less messy, calm. It’s not to say either that I shouldn’t Kondo the crap out of my home, or eat more vegetables, or read diverse books. But perhaps we can consider that, maybe, there is just no changing who we are at our core.

Maybe instead of forcing an external change, I can deeply love the person I am. I can be enough. I can decide that, against all odds, I am lovable and loving and deserving of love. No matter the condition of my clothes, or the time I spend on my phone, or the amount of coffee I drink, I can accept myself.

I am enough. You are enough. We are enough.