Acceptance and freedom

Ivy photographed on the morning of
the Feast of St John the Evangelist 2003

John Bradshaw discusses some ideas from Virginia Satir on five freedoms in his book Healing the Shame That Binds You:

When we are wholly and fully self-accepting, we have the freedom to see and hear what we see and hear, rather than what we should or should not see and hear; the freedom to think and express what we think, rather than what we should or should not think or express; the freedom to feel what we feel, rather than what we should or should not feel; the freedom to love (choose and want) what we want, rather than what we should or should not love (choose and want); the freedom to imagine what we imagine, rather than what we should or should not imagine. When we are loved unconditionally, i.e., accepted just as we are, we can then accept ourselves just as we are. (page 154)

This passage just hit me one morning a while back and I’ve been wanting to share it with you all ever since.

How much of our lives, how much of our energy, is wasted striving to see and hear, think and express, feel, love, or imagine what someone else thinks we should (or should not)?

What a gift it would be if we could tell the next generation that their perceptions and desires are real and to be honored. [Omigod, I can hear the control freaks freaking already. But that’s inviting chaos, sin, awful stuff! To which I say: Oh, bite me.]

Just because one recognizes, acknowledges, and honors desires does not mean you encourage indulging all of them. But it sure as hell does NOT mean you deny or repress them. If you do that, then you are the one to be bitten you know where, and when you least expect it.

My best friend observed that I have spent most of my life trying to fit into spaces too small for me. The observation sprang from an immediate physical context (one in a long series) but he meant it in the broadest metaphorical sense. I have tried to fit into spaces based on other folk's perceptions and wishes rather than my own. And, perhaps even worse, many were not even their spaces but my imagination of their spaces.

I'm working on finding my own space now.

It's about bloody time.
—the BB