Tease Tips – Lessons in life, love and the art of tease

By Michelle L’amour

Photo by Mike White.

Acceptance is healing.

Every time I sit down to write a Tease Tip, I think about what is going on in my life. Things that I experience, observe and think about all play into what I want to talk to you about. This time I wrestled with this tip because the words just kept playing over and over in my head but I kept saying, ‘No, I can’t write about that. It’s not funny enough. It’s not clever enough.’ But, I can’t help it. This is what’s in my heart today and it’s there for a reason. I’m accepting that and moving forward.

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve been accepting situations in my life and I find that in the acceptance, I’m calmer and I’m on a road towards long lasting healing. Before the acceptance, I was just angry and fighting against things that I thought were unjust. I was fighting with anger and disappointment, but nowhere in there was acceptance. Just as I was experiencing this new feeling, I sat down for tea with a good friend and she started talking about the idea of acceptance without any prompting from me, and that just further implanted this idea in my head and now I have to write about it!

The thing I struggled with in writing this is that I didn’t want acceptance to be taken as giving up. They are very different in their approach, one positive and one negative. I want to encourage the positivity here. I’m sure that in your life you have been in situations that you didn’t want to be in or have experienced things that you wished you didn’t. It is normal to fight against these things and experience anger. You should. It’s healthy. You have to experience that and move through that but the sooner you can move to acceptance, the sooner you can really heal. Removing the anger and injustice does wonders for your overall mood and health.

To give a more specific example, I had a very difficult childhood, as have most people, unfortunately. I have spent a good portion of my adulthood being angry about it. That anger informed so many different aspects of my life. Relationships with friends, lovers, and business decisions have all been affected by this anger. I struggled against this for so long but I learned to accept it. Now, instead of fighting against the fact that it DID happen, I can fight towards a healthy life so that it doesn’t continue to happen. It’s a very different world and I’m so happy to be living in it!

I want to encourage you to fight the GOOD fight. Good, is the operative word. Accept and make peace with the things you wish didn’t happen or you wish weren’t happening now. Move forward in the fact that you can change yourself and the world around you. It might take longer than you want, but if you do it right, it will last forever.