Grief Series - Acceptance
**** Trigger warnigs**** Discussions of abuse.
Dear reader, thank you for coming on this journey with me so far. Acceptance has proven to be a tricky and sometimes elusive feeling.
I find the best way for me to express my thoughts on the matter is with a sort of “stream of consciousness”.
Hopefully some of my musings will resonate with you.
What a sense of giddy joy that washed over me. I finally felt like I had “gained permission” from those around me to say my choice out loud. To not fight anymore. That old life was drawing to a close and I could finally start to contemplate what re-building would look like. It was such a terrifying feeling. I was so accustomed to the fear, anxiety and hopelessness, it nearly took my breath away to step out of the darkness.
The battle is over and I certainly have scars that will follow me for the rest of my life. Continually trying to cover them and feeling the shame if anyone glimpsed at the broken parts of me feels so futile and exhausting. It was relatively short lived, but I certainly did try.
I know that I can’t change any of them though. I believe it was a friend who told me once that they are as a part of my story as knots and bends are a part of a gnarled oak tree. Those “imperfections" are what makes that tree beautiful. (I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true.)
I find it much easier to look at other’s scars and dismiss them as “not a big deal, no one even notices.” Or “you’re stronger for them”… but my own?? They seemed so pointless and like they could have – should have been avoided altogether, if I had only tried harder…. But that’s not the case.
So it's time to bare them, if not “proudly”, at least with a small sense of confidence knowing that it’s the mended skin around the scars that are tougher – it joins together the broken parts and I think our healed scars can join us together too. (yeah, that part is kinda cheesy too… just go with it.)
What I’ve learned is that acceptance isn’t moving on with your life like nothing happened. You, or I… well, any of us can’t ever really “get over” our past traumas or hurts. We will always have that baggage with us to bring along.
What we can do though, is learn how to live in a new reality with what we’ve been through. We can get stronger so the baggage doesn’t weigh us down as much and maybe, sometimes, we can sort of repack and condense the baggage, so it doesn’t take up as much room in our life as it did before.
Another thing, acceptance doesn’t mean that you go on like nothing happened. It has taken me 4+ years to finally name aloud, without many a caveats, that what I experienced in my relationship was absolutely not ok. To use the words like “rape” and “abuse”. For the longest time I didn’t want to label Josh with such big, strong words because I feared that if I was wrong, even a little, that those accusations were just too big to put on anyone without 1000% proof. I didn’t want to ruin or negatively affect the rest of his life. I certainly didn’t want someone spreading negative words around about me, so I was trying to do the same for him.
But, I wonder now, if I had been able to name his actions more clearly sooner, if it could have changed things. If it could have saved so much hurt and loss that he caused. This one matter is something that still haunts me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to feel at peace with those “what ifs”.
Unfortunately, it’s not like your story and grieving ever end. Once you’ve gone through all the stages at least once, that’s it – you’re good to go.
No, alas you may have to circle around the stages many a time. (I certainly have and am still processing.) For me, acceptance has proven to be a challenging one. I think this is in large part because I feel like I had really wanted to finally confront Josh and fully explain to him all the ways in which he negatively impacted my life. And since that chance is now gone for forever, I feel like I can never quite close the book all the way.
Also with Anger – it feels like the more I learn about my own relationship and other abusive relationships, the more my sense of injustice screams out at me. Letting myself actually experience those feelings of anger is pretty new – So, I think I’ll probably be circling around that stage for a while. And, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, as I learn and grow more and resolve some areas of my grief, it doesn’t open up other areas that I thought were healed and dealt with.
I’ll be honest, there is a part of me that wants to share this with you in order to validate my own experience. For practically my whole marriage and afterwards, there were only a handful of people that knew everything that went on in my relationship with Josh and how unhealthy it was. Most other people I would talk to – including mutual friends, strangers and basically anyone that Josh might interact with, I just said “Our relationship was very unhealthy” but that is quite vague and again, takes a lot of the blame and accountability away from Josh.
Yes, absolutely – there were unhealthy parts of our relationship that were both his issues and mine. No relationship problem is going to be 100% just one person’s fault (at least not in my experience) but in the case of abusive relationships I DO NOT believe that it is 50-50. (as the abuser would like you to think. Well, they would like you to think that the problems are much more 80-95% your fault. )
I can’t tell you what exactly the message Josh had that he brought into our marriage. As I said, I unfortunately will never be able to have the opportunity to ask him. But, based on his actions and the society we live in, I can tell you that he seemed to have a large sense of entitlement. That one word seemed to rule most of his actions.
And though we both brought our own narratives into the relationship. I do still strongly believe that it is the responsibility of the person with more power (in this case, a husband and the Patriarchy as a whole) to not take advantage of those in weaker positions than themselves.
Ironically enough, out of the 5 conceptual photos, coming up with the idea for and then shooting the image for Acceptance was by far the most challenging.
Maybe it's because I still don’t fully know yet what it’s supposed to look like? What I’ve written for you here is definitely the most progress I’ve made so far on defining it for myself.
Thank you again for your time and for witnessing my story. As I said back in the beginning of all of this - I hope it connected with some of you on a personal level. You are not alone. You do not deserve to be mistreated and abuse is not your fault.
And also connected with those of you who maybe know someone who’s gone through similar stuff.
Whoever you are though, please remember that abuse doesn't always look the same. It can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter your gender, social status, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
If you are curious about more resources, please see the statement at the end of the cover song music video. .
The very biggest of thank you’s to Joy who helped me photograph this image. It would have been very very tricky to do on my own. And thank you to Rebekah For showing us these excellent locations.