Quotes About Acceptance

Nothing is intolerable that is necessary.

You 'ain't found out yet we're women-folks, Nanny Penn," said she. "You 'ain't seen enough of men-folks yet to. One of these days you'll find it out, an' then you'll know that we know only what men-folks think we do, so far as any use of it goes, an' how we'd ought to reckon men-folks in with Providence an' not complain of what they do any more than we do of the weather.

And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

I know how this feels: the tightening of the chest, the panic, the what-have-I-done-wait-I-was-kidding. Eating disorders linger so long undetected, eroding the body in silence, and then they strike. The secret is out. You're dying.

My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I'm not sure I wish I'd never gone there.

In truth, you like the pain. You like it because you believe you deserve it.

There was a time when I was unable to get out of bed because my body, its muscles eating themselves away, refused to sit up. There was a time when the lies rolled off my tongue with ease, when it was far more important to me to self-destruct than to admit I had a problem, let alone allow anyone to help.

I developed a deep, abiding fear of jeans, which I still have. I hold my breath and shut my eyes when I pull on a pair in the dressing room, afraid they will now, as then, get stuck at my hips and there I will stand, absurd, staring at the excess of hips that should, if I were a good person, be "slim".

Someone speaks in soft tones to me and says I am psychotic, but it's going to be all right. I put on my hat, unperturbed, and ask for some crayons.

The idea began to sink in, more than it ever had, that I might be crazy, in the traditional sense of the word. That I might be, forever and ever amen, a Crazy Person. That's what we'd suspected all along, what I'd been working so hard to disprove, what might be true. I preferred, by far, being dead.

Bear in mind you have a life to live. There is an incredible loss. There is a profound grief. And there is, in the end, after a long time and more work than you ever thought possible, a time when it gets easier.

I am mad. The thought calms me. I don't have to try to be sane anymore. It's over. I sleep

Somewhere in the back of my brain there exists this certainty: The body is no more than a costume, and can be changed at will. That the changing of bodies, like costumes, would make me into a different character, a character who might, finally, be all right.

I relish my life. It's the one I have. It's difficult, beautiful, painful, full of laughter, passing strange. Whatever else it is, whatever it brings – it's mine.

And then the horror sets in. All that time I wasn't crazy; I was, in fact, crazy. It's hopeless. I'm hopeless. Bipolar disorder. Manic depression. I'm sick. It's true. It isn't going to go away. All my life, I've thought that if I just worked hard enough, it would. I've always thought that if I just pulled myself together, I'd be a good person, a calm person, a person like everyone

The last place I want to be is the hospital, but I'm not stupid. I know when it's time to go in. I am so terrified of myself and of the vast, frightening world, that the psych ward, with its safe locked doors, sounds like a relief.

Here's the hell of it: madness doesn't announce itself. There isn't time to prepare for its coming. It shows up without calling and sits in your kitchen ashing in your plant. You ask how long it plans to stay; it shrugs its shoulders, gets up, and starts digging through the fridge.

When we doubt, we learn to accept that we may not ever know. When we question, we learn to accept that there may be no answer. When we shout our doubt out into the universe, we learn to accept that we may be met with a silence we do not know how to read.

Being here, living now, recognizing our smallness, is a spiritual practice. It allows us to be at peace with our humanity. It humbles us and grants us permission to fumble, and not know, and fail, and also to take pleasure in the small triumphs of our days.

There is no right," she says. "There's the best you can do. And that's fine. That's normal.

for the purposes of my own spirituality, it is far more useful to recognize the limitations of my knowledge; to humble myself, not before a deity, but simply to be humble; to surrender, again, not to a God but simply to surrender; and to accept. Not accept certain facts; but simply to train myself in the practice of acceptance.

For all its God language, the Twelve Step program isn't actually an attempt at religious conversion. Really, it just tries to bring us to a place of new spiritual understanding that allows us to live differently in this world.

I have a word. Now it will be better. Now it has a name, and if it has a name, it's a real thing, not merely my imagination gone wild. If it has a name, if it isn't merely an utter failure on my part, if it's a disease, bipolar disorder, then it has an answer. Then it has a cure.

I relish my life. It is a life of which I am fiercely protective. I have wrested it back from madness, and madness cannot take it from me again. I will not throw it away. So what if it isn't a normal life? It's the one I have.