Quotes About Acceptance

Attention from others leads to self-respect. Acceptance engenders a sense of being inherently a good person. Appreciation generates a sense of self-worth. Affection makes us feel lovable. Allowing gives us encouragement to pursue our own deepest needs, values, and wishes.

The message of the cross is not only that there is nothing you can do to oblige God to accept you, but nothing you need to do. It's all been done. But we have to have the humility to accept it, and luxuriate in it.

But if I've learned one thing during our descent into dog rescue lunacy, it's that dogs bridge gaps between people. they smooth over the human condition, and they provide an extraordinarily valuable function. They take people of all political persuasions, religious faiths, and geographical locations and represent something that everyone can love.

In the free, easy social atmosphere of pre–Civil War America, overt displays of affection between people of the same sex were common. Women hugged, kissed, slept with, and proclaimed love for other women. Men did the same with other men.

being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

I wanted to be able to do things at my own pace," he said. "I wanted to make mistakes and nobody would care.

But that night I went to sleep, and the next day I was able to go to work and take the necessary steps to begin to face the disease, and to face my life.

I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.

I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it.

Some people may opt out. Their child turns out to be whatever it is that they find impossible to face—for some, the wrong religion; for some, the wrong sexuality; for some, a drug addict. They close the door. Click. Like in mafia movies: "I have no son. He is dead to me." I have a son and he will never be dead to me.

Don't confront me with my failures. I have not forgotten them.

I see Nic on the plane. I see him as he is - frail, opaque, ill - my beloved son, my beautiful boy. "Everything," I say to him. "Everything." Fortunately there is a beautiful boy. Unfortunately he has a terrible disease. Fortunately there is love and joy. Unfortunately there is pain and misery. Fortunately the story is not over.

Anne Lamott advises, "Try not to compare your insides with other people's outsides.

No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die.

But you know, I don't think I will be so scared to die. I think it's like today: the end of a vacation when you are ready to go home.

The miracles do not cancel out evil, but I accept evil in order to participate in the miraculous.

You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it.

In my first group, a counselor asked me why i'm here. he said, 'What's your problem? I said ' i'm a drug addict and an alcoholic.' he shook his head. 'no.' he said, 'that's how you've been treating your problem. what is your problem?

We deny the severity of our loved one's problem, not because we are naive, but because we can't know.

sometimes a warrior's task is to sit with defeat.

Thomas Lynch showed me that it is possible to love a child who is lost, possibly forever.

our children live or die with or without us. No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die. It is a devastating realization, but also liberating. I finally chose life for myself. I chose the perilous but essential path that allows me to accept that Nic will decide for himself how—and whether—he will live his life.

The constellation of these impulses that we call love feels like a miracle. The miracles do not cancel out evil, but I accept evil in order to participate in the miraculous.

But you know, I don't think I would be so scared to die. I think it's like today—the end of a vacation, when you are ready to go home.