Reality Bites

Cheryl Strayed is one of my favorite writers/authors.  What I love about her work is that it delivers hard truths in a direct, compassionate, sometimes humorous, and always wise way.  Hers is a style that packs a punch without leaving a bruise; a style that, in my opinion, mirrors what good therapy is all about.  As an example, I was thumbing through her book, “Brave Enough”, which is a slightly bigger than pocket size compilation of quotes taken from Strayed’s various writings, and this one grabbed me:“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be.  Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose.  Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go.Acceptance is a small quiet room.”Sometimes clients struggles (as well as my own) are less complicated than the avalanche of identified stressors make it seem.  It’s not that the issues don’t merit the difficult emotions that come along with hardship - they do.  The bigger problem, though, tends to be the twisting and turning that people do over wishing things to be different that for whatever gamut of reasons just can't be.  Whether it’s wishing you’d been kinder, smarter, more assertive, less reactive, more disciplined, etc etc, you fill in the blank, the truth is that life is hard and many things happen that are unfair.  If we allow ourselves to get sucked into the vortex of thinking we have the right answer, approach, or vision for how people should behave and how things should happen, we will continue to suffer.  If we instead recognize that there can be more fluidity to what’s “right” and less doom and gloom to what’s “wrong”, we may find that there’s more time and energy to enjoy the stuff that is good.  There’s a lot of it out there, but it’s hard to see when we make ourselves busy resisting what we refuse to accept.As summer turns into fall and we’re all invited into a new season, maybe there’s something you’d like to work to loosen your grip on?  Maybe you’d like to make room in your life for what not only wants to give back what you put into it, but also has the capacity to.  I imagine that’s what it is to live a well lived life.