The One Shift That Changed Everything About How I Show Up in My Life
I was sitting in my therapist’s office when I had one of those subtle epiphanies—the kind that sneaks up on you but that, when you reflect on it later, you realize is actually a monumental shift in the way you’ll show up in your life from this point forward.
The shift wasn’t dramatic. It was more like finally setting down something heavy I’d been carrying for so long I’d stopped noticing the weight. I’d been waiting for my life to get easier. And somewhere in that hour I finally stopped.
The Belief I Didn’t Know I Had
For most of my life, I’ve been an idealist—and not in the inspiring way. What I mean is that I’ve carried an unconscious belief that tomorrow will (or at least should) be easier than today. That by some invisible law of fairness, if I just do things right, or show up long enough, or love hard enough, I will eventually be owed a season of peace. Things will calm down. The rocks in my shoes will disappear. The storms will pass.
I know exactly what that imagined future looks like. I’ve spent a lot of time there. It’s the life I’ve engineered in my head, free from the problems that show up every single day without fail—the people who won’t cooperate with my timelines, the situations that defy my best planning, my own limitations I keep bumping into. In the future, I’ve solved all of it. I’m the fully actualized version of myself. I have total peace and no pain.
But here’s what I’ve been slow to see: that future isn’t coming. And waiting for that day threatens to cost me the beautiful (albeit messy and complicated) life I actually have.
What Acceptance Actually Means
The older I get, the more I believe the secret to life is acceptance—but not the kind that curls into resignation. I mean something more like calling a spade a spade. Being willing to open your eyes and look clearly at the reality of your life—whether it’s a difficult marriage, a challenging job, a chronic health issue, or a situation with your kids that just keeps being hard—and saying to yourself: “This is what I’m dealing with. Now that I accept it, how do I want to be with it?”
Because when we don’t accept it, it swallows us. It sneaks up behind us in the night and takes us out. We stay locked in a low-grade battle with reality, burning energy on being surprised, resentful, and braced for impact.
Now, as I close in on my 46th birthday, I can say with confidence: a season without problems is not the discernible pattern of my life—or anyone else’s I know. The truth is that no matter what the future holds, it will be filled with storms and problems alongside its joys and triumphs and celebrations. It always is.
Here’s what changed for me when I finally stopped fighting this.
A Starting Line, Not a Finish Line
As you probably know, as adoptive parents, my husband and I chose to parent children who had horribly traumatic starts to their lives, through no fault of their own. That leaves a wake of consequences that defy informed consent and any kind of predictable trajectory other than “hard.” The particular challenges that come with raising kids like ours don’t resolve on a timeline, and they don’t respond to wishful thinking. They just keep asking for more of you, in different forms, for as long as they need to, which by now, I know, means a lifetime.
When the next hard thing arrived—as it always does—I finally stopped asking “why” and “when will this stop.” That created the space to finally see clearly what the situation actually required.
The answer was: more than I’d been giving it. Not because I’d been failing, but because I’d been unconsciously treating our reality as temporary. You don’t fully resource a problem you’re still hoping will just go away. Instead, you numb to it, or temporarily white knuckle it, or downplay it.
So I got serious about what that meant—for our kids and for me.
I added back weekly therapy and, candidly, some medication support to my own regimen. I had put both off because I expected the storm to pass and render them unnecessary, but it didn’t.
Because the stressors in my life are real and significant, and no matter how powerful my flourishing practices are (and they are absolutely lifegiving and powerful), they simply weren’t designed to offset stressors at this level on their own. Nothing is. Sometimes the gap between what we’re facing and what our practices can absorb is just too wide, and the honest, grown-up thing to do is close that gap with real support.
I also took a hard look at what our kids actually need right now—not what I hoped they’d need, not what would be convenient—and adjusted accordingly. Truthfully, those adjustments are costly in every way, but they are also necessary. And to ignore them costs far more.
None of that felt like giving up. Instead, it felt like waking up to the reality we have, not the one we wish we had.
The Life That’s Actually Available to You
The sooner I stopped wasting energy fighting reality—being surprised by it, resentful of it, white-knuckling toward some easier season that may never arrive—the sooner I could ask a completely different set of questions. Not: “When does this end?” But: “Given that this is my actual life, what does restoration look like inside it? What fills me up for the journey? What can I enjoy and celebrate today, instead of holding that in reserve for a problem-free tomorrow?”
As I wrote last week, simple flourishing practices—getting outside, making things with your hands, being with people, engaging beauty—aren’t just nice-to-haves. They’re the infrastructure that keeps you upright in a life that requires a lot of you. And I’m pretty sure that’s all of us. But they only work if you’ve accepted the reality they’re supporting. If you’re still waiting for things to calm down before you build that infrastructure, you’ll be waiting a long time.
Maybe your life is a little less stormy than mine—or maybe it’s not. Maybe you’re exhausted from fighting a reality that hasn’t budged no matter how hard you’ve hoped or pushed.
If so, here’s what I want you to consider: What would it look like to stop fighting it, and start actually building a life that works within it? Not a smaller life. Not a sadder one. A more honest one—and I think, in the end, a more beautiful one where flourishing, not just surviving, has a fighting chance.
What’s one thing you’ve stopped fighting—and what did you build in its place?
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Last modified on March 24th, 2026 at 8:42 am
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