One of the first concepts I heard about in Al-Anon meetings was “acceptance.” At first I thought that to accept something meant I had to agree with it, condone it, like it, or even just be ok with it. But that’s not what acceptance means. In one of the Al-Anon daily readers it says “…we may hesitate to accept an unpleasant reality because we feel that by accepting, we condone something that is intolerable. But this is not the case. As it says so eloquently in One Day at a Time in Al-Anon, ‘Acceptance does not mean submission to a degrading situation. It means accepting the fact of a situation, then deciding what we will do about it.’ Acceptance can be empowering because it makes choice possible.” (Courage to Change page 256)

Once I am able to accept something as it is, then I can see that I have options about what I can do or what I want to do.

There is also a reading in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book which says:

“…acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake…unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” (Alcoholics Anonymous page 417)

Acceptance brings me freedom because it allows me to stop fighting against the facts and frees me to make choices about how I will act and think and how I will take care of myself.