"Acceptance is the Key" Episode Three(video)

Welcome to Honor Your Truth

The “It’s ALL True!” Series Episode Three

“Acceptance is the Key”

Well, here I am and it’s Meatloaf night. It’s Meatloaf night and it’s gonna be busy no doubt about it. I’m taking a little break so I can breathe, gather my thoughts from where ever they went to, and write. This is new behavior. In the past, I would never sit down. I’d fall over before I’d even consider it as an option. If it was slow at the restaurant, I’d send people home and do their jobs for them. I have made some changes. At one place I used to manage, I actually slept in A4, a booth in the annex section….and more than once…..always the last one to leave, even when I no longer needed to be. I trained someone else who could close the front, wait for the dishwasher, lock up, and go to the bank, but more often than not, I’d do it myself. I had something to prove.

I had to go above and beyond in order to even consider myself as having done a “good job”, and even then I wasn’t sure. For the most part, I could never do enough. God forbid someone thanked me. I might feel satisfied in the moment, but live on the edge for a while……anticipating the day that I’d let them down. I thought if they only knew who I truly was, they’d feel differently. I wanted to prove I was enough, but to whom? Surely not to my current employer, who totally freaks out at the slightest mention of my not returning and begs me to come back each season. Certainly not to the staff, who, although it is difficult to say, always loves me. Last year, they made me a huge plate signed with all kinds of wonderful things that are so hard to hear. If I accept them, that the staff and my employer do love and respect me, then what about the day I screw up. It matters not if that day ever comes; but I live in fear of it. What will happen? If there is a crack in the outside, they may see inside. Inside, I was ashamed and unloveable. If I never accept the compliments, then I have nothing to fear….I’m always rising.

I’ve lived like this so long, motivated by having something to prove, that if I accept that I don’t, will I lay down and die? I didn’t know another way. I had to learn it. If I have nothing to prove, I have something to give. If I have something to give, I have something to lose. If I give you the “real me”, you could reject the “real me”. If I am wrapped up in proving, aiming to please at all costs, then it’s about those I bind myself to, not me. It’s about their reaction to me, rather than what is coming from me, what I am giving. I could disappoint, make a mistake, say no…any number of things…but if I accept myself…..then all I do is learn from what applies and leave the rest. If I don’t accept myself and have something to prove, then I must somehow fix everything “wrong” because I rely on how you feel to gauge how I feel.

A cup can’t hold water with a leak in it. Nothing from the outside can fix the emptiness on the inside. It can ease the pain, but it cannot erase the shame. No amount of water can fill a cup with a hole in it. I have to fix the hole. If I accept the things I cannot change in the moment, I can make a start at accepting the whole. I decided to come back here for another season. No one made me. As much as I would have liked to walk away, it didn’t feel like the right thing to me. That being said, I know change doesn’t necessarily feel “right”. I wasn’t thrilled with either option all that much for varying reasons, but here I am. I chose this and I am not going to hem and haw about it now that I did. Although it is more challenging to make changes within a system that already exists, the growth is more profound.

I have set up a dynamic over the years that I am shifting. I am uncomfortable. All the things my ego used, to give itself the artificial boost it needed, are being taken away. Those around me who had also grown accustom to expecting my usual MO, may feel uncomfortable too. This is unfamiliar to the system. It asks, "Will I have to change too, because I kinda liked it how it was?” “Am I going to lose something I have because I liked it when she had something to prove and therefore would do everything and anything?” All sorts of shifts happen when an element is taken out or changes. I can accept that too. I can follow the voice in my heart, rather than the chatter in my head that sometimes tells me I am not enough. I am HONORING MY TRUTH!

Debra Hadraba
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