Opening the Box of Darkness: How Acceptance Transforms Our Reality
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
–The Uses of Sorrow, by Mary Oliver
I've had a very difficult couple of weeks, challenged by the question: How do we find acceptance in a situation where we don’t like the outcome?
My daughter lost her best friend in a tragic motorcycle accident. A woman in my neighborhood was killed in a case of domestic violence, leaving three young girls behind. There was another shooting in Georgia. And, as highlighted by the recent presidential debate, we're witnessing deep divisions in our nation.
When Elyse, my daughter, shared with me the heart-wrenching experience of her friend’s funeral, she described how the mother threw herself on the casket, wailing and screaming, "No!"—it was the moment every parent dreads: the lowering of the casket. Despite the overwhelming anguish, this was her reality.
No one interfered; they let her scream, cry, and exist in her state of resistance. They circled around her and sang, allowing her the space to grieve and come to her own place of acceptance in her own time.
As Elyse told me this, I envisioned elephants circling a grieving mother elephant after a loss, or whales swimming alongside a mother and her stillborn calf. These creatures allow grief to unfold without interference, without a rush to acceptance. They honor the process, letting time and the heart do their work.
As a mother, I ask: How do we reach a place of acceptance, especially when every fiber of our being resists it?
I'm currently preparing for a Divine Feminine retreat in October, where we’ll focus on our relationships with our mothers and how we embody the divine. As I reflect on my mother and her dementia, I wonder: How has she learned to accept the decline of her memory and the loss of her own sense of reality?
I don’t believe my mother had a good role model of loving acceptance. My grandmother lost her husband when my mother was only eleven months old, leaving her to care for four young daughters. It was 1935, and back then, there was little support outside of the family. In a way, my grandmother buried herself with her husband. She lived a life of going through the motions, without finding peace, without acceptance.
I think about what happens to us when we walk through life like that—without accepting the reality we’re given. When my daughter called me this past week, sobbing over her loss and crying, "No, I won’t accept this!" I wondered what her own path to peace would look like.
Perhaps acceptance is about balancing the dualities of life: grief and love, loss and hope, reality and resistance. Understanding that both shape our ability to find peace within. What if, as a society, we could do the same—hold space for each other without judgment or division? What if, instead of projecting our fears, anger, or politics onto others, we allowed one another the space to grieve, to process, and eventually to find acceptance in our own time?
Change is inevitable, as life itself is. So how do we stand in acceptance and peace as the changes unfold, instead of resisting or interfering with the natural process?
At my daughter's friend’s wake, there was an outpouring of love—from friends, coworkers, and the community. That love has started to help Elyse open herself to the reality of her loss. She’s learning what acceptance might mean for her. She wants answers to the bigger questions, searching for a greater understanding. But those answers don’t always come.
“Maybe he’s going to be my guardian angel,” she said one day, holding onto the idea that his presence in her life will somehow continue.
In the meantime, it’s the love of her friends and the support of her mother that give her the strength to hold her own box of darkness. In that space of love and community, she’s begun to find peace—and even the gifts within the pain. In her acceptance, she will learn that he will always be with her.
There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen. —Rumi