Turbo Acceptance
Hey readers, an update. (Never rush to publish an essay in a time crunch!) I blew my attempt at reframing a hashtag in order to make my point on this tweet below yesterday. I finally caught it and had to rewrite it today. Please start with new eyes!
I’m sharing a Twitter thread below. Feel free to jump to it at the end of this essay, but first, a little history. I really relate to this young person’s video in the tweet below. I am able to translate the Catholic in it, and her rejection of this letter is similar to things I did, as a result of my own choices in young adulthood. I entered a painful phase in my 20s after moving in with an inappropriate, loose cannon of a partner, wasting my youth and fertility on someone who was not ready to be an adult.
Frankly, neither was I.
I remember writing my Dad letters, demanding acceptance and asking him to refer to my live in boyfriend as my “spiritual partner” because I was reading Gary Zukav and embracing a CA lifestyle. I was shedding “labels” and “roles” and “boxes”. Mmmm…was I? Nope. Just getting captured, and preparing a long, painful road of returning to the simple joys of life. Basic acceptable sacrifices for unity, the love of a good man who knows how to be a husband and a father, the fulfillment of ordinary commitments. The faithful, steadfast integrity of showing up for a friend in need. The freedom from a feeble, persistent need for validation from others. The sweetness and comfort of trust in God, and not having all the answers.
The dubious choices I made were obvious to a lot of people around me at that time, and I’m grateful I had parents who challenged me, but also just let me make them. I was real, real busy changing the world with my West coast branded, evolving and spiritual New Age life, they just didn’t get it, and I could not be bothered with their real time observations. To be fair, there were some things they didn’t get and still don’t, that I achieved and claimed. But mostly, they knew me, and they were right.
Demanding the use of “spiritual partner” is how I relate to this young person’s demand of the use of a new name and pronouns. (But only those people she specifically asks. That’s pretty involved). I remember my Grandma’s second husband looking up at me from a wheelchair and asking “how’s your spiritual partner?” during a visit in Florida. It was in that moment I realized how stupid my demand was, because the guy wasn’t there. This warm, loving grandfatherly willingness granted me an opportunity to realize that terminology would never change the fact that he was just not ever there by my side. Not even when there was a funeral to attend.
Here’s the delicate paradox. It was through being granted acceptance from my Grandma’s dear heart of a husband that I was liberated. He warmly used my preferred terminology with regards to said inappropriate partner, and as a result I was able to see it. For myself.
I don’t have a kid transitioning. I have two young men so secure in their masculinity it is as though my husband has tripled and there are some dinners where I just sit there wide eyed with my inability to finish a sentence or confirm a sports reference.
But if I did have a kid susceptible to capture, I do not wonder what I would do. I know EXACTLY what I would do. I’d TURBO CHARGE acceptance. I’d paint a border of the new name in the bedroom of the kid. Remind the kid of the pronoun and the name and the new responsibilities of the new gender, day in day out, and hour in and hour out. Because both genders are wonderful, and both genders stink. Both come with hair commitments, whether to remove or coax growth, maintenance for days, unspoken norms, hints, clues and commitments. I would turbo charge acceptance until it became obvious again that the grass is always greener, and we all have both ENERGIES inside. Yes, sometimes I whack the heck out of the punching bag in the garage and I feel like a ferocious man. Doesn’t mean I’m meant to grow a beard. That sorta thing.
Because the key to all of the freedom from this toxic culture capture, for ALL of us, in all of its medical and political and religious and ideological forms, is extreme personal responsibility. Of the whole entire life, warts and all. Victories and failures, areas of agility and potholes of disrepair. Own it. That’s the deal, no matter who you are. Took me decades. I’m into gentle longevity on this one.
There’s an upside. The wonderful, sacred, liberating acceptance that arrives with it. No matter what is going on around you.
I want to hear more about the turbo acceptance. It seems like the perfect way to unveil the LIE. Reminds me a bit of that Cosby show way back in the dark ages of the 1980's when the oldest son wanted to move out. And so the family all did a pantomime of the responsibilities he would incur. Rent, cleaning, furnishing,etc. it was a brilliant show. Demonstrating that he was nowhere near ready to live independently.
As always- deeply meaningful-🌺