Why Acceptance Is the Key
- Julian x
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Lifting the Anchor: Why Acceptance Is the Key You Didn't Know You Were Holding
By Julian Jenkins | Light & Harmony
Here is the great paradox that nobody tells you: the moment you stop fighting what has already happened is the moment you become free of it. Not before. The struggling keeps you bound. The resistance is the prison.
I spent years trying to forgive people who had hurt me—reading books, attending workshops, lighting candles while attempting to send loving kindness to people I wanted to throw darts at. None of it worked. And then I realised something: forgiveness wasn't my problem. Acceptance was. They are not the same thing, and confusing them had kept me stuck for a very long time.
"You cannot row your way out of an anchor problem. You have to lift it." — Julian Jenkins
The Anchor You Didn't Know You Were Dragging
Picture yourself in a boat, rowing with everything you have. Your arms ache. Your back screams. You are giving it absolutely everything—and yet you are going nowhere. The shore stays exactly where it was. The horizon doesn't move. You begin to believe that perhaps the universe has singled you out for special cruelty, that you are uniquely cursed to remain stuck.
Then someone taps your shoulder and points to the back of the boat. An anchor. Massive. Dragging along the seabed this entire time.
That anchor is the thing you haven't accepted. The relationship that ended. The career that collapsed. The betrayal you've replayed ten thousand times. The version of yourself you're still at war with. You have been dragging it behind you, exhausting yourself with effort, when the only thing required was to lift it.
But here's the thing about anchors—and this is where it gets interesting—the weight isn't in the anchor itself. The weight is in your grip on it.
The Difference Between Acceptance and Forgiveness
We have been taught that moving on requires forgiveness. And forgiveness can be beautiful when it arrives naturally. But notice what forgiveness implies: a transaction. Someone wronged you, and now you are letting them off the hook. It still requires you to engage with the other person, even if only in your mind. You are still in relationship with the wound.
Acceptance operates differently. Acceptance doesn't care about the other person at all. Acceptance is entirely, completely, ruthlessly about you.
"Acceptance is not agreeing that what happened was acceptable. It is simply refusing to argue with reality any longer." — Julian Jenkins
Acceptance says: this happened. It happened to me. It was painful, unfair, devastating—or all three at once. And I am choosing to stop fighting the fact that it exists in my story. That's it. No warm feelings required. No pretending it was okay when it wasn't. No spiritual bypass where you slap a bit of love and light on a wound that still bleeds.
You see, thoughts are real but they are not true. That voice telling you that you should be over it by now? Real voice. Not true. That thought insisting you cannot accept what happened because it was too awful? Real thought. Not true. Your mind will lie to you to keep you safe—even when 'safe' means stuck in the same place forever.
The Paradox of Letting Go
There is a peculiar magic in this: the thing you resist persists. The thing you accept begins to dissolve. Not because acceptance is passive—it is perhaps the most active thing you can do—but because acceptance removes you from the exhausting game of pretending reality should be different than it is.
Think of it this way. When you argue with what has already happened, you are like someone standing in a river, pushing against the current with all your might, shouting at the water to flow backwards. The river doesn't care. It simply continues. And you grow tired.
Acceptance is when you stop pushing. Not because you've given up, but because you've finally understood that the river was never your enemy. It was simply going where rivers go.
"When we let go, we rise. Not because the burden disappears, but because we stop volunteering to carry it." — Julian Jenkins
The Body Knows
Here is something the books don't tell you: acceptance is not a thought you think. It is a state you embody. It lives in your nervous system, not just your head.
Throughout our lives, we collect emotions like ingredients in a bowl—some from our own experiences, some absorbed from others, because we are porous creatures whether we like it or not. These unprocessed emotions sit there, stirred up every time something triggers us. Sad carrots, angry onions, a variety of anxious greens, all swirling around in the soup of who we've become.
Acceptance is when you finally stir the bowl on purpose, look at what's floating there, and say: right. You're part of my soup now. I'm not going to pretend you aren't there or keep trying to fish you out in a panic. You exist. Let's work with what we've got.
When you do this—really do this, not just think about doing it—something shifts in the body. Your shoulders drop. Your jaw unclenches. Your breath deepens. Because your body has been holding that fight-or-flight response for years, waiting for you to either defeat the thing or run from it. Acceptance tells your nervous system: we are not fighting this anymore. We are integrating it.
When Your Back Is Against the Wall
I know what some of you are thinking. That's all very philosophical, Julian, but you don't understand my situation. This isn't something I can just accept.
But here's what I've learned: the situations that feel most impossible to accept are precisely the ones where acceptance becomes your only path forward. When you've fought, bargained, raged, and collapsed. When everything else has failed. When your back is truly against the wall—that's when acceptance stops being a spiritual concept and becomes a survival tool.
After my father passed, I was alive but not living. I had panic attacks so severe I was convinced I was dying. Fighting my grief was making everything worse. It wasn't until I stopped fighting the fact that I was broken—that I was lost, that I was in pain—it wasn't until I accepted where I actually was, that I could start moving from there.
"There is a difference between giving up and letting go. Giving up says nothing will ever change. Letting go says I release my grip on how I think this should be, so I can see what it actually is." — Julian Jenkins
A Practice for the Body, Not Just the Mind
Close your eyes if you can. Bring to mind the thing you've been resisting—the situation, the person, the memory that keeps you up at night.
Now breathe in deeply. On your inhale, acknowledge silently: This is real. This happened.
On your exhale, release: I stop fighting its existence.
Inhale love. Exhale the fight.
You are not saying it was okay. You are not saying you deserved it. You are simply acknowledging that it exists in your history, and you are done exhausting yourself by pretending it shouldn't. Some anchors lift quickly. Others take time, patience, and a great deal of self-compassion. All of it is valid.
The Freedom That Waits
Acceptance is not defeat. It is not waving a white flag. It is picking up the anchor that has been holding you hostage and saying: you no longer get to decide where I go.
Forgiveness might come later. It might not. That is not the point. The point is that you deserve to move forward—regardless of whether the person who hurt you ever understands what they did, regardless of whether the situation ever makes sense, regardless of whether anyone else validates your experience.
"Your freedom is not dependent on anyone else's behaviour. That is the power of acceptance. It puts the keys back in your hands—where they have been all along." — Julian Jenkins
If something inside you just shifted—even slightly—trust that. Your soul knows what it needs. It always has.
Be love and give love, always.
Julian x
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