I have always struggled with the concept of ‘surrender’.  It sounds so wimpy, doesn’t it?  I'm not about to surrender to anyone or anything.  I am a strong woman because I'm willing to fight it.

Maybe that's worth rethinking. 

Newsflash: It seems that life does what it is going to do regardless of whether I ‘surrender’ or not.  I’ve been looking for a different outcome now most of my life, oh I can fight and resist with the best of them.  But I’ve concluded that approach doesn’t work since I certainly haven’t noticed that my refusal to surrender changes anything.

Oh well, after 50 years of pushing back, no one can say I’m not persistent.
 
So here’s what I think it means...surrender really means accepting reality as it is, not fighting it.  Have you heard the saying, “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”?  Life is full of pain, but I think surrender is what helps us avoid the suffering part.

In the past few weeks, my relationship with my significant other has been turned upside down.  Not from some change between us but due completely to outside circumstances.  From having his 12 year old son about a quarter of the time, suddenly it seems he will be having him almost full time.  That, on top of an already full workload that in the same time period increased by 2.5 times, has knocked him for a loop needless to say.  He’s thrilled at the prospect of finally having this fine young man with him, but he is understandably panicked at how he will be able to fit everything he wants in his life into a suddenly very crowded and chaotic situation.

We had had it good, a nice little compartmentalized life.  And this was finally a man I wanted to think very long term with.  So, I immediately went into a tailspin. 

Is there going to be room for me in all this?  And if there is, just how much?  Will we ever have any time to ourselves?  Will we have to reconsider co-habitating?

The little rational part of me that could make itself heard above all this knew there was not a quick fix to this. That I just had to sit and wait in the mucky, uncertain mess of it all to see what happened.  But my emotions refused to accept it, kept churning on it, playing out a million ‘what if’ scenarios, none of them good.

In a word, I was not surrendering to this sudden change of reality.  And I suffered for about a week and a half.  I dropped about 4 pounds and wasn’t getting much work done.  Although I was pretty good, still, I was adding stress to my guy in a big way by trying to find solutions right away and just talking about it endlessly.   And, I think I was on my way to an ulcer from the stress. 

That last got my attention.  I don’t get upset stomachs over ANYTHING.

The good news is I did get hold of myself finally.  And, accepting the reality of it actually turned out to be the most powerful thing I could do.  It allowed me to focus on functioning fully in the rest of my life which I wasn’t doing.  It took away the stress and I started eating again.  AND, perhaps most importantly, it allowed me to give my S.O. the space he sorely needed to get his own head around all this.

Big life lesson for sure.  Waiting has never been my strong suite, but I’m sure getting a lesson in it now. 

And now I see...surrender is actually what gives us the strength to move through life’s upsets.  Without it, we get a heaping helping of suffering on top of the upset.

Where are you resisting surrender?  

Allison Allen is Founder of WomenBloom.com, a web community inspiring and supporting women to make the most of midlife.