My Word For 2009: Acceptance

I have had such a hard time coming up with one word to concentrate on for the coming year. Today I thought of a word and knew it was mine. A little history here. I saw Sharon's article, by the way her word is Teach. It sounded like a good thing to do so I went in search of this group dedicated to picking a word to guide you through the year. The group is Word of the Year 2009: The Group. There you will find other articles by Gatherers about the words they have chosen. I thought this was such a great idea that I even started a group on my website dedicated to it. As I said I had a hard time picking my word. If you go to Christine Kane's website you will find so many wonderful words to choose from. In my humble opinion I could do with some work in so many of these areas. So what word to pick?

It came to me today like a bolt of lightening that my word should be acceptance. What does acceptance mean? According to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English it means:

Acceptance is the word in far more general use; it means "the act of accepting" in all the senses of the word.

I have been working on acceptance for many years. Some of you may know from my articles and comments that I have a hard time in my relationship with my mother. My dad gave me some words of wisdom. He said people are not going to change unless they want to. You have two choices, you can either accept them for who they are and (in the case of my mother) let them know you love them and they are important to you. This is a painful road to travel, but if you want them in your life you will have to deal with that pain. The other option is to cut them out of your life. With this option there is no hope of your relationship ever getting better, you will still feel the pain but it will lessen over time. I chose the first path. I still work on this acceptance and always remember my dad's wise word's. I hope it helps someone reading this.

I had a situation recently that lead me to see that there are other aspects of acceptance I need to delve into. First I must accept that I am not the best judge of character and must take more time to get to know people before I allow them into my heart. Please do not take offense anyone. Second I am sure there are times when I talk about not knowing how good my writing is, or when I say I don't like it when people think I am fetching for compliments. I really am not. Someone, a person in my opinion who is a really good person pinged me for New Year's and stated I hope that 2009 will bring you the self-esteem, pride and confidence to accomplish everything you want. I guess what she said is part of what lead me to this word.

So here is another form of acceptance I need to work on, acceptance of self. I know this sounds like a boo-hoo poor pitiful me statement but it can be really hard being brought up by two geniuses in a family of geniuses. I am not bragging here because there is a downside to this. My grandfather's sculpture was exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City, my dad's accomplishments as a writer, I could go on, but I won't. I am very proud of all of them, but it was hard to measure up. I just always felt like I could not find my niche and I just was not up to snuff. I don't have a hard time accepting the negative things, yes I am really bad about housekeeping, yes I am a terrible cook and I hate it etc.  I think this will be the toughest part of working with my word. Accepting me, the good and the bad.

There is another type of acceptance I need to work on. This one may sound strange to some people. Really letting people into my life. I usually only have one maybe two friends that I really talk to. This can be very lonely. It may not seem like it, but I really am not a very outgoing person, either online or IRL. The way my life has been I have never really fit in. We moved alot growing up and well my family was a little different from everyone else's. Plus I was in charge of the household from age thirteen on. My sister was almost a daughter to me. I never learned the fine art of small talk. I don't cook, bake, sew, I don't care about fashion, make-up or home furnishings, I don't know alot of babies or diseases so that pretty much cuts out the light talk with most other women. Yet I do want to bond with other people, I want to get to know them and have friendships. I think learning acceptance can help me there.

About the only place I do not think I need to improve in is accepting people for what they are. By that I mean whether you are straight or gay, Christian or Jewish (or whatever religion you are), black or white etc. These things I learned growing up. To my knowledge I have no prejudices, well I am not crazy about bigots or people who harm other people, even if they have a mental illness that makes them do these things. So I have a step up in working on my word.

If you wish to comment on the word I have chosen for myself please do.

So what is your word going to be this year. Instead of making yet more resolutions (and goodness knows I would love to lose weight, accept my weight? accept the fact that I must be more active to lose my weight?) try picking one word to help guide you through the year. Let us know what your word is and why you chose it either by writing an article (click on the group name above it will take you to the group) or by comment. If you already wrote an article link back to it here in a comment so others can read about your word. Then let us know how it is working out for you over the year. Whether you are following the traditional resolutions or this method I wish you the best of luck. I hope it works out great for all of you.

Group moderators please note - If this was submitted to your group and does not belong please just delete it. I think my computer had to much holiday cheer. It's acting like molasses in a winter storm which had to much wacky tobacky.