How to accept your loss: a process to help you

I have been writing about loss and the grief that follows, especially in relation to breakups. Loss can often be a hard thing to accept and I've already written about it in some of my other hubs.

So you become aware that you are rewriting your history, you slow down so you have some time to feel, and you have been through many of the stages of grief - so what next? How can you accept what has happened to you?

I've been emailing with a friend, Alice. She recently went through a divorce with her husband of seven years, they started dating and married young so really grew up together. It took her a long time to get over her first love. She spent a lot of time working on acceptance:

Sometimes I could only choose to accept being separated for about 15 minute intervals. To cope my mantra was 'I choose to accept that I'm separated, I don't like it, but I do accept it.

After I asked her more about what she actually did that helped her to accept the situation, she gave me this process.

You need to:

1. Identify the thing that is hardest to accept
2. Acknowledge that right now in this present moment its actually happening. (Concentrate on things that you actually know, rather than imagined wrongs, or foreseeable disasters). This is an act of staying in the present. (You cant regret the past or worry about the future). What is happening right now is actually really happening.
3. Acknowledge that you don't like it. Accepting that its happening is not the same as saying that you like the situation. Similar to how forgiveness is not saying that the wrong thing never happened - when forgiving you have to acknowledge that it really hurt, but you are also able to let go. So acknowledge that what is happening right now is not your first choice for how you wanted things to work out. In fact you might hate what is happening.
4. Look to see that you will be OK if you have to live with the worst possible thing. Just look and see, look and see. You will actually be OK. The sun will still come up tomorrow. Life goes on.

In her book Getting Past Your Breakup, Susan J Elliot explains that accepting the loss does not mean that you are necessarily happy or that you have forgotten or will never feel sadness again. She says:

It is a turning point signaling that the final stage of grief has begun. Acceptance is about understanding what has happened and that it cannot be changed.

We start to understand what this loss means to us, and start to reorganize our life to reflect this. It is at this stage you might make some life changes and start working towards you new life goals.

That first glimpse of acceptance will grow into a new outlook on life as you look outwards, and start enjoying things again. Finally Elliot says this about acceptance:

It's a very quiet thing, and comes in phases just like everything else. When you do find it, accept it and enjoy it.

It definitely does creep up on you, and it is a relief to find it has started making an appearance in your life.

The last thing that works for me is to do something - something that will make you realize you've broken up.

• Go with a friend or alone to one of your 'couple places'. 
  
• Go to a movie you might have gone to together, alone. 
  
• I have a friend who throws an annual ju-ju party where people throw mementos of past loves, or jobs, or projects (anything really that is over) on the fire, and then go on to celebrate the new.  Find your own ritual.
  

People have told me of other things that they have done to help realize it was over.  Some turned it into a positive thing by planning to do the things they couldn't do while in their relationship - month-long hikes, travel to countries that their partner didn't want to go to, or move back to their home town.

What about you?  What can you do to help you to accept your new reality?