I’ve been writing about grief and loss for half of my life – books, essays, blog posts – and yet, I feel as if I am just beginning to grasp the importance of acceptance – some call it radical acceptance – as a tool for managing fear, loss, anger, and grief.

I love this topic, and my wonderful dogs always re-ignite it for me when they die, which if you know dogs, is often.

More and more, I find that radical acceptance is a part of me, and the more I understand it, the greater my awareness of it’s being profound.

Almost everything I write about grief and grieving seems to be controversial, I have learned,  at least to some people.

The subject seems to draw out a kind of Middle School spasm of name-calling.

I am continuously accused of not having enough empathy, or sympathy, or of being mean-spirited or cruel. Of denying my feelings, or posing as tough.

People assume I am telling them how to grieve, or implicitly criticizing them for the way they grieve, or not being sympathetic enough to their grief, no matter how many times I say I write only for myself and don’t tell others what to do or feel. We are all different, our differences are sacred, not heretic.

Radical acceptance is not about surrender or weakness, it describes the process of embracing with my total being what is happening now.

It challenges me to accept that I can’t control life, and I can not control others.

It means accepting myself as I am, no matter who or what I am.

Accepting the reality that I am not in control has not been easy for me, it takes discipline and persistence and practice to understand why it is that I react so strongly to things rather than understanding that I am often acting out of reality.

Radical acceptance does not mean I resign myself to mistreatment, cruelty or injustice. Quite the opposite. When I began to accept who I was, and what I could not control, I found that I was more able than ever to know myself, to find meaning and purpose for myself in the world, and thus to speak the truth.

To protect me.

When I write about my grieving process – and yes, I wrote only for myself, I don’t really need or seek the agreement or approval of anybody else – it means that I accept the universal reality of death, taxes, the rising cost of things, the fecklessness of politicians, the quirks and tics and oddities of friends, the drama of real families.

Being alive, wrote the philosopher Paul Tillich, means being in a body – a body separated from all other bodies

And being separated means being alone.

This is true of every living creature, but it is truer of man than any other creature. Man is not only alone, but he also knows that he is alone. He is not only going to die, but he also knows he is going to die.

I am going to die, and everyone I know, have ever loved, anyone I have ever met is going to die. I respect this about life, and I accept this about life. No one has it worse than me, at least not for long.

We are taught to hide from death and fantasize about life.

We are taught that money conscientiously hoarded and saved and invested will make us happy and secure, will give us a safe and protected life. Mostly, it enriches other people.

I’ve been working with the elderly for some years snow, and I have yet to meet a single one who agrees with the notion that money secured the life they wanted in the way they wanted.

Almost every single one has told me they wish they had done what they loved instead of what they were told was safe.

An old farmer told me he threw an insurance salesman out of his farmhouse when he said the old man needed a million dollars in the bank to retire safely. “Hell,” he said, “I’d rather shoot myself than do that.”

When people talk about death or seek to move forward with their lives, or forego the endless and grim rituals most religions bestow on death – elaborate wakes,  sacrifice, and mourning, ritual – they are almost accused of being uncaring, of lacking empathy. This ethos shuts down the discussions about death and grieving that we all need to heave.

This, of course, is yet another way in which we are intimidated into not thinking;  manipulated into spending our money or saving it for the profit of others.

I remember my mother and aunts grieving for days and weeks when they lost their husbands, an orgy of cooking and weeping, entertaining strangers and relatives past exhaustion, rendering their garments, covering up mirrors, days wracked with grief, baking and baking obscene amounts of food to feed the hungry mourners.

It was a painful thing for me to watch. There was no peace, no rest, no time to heal.

It seemed to me the dead were lost in a thoughtless orgy of emotion and obligation and exhaustion. I promised myself I would find another way to grieve.

I do not equate the length of grieving or the money I spent on health care, or the debt I incur with my love or Red or any dogs. I do not measure love and commitment by money. Neither do dogs, so far as we know.

I do not see the value for me in searching for sympathy and prolonging grief on Facebook or Twitter.

I will grieve as long as I have to, and not a day longer.

I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me, I am not sorry about my life.

My love for Red is not measured by how much money I spent to keep him alive, how many tears I shed for him.

My feeling for him is measured in the highest compliment I could pay any companion: I went on to live my life as fully and quickly as Ican.

If that seems uncaring or cold to other people, too bad. Go read something else.

Accepting life is liberating. People, dogs, flowers and animals will die, every single one of them. It is often sad, but often much more than that. I always think, well, I’m sorry I lost a friend but I am still here.

My life is waiting for me, every second of it.

I can get another dog, and I want one, and I better get moving because I am getting older.

Do not ask me how deeply I grieve or how sorry I am. Ask me how I intend to use my time, how I am living my life, what do I hope to accomplish.

After the fog of death comes the spark of life. One is wedded to the other, they are not different things, they are the same things. It is important to grieve. It is beautiful to heal.

Tara Brach, the author of the ground-breaking book Radical Acceptance, writes that “the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgment and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction.”

And with grieving, lament, and self-pity and anxiety, mostly about things we cannot foresee or change or control. When I think about all the time I was worrying about things I couldn’t alter or change, I could really grieve.

I’ve learned to separate and organize my feelings about life: things I can control things I can’t control.

It’s a question I ask myself all the time. I’m getting good at it.

I work on the former, I accept the latter and let go. I do not speak poorly of my life. I don’t bitch about the cost of things, or paying taxes, or kids today, or troubles in my family, or my macro-bank account.

We say we wish to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to experience the joy of life. Yet each day writes Brach,  we listen to the inner voices that keep our lives small and fearful.

For me, conventional notions of grieving offer me one of the great opportunities to learn from the battleground between the inner voices that keep us small,  and the liberation and meaning that comes with accepting every single thing about our lives.

Freedom comes from embracing and awakening to the eternal now, our day to day, minute-to-minute experiences.

I will never forget walking into a Quaker Memorial Service in Providence and listen to the joyous celebration of life as well as the sadness that follows a loss. I had just spent a week watching my relatives grieve.

I knew I had come home.

For me, grieving is a benchmark, a landmark opportunity to learn how to accept life, move forward and drink from the cup of life.

We are allowed to think about it differently. I will never be scolded or bullied out of that.

When we lose ourselves in their script, in the stories others have written for us, we lose touch with our reality, our actual experience. We enter someone else’s dream or dogma.

I respect and understand that this is not a common view or even a popular view.

If I could in some way ease the burdens of grief for other people, and wave my magic wand, I would be happy to do it. But that’s not for me to do.

I can’t control what other people feel, and I don’t ever want the power to do it.

I want to awaken from the trance.