I Accept deals with the difficult coming of age story of a young woman who’s first memory of how she got where she is right now is the day her mother held her and told her that her father had left. Sitting in her therapist’s office looking at all of the perfectly placed things she tries to find the moments of displacement she has lived through. Through the telling of her story she reflects on the loss of her father from her life being the creation of a whole within her that she spent most of her teenage years trying to fill. She tried filling it with drinking, drugs and other men. There is a power that comes from her realization that through all of her soul searching and all of the bad decisions and drunken nights that her mother was always there ready and waiting to once again pick her up, hold her, and try her best to make sure that she had the resources to change her life. It is in her moment of acceptance that she realizes that she made some bad choices but she owns them and has made the decision to make the first step toward getting her life in order. She has the power to stand in reflection of herself and say, “I Accept.”
PR- I Accept
I was seven years old when my mother came into my bedroom and lay next to me. She wrapped her arms around me so tight on that Saturday morning I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what it was. Something was different I slid my hand on her face and said, “Good morning Momma, are we going to make weekend happy pancakes with Daddy?” It took a minute for her to look down at me. My head had sunk into her chest, her heart was beating fast and I could feel her shaking, as I lay nestled in my safe place. Eventually she looked down to me, I wondered why she was crying but I was afraid to ask. Later that morning after pancakes and orange juice she sat me on the couch in the living room, wrapped my favorite blanket around me and began to explain something that was a little too adult for my mind at the time. By the end of the day I realized that my father was gone and he wasn’t coming back. “Your father felt like we would have a happier life without him, and I’ll try to give that to you Sweet Pea. I’ll do my best,” she said to me. Now as I sit in the lobby of my therapists office looking at the paintings on the walls, and the perfectly arranged magazines on the table I realized how I got there, it was that day. Had he not left I wouldn’t have started searching. Not for him but for his love. For the acceptance I felt I could only get from a man, more often than not finding what I thought was love on the receiving end of a fist. Acceptance is the first step. I accept.