I spent the afternoon dreading then talking to my counselor.  The interesting thing about acceptance is it is easy to accept the good parts of my life.  It is easy to accept the mundane parts of my life.  But the crusty-nasty-wish-that-never-happned parts are a bit more of a challenge.  My counselor challenged me to sit with the part that was disturbing me so deeply.  She asked me what would happen if I accepted that part of my life.  She then tossed out a question that totally changed my perspective, “What purpose or benefit do I get from what I am thinking and feeling?”  We are not discussing friendly thoughts here.  These are memories from deepest darkest corner.  Words tumbled around in my mind and rearranged themselves in a different order.  This is what I expect out of counseling.  I am blessed to have had 3 counselors that help me to rearrange my thoughts into a new understanding that helps me to inch forward towards healthier living.  I recommend finding a healthy counselor than can help rearrange thinking.

This process brings to mind the Japanese tradition of wabi-sabi, elevating imperfections to art.  Kintsugi, or golden joinery is the practice of repairing pots by placing gold in the broken places.  The link below gives a lovely description.

http://lainie.typepad.com/redthread/2009/03/gold-in-the-broken-places.html

The whole concept or repairing my broken parts with gold and enhancing my imperfections that make me uniquely me presents a new way to look at myself.