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Learning to Accept



Life is all about palliation. And palliation is about learning to accept. Learning to accept doesn't mean losing hope, or stopping trying. We, as humans, are here on earth to push boundaries. But learning to accept what is can enhance our perspective. It can benefit our outcome. Stopping trying to change everything, to mold it to our satisfaction, can yield unknown benefits. I have my gala apple trees as an example.


I planted two gala apple trees. At first they did well and then they didn't. Both contracted an illness called fire blight which made their top branches look like burnt-red dead wood and made their leaves wilt, darken, and curl up. I read about what to do. I researched it online. And most of the people giving advice said to cut off the dead branches, to salvage what one could. But I was reluctant to do so.


The palliative in me thought about the many patients I'd seen over the years who had not done well under the surgeon's knife: the patient with the two separate terminal wounds who was debrided inpatient and discharged with an even mightier coalesced wound; the nonagenarian who agreed to a surgery for a localized rectal cancer which left her missing a large chunk of her right buttock cheek - had she not had surgery she could have gone home with hospice and passed away there comfortably from slowly progressive cancer; instead she ended up needed to stay inpatient to die because of her incredible, sizeable cavitating wound; and the octogenarian who had a surgical resection of her neck and mandible for cancer and never recovered, staying in the surgical ICU to die with a gaping, oozing wound and being unable to talk or eat. These are just the tip of the iceberg.


But one man in one video said to leave things be. He showed the viewer a tree he had pruned to death, chasing cutting off the infected limbs, and one he'd left be. The one he'd left be was doing well - the carefully pruned one was dead. So I left my trees alone. Even when their burnt-red limbs were frustrating me, I had faith they'd take care of themselves if they could. It was better to let them figure out how to survive and overcome and keep an onslaught at bay than to try to "treat" them by inadvertently incapacitating them. I forced myself to accept the situation, literally accept the daily unsightly blight, and see and how things would go.


And lo and behold, my apple trees are growing. They've leafed out more and more, and are happy and thriving. The blight in their limbs is contained, via a line of demarcation appearing where the tree decided to create a stronghold of oppositional resistance. In accepting what was, as troublesome and niggling as the actuality felt, in not approaching decision-making with radical and blind destructive action, I ended up giving the situation space to heal, to morph, and to blossom.


Learning to accept, while initially feeling disempowering because it requires a calm acceptance of non or lesser action, can actually be the most empowering thing. Learning to accept is the antithesis to control which yields fascinating and unpredictable results.

1 Comment


This is such a beautiful post. Thank you so much. I will carry your gala apples with me and palliative metaphor in my heart. Hope you’re well!

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