What I Wish People Knew About Acceptance

Feeling allowed to exist just as you are is a privilege not many people have.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Acceptance is a thing you can give someone, including yourself, when all else fails. Because of the acceptance someone doesn’t get growing up it can be a battle to accept parts of themselves when they are adults.

Acceptance is a gift. It’s not something that needs to be earner or dangled in front of people to coax them into the behaviors you want.

That is not acceptance but dominance.

Feeling allowed to exist just as you are is a privilege not many people have. And it is obvious that a lot of people don’t realize that. They think that acceptance is something they don’t need to be apart of, but we all need to be apart of accepting every aspect of ourselves and our greater human community.

Think about the times you’ve tried to push away those things in yourself you don’t like. You feel like someone has wrecked your home, your center, the safe place you kept since you needed a safe place.

Is that what you want someone else to feel? Especially someone you love?

In love between us—the growing queer many—acceptance is rare. Many of us learned to love in the shadows, with acceptance as a wet dream — an illusion that was many times shattered.

If you take a chance at intimacy, platonic or romantic, with one of us, let us be just who we are.

Exist in the moments when we are quiet and alone because that’s where our home is. Pushing past what we know about secrets and lies, is the truth of love in the salvation of acceptance.

If you can’t accept something, then listen to it, learn it, and leave it for someone else.

Aigner Loren Wilson is a queer Black SFWA, HWA, and Codex writer. Her work has appeared in Arsenika, Terraform, Rue Morgue, and more. She was listed on the honors list for the Otherwise Fellowship award for 2019. She also writes or edits for Strange Horizons, Nightlight Horror Podcast, Oly Arts, Discover Pods, and more. She offers a writing craft newsletter to people who want to become better writers and publish quality pieces.