"Let me tell you the secret to healing–it’s learning the art and patience of acceptance. Accepting exactly where you, your life experiences, and how you feel in this world that is constantly changing and shifting. Many times we are trying to 'improve' ourself by not really truly feeling our pain. It feels overwhelming at times, but accept that you feel this way. You can’t truly be happy unless you free yourself from not feeling and this comes with accepting every single emotion you encounter on a daily basis: sadness, grief, joy, peace, love. None of them define you, they are simply getting you in touch with yourself on a deeper level. Grief and anxiety are teaching us what we need to let go. They are also showing you how much love you have inside of us. All of our emotions come and go–nothing is permanent. By learning the art of letting go you will discover peace. For peace is simply being present with exactly what is. By discovering peace you also learn to embrace happiness more and more, but happiness is also not permanent and it will come and go out of our life so we must be careful not to cling. When you begin to accept, you let go of notions that it should be a certain way. There’s no way it should be than what it is now. Accept that and then let it go. When fall comes and the leaves fall off trees they don’t cling their beautiful golden leaves, they let go and fall to the ground. They know winter is coming and they get ready to be with the stillness for the next coming months. They let go one leaf at a time. Nature has a lot to teach us if we take a minute to simply observe the changing patterns around us. It’s never the same–we are constantly changing and so is everything around us. It’s not suppose to stay the same and we must learn to accept this process for what it is. When we can embrace ourself for exactly where we are in life we discover what it means to live in this body. We no longer have to run away, we can sit in the stillness of silence knowing that it’s okay not to be okay. Knowing that our leaves are changing and falling and we must learn to courageously let go so we open up room for something new to come into our life." - Adam O.