Nothing Can Change Until You Accept It

Midlife transformation, acceptance, and the wisdom of the body

Have you ever read a line in a book, or seen a meme quotation, that JUMPED out as a deep TRUTH and spoke to your body, mind, and soul?

For me, when I read the quote “Nothing can change until you accept it” in Danielle LaPorte’s book How to Be Loving in 2023, I immediately realized something that stopped me in my tracks.

I had done everything but accept something that I deeply wanted to change.

The thing I couldn’t fix

At the time, I was suffering with a debilitating eye condition (that I still carry, but suffer less with now) that was wreaking havoc on my life. The condition, called Binocular Vision Dysfunction for those who care to know, made driving nearly impossible.

And for an independent, go-getter, hyper-self-sufficient person, it was a REAL challenge.

I tried a LOT of healing modalities: glasses with prisms, vision therapy, changing my eating habits, all kinds of woo-woo belief unblocking technologies, and psychic remedies.

I WANTED IT GONE.

The moment everything shifted

When I read that quote, I heard it as a clear invitation to take a step back.

To stop trying to fix it.
To stop trying to change it.
And to first ACCEPT it.

It sounds simple, but it was anything but.

I felt compassion for myself.
I grieved my old life of hopping and bopping around without a care.
I allowed myself tremendous grace.

And slowly, I accepted my limitation.

Believe it or not, I eventually got to a good place living with it, and I was able to drive at least short distances with relative ease.

The relapse

Then I had a relapse when I took a longer drive than usual, and landed back in the panic and despair of driving being nearly impossible again in 2025.

Slowly, reluctantly, and with even more acceptance, I allowed new solutions to come to me. And finally, by the grace of God, I found a doctor who understood my condition and was able to set me up with prism glasses that are actually right.

Driving is still not easy. I’m still in recovery, I would say. But it’s better than it was before.

And I’ve come to ACCEPT something else, too.

I might not ever be able to take road trips on my own.
I might have to rely on others to drive me on highway trips.

And I am open to healing that. But equally important, I’ve accepted that this is where I am right now.

An invitation for you

I share all of that as an invitation.

Look at something in your life that you’ve been white knuckling to change, and ask yourself:

Have I fully accepted it?

Or in all the solutioneering, have I rejected it, cast it aside as “bad” or “wrong,” and just wanted it to be done already?

Nothing the body does is by mistake

In my most recent menopause read, Age Like a Girl by Mindy Pelz, I came across another line that hit home for me:

“Nothing the body does is by mistake.”

I’m realizing in this phase of life, this hormone shift that completely rewires a woman’s brain, that even if what I’m experiencing is uncomfortable or undesirable, my body is not betraying me.

It is becoming new.

With my eyes, maybe I’m meant to see things differently at this stage of my journey.
Maybe it’s good for me to let go of my hyper-independent ways.
Maybe it’s time to be a passenger and not a driver.

Who knows.

I don’t even have to assign it a deeper meaning.

My responsibility is to welcome it, accept it, give it its rightful place in my life, and move forward.

A question to sit with

So I’ll ask you:

Might there be a step back into acceptance that you need to take?
Might there be a deeper truth emerging in the change that you’re resisting?
Might you be willing, with grace and surrender, to accept whatever is happening for you right now?

If this lands, I’d love to hear: what are you being asked to accept in this season of your life?