“The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins. ”
In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson defines surrender as “the decision to stop fighting the world, and to start loving it instead.” When I surrendered to the idea that I was a victim of depression my life started to change. It is so easy to fall prey to your circumstance, to believe that you cannot change your situation. Although many times we cannot change the illness, the hardship, or whatever else life hands us, we always have a choice in how we react. I was prisoner to my illness for far too many years and when that mentality continued to bring me further from freedom, I knew things had to change. Surrendering was not giving up on life but letting go of certain ideas and practices that were causing more harm than good. Letting go both of “coping” skills that were actually not helping me cope at all and the idea that life was supposed to look a certain way.
What do you imagine when you think of the word surrender? To cease resistance, to give up, to let go? Does the word seem like an act of courage or weakness?