Acceptance in Later Life: Letting Go of the Life You Planned
When reality no longer matches the plan
If you are at a point in your life where things haven’t turned out the way you planned or wanted, it can be deeply unsettling. There is often a quiet shock that lingers long after the event itself — the sense that this wasn’t how it was meant to be.
I have battled for a long time with the fact that conventional retirement isn’t really an option for me. What I’ve come to realise, though, is that I’m not an anomaly. More and more people are reaching this so-called age of retirement either unable to stop working, unwilling to, or quietly questioning what retirement is even meant to look like now. In many ways, this realisation sits at the heart of Freedom in Later Life.
At my age, not many employers are willing to take me seriously enough to offer opportunities, regardless of experience. And so, as I often do, I return to teaching because there, age doesn’t seem to matter quite so much. With such a shortage of teachers, schools are often just grateful to recruit someone experienced who may actually stay.
What I struggled with for a long time wasn’t simply the practical reality of working later in life, but the gap between the life I thought I would be living by now and the one I actually am.
Returning to teaching when you’re already tired
But teaching is tough. I mean really tough.
And that’s not always down to the students. More often it’s everything else that gets added to the role. The marking, the meetings after a full day of teaching, the politics, the constant demands that require you to prove your worth even after decades in the profession. The expectations of senior leaders, parents, and the students themselves.
So here I am, back in the classroom again and not in the easiest school in the world.
Unlike when I first started teaching, I no longer return home to a busy house. Back then I had my family, and a husband who would have coffee ready, someone to talk the day through with. Now, it’s quiet when I get home. And that quiet took a long time to adjust to.
The quote that helped me see my life differently
Something rather unexpected has happened over the last year, and it’s captured best by this quote from Carl Jung:
“What you resist, not only persists but grows. What you accept, transforms.”
For the past decade, since my divorce and redundancy, I have been fighting against the story of my life.
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
I had reached a high point in my career as a national education advisor and was about to celebrate my 30-year wedding anniversary when everything went in a completely different direction. I’ve been angry, sad, and deeply resistant to accepting that this was my life, just as it was.
Looking back now, I can see that the resistance itself was exhausting me almost as much as the circumstances.
What happened when I stopped resisting
And then, over the last few months, something shifted.
I stopped fighting the story of my life.
I’ve got used to living alone and more than that, I’ve become extremely comfortable with it. Instead of loneliness, I’ve found a peace in the space I now have, a peace I never expected.
I have time to be myself again.
To do what I want, when I want.
I write. I read. I exercise.
And I have complete control of the remote control on the rare occasions I actually watch TV.
Why acceptance becomes so important later in life
There is something about getting older that sharpens things.
Not in a dramatic way, but in a quieter, more insistent one.
You become more aware of how much energy resistance takes. The constant replaying of what should have been, the comparisons, the bargaining with the past — all of it begins to feel heavier. Less abstract. More embodied.
Earlier in life, it’s often possible to outrun this discomfort by staying busy. By striving, building, pushing forward. Later on, that strategy stops working in quite the same way. The body knows. The mind circles. The quiet gets louder.
Acceptance becomes important not because life has narrowed, but because time has become more visible.
Continuing to live in opposition to your own reality starts to feel costly — emotionally, physically, and psychologically. And at some point, that cost outweighs the comfort of holding on to old stories.
Letting go of the life you planned doesn’t happen because you stop caring. It happens because you care enough to want to live what remains with some sense of honesty and peace.
How acceptance changed my work as a teacher
Living alone isn’t the only thing that seems to have transformed.
So has my teaching.
When I first took on this role a year ago, it was purely to pay the bills. I closed myself off from the students and the staff, telling myself, “It’s just a job. Come in, do your time, and go.”
But those kids weren’t having it.
They pushed. They charmed. They made their way in.
And as my relationship with the students grew, my desire to do better for them began to replace my anger, resentment, and that constant inner refrain of “I shouldn’t be here. It shouldn’t be like this.”
Looking back now, I can see that when I stopped resisting where I was, I also stopped resisting the people in front of me. And in that shift, I found a deeper sense of purpose in being where I was.
Acceptance is not resignation
When Jung talks about acceptance, he isn’t talking about resigning yourself to fate.
Acceptance is facing the reality of a situation as it is because in denial, nothing changes. We simply pour energy into resisting something that already exists.
For me, acceptance wasn’t about liking my life or pretending it was what I wanted. It was about stopping the constant argument I was having with it.
In mindfulness, we talk about turning towards difficulty rather than away from it. This is the first step, to be honest about what is, without judgement.
Acceptance needs self-compassion
There is another part of acceptance that feels important to name, especially later in life.
When we look back, acceptance isn’t always about what happened to us. Often it’s about what we didn’t do. The moments we didn’t speak up. The changes we sensed were needed but couldn’t quite make. The ways we feel we let ourselves down.
This is where acceptance can easily slide into self-criticism.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to judge earlier versions of ourselves harshly. To say I should have known better, I stayed too long, I didn’t act when I had the chance. But hindsight brings knowledge we simply didn’t have at the time.
Self-compassion asks us to pause and remember that we were making decisions with the tools, awareness, and resources we had then — not the ones we have now.
Acceptance, in this sense, isn’t about excusing everything or pretending it didn’t matter. It’s about turning towards what happened with honesty, without cruelty.
And from that place — not blame, but understanding — a different question begins to emerge.
Not why did I fail?
But what did I learn?
And what do I want to do differently now?
Acceptance as the beginning of transformation
Once we become clear about what we are struggling with, things often begin to shift, not because life suddenly changes, but because our perspective does.
It’s no coincidence that the 12-step program for addiction recovery begins with acceptance. The first step is about owning what is happening and naming it honestly, bringing something out of denial and into the light. In doing so, it begins to lose some of its power.
Once something is named and acknowledged, it can be worked with rather than fought against. That act of ownership becomes the starting point for recovery. Without it, nothing meaningful can move forward.
In my book, How Did I Get Here?, acceptance is one of the essential steps in letting go of the past.
Until we accept where we are, and the reality of our current situation, we can’t transform it into something more useful as we move forward.
Transformation doesn’t come through force.
It comes through a shift in attitude and perspective.
If you are in a difficult personal relationship, for example, you may feel disempowered because you believe there is nothing you can do. But once you look honestly at the situation and recognise that it isn’t healthy, the focus begins to move from the problem to the possibility of change.
What can you do?
What are you learning about yourself?
And how might old stories about who you are, and what you are capable of, be keeping you stuck?
Living with what is, rather than what should have been
Acceptance won’t give you the life you once imagined.
But it may give you something else — a way of living more honestly within the life you have.
I don’t know where this next chapter leads. But I do know that since I stopped resisting the story of my life, things have softened in unexpected ways.
And for now, that feels like enough.
If this resonated, you might like to stay with it a little longer. I share reflections like this, quietly and without pressure by email.
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