What makes it so hard to receive sometimes?

One answer is: We haven't imagined it yet.
If you can see it, you can receive it.

What about the things that we, in our young grief, stashed away deep, wrapped in our disappointment? Now it's only the disappointment that we can see. Receiving has become preposterous, near-unthinkable.

To unwrap that which we long to receive, we would have to touch the liquid pain of the disappointment we'd stashed away.

How might that go?
Maybe something like this:

I grant myself the pain of that disappointment now as part of my richness.

In knowing my disappointment, I receive more of myself - and more of humankind. I can be with people in their disappointment; I no longer have to wince away from their pain because it reminds me too vividly of mine.

In making space for my disappointment, I am re-discovering what I had wanted to receive.

I can now see disappointment *and* receiving. I can conceive of a more generous universe than the one I'd been dreaming inside me, a whole world within encapsulated in disappointment.

Receiving enough, I can tolerate moments of frustration. I can acknowledge them without despairing.

Now for the imagining part.
If you can see it, you can receive it.

Let's go there, with 'SO GOOD YET TRUE' on our banner. :)