Come to grips

Come to grips

Today’s phrase is “come to grips.” Earlier in the show, you heard that the mayor of Humboldt said that it will take years for the community to come to grips with the tragedy that struck his hometown hockey team.

To come to grips with something means to fully understand it, to accept it. We generally use it to describe the process of understanding and coping with a difficult or problematic situation. By saying what he did, the mayor means that it will take years for the people in the town to fully accept and understand what happened.

Here’s a good example. Do you remember the 2016 election in the United States? Everyone expected Hillary Clinton to win. On election night, her supporters were ready to throw a big party to celebrate the first female president of the United States. When it became clear that she was not going to win, her supporters had to come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump had actually beaten Hillary Clinton. It took many people a long time to come to grips with the result of the election. They were just in shock for so long.

What have you had to come to grips with lately? Have you been in a situation where you’ve had to accept something that’s not ideal? I recently had three very hard months at work. I was doing a really big project and, of course, I work on the podcast in my spare time. I had to come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t going to have a lot of free time during those months. Faced with a lot of work and other commitments, I had to come to grips with the fact that I wouldn’t have a lot of free time. I did, and I got through that hard project.

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We have a lot of listeners in Mexico, and probably many of you in the United States have family ties to Mexico—if that’s you, you’ll want to listen on Monday when we’ll talk about all the evidence the prosecution wants to bring in the El Chapo trial that will take place in September. That’s Monday on Plain English—don’t miss it.