A Little Bit a' Bitter Goes a Long Long Way

At the squealing, shuddering, slow-motion end of my last relationship, my then-partner looked at me with a mixture of what appeared to be disgust and disappointment, and remonstrated, "Oh Kate, don't be bitter." Immediately, I felt like a child being reprimanded for bad behavior, for indulging in a coarse, despicable emotion that had no place among the wise or the mature. I had coughed up a tight-throated comment, both snide and resigned for which I was being chastised.  Wishing to retain some semblance of self-respect, I gathered up the little wounding shards of my agony and sighed, weakly faking a smile, trying to make myself look brave.
    At first, for months, the thought repeated itself, "Kate, don't be bitter" and so I was not. Instead, I was awash in my own living colors.  I was vacant, raw, tremulous, a blur of myself.  I lost 15 pounds and still could not eat.  Bread turned to ash in my mouth, soup tasted like bile. An acquaintance casually told me not to worry about it. She said that I was too busy digesting the past, and resolving the present to take anything into my body.  She said that the feeling would pass, and that my appetite would return. But I felt as if something wasn't working.  In dealing with loss, I was forcing myself to be gentle; I was taking the blame; I was practicing compassion; I was actively understanding, but I was empty, edgeless, skinned.  I was raw and I felt ill.  It occurred to me that because I was having a hard time digesting the past, I couldn't savor the moment.  Intellectually, I knew that life was too short to be wasted.
      In an effort to return to a more balanced self, I began seeking the help of Naturopaths and healers because though part of my problem was my body, the other part appeared to be rooted in my emotions.  I went to acupuncture and was silently ministered to twice a week for two months.  I read about tinctures and supplements. I wanted my strength back and somewhere in my research I happened upon the uses, both modern and ancient, of bitters.  Immediately I took notice because I was still trying to ward off my own emotional bitterness. That bitters are used medicinally struck me as funny at first and then later as profound.
       In my studying, I learned that bitters have long been used in folk medicine to aid in digestion. From everything I read, it appeared that bitter foods might be the remedy to my diminished appetite thereby solving some of the physical symptoms of my malady. I found that mustard greens, radicchio, wormwood, endive, arugula, dandelion greens, chamomile tea, calendula flower, licorice root--all of these were part of the ancient food-wisdom associated with digestion.
       I read that, now, because so many modern-day diets are deficient in bitter foods, these important plants are prescribed as potent tinctures to remedy what more or less can be described as pain in the gut.  Bitter tinctures ostensibly allow people to make use of the food traveling through the intestine, to absorb what is useful and be rid of the rest by increasing the production of bile in the stomach, healthy acids, necessary for digestion.
       I began to think of my former relationship as a heavy meal full of the wrong kinds of food from which I was now sick.  I thought of my desire for some form of sweetness to finish it off (a sure sign that something is missing), and the terrible lack of satisfaction I felt. I thought of my body's own wisdom when, all those months ago, it turned to bitterness as a way of digesting hard facts. And so, I  have come to believe, bitterness has it's important place in our emotional lives, and it applies to all loss: Bitterness is sometimes necessary to digest indigestible emotions. Bitterness gives one the space to move on, to swallow that unthinkable thing and begin the slow work of chewing on the hard facts of our losses.
       It appears that early people knew something of the matters of moving on, of passing through agony of the gut by tasting a little bit of bitterness. It  seems right to me that the natural, external world should parallel the internal, that to pass through what is causing your emotional gut to wring itself out, to knot, might be the small dose of bitterness that allows you to say, "He wasn't worth it"; or "He's dead to me"; or to allow yourself to laugh that sardonic, hard, little laugh, that this might allow you to create space between yourself, and the hurt.
      Since the loss of my pregnancies, I have revisited the notion of bitterness, of its danger and it's usefulness. I have spoken to other women who are waging a battle against their own bitterness, or are trying desperately to hide it, or are being chastised for it. It occurs to me again with a sort of clarity: emotions are like ecosystems, they are beautiful and balanced when they are most diverse so, of course bitterness has it's place. But, you can't be only bitter. Too much of anything is poisonous, it robs the body (or the ecosystem), of its fine balance, its complexity.
     Even sweetness, a life of pure pleasure can lull a person into a sort of over-feasted torpor, a half-sleep that knows nothing but the desire to continue feeding.  Similarly, bitterness alone for too long will corrupt one's view of the world--it's true. But, experienced in small doses (as bitters are taken medicinally) acknowledged as part of the process, I believe a little bit of bitter can help heal, or at least help begin the process by making the indigestible digestible so that you can once again savor the sweetness of the world.

The Important One

Five weeks after I lost my second baby a woman who is a "Channeler" (one who makes contact with spirits or "guides") by trade, asked me if I wanted her to check in with my guides about why I had lost the babies.  My immediate, internal reaction was no, but I said instead, "Okay, sure." I don't know why I agreed. I don't know if it was because I have been trained to be polite, or whether I believed that being "open" meant that I was strong. It was complicated by the fact that this woman is a relation of sorts to my family and perhaps that is why I felt compelled or obligated to allow her to speak with me.

That said,  I knew enough to be aware that the thread of security, of acceptance, I was holding onto regarding the loss of my babies was the fragile and yet magnificently formed belief that my losses were not personal--that babies are lost not because we deserve loss, or have done something wrong but because life is a momentum, it is the sea and not the waves we come to understand as the vast kinetic energy of life; the sea is one great moving body and not a composite of separate shorelines or breaking waves. I had accepted the fact that, as part of nature, I too was bound to laws of expansion and contraction, sudden profound growth, and unexplainable diminishment. I was consoled by the fact that there is no meaning but the meaning that we make of our lives. I found kinship in the world, my lost babies like waves, like weather, like small seasons, not catastrophes or mishaps but part of all that is mysterious, cyclical and unknowable.  I don't mind mystery.  I abhor reduction. As I said, the belief was crystalline, but fragile, as I was still so vulnerable, so deeply sad.  I knew better than to expose myself to someone else's meaning-making, but I betrayed my own intuition.

On the appointed morning, five weeks after the loss of my second pregnancy, three days after agreeing to talk to the channeler but having no notion of what to expect, I sat in my car on a rain-drenched street holding my cell phone to my ear. At the scheduled time I received her phone call. She asked me a few questions regarding motherhood and my feelings about it and then told me that she had already checked in with my guides. I should have stopped her right there but I didn't. I sat in silence as she proceeded to read me a report of their communication. 

As one might guess, the report held plenty of reasons for my unsuccessful births, including rather horrific actions in my past life as well as my current, subconscious inability to forgive myself for those actions.  The result, she told me, was a belief I held without knowing it, that I don't feel worthy of motherhood.

Into the silence, I started sobbing. 

I wanted desperately to get off the phone but couldn't speak. I wanted to say that I had betrayed myself by agreeing to this phone call, but all I could do was choke out broken answers to her continued prompting. I felt complicit to my own violation and this felt worse than almost anything she could say. Why had I agreed to this? What good did I think would come from this? I hadn't wondered why I couldn't have babies. 

She continued to tell me that I could be good again if I could forgive myself, if I told myself I was worthy of motherhood. She asked me if I could do this important work.  Instead of hanging up I choked out a ragged answer like, "Sure, what is life for anyway?" and she heard my sarcasm and was not convinced. She pushed me further.  "You understand about reincarnation? You must keep your heart open. This is your chance to do the work," she told me. 

Fine, I said, Fine. Paralyzed, I felt like a trapped child, my mind shutting down until I could be free of the conversation.  Finally, still unconvinced, she sighed"Call me if you have any questions, if you need any help." 

Driving home I howled. My knuckles whitened gripping the the steering wheel. Over and over I repeated no, no, no as my heart worked to shut out one person's story of my loss. I fired my hypothetical "guides," should they exist, for "speaking" with anyone but me. If there is information pertinent to my soul's journey, then I will accept it only if it is accessible to me directly. If it is not, I assume it is not for me--all of this began burning through the ruptured center of my mind--a wild blaze.

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Later that day I attended an already scheduled acupuncture appointment.  I walked into the office fierce and clear with indignation searing my insides with what felt like white heat. This was a new kind of clarity.  I would not longer allow others offer information to me about my life--and certainly not gurus. I was Athena, fierce, and certain.

My lovely, gentle acupuncturist listened. Hmmm. Nodded. Commiserated. I relaxed.

"You have a lot of aggressive energy around this. Let's see if we can release it." Trusting her, I agreed. She stuck what felt like 20 needles down my spine and left me to rest. 

When she returned to remove the needles, I did feel different. I felt washed out, empty, dull, bleak, miserable.

I left the office exhausted, stripped of everything: my clarity, my peace of mind, my anger and my story. But I wanted my anger, I thought, and now it's gone. My anger had arisen to protect me I realized, a temporary shield to separate me from the unwanted information, from the reasoning of meaning-makers but I could not reinvent it, reignite it however I beckoned.

The trauma of listening to this narrative was cataclysmic and, no longer protected by my own rage, it seeped in, gas-like, silent and invisible.  My trust and acceptance, the purity of my sadness, was lost in spite of my best efforts to shut out the details of what I had been told. The vault of my heart closed, the heavy doors shutting on their dark hinges and only silence followed.

I have been in quiet rebellion since then, against the notion of deserving.  I have anger at the idea that deserving has anything to do with bearing a child and yet the notion seems pervasive.  I don't believe the notion of deserving at all, nonetheless, it is hard to be surrounded by so many people who want to explain unexplainable events, who want to give meaning to loss or tragedy. It takes great skill to shut out these narratives and to choose one's own. This challenge alone has has silenced me for months.  I have wanted to protect myself from those who would attempt to explain me to myself or ask me for a reason for my losses (do you think you weren't ready?).

As the months passed I tested myself by wondering, Well, if her story was true, could I live with it? What do I think about redemption? Do I think the universe is a system of checks and balances? How do I feel about "healers" offering their services unsolicited? What good do stories from supposed past lives do? Isn't there enough material from this life? Don't many of us struggle with themes of deserving? 


And finally, Am I strong enough to withstand accusation, real or fictitious and practice fidelity toward myself? My answer, ultimately, was yes.

Isn't is strange that believing something isn't enough? We must act faithfully towards our beliefs, we must reflect on them, question them, alter and finally affirm them. Believing, in the best sense, is active not static. Believing is not a resting place but a practice in self-knowing and world-knowing.

Spring comes. My heart begins, like the plants, to unfurl its leaves to reveal foliage and blossom, to beckon the bees.  The hurt ebbs away.  I am not angry nor do I feel fragile anymore.  Winter is good for that; it provides the heart dormancy, lets it be nourished in the blind darkness.

I am not bitter at other people nor have I been. I love seeing pregnant women and children.  I no longer find it strange that every third woman I see is ripely endowed with a round belly or carrying a beautiful child, but I am bitter about human limitations, lack of compassion, need for meaning-making. Have not the great travesties of history taught us that heinous crimes are not exacted because the victims were deserving? Have not terrible tragedies occurred that have no meaning, no lesson, besides the lesson of endurance?

I want to walk into the achingly bright world with wonder.  I want to see myself among the living, part of a spectrum of experience, free of what if, because, or any other conditional phrase of deserving. There is freedom out there in not knowing, in not needing to know, just ask the trees, the mountains, the rivers.

I want other women to know that we can't afford to let other people dictate our stories, or interpret the text for us.  We are our own best narrators--these are our stories to tell. It is our own work to do.  If we want the clarity of someone else's perspective, fine, but we must seek it and seek it with care and discernment. Afterall, aren't we are our own best sources of wisdom, lonely as that might be?

It cannot matter what others believe to be the source of our losses or our maladies.  Rather, we must decide what to make of the circumstances of our lives, choose what we wish to learn, be our own gurus, and as Polonius in Hamlet said, "To thine own self be true."

Fermaldahyde

Today the high school science class across the hall from the room where I was substitute teaching was dissecting stillborn piglets; they were 8 inches long and had little arm buds.  I wanted to throw up.