The Bittersweet Bits

This is a truth that is slowing sinking deeper into my heart, that the most content life lies in holding the happy and the hard emotions in the same space.

I don't know if it's the menopause memory loss or it was just that long ago, but I can't remember when I first came across this concept, that I could feel two opposing ways at the same time, but I know it shocked me and took me quite awhile for that reality to set it. After all, I had been the one who barely made room for any hard feelings period, never mind letting them share space in my heart and mind with the happy, rose-coloured feelings I worked hard to steep myself in. Yet, the Divine had other plans for this stubbornly optimistic woman chasing rainbows.

Not unlike most of the lessons I've learned in life, it washed over me in waves.

It was like a gentle lapping at first, just enough to tickle the toes and interest. Gradually it's more constant ebb and flow began shifting the sands that I was standing on, no longer feeling fully stable planted in a solely positive outlook. Finally the strength of it's tide was more than I could withstand, and it pulled me into it's depths completely. Each wave washed away the façade of what I had wanted to feel, which were merely shallow etchings not meant to have permanence in my life.

The first lesson I learned was that what I had been calling negative emotions was a misnomer, they were not bad at all. Emotions are like indicator lights on a car dashboard, each one has a purpose to guide you to a reaction. Those emotions I had been listing under the umbrella of 'negative' were blinking lights to tell me there were problems I wasn't dealing with in a healthy way. I was uncomfortable for a reason. I was frustrated for a reason. I was angry for a reason. I was grieving for a reason. I was hurt for a reason. And those reasons would continue to happen if I ignored all my internal blinking lights.

Once I became comfortable with actually allowing myself to feel hard feelings, it still took me a long time to embrace their role in my mental & emotional health. They showed me problems in my relationships, my expectations, my self-perception, and the list goes on, yet my upbringing wouldn't let me focus on them long enough to honour them or deal with them. I was taught not to complain, to always forgive, to always be grateful, turn the other cheek, and put others needs ahead of my own. There are seeds of truth to those adages, but they can't be blanket statements over every situation.

Yes, gratitude does have incredibly positive effects on our minds, it helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build resilience and strengthen relationships. However, many of us have been taught a toxic kind of positivity, an extreme appreciativeness which dismisses the reality of accompanying 'indicator light' emotions, which are not meant to feel good. They are there to create discomfort so that change takes place. Toxic positivity also responds to distress with false reassurances rather than empathy, and we've long learned that platitudes and candy-coated sentiments help nobody. It actually does more harm than the good it's pushing, causing us to become disconnected from reality, everything is not in fact always positive.

The benefits of the bittersweet

It's no surprise I used to hate the word bittersweet. And I don't use the word hate lightly. Hate, after all, used to be a negative emotion. I just thought in more black & white terms back then, if it's sweet it's sweet, it can't also be bitter, or hard, or upsetting. Or at least, through my rose-coloured glasses I thought, it should not be.

But as I began to absorb and incorporate the truth of 'feeling all the feels', I began to see the truth behind the word bittersweet. And I worked to embrace finding more bittersweet in my life. I intentionally practiced holding space for all the emotions trying to get my attention, especially where I'd done them a disservice in the past. When hard things happened, I resisted avoiding or glossing over the challenging emotions that came with. When enjoying fellowship with friends, I worked at believing I wasn't spoiling the pleasantness if I was honest about going through something difficult. I found my highs and lows balancing out, neither extreme gripping me like they used to. This more even keel of reality motivated me to begin to seek out more practices that could proactively help me embrace & express the emotions guiding me to healthier thoughts and actions.

This is when I was also deep diving into how art can also help, in that same vein of 'no holds barred' open expression. Through a variety of concepts and practices I found in different art books, I pieced together something I call Bittersweet Bits. Bittersweet Bits are moments of our day we choose to reflect on and take a balanced view of, beginning with reflecting on what we can be grateful for from an experience or situation, but then also acknowledging what was hard about that moment. The word bittersweet is the epitome of the concept that something can be two things at once, a moment can be sweet at the same time as it is bitter, and there is space for both to be held and honored.

More than a year after I coined this term and started incorporating how I could use it in the art journaling courses I was planning, I started seeing more of the world embracing the benefits of the bittersweet. One of my new favorite blogs (or podcast if you'd rather listen) that deals with loss & grief wrote this post with an excellent take on the importance and prevalence of the bittersweet in life. It was really enlightening about how the bittersweet is inescapable and also beautiful. And her post led me to a book of the same title, Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist, that had a perfect quote about it.

"Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a moment of lightness on even the darkest of nights." ~ Shauna Niequist

Now these were terms I had long resonated with. Long before infertility, or even before meeting my husband, there was a relationship I thought had broke me, but God had revealed His light in that darkness, and showed me the beauty in me that had been amplified from being broken in that way. I had learned to seek out joy in all circumstances, searching for the light trying to get through those cracks. Or as psychology now calls them, glimmers amongst my triggers. This created a resilience in me, which really came through for me during the hardest moments of loss in motherhood, and all the pieces of the puzzle were coming together as I realized Bittersweet Bits were just a new iteration of that practice I had already been working on for years.

Yet another wave pulling me deeper into the truth. Good thing I love the ocean!