Bittersweet
What blooms when the weeds are stripped away
I was an early devotee of Marie Kondo and the art of letting go. I read her books, watched her Netflix show, and threw away letters from old boyfriends (after thanking them for their service). I train my children to cull their closets. I am overzealous about throwing away leftovers. Making space for what matters? I thought I had it figured out.
Then we moved into a house with a yard and a garden. And also, weeds.
Specifically, oriental bittersweet. Its twisting vine and bright green leaves were scaling the walls of my garden and spreading across the ground of the empty lot nearby. When I dug down to find the roots, some of them were an inch thick.
Once I started seeing it, it was everywhere. In our yard. On walks. Infiltrating the laurel near my grandparents’ grave stones. And once I started attacking it, I couldn’t stop. It’s much more physical than cleaning out a closet! It took heaving, digging, and plenty of swearing.
As I worked, I thought about how depression can wrap around a person and threaten to choke their inner light, how hard it can be to reach the roots. I grieved for my family members who live with this.
Near the garden, I found that the vines had wrapped themselves around a few small trees. I stripped off as much as I could, not sure whether they would survive.
A few weeks later, I looked out my office window to see heart-shaped leaves on one of the trees I’d freed. And a few weeks after that, these extraordinary flowers!
When I shared this story with my college roommates, one of them started crying. “When I weed,” she said, “I think of how sad it was that I was pulled out of a home where I felt safe and loved as a child.”
We sat with that.
Now I can’t pass bittersweet without stopping to rip it out. Not just in my garden, but in my calendar, my children’s schedules, my own expectations. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is make space for what wants to bloom.
If transformation is on your mind, you might also love Imaginal Cells — about the uncomfortable mush before the butterfly.
🕊️
SAM
Thank you! The metaphor of weeding to clear the way for beautiful growth really resonated with me - both personally and professionally. It captures so powerfully the courage, effort, and TIME it takes to remove what no longer serves us, even when it is familiar because we have learned to just keep moving forward despite it! In our work, and in our own lives, that process of "clearing space" can feel daunting and uncomfortable, yet it is precisely where growth and transformation begin. Thank you for reminding us that tending to what is beneath the surface is an act of both discipline and HOPE.
Your essay serves as a beautiful metaphor for what ails us—stripping away the weeds wrapped around our hearts, lungs, and other organs to free them to work at their best. So poignant, and a lifelong worthwhile undertaking.