When Life Gives You Lemons: On Bitterness, Beauty, and the Choice to Rise

Artwork: An Marke

There are seasons in life when all we are handed is what we did not ask for. Not the gold of fulfillment or the warmth of recognition, but something sour, raw, and unformed—a harsh gift wrapped in silence. There are days when life places into our open palms something so sharp that we almost cannot hold it. The death of a dream. A betrayal that cracks the spine of trust. A sickness that lingers like a shadow. A silence where there once was song. We stand in the ruins of what once was familiar, and we are forced to confront not only the loss before us, but the strange emptiness that follows it.

It is in such moments that we face a quiet crossroad—not visible to the eye, but known to the soul. The world may not see it, but deep within, a question has been placed like a stone in the center of our being: What now will you do with this?

This is not a question of blame or fault. It is not about who caused the wound or whether the pain was deserved. It is a question of response, of inner freedom. And in truth, this is the holiest space in the architecture of the soul—the space between what happens to us and how we choose to meet it. Viktor Frankl once wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” That space is sacred. That space is where our real life is born.

Bitterness often arrives first. It is fast, seductive, and deceptively comforting. It seems to offer safety—to fold into oneself and trust no more, to harden against further pain, to retreat behind the sharp logic of cynicism. Bitterness feels like protection, like a wall we build to survive. But what we forget is that bitterness doesn’t just keep others out—it also keeps us in. It dulls the light from within. It calcifies the heart. What began as a shield becomes a prison.

And so we are left with the deeper choice—not one we make once, but again and again over time. Do I become what hurt me? Do I carry this weight as poison in my blood, letting it seep into all I do? Or do I take this bitterness, this unwanted fruit, and begin the slow alchemy of transformation?

There is an old saying—“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” And though we often brush it aside as simple or sweet, there is a wild wisdom buried in it. Life will hand us lemons. Life will offer us what is sour, what is stinging, what we never would have chosen. But what happens next is the miracle. Not in the pain itself, but in what the soul dares to do with it. The real art is not in avoiding bitterness—but in not becoming it. The real triumph is not in being untouched by hardship, but in being touched and still choosing tenderness.

Leonard Cohen once wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” And perhaps, if we look gently enough, we may discover that it’s also how the soul gets out. Through the cracks in our certainty. Through the wounds we thought would undo us. Through the places where life brought us to our knees and whispered, You cannot go on as before. You must become more now.

The work of rising is not always dramatic. It is often quiet, private, even invisible. It may look like a deep breath in the middle of the night. Like saying no when your whole body is afraid. Like saying yes when you have every reason not to trust again. It may look like forgiving someone who will never apologize. Or allowing yourself to grieve someone who is still alive but no longer present in the way your soul longs for.

There is courage in this. A quiet kind of courage. A daily, sacred bravery that rarely gets noticed—but changes everything. To rise, in this way, is to choose to become more human, not less. It is to deepen your roots, even in dry seasons. It is to speak kindly to yourself when the world has gone silent. It is to believe that your story does not end with suffering, that there is still sweetness ahead, even if you cannot taste it yet.

The poet Rilke once said, “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” This is the gentle endurance of the soul—the trust that even the most bitter chapter belongs to a larger book of grace. That even what you thought would break you has something to teach you. That the lemons in your hand might one day feed someone else’s thirst. That your sorrow might become someone else’s shelter.

And so you begin the work—not of erasing your pain, but of weaving it into something new. You do not pretend that the bitterness is not there. You do not force joy where sorrow is still sacred. But you allow yourself the possibility that something beautiful may yet grow in the soil of suffering. That the heart, even broken, still knows how to bloom. That love, even wounded, still knows how to give. That your life is not a tragedy, but a turning. A rising. A beginning, again and again.

And if one day you look back and see how far you have come—not through grand victories, but through small, faithful choices—then you will know that the real miracle was never in avoiding the sourness, but in becoming someone sweet in spite of it. You will know that what life gave you did not define you. What defined you was how you chose to rise.

And so, may you rise—not hardened, but softened. Not embittered, but wise. May you be like the wild lemon tree that bears fruit even in dry soil. May your life become not a complaint, but a gift. And may your soul remember, in the quiet places, that it was never what happened to you that made you who you are. It was what you did with it. And you, dear one, have chosen to rise.

All my Love and Light,
An