The Sweetness of Heartbreak
#032 Gifts from Nashville
Dear Readers,
I found some old photos. Me, twenty-something. Freshly heartbroken. Doing what I love to resolve the ache. Kayaking.
In finding those photos, I felt the stirrings of two memories from the city where I began practicing adulting and peopling, and meeting the origins of this here newsletter title.
It all felt like a good time to share.
I hope you enjoy!
Icing Origins
The origins of my relationship with cake icing began in Nashville, Tennessee.
I’d moved to the city for graduate school immediately after undergrad—which is its own tale. And within two years I’d begun practicing MMA—mixed martial arts.
I had three senseis at the dojo: the owner, a Black guy and barber, married with kids; a White guy who’d trained in China and was a stunt double in Hollywood; and another White guy two generations older who was like a grandpa figure, gentle to chat with, but he could rip you up just as a Grizzly bear.
The owner, everyone’s primary sensei, informed me that my eventual black belt test would last five hours, testing my endurance, strength, basic to advanced kicks and punches, reaction time, and everything else in between.
I’d slowly been making my way through the ranks, and I knew that getting my black belt was going to require a lot out of me, and per my Virgo-sun tendencies, I wanted to be more than prepared. So, I hired a trainer some eighteen months in advance to make me stronger.
She was incredibly successful with me. At the peak of my strength I had shifted from some 30% body fat to 13%, meaning that I was a dense sack of muscle, capable of doing twenty pull-ups in a row, kicking for hours unfatigued, and doing pushups for days.
My trainer said one of the main tricks was to eat super clean during my bleeding days, when my body would purge out everything unnecessary.
But when you’re pushing your body hard like that, a few hours a day, something’s gonna give.
In women, what often happens with high intensity exercise is a surge in hunger. With men, the opposite occurs. This is all generalized, but for me, it was true. To combat my hunger surge I started referring to my body as a machine and I began eating six clean meals a day. But to pacify the loss of my favorite snacks and treats, and not lose morale, I needed a regular reward.
Enter Gigi’s Cupcakes.
The photos on the website don’t really do these things justice. If you’d have seen these cupcakes in person, at least way back in the mid to late-2000s era, you were looking at sometimes three layers of icing.
Each cupcake had a name, like: Lemon Dream Supreme, Peanut Butter Cup, Miss Princess, or Birthday Surprise.
I’d allow myself two cupcakes each week, which meant that I could still cut fat, build muscle strength, and maintain my endurance. I’d choose one day in the week to pick up both cupcakes, and I’d take my time devouring the soft, sweet layers of icing.
But sadly, after a year of all that icing and hard work to get strong, my sensei, heartbroken, cried during a final class as he let us know he could no longer keep the dojo open unless he raised his rates and he didn’t want to do that.
With that announcement at the tail end of my year of intense training, all of the effort I’d made for getting my black belt vanished.
Southern Comfort
As time went on, I really sank into the comforts of Nashville. Southern food. A whole brand new Southern accent (that I have since lost). In addition to cupcakes, and martial arts, Nashville also nurtured my love for kayaking.
For my birthday one year I wanted to share kayaking (and cupcakes) with a guy I’d been seeing. He was a pretty-boy and a bit of a lady’s man. Because we spent so much time together, I really believed he liked me.
But the plans I made for us to kayak on the weekend of my birthday, didn’t pan out. Out of nowhere this guy’s behavior sharply changed in ways that left me devastated. He didn’t pick up the phone when I called him to confirm. Or when I text him the address to meet me at the river.
Absolutely nothing.
So, I kept my birthday date with myself. Hopped in my car, and drove up to the Harpeth River. And I knew then that I would be moving on from him, even when I didn’t want to.
I could not paddle the hurt out of me.
My special day of kayaking, ruined by the funk of disappointment, left me with a saggy posture and inability to cheer up for hours. Then days. Then weeks. Then months. It’s difficult to shuck off that sort of treatment from a fellow human, especially one who I was beginning to trust.
At the end of my birthday journey down the river I was responsible for bringing the kayak up the rocks to the pickup crew, where the driver asked, “How was it?”
Pretending to be okay, I said something quick that would pass through his senses and let him think, She had a great time.
I scooted up and into the van in the first row just as a family, in tow with a Golden Retriever, hopped up inside too. The humans all filled the other rows, but their dog didn’t follow. Their dog plopped his head onto the tops of my feet, and the immediate understanding of the gesture almost made me burst into tears.
The dog’s owners apologized. Tried to get their dog to move. But this dog knew I was heartbroken or sad or some combination to such a degree that it defied its owner (I am a total sucker for such gestures).
In the moment, I remember how incredible it felt that this dog, a stranger, and of a different species adept at sensing the ache and disappointment in me, could offer so much tenderness.
I finally waved my hand and said that it was okay for the dog to stay there, resting on my feet. And for the ten or fifteen minute ride back up to the parking lot, this nameless Golden Retriever soothed the hurt in me on my birthday.
The Psycho-Spiritual Takeaway
A brief aside: This week I read an article by
who runs Marketing for Hippies, where I am only about a month in, and finding so much comfort on what it means to be in the working realm of hippies and hippy work—and how to communicate marketing messages ethically (and beautifully) so those seeking me out may find what I’m offering. I was not paid or asked to share these links from him but (I do not know this guy personally), I’ve just found his resources helpful and I usually can’t shut up about helpful things.In Hargrave’s article he references the astrologer Caroline Casey who says in a Sounds True episode (🎧), “The Trickster within us all, with a wave of the hand, turns the mirror into a window.”
In finding these photos, remembering such a fleeting, yet impactful moment of my life I was reminded—isn’t that what heartbreak is?
Isn’t heartbreak a visit with the Trickster—who reveals to us our own magical potential?
Isn’t heartbreak all at once a mirror and a window or a doorway? A portal and a threshold?
Whether the dojo closed prematurely and crushed my black belt dreams or a lady’s man disappears on my birthday long ago—the emotional condition I allowed myself to exist inside—for what I could make of these data points even in the midst of that felt sense of truly human grief—is where the potentiality of one’s unique magic exists.
I’ve had to work really hard to avoid slipping into the, “something is wrong with me” mantra that I was acculturated into believing.
It has required a team of practitioners—coaches, therapists, plants—to remind my soul to feel the grief, collect the data points, and craft it all into your next, sweetest, passageway.
🧁 Thank you for reading Icing on the Cake. In addition to subscribing, you can support voices in culture work and psycho-spirituality with a one-time donation/tip here. With your generosity I can continue delivering thoughtful and independent essays and stories.
Bless you. <3
Beautiful, Danver.