I got a firm no this past month. It felt pretty big. Not something that I was super set on doing, but the no still felt…personal. It hurt. The strange thing was, I was expecting it. I knew the no answer was going to be coming that week. Earlier on in the waiting, I had felt more confident that I would get a yes, but as the days went by, I began to wonder, and I began to see and hear different signs. I kept remembering stories and times when other people had heard nos and it meant yes to something else. I found myself in conversations with people pointing out that sometimes no can be a blessing in disguise. Yet, still, it stung.

Listen, I am a lemonade girl. Not that I drink tons of the sweet stuff, but the idea of making lemonade appeals to me on many levels. First of all, on the surface, if you can add sugar to it and serve it to guests, I am going to love it–it is just how I roll. However, on a deeper level, If you can take something (arguably about lemons here) not so great. evaluate it as a raw ingredient and then and transform it into something people love, then who wouldn’t love that. Who wouldn’t want to be that sort of person? If you start to hand me lemons (life lessons here, not actual lemons), I instinctively start casting about for what I can do with them. Similarly, if you show me some clouds, I will strain my eyes, squint just so, and twist upside down until I can find that silver lining, even if it is barely perceptible.

I am not sure if it was an innate characteristic I was born with, or if it was something that I nurtured or was instructed in. I can clearly remember a Garrison Keillor short story that my sister and I listened to in “News from Lake Wobegon,” the “Summer” cassette. It was probably our favorite of all his stories we listened to on road trips, and along with a lovely title, Tomato Butt, it included the lines “Make the best of it. Life is what you make it.” Even delivered in Garrison Keillor’s characteristic dry humor and deadpan, it resonated, and I can still hear it clear today. I like those words. I think they are the truth.

I wouldn’t trade this basic optimistic idealism within me for something else. I like it, and it is probably why that line still stands out to me. However, I can’t help but wonder if I don’t rush the process a bit and refuse to sit with the lemons as just lemons for a while. I am not really talking about wallowing here. I am talking about acknowledging the lemons and just letting them be lemons for a while. Yep, those are lemons. Big ones. Quite a few too.

It’s in the denial of the lemons that I think I tend to get into trouble. I try to find the lemonade before I have fully evaluated the lemons. I’m afraid at the end of the day, it is a desire for control, wrapped up in the socially acceptable trappings of “being positive.” I also wonder if I am shortchanging the process a bit by trying to turn it into something else before it even was. There is a disingenuousness to that approach that just no longer felt right.

So I sat with my no and my hurt, and what do you know? The sour feeling gradually receded without any heroics on my part. I didn’t have to twist myself into crazy shapes explaining why it was a good thing or act like a frenetic “As Seen on TV” hawker selling myself (and anyone within earshot) the lemonade of it all. Even more surprising. it was a huge relief to not feel like I was responsible for instantly making it all okay. Like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Ceding the illusion of control allowed me to lay down a burden I didn’t even know I was exhausted from carrying. Being positive and optimistic, it turned out, wasn’t about denying it outright. It was about being open to feeling the disappointment and allowing it to be what it would be and then, maybe, making something positive out of it, or maybe just turning to something else. I am not sure if I can really fully explain how revolutionary that felt, despite just being a relatively small shift. Truthfully, I don’t know if there will be more positive (beyond my “aha moment”) to come out of this no, but I am open to it if there is and open to it if there isn’t. Until then, there is always bread to be made and cinnamon to be swirled, and that is more than enough.