Grief is Fermentation, and I’m Turning into Kimchi

A look inside the jar where I spent the last few months grieving for ambiguous loss.

Grieving is a process that resembles fermentation. Have you ever made your own sauerkraut? 

First, you pour a lot of salt and rub it into the cabbage leaves. You won’t normally eat cabbage with that much salt, but fermentation is a transformative process. The conditions are rough and intense at the beginning. The taste will be entirely different in the end, not to mention the wonderful nutrients that result from the work of invisible microorganisms. 

Another important key of the process is the absence of oxygen. The anaerobic environment provides the best conditions for beneficial microbes to work their magic. 

So, how is this similar to the transformative process of grieving? 

The transformative process of grieving

First, rubbing in the salt is like being stung by the raw truth of betrayal, loss, or whatever makes you grieve in the first place. You moan, you scream, you cry, yet nobody hears you or understands just how profoundly it hurts.

Then, you put all the ingredients in a jar and close it loosely with a lid or a cheese cloth — just loose enough to let out a little bit of carbon dioxide produced during fermentation.

Isolating yourself after a trauma, a permanent loss or an ambiguous loss¹ protects you from being further hurt by people who don’t truly understand the depth of your pain, or those who blame you for bringing on your own emotional injury. So when you leave behind the “oxygen,” or what you thought you couldn’t live without — all the old habits and external voices — you can focus on yourself, and truly feel into the myriads of intricate, complex and uncontrollable emotions swirling through your body.

But, you keep a tiny gap open on the door of your heart, in case you need to let out some steam, and in case a compassionate soul catches that and holds the space for you to vent.

Little by little, the cabbage gets used to the tight and warm environment in the jar, which allows the salt, the cabbage, and the microbes to mingle. Being distanced from external distractions, your soul starts to digest the gut punches, back stabs and thousands of papercuts that almost killed your desire to live. 

Your soul begins to metabolize the craziness of what happened to you. The emptiness of having lost the person you loved or you thought you loved the most. The loss of an imagined future together. And the existential loneliness of being left behind in the world all by yourself. The whole thing stings and stings a thousand times more. You deny it, you get angry at it, you try to bargain with it, and you lose hope and feel depressed.

Until one day, your cabbage changes its color, and everything tastes different.

Soaked in the salty brine, the cabbage turns sour. But it isn’t sour like vinegar. No. This isn’t a jar of store-bought pickled veggies that never went through a true fermentation process. It’s got a kind of sweetness hidden in the tang. And if you added gochugaru (Korean red pepper powder) and garlic in the beginning, you’ll get a piping hot taste and a pungent stink when you open the jar! 

Photo by nungning20 | DepositPhotos.com

Well, I didn’t set out to make kimchi, to be honest. But circumstances gave me such complex and rich ingredients that they turned me into kimchi. And so here I am.

I never expected to turn into kimchi

I didn’t welcome the extra doses of salt that sexual betrayal by an intimate partner gave me. I didn’t expect the stink from being lied to and gaslighted straight in my face without the blink of an eye. I couldn’t imagine the repetition of being deceived again and again even though I forgave and continued to love. Neither did I choose the burning hot spice that numbed my joy and enthusiasm for what I thought was the love of my life. But those were the ingredients I was dealt with, and so I took them all and put them in a jar. 

I didn’t know what the outcome would be. And I didn’t realize how lonely it felt to sit in the jar for months and months without touching oxygen. 

Luckily, I did leave the lid a bit loose, and hundreds of heads of cabbages sitting in their respective jars caught my bubbles and listened. They were my fellow “chumps” — an endearing term² that means to us the opposite of what it might sound to the lucky folks who have never experienced sexual betrayal in an established, supposedly monogamous relationship.

I like the word “chump”… because it’s a way of owning our own sweet stupidity. The way we attribute good intentions to everyone, our “love all the hurt away” super optimism. Our naiveté. And it’s also a way of owning our experience, taking a mild slur “chump” — and empowering it…. I was CHUMPED. That cheater must’ve thought I was an IDIOT to take that kind of bullshit.

~ Tracy Schorn, The Chump Lady

These are people in a support group who understand in their guts how it feels like to be betrayed after pouring their heart and soul out to their special person for years and even decades, only to have the proverbial rug pulled from under their feet.  

My fellow chumps let me release all my pent-up bubbles. I didn’t have to watch my language or manage my image to make sure I’m always walking on the high road. We laughed at the absurdity of the narcissists and psychopaths who messed up our lives and betrayed us to the highest degree. The humor we shared gave my cabbage such a delicious tang! Yes, this is the jeotgal made from fruit juice that became the sugar fueling the fermentation.

Emerging from the jar

Emerging from the jar, my first batch of kimchi is ready for sampling. Kimchi is an acquired taste. Not everyone can stand its distinct sourness, let alone the heat! 

My cabbage has lost its original people-pleasing sweet taste altogether. Its unabashed spiciness may repulse some people who prefer a milder taste. The interesting thing is, kimchi doesn’t care for everyone to like it. It knows its worth, and those who aren’t afraid to take a bit of heat in life will acquire the taste for it. They will, of course, enjoy its health benefits too. 

Kimchi contains gut-healthy probiotics, vitamins, antiinflammatory properties, and may even help you achieve a healthy weight. 

A person transformed by betrayal and deep grief may seem jaded and pulls no punches, but s/he knows all the red flags of a chronically lying narcissistic psychopath and how to finally draw healthy boundaries and stand up for her-/himself.

This kimchi is happy to meet you! I hope you enjoy this sampling. It’s a labor of grief.

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1. “Ambiguous loss is a person's profound sense of loss and sadness that is not associated with a death of a loved one. It can be a loss of emotional connection when a person's physical presence remains, or when that emotional connection remains but a physical connection is lost. Often, there isn't a sense of closure.”
”Unnamed pain: Coping with ambiguous loss” https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/coping-with-ambiguous-grief

2. “Yes I Am a Chump” by Tracy Schorn. https://www.chumplady.com/yes-i-am-a-chump/