吃苦 (chīkǔ) / for amara

I was four months pregnant when I decided to start this project. I am six months and one week pregnant as I draft this piece. 

It will be a baby girl.

So far, she seems to like the taste of dates and pickles. Kosher dill pickles, only. Any other kind makes me sick. She also likes to kick around 10:30 p.m.—rapid fire kicks, like a character in a Street Fighter game.

Her name will be Amara.
At least, I hope she will be. 

I'm glad this project won’t launch until (hopefully) we have a healthy, happy baby in our arms. A sweet baby girl who likes dates and pickles, with a name of Amara.

Amara can mean many things — it is a multicultural name of many origins. It can mean “grace” in Igbo; “immortal” in Sanskrit; “to love” in Spanish. Most commonly known, Amara means "eternal" or “everlasting" in Latin. In Italian, it means "bitter."

We chose Amara for her name — with its kaleidoscope of meanings, so that she can choose the meaning that resonates most for her. And as her parents, we can choose our own meanings too.

I used the Latin meaning to sway my husband. But what drew me to this name is the secondary, Italian meaning.

I had to scroll quite a bit to unearth the translation that Amara means “bitter” in Italian–you won’t find that translation on baby name lists or mommy blogs. I assume that’s because most moms don’t want their child to be known as bitter. 

I do.

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There is a phrase in Chinese called 吃苦 (chī kǔ).

吃 (chī) = to eat
苦 (kǔ) = bitter, difficult, painful, hard

The character 吃 (chī) is a verb and its literal meaning is "to eat." In this context, it means "to endure" or "to undergo."

As for 苦 (kǔ), other definitions include hardship and suffering. If you remember, this 苦 (kǔ) is also part of the characters for an earlier piece.

Literally, the two characters mean to "eat bitterness." The figurative translation means to "endure hardship."

In ancient Chinese culture, the concept of "吃苦" was a virtue. You’ll hear parents say about their children: 他很能吃苦 (tā hěn néng chīkǔ).

Direct translation, “They can really eat bitterness.”

What it really means: “They can endure hardship. They know how to work hard.” More dramatically, it means “they know how to suffer.”

If we were to simplify it down, I like to think it means resilience. 

That we can rise through resilience.

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It’s been almost a year to the T since this first draft, as I edit the original and prepare to publish.

Baby girl is here now. Today, she’s eaten yogurt, scrambled eggs, and as many vegetables that we can pile on her plate for her little hands to grab. No dates or pickles yet, those will come later.

She’s healthy, happy, and growing. Oh how much she has grown; both inside my belly and out. And how much she has yet to grow, still.

Now that she is here, I am reminded of the meaning behind her name more and more every day, and my own wish for her, as her mother.

Amara. Bitter. 吃苦.

I want her to be able to eat bitterness, to 吃苦 (chī kǔ).
To build resilience.

I don’t want her to have too easy of a life. 

My wish is for her to understand bitterness. To clarify, I don't want her to suffer. More than anything, I want her to be happy. And happiness, as any productivity guru will tell you, is not a place but a state of being.

While I cannot dispel the same wisdom a guru can, I’ve learned through my own whirlwind spectacle of human existence that happiness and sorrow move within us “as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.”¹

And the best way to process sorrow, and return to happiness, is through resilience.

I want her to understand what hardship looks like. What failure feels like. What tears taste like. What a heavy heart can weigh like.

So that when she does experience these hard emotions, hard feelings, hard tears she knows she can, and how, to transcend them.

Because when things inevitably fall apart, she’ll know that she too, can rebuild them. 

After all, life is full of adversity. Inexplicable sorrows await us all, there to weigh us down.

How will we rise up against it?

this one’s for you, baby girl

1. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet