I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag

by Jennifer Gilbert

  After the ceremony the band played “At Last.” Bennett had finally got his girl.

  We’d rented out Lutèce for a five-course dinner paired with wines, and each person was given an orchid in a color that matched the orchid on the table where they’d be sitting. The first course was foie gras with chocolate sauce—an homage to Bennett’s dessert-first philosophy—and my additional surprise to Bennett was that our wedding cake was constructed to look like a gorgeous orchid plant. We had an open mike in case anyone wanted to say something, and by the end of the evening there were dozens of speeches.

  The following weekend, our tiny secret wedding was featured as the huge profile in the “Vows” column in the New York Times Style section. Can you blame me? Once a wedding planner, always a wedding planner. And it was a fabulous wedding.

  Bennett had seen me at my worst, and he’d stuck around anyway. For years I’d said no, nope, never going to happen. I struggled and I resisted, but love won out over doubt and fear. It took nine years, but in the end, he was the one. Millions, billions, trillions.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Something Is Happening

  The first year of our marriage was a rocky road. I still couldn’t quite believe that this wonderful new life I had wasn’t just a temporary thing. Maybe, I told myself, Bennett was just in love with an idea of me? Maybe now that I was living with him day in and day out, he’d see the real me—and then buyer’s remorse would kick in? I kept throwing my old feelings of unworthiness in the way of our happiness, constantly testing his love before I could believe that it was real and permanent.

  Just as my commitment anxieties didn’t magically disappear once I kissed Bennett the first time, my eating issues didn’t simply dissolve once I was in a stable relationship. Bennett loved good food and great wine, and he knew how much I loved them, too. So it made him sad that I just couldn’t let myself indulge those desires. While he ate his chocolate soufflés, I kept eating my usual five foods. I had proven myself worthy in so many spheres of my life, and shed so many of my layers, but my food denial was my last security blanket, and I held on to it for dear life.

  Bennett knew that I relaxed my eating regimen on my birthday, so he’d say, “Let’s just pretend today’s your birthday.” But even when I did give in and eat something that I loved, then I’d berate myself the next day. I’d do penance by exercising to exhaustion. I’d look in the mirror and say the nastiest things to myself. If Bennett overheard me, he’d say, “Hey, don’t say that stuff about my wife.” He’d cringe when I looked at my fit body and called myself fat. In frustration and sadness, he’d say, “Doesn’t my opinion of you count?” But telling me to stop hating myself was like telling a chain smoker to stop smoking. If only it were that easy.

  For six years I didn’t get my period, I had very little body fat, and I was proud of it. I thought menstruating was girly and inconvenient. I’d done a lot of bleeding in my life already, and it felt powerful to be able to just stop it. But during all those years of withholding food and exercising my body into submission, it never once occurred to me that all of my self-control would culminate in the worst kind of helplessness.

  Prior to the attack I’d wanted a big family—after the attack, of course, that dream got put on the farthest back burner. But marrying Bennett meant that I could actually make that dream come true. The problem was that I harbored irrational, illogical fears about having a child. I knew that I could cope with anything that life threw my way, but how could I be willing to bring children into a world where I knew bad things happened? That was a fear that I couldn’t just face and shake off—it was way too powerful. And on some level, I think I had to know that if I dieted my period away then I couldn’t possibly get pregnant, making my fears a moot point.

  Bennett and I tried to get pregnant the natural way for about a year before we went to see a fertility doctor. When I told the doctor that I hadn’t had a period in six years, he didn’t ask any more questions. He closed the file, looked at me, and said, “Eat a healthy, balanced diet, stop exercising so much, gain some weight, and then come back and see me.” I don’t like hearing the word no, so I proceeded to shop for a different answer with five other doctors, all of whom said the same exact thing.

  Bennett went to each appointment with me knowing full well that the doctors were right, and knowing equally well that I wouldn’t allow myself to follow their advice. Every time I ate a regular meal, I’d be seized with panic. To repent, I’d go for a long run the next day and slash my calorie intake. If I tried to slack off on exercise, I turned into my evil twin, taking out my self-loathing on everyone around me—especially Bennett, poor thing.

  I so badly wanted to have children, but I couldn’t get out of my own way. It broke my heart and Bennett’s to see me that way. Finally, in the office of the sixth fertility doctor, I broke down and admitted that I was terrified to gain weight. The doctor looked at me with sympathy, and I knew the solution was up to me. I’d have to trust my husband and relax my suffocating grip on my own body if I was ever going to have the family I wanted.

  I made a compromise with myself and with the doctor—I’d begin to eat a normal diet, but I’d also continue to exercise to keep myself feeling strong . . . and sane. Six months and thirteen pounds later, I menstruated for the first time in six years.

  Even then, though, Bennett and I couldn’t get pregnant. So we began IVF. At that point fertility treatment was a far more embarrassing and taboo subject than it is now. So I didn’t tell even our families that we were trying. Meanwhile, every time a friend told me the news that she was pregnant, I’d be excited and happy for her, and then I’d wait until I could find a private place to cry. The concept that someone could get pregnant the good old-fashioned way was almost more than I could bear. I remember wailing to Bennett one time, “Oh my God, people get their kids for free!” Those women just had a few glasses of wine, and boom, baby made three. But not me. Once again it felt like the universe was telling me that I didn’t deserve the easy way.

  The first time I became pregnant, I miscarried at seven weeks. I was devastated, confused, and furious at my own body. I’d done everything I was supposed to do—I’d listened to the doctor, I’d gained weight, I’d taken all the miserable hormone shots and done the IVF. And now it felt even the hard road wasn’t hard enough for me. I thought, maybe I just didn’t deserve a happy life.

  It was around this time that my friend Pam invited a bunch of us to a two-layered birthday party. First, she invited all of us who were interested to go to a spinning class with her—she’d booked the entire Upper West Side SoulCycle studio for the occasion. Then, afterward, we were all invited to a lovely meal at a wonderful restaurant.

  In the spinning class on the day of the party, the room was lit with candles, and we pumped our legs to all of her favorite music. Something about the energy in the room got to me. The instructor, Laurie, was incredibly inspiring, always calling out encouragement, and one thing in particular she said has stuck with me ever since: If you feel weak, lean on the group for support—and when you feel strong, give it back to the group. Later in the class, when I was just about out of energy, Laurie called out to me, “Way to go, Jennifer Gilbert!” It was like a shot of positive juju to get me through, and I loved it.

  I never could have predicted the degree to which that class would change my body, and my attitude. I was part of that room, and in that moment we were all in it together, all showing up for each other. It almost felt spiritual. I cried in that class over my miscarriage, a loss I hadn’t shared with even the people closest to me because it felt too personal, too devastating. But days after Pam’s birthday, I told my sisters and best friends about my miscarriage and the grief I felt. It was a revelation to me that I didn’t always have to suffer in silence, that I could receive support.

  Since then I have tried to carry the lesson I learned in that spinning class with me in the rest of my life—when we�
�re strong, we share our strength, and when we’re weak, we find strength in others.

  After the miscarriage one of my friends recommended that I see a spiritual healer who had helped her. By that point I would have eaten toad’s poop if I’d thought it would help me get pregnant, so I made an appointment.

  I had no idea what to expect when I walked into Julie’s office. Maybe I expected some sort of swami, but the woman I found was a caring, compassionate Yale graduate. She was a writer who had studied psychology, and was more of a life and spiritual coach than a magic-wand-wielding psychic. After days of just talking about my fears and my situation, one day we tried something different. She had me lie down, and then asked me to meditate on what I wanted. She put her hands over my womb, and she asked me what I envisioned. In that moment, I told her with complete honesty that the picture in my mind was of a freezer, glistening with frost. She said, “If you were a baby, would you want to be in there?” How could I hate my body so much—how could I treat it so badly—and yet expect a baby to want to live in there?

  How could I work so hard to magnify the light and joy in the world around me, while stifling it in myself?

  It was time to make another turn in my life. It was time to stop wishing and hoping that things would change, and to make the decision to change what I could. The rest would have to take care of itself. I couldn’t control whether I’d ever get pregnant. But I could warm up that space inside me. I could stop trying to control my body, and learn to love it instead. I could accept my fears for my future children, sit with those feelings, and then release them. I could believe, once and for all, that I was worthy. The only person I’d ever really needed to prove it to was me.

  Three months later, Bennett and I geared up to try again, and even before I took the test, I knew that I was pregnant. I could just feel it. And for the first trimester I counted the days and searched for some grace and peace within myself, hoping and praying that this time the pregnancy would take.

  After the first trimester, Bennett and I breathed a half sigh of relief, and we told our friends and family that we were pregnant. I bought a few books about pregnancy, and after the first couple of pages I was already in a panic. The title might as well have been What Jen Should Freak Out about When She’s Expecting. I called my obstetrician, Dr. Steve, to ask him about all these what-ifs. He said, “Jen, I am a high-risk specialist, and I am going to monitor you every step of the way. If you feel anxious, then come in more often. And if those books make you nervous, don’t read them. I’ll worry plenty for both of us.” So I hired a doula he often worked with, and I got ready to surrender control and to trust in the expertise of others.

  Working with Julie had sparked a dramatic change in me, and I’d begun to have a new attitude toward food and my body. Pregnancy closed the door on my eating disorder for good. After fifteen years on a low-carb diet, I was eating spaghetti Bolognese five nights a week. For lunch I had man-size subs, and after dinner every night I had an ice cream sundae with chocolate sauce. Bennett, who was so used to begging me to indulge once in a while, would watch me stuff it in and just laugh. Once he looked at me eating ice cream out of the tub and said, “Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?” In restaurants, it was a revelation to me that I could look at the menu and actually pick whatever I was in the mood for. I had denied my food longings for so many years that I had to relearn how to order, how to evaluate my own body’s hunger.

  Something about carrying a baby loosened me up in a way that nothing else could. I just gave in to my body, and I trusted in its wisdom. Pregnancy allowed me to love my body in a pure, essential way. It wasn’t just mine anymore, it was my baby’s, too. I even hired a professional photographer and dropped every stitch of my clothing for a complete stranger, without a moment’s hesitation. I was bigger than I’d ever been, and I felt beautiful.

  While I was pregnant, I had two separate clients who gave me a whole new perspective on my work—and the kind of people that I wanted to work with. I’d always prided myself on spotting the monster clients from a mile away, and just as quickly I’d take off running in the opposite direction. But in both of these cases I ignored my better instincts, and oh, did I pay for it in spades.

  Michelle was a bride with every reason to be happy. She was beautiful and wealthy, and her fiancé loved her. But she was proof to me that happiness is elusive for some people. When I first met her, she seemed smart and funny. I caught a whiff of sarcasm in her humor, but I told myself that even if she was spoiled and demanding, that wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. Aside from the snark, there was something else that should have tipped me off: she fawned over my engagement ring, but there was no sweetness to her compliments. Her eyes got sharp and calculating, and she said, “I think your ring’s bigger than mine.” She was newly engaged and should have been in that dreamy phase of being on top of the world, but already she was comparing her piece of the pie with everyone else’s.

  I took her on anyway, and soon thereafter the crazy train left the station full speed ahead. If I could identify the one thing that sent her over the edge, it was a prominent monthly magazine spread that featured me as an event planner. When Michelle and I visited some spaces the day the magazine hit newsstands, my colleagues made the mistake of congratulating me instead of focusing exclusively on Michelle.

  After that, nothing I could do was enough for her, and the strife culminated with her throwing a royal hissy fit because Bennett and I planned to be away for my birthday (December 24, when there’s not a whole lot of vendors open anyway), six weeks before her wedding date. At one point she looked at me and said, “You work for me, how dare you go away on a trip?” So I turned to her, and I said, “Lady, you hired me, I don’t work for you.” After that, things got so acrimonious that she actually banned me from her wedding and insisted that someone else in the office handle it. I’d like to say that I just shook it off and said good riddance, but I was horrified that I’d been banished from my own client’s event, and I would miss the finale I had worked for months to plan.

  While Michelle’s wedding was still in the early planning stages, I had an even bigger headache to contend with. It was the summer of the Republican National Convention in Manhattan, and the entire city had been booked up for months. We were approached by a lobbyist who wanted to hire us to plan several parties for him. Rick said he was known across the RNC for his after-parties, which ran from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. every single night, for five nights in a row, and he wanted us to plan all of them.

  This was going to be no easy feat. We couldn’t have the parties in a hotel—they were all booked up for dinners and banquets. So the only option was a party space. We must have shown Rick fifteen spaces, and finally the one he loved—the one he simply had to have—was the entire lobby of an unfinished building that occupied a full block in west Chelsea. There was no electricity, no air-conditioning; they hadn’t even installed bathrooms yet. The owner swore up and down that the space would be ready in time, but insisted on a contract that gave him no responsibility whatsoever if it wasn’t. Rick wasn’t worried, though, and he had his heart set on that space. We negotiated the space fee down and made a verbal agreement. But when we presented Rick with the contract, suddenly he said no. He wanted the space for even less.

  This should have been my signal to say, Forget it. But at a time when I should have been reveling in my pregnancy, maybe giving myself a little down time to enjoy something I had worked so hard for, I went against my intuition and plowed ahead with this client.

  The plan was to create a miniature city within the unfinished space—Little Italy, Chinatown, the East Village, Harlem, and so on. And all this had to be erected from scratch in this enormous tunnel. There would also be a live band and five hours of open bar every night for five nights.

  Two weeks out from the event, we found out that the owner hadn’t received his certificate of occupancy, which meant that we were not legally al
lowed to have anyone in this space. Normally I don’t like to bring my clients a problem without a solution, but this was too big a problem not to tell Rick about. When he got the news, he screamed at me so loudly that I had to hold the phone a foot away from my head. When I tried to explain to him what our options were, he hung up on me midsentence.

  Of course we figured out a solution and got a temporary license. Problem solved. Except, not really, because the owner of the space then announced that there would be no electricity in time for the parties. He didn’t care; he had a contract that said nothing was his fault. Meanwhile, no electricity meant no lights, no air-conditioning (in August), and no working bathrooms. And again, all I got from my client were obscenities screamed into my ear.

  The only choice now was to bring in generators—so many that they lined both sides of a city block. For the air-conditioning, we brought in portable units. Instead of producing the party, we became a full contractor to an unfinished space. We were doing things that were not even in the scope of work we had agreed to.

  On the day of the first party, we had the generators lined up, the bathrooms working, the air comfortably cool, and the food and music were fantastic. I remember watching Rick walk around the room to inspect everything, and I thought, He’s got to be happy. But no, there were no thanks. He walked out of the bathroom, and his only comment to me the entire night was, “I don’t like the quality of the toilet paper.”

  Michelle, the only client who has ever banned me, and Rick, the only client I have ever genuinely wanted to strangle, both taught me something. I would never go so far as to thank them for the wisdom, but I did learn from them: no paycheck is worth that kind of misery. And I promised myself something that has been my mantra ever since: “Outsource everything but your soul.” Identify the “soul” of your business (which most of the time is the thing that makes you supremely happy), and hire everyone else to do the rest.