Guest Post by Amber Schurr
Shared on Raw Bleach with the author's permission
The Well and the Garden- Reflections on suffering, resilience, and the nature of good and evil
I finished watching East of Eden last night, and I woke this morning with a heaviness I couldn’t quite explain. I’m not even sure I liked the story. It was dark, disturbing, and profoundly sad. And yet, beneath all that darkness, there was something beautiful. Something that left me wrestling with questions about human nature, the wounds we carry, and the choices that shape who we become.
How is it that two people can endure similar suffering and emerge so differently? Why does pain seem to deepen the compassion of one person while hardening the heart of another? Are we born with some innate capacity for resilience, or is it something we develop through the love, protection, and experiences we encounter along the way?
And what happens to those who never receive that love?
I keep returning to the character of Cathy. A woman capable of extraordinary cruelty, who abandoned her newborn twins and seemed to move through life without remorse, attachment, or any genuine belief in goodness. To her, kindness was merely manipulation dressed in more acceptable clothing. Love was a weakness, generosity a transaction, and vulnerability something to exploit.
But I wonder whether her inability to recognize goodness in others began with her inability to recognize innocence in herself.
There was once a five-year-old girl in a cave. A child who experienced something terrible, something she could neither understand nor deserve. And perhaps, somewhere in the aftermath, she began constructing a world in which innocence didn’t exist. Because to believe in innocence would mean acknowledging her own. And to acknowledge her own would mean confronting the terrible truth that someone had harmed a child who deserved nothing but protection.
Perhaps it was easier to believe that everyone was evil.
What struck me most was the possibility that, near the end of her life, Cathy finally encountered something she could not explain away. She witnessed genuine love between her sons, their love for their father, and a depth of grief that could not be manipulated or dismissed. For perhaps the first time, she saw goodness that existed without an ulterior motive.
And in witnessing that goodness, she was forced to confront the possibility that she had been wrong about humanity. And perhaps about herself.
The image of her finally embracing that frightened little girl, offering comfort to the child she had spent a lifetime refusing to acknowledge, was profoundly moving.
It made me wonder how much of our lives we spend defending ourselves against wounds we have never truly allowed ourselves to feel.
I think of despair as a deep, cold, dark well.
Some of us seem to begin our lives in a garden, surrounded by enough love and reassurance to believe we are worthy of both. We may stumble into the well throughout our lives, but we carry with us the knowledge that the garden exists. We know what sunlight feels like. We believe there is a way back.
Others seem to begin at the bottom.
They grow up believing something is inherently wrong with them. That their darkest thoughts are their truest selves. That love is conditional, goodness is fleeting, and peace is something other people deserve.
And so they climb.
They claw at the walls of that well, searching for something to hold on to, exhausted by the effort of reaching a place others seem to inhabit so effortlessly.
And what they hope for, perhaps more than anything, is that someone will notice.
Someone will look down into the darkness and lower a ladder.
But not everyone has that person.
Perhaps this is why Lee’s presence in East of Eden moved me so deeply. He couldn’t undo the abandonment or erase the suffering. But he offered something that might be among the most powerful forces in a human life: steady, unconditional care. He became a kind of ladder for a family that might otherwise have remained lost.
And I wonder how many lives have been changed, or even saved, by someone who simply refused to look away.
Still, the questions remain.
Where does our bitterness go? Our resentment? Our anger at the injustices we have endured?
Do we absorb it, allowing it to reinforce the belief that we are undeserving? Do we project it onto others, perpetuating the very suffering that wounded us? Or do we somehow learn to separate what happened to us from who we are?
Perhaps the answer is not as simple as choosing goodness over evil.
Perhaps our capacity to choose is shaped, in part, by how much love we’ve known, how safe we’ve felt, and whether anyone ever taught us that we were worth saving.
But I don’t believe our wounds must become our destiny.
And maybe that is what I found beautiful beneath the darkness of East of Eden. Not the promise that suffering makes us stronger, or that everyone who falls will find their way out.
But the possibility that even after a lifetime spent believing in darkness, we might encounter something that changes what we believe is true.
That goodness can be genuine. That vulnerability is not weakness. That what happened to us is not necessarily who we are.
And that somewhere above the cold stone walls of the well, the garden still exists.
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