🔗 Share this article

I trust your a enjoyable summer: mine was not. That day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept sensing an urge towards seeking optimism: “I can {book a replacement trip|schedule another vacation|arrange a different getaway”; “At least we have {travel insurance|coverage for trips|protection for journeys”; “This’ll give me {something to write about|material for an article|content for a story”. But I remained low, just a bit down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and embracing the pain and fury for things not happening how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this desire to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the change you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem endless; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments caused by the unattainability of my protecting her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience great about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my awareness of a skill developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to sob.