🔗 Share this article

I hope you had a good summer: I did not. The very day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode 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 major catastrophes, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept sensing an urge towards finding the positive: “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 depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is impossible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this desire to reverse things, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the task you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the impossibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the desire to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to sob.