🔗 Share this article

I trust your a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. That day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge towards looking for silver linings: “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 face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those moments 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 feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that option only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: 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 experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability 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 manage her sentiments and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my feeling of a skill growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.