🔗 Share this article

I trust your a good summer: mine was not. On the day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, 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 never felt better, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line 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 addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that button only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and embracing the pain and fury for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to reverse things, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the swap you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling 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 separated from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have excellent about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the wish to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my sense of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to cry.