I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. That day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.
From this experience I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will truly burden us.
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 never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: 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 getaway. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.
I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure 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 hope I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.
We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.
I have frequently found myself caught in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements 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 changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.
I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.
I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not going so well.
This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have great about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to endure my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.
Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to click erase and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my feeling of a capacity evolving internally to recognise that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to sob.
