Accepting Our Unplanned Challenges: The Reason You Cannot Simply Click 'Undo'

I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. That day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, I kept feeling a tug 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 depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and embracing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this urge to erase events, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her distress 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) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my feeling of a ability developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to cry.