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I hope you had a pleasant summer: mine was not. On the day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight important, 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 common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

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 didn't improve, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this urge to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even finished the task you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger 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 wept as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled 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 aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her distress 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) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance 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 positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience great about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my awareness of a skill growing inside me to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to sob.