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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected 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 didn't improve, just a bit down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and liberty.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this desire to reverse things, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and wept 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 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 support her in managing the powerful sentiments triggered by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own imperfections 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 comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.