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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, 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 was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the task you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most primary duty 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 required it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments provoked by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing 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 distinction, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the urge to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my feeling of a skill developing within to understand that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to cry.