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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: I did not. On the day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, I kept experiencing a pull 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 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 agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed 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 going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and allowing the pain and fury for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have frequently found myself caught in this urge to reverse things, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands 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 diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the change you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the unattainability of my guarding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the desire to click erase and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my feeling of a ability developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to cry.