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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: mine was not. The very day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight 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 common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, I kept feeling a tug towards finding the positive: “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 depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and liberty.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish to click “undo”, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the change you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem endless; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, 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 make things go well, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a skill growing inside me to recognise that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to cry.