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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: mine was not. The very day we were planning to take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. 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 hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this wish to reverse things, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the task you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were falling 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 no solution we provided could aid.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments triggered by the impossibility 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 manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my feeling of a ability evolving internally to understand that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.