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I trust your a enjoyable summer: mine was not. That day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this wish to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the change you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. 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 nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the intense emotions provoked by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my feeling of a ability evolving internally to recognise that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.