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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting 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 allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that button only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands 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 changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the impossibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the urge to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my sense of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to weep.