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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept sensing an urge towards looking for silver linings: “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 painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments 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 in some way erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that option only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and embracing the pain and fury for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this desire to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the change you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling 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 separated from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my guarding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside 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 feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my feeling of a skill growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.