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I trust your a pleasant summer: I did not. That day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight important, 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 everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress 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 face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those moments 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 experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the grief and rage for things not working out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and life force, 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 caught in this desire to reverse things, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period 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 task you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort 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 primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside 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 emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to accept 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 contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a skill growing inside me to recognise that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to cry.