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I hope you had a good summer: mine was not. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed 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 appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the pain and fury for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this urge to reverse things, 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 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 doing it once more before you’ve even ended the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem endless; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my shielding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her pain 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, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to weep.