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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: my experience was different. The very day we were planning to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth 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 routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, I kept feeling a tug towards finding the positive: “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 face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and embracing the pain and fury for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this desire to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even finished the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance 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 assumed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to consume and process 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 suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have excellent about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my feeling of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to cry.