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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. 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 urgent but routine surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this experience 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, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those moments when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the change you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings caused by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my awareness of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to cry.