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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. The very day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements were forced 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 go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge 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 didn't improve, just a bit down. 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 limited time window for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to erase events, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the intense emotions triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments 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) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my awareness of a ability developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to cry.