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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

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

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, 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 confront 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 enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma 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 halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and liberty.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes 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 finished the task you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. 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 solution we provided could assist.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments provoked by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to press reverse and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to sob.