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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge 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 depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about 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 bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and embracing the pain and fury for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow 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 freedom.

I have often found myself caught in this urge to erase events, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour 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 finished the task you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. 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 assist.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering 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 assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my attempting to halt 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 rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my feeling of a skill growing inside me to recognise that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to cry.