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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: my experience was different. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and embracing the pain and fury for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: 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 dulling of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even finished the swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – 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 embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments 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) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my feeling of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to cry.