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I trust your a good summer: mine was not. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight 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 major catastrophes, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted 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 facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes observe 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 clicking “undo”. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and allowing the grief and rage for things not working 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 requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this urge to click “undo”, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process 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 reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the intense emotions caused by the unattainability of my shielding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. 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 distinction, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel great about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

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 optimism in my awareness of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to weep.