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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: mine was not. The very day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, 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 remained low, just a bit down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those instances 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 being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the task you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity 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 hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to click erase and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a ability evolving internally to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to weep.