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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. On the day we were planning to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to erase events, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the task you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise 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 nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. 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 no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments provoked by the impossibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning 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 pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the desire to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my feeling of a skill developing within to recognise that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to weep.