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

From this situation I gained insight important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, quietly devastating 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 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 blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument 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 talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, 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 observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the pain and fury for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to erase events, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after 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 routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging 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 nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions caused by the unattainability of my guarding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond 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 sense of a skill developing within to understand that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.