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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: I did not. That day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed 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 difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this wish to reverse things, 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 nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even finished the swap you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs 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 help her digest the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her pain 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) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my sense of a capacity evolving internally to recognise that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to weep.