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I trust your a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience 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 routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. 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 smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and allowing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and vitality, 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 repeatedly found myself stuck in this desire to reverse things, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the task you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance 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 feelings requirements.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem endless; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling 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 no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the intense emotions provoked by the unattainability of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her pain 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) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel great about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to sob.