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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements 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 don't work out. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, I kept experiencing a pull 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, 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 required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that option only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We think of 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 vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have frequently found myself caught in this desire to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were descending 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 lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the intense emotions triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience 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 capacity to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity developing within to recognise that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to weep.