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I trust your a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: 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 getaway. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and embracing the grief and rage for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have frequently found myself caught in this urge to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes 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 change you were handling. These everyday important activities 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 shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my shielding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity 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 hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between having 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 distinction, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my feeling of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to weep.