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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: my experience was different. The very day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept feeling a tug 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required 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 sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that option only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and allowing 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 progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and liberty.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this wish to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements 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 doing it once more before you’ve even completed the change you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have great about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast 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 urge to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my feeling of a ability growing inside me to recognise that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.