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I trust your a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were planning to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, 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 down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing 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 avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this desire to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the task you were doing. 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, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from 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 support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending 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 everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a ability developing within to understand that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.