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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: I did not. On the day we were planning to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, gently heartbreaking 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 sensing an urge 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 really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

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 wanted was to be honest with myself. In those instances 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 being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this urge to reverse things, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the task 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, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and cried 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 comfort we gave could help.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions caused by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a skill to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness 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 needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the desire to click erase and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity evolving internally to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to weep.