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I hope you had a pleasant summer: mine was not. That day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight significant, 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, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

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 didn't improve, just a bit down. And then I would confront 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 relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations 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 sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed 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. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the pain and fury for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this wish to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the swap you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were falling 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 learned that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments provoked by the impossibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel great about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my sense of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to cry.