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I trust your a enjoyable summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, 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 down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those moments 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 put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and embracing the pain and fury for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy 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 often found myself caught in this wish to click “undo”, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs 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 finished the task you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the intense emotions provoked by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience great about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity growing inside me to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.