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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. That day we were planning to go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something 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 – without the ability to actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull towards seeking optimism: “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 was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting 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 unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to erase events, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the task you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. 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 craving could seem unmeetable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings triggered by the impossibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to endure my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity evolving internally to recognise that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.