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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: mine was not. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our travel plans had 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, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this urge to erase events, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my newborn. 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 repeating the process before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. 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 sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted 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 help.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel great about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the desire to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my sense of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to weep.