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I trust your a pleasant summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this experience 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 major catastrophes, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about 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 granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, 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 brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this wish to reverse things, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the swap you were handling. These routine valuable duties 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 astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles 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 learned that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments provoked by the impossibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill 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 suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel great about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my awareness of a ability evolving internally to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.