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I trust your a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge 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 blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning 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 discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is impossible and embracing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this urge to erase events, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nourishing – 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 doing it once more before you’ve even completed the change you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces 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 crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions caused by the impossibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a skill to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel great about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand 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 evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to click erase and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to sob.