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I hope you had a good summer: mine was not. The very day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected 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 never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

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 required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

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

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to reverse things, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period 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 swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had thought 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 meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were descending 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 separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions provoked by the unattainability of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to make things go well, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a skill to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the desire to click erase and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my sense of a skill growing inside me to understand that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.