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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant 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 getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, I kept feeling a tug 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and allowing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. 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 dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to erase events, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, 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 under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the swap you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my shielding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my sense of a ability evolving internally to recognise that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to cry.