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I trust your a good summer: I did not. The very day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually feel 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument 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 talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and liberty.

I have often found myself caught in this desire to erase events, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted 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 assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all distress. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, 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 trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a skill evolving internally to understand that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to cry.