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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: I did not. On the day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, I kept experiencing a pull towards finding the positive: “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 confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times 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 feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted 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 became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – 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 repressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this urge to click “undo”, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even finished the change you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings caused by the impossibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the wish to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my awareness of a skill developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to cry.