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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: mine was not. On the day we were planning to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, 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 routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required 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 given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, 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 view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this urge to click “undo”, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. 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 aid.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments caused by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my feeling of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to sob.