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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. On the day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront 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 enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma 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 cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, 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 deadening of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this urge to reverse things, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour 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 finished the swap you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite 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 wept 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 nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments triggered by the unattainability of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel great about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity developing within to recognise that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to cry.