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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as being sad – 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 substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this desire to reverse things, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the swap you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to weep.