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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth important, 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 common, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed 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 blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and allowing the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this wish to erase events, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the swap you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem endless; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from 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 triggered by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest 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 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 make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the urge to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.