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I trust your a pleasant summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge towards looking for silver linings: “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 never felt better, just a bit depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and accepting the grief and rage for things not turning out how we hoped, 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 profoundly impactful.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to reverse things, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the change 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 shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. 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 comfort we gave could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the unattainability of my protecting her from all distress. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to sob.