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I trust your a enjoyable summer: mine was not. On the day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to acknowledge pain when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

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 required was to be honest with myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – 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 pressing down of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this wish to click “undo”, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – 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 changing again before you’ve even finished the change you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions caused by the unattainability of my guarding 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 pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the wish to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to weep.