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I hope you had a good summer: my experience was different. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will truly burden 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 was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed 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 experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We view depression as being sad – 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 vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to click “undo”, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour 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 ended the change you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem endless; my supply could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the unattainability of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering 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) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to make things go well, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to accept my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a skill developing within to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to cry.