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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. The very day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 didn't improve, just a bit down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and embracing the pain and fury for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this urge to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements 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 outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a skill to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel great about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity evolving internally to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to sob.