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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: my experience was different. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight significant, all over again, about how hard 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 – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this wish to reverse things, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even finished the swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments 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) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel great about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to endure my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the desire to click erase and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my awareness of a skill developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to sob.