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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. That day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight significant, 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 common, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, 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 never felt better, just a bit depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments 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 patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that button only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and allowing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of 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 disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this desire to click “undo”, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and cried 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 nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my protecting her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through 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 feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to sob.