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I trust your a good summer: my experience was different. That day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed 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 sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that button only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the grief and rage for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this urge to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem endless; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments triggered by the unattainability of my protecting her from all unease. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, 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 working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with 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 contrast, for me, between desiring to experience great about performing flawlessly 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 distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to cry.