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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: mine was not. The very day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, 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 halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and liberty.

I have often found myself stuck in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period 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 ended the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. 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 came to realise that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were falling 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 no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings caused by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience great about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to press reverse and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my sense of a skill developing within to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to weep.