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I trust your a good summer: my experience was different. On the day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

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 required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes observe 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 clicking “undo”. But that option only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and accepting the grief and rage for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this urge to click “undo”, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings caused by the unattainability of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the desire to click erase and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my sense of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to sob.