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I trust your a pleasant summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge towards seeking optimism: “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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that option only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the grief and rage for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself caught in this desire to reverse things, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour 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 finished the task you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no solution we provided could help.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have excellent about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the desire to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my sense of a ability developing within to recognise that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to weep.