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

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

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 sincere with my feelings. In those instances 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 appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that button only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and accepting the pain and fury for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this desire to erase events, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed 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 repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem endless; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed 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 separated from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings provoked by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her distress 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, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my feeling of a skill evolving internally to recognise that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.