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I hope you had a good summer: my experience was different. The very day we were planning to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth important, all over again, about how difficult 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, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required 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 going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and allowing the pain and fury for things not happening how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the task you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the impossibility of my protecting her from all distress. 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 difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the desire to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a capacity developing within to understand that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to cry.