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I trust your a good summer: mine was not. On the day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required 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 sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, 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 button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and accepting the pain and fury for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing 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 honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish 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 amazing requirements 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 outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the change you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite 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 disliked being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the intense emotions provoked by the unattainability of my guarding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the urge to click erase and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.