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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: my experience was different. The very day we were planning to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, 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 cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and allowing the grief and rage for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have often found myself stuck in this urge to reverse things, 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 infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

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 impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem endless; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were descending 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 aid.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my protecting her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with 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 contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience great about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my sense of a ability growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to weep.