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I trust your a pleasant summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, 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 down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those moments when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is not possible and embracing the grief and rage for things not happening how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the task you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem endless; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the intense emotions caused by the unattainability of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel great about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the desire to click erase and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my awareness of a ability evolving internally to recognise that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to sob.