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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. That day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, I kept feeling a tug towards looking for silver linings: “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 depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to erase events, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes 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 changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem endless; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to 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 support her in managing the powerful sentiments triggered by the impossibility of my protecting her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill 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 in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to click erase and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my feeling of a ability evolving internally to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to weep.