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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, 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 didn't improve, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to value our days 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 client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this urge to reverse things, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the task you were changing. These routine valuable duties 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 surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem endless; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling 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 distant from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her pain 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) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have great about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the urge to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.