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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull towards finding the positive: “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 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 enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling 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 acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this wish to reverse things, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my newborn. 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 changing again before you’ve even finished the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs 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 important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings caused by the unattainability of my shielding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb 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 hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to understand 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 sob.