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I trust your a enjoyable summer: I did not. The very day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is impossible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this wish to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my infant. 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 doing it once more before you’ve even ended the change you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could aid.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a skill to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience great about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to sob.