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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: mine was not. That day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required 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 facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this desire to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could aid.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to accept my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my sense of a skill growing inside me to understand that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to cry.