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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: my experience was different. The very day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas had 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 profound crises, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, 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 required was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have frequently found myself caught in this urge to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the change you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful 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 grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the urge to click erase and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my sense of a capacity developing within to recognise that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to weep.