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I trust your a good summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 never felt better, just a bit depressed. 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 finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this desire to reverse things, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the change you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a significant blessing. 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 key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces 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 persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the impossibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience great about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the urge to click erase and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a ability growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.