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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: mine was not. The very day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that button only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have frequently found myself caught in this urge to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour 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 finished the change you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions provoked by the impossibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, 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 trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a ability to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the desire to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to sob.