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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight 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, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, I kept feeling a tug 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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as feeling bad – 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 life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this urge to erase events, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon discovered that my most important job 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 distress. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a ability to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the urge to click erase and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my sense of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to cry.