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I trust your a pleasant summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge towards looking for silver linings: “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 down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have frequently found myself caught in this urge to erase events, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the swap you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, 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 dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could aid.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments caused by the unattainability of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel great about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the desire to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my awareness of a skill growing inside me to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.