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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: I did not. On the day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting 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 consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish to reverse things, but my little one 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 feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period 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 swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled 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 aid.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments provoked by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. 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 being with someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger 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 reduced the desire to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my feeling of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.