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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: my experience was different. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to halt battling 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 difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this desire to erase events, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. 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 diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. 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 no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my feeling of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to cry.