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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: mine was not. On the day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument 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 talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a hope I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the pain and fury for things not working out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to reverse things, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even finished the swap you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. 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 no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to press reverse and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my feeling of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to cry.