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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: mine was not. The very day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 never felt better, just a bit depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and allowing the grief and rage for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have frequently found myself caught in this urge to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending 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 separated from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the impossibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have great about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my feeling of a ability developing within to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to weep.