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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: mine was not. On the day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, 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 numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period 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 ended the task you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were descending 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 separated from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments caused by the unattainability of my shielding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, 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 working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my feeling of a capacity evolving internally to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to cry.