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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: mine was not. On the day we were planning to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how difficult 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 really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the pain and fury for things not happening how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the task you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem endless; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments provoked by the impossibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my sense of a ability evolving internally to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to sob.