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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 waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this experience 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 life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is impossible and embracing the pain and fury for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire 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 amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the intense emotions provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her suffering 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 guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to press reverse and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my awareness of a ability developing within to recognise that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to weep.