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I trust your a enjoyable summer: mine was not. The very day we were planning to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth significant, 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 everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a hope I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that option only looks to the past. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight 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 freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this wish to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my newborn. 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 diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even finished the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. 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 solution we provided could aid.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the intense emotions provoked by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a ability to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the wish to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a ability growing inside me to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to weep.