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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight valuable, 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 everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, 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 down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness 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 seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out 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 somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is not possible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out 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 needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this wish to reverse things, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nourishing – 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 doing it once more before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. 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, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – 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 satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no solution we provided could help.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the intense emotions provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions 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 grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey 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 helped to grow a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have excellent about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my awareness of a ability developing within to understand that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to cry.