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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation 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 life-altering traumas, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 didn't improve, just a bit down. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, 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 consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this urge to reverse things, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the task you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem endless; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked 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 distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, 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 make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the desire to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.