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I trust your a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. 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 weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line 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 discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the pain and fury for things not happening how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this urge to click “undo”, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties 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 astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated 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 comfort we gave could assist.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have great about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the desire to press reverse and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my feeling of a skill growing inside me to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to sob.