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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: mine was not. That day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge towards looking for silver linings: “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 blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that button only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have often found myself stuck in this urge to erase events, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the swap you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the desire to press reverse and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my feeling of a ability evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to weep.