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I hope you had a pleasant summer: my experience was different. The very day we were planning to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, 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 depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning 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 facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that option only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and allowing the pain and fury for things not working out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – 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 energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish to click “undo”, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even finished the change you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem endless; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. 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 comfort we gave could aid.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have great about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.