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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to stop fighting off 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 smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. 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 psychotherapy patients, 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 points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself stuck in this wish to click “undo”, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes 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 ended the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my protecting her from all distress. 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 hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel wonderful about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the desire to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to cry.