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I trust your a good summer: I did not. The very day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, I kept feeling a tug 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 down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern 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 discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is impossible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have often found myself caught in this desire to click “undo”, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my infant. 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 diaper swaps, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the change you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem endless; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings caused by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a skill to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger 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 wish to click erase and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a skill developing within to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.