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I hope you had a good summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice 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. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, 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 profoundly impactful.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have often found myself caught in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the swap you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging 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 separated from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings provoked by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill 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 in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my awareness of a ability growing inside me to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to weep.