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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. The very day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge 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 face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes notice in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is not possible and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we anticipated, 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 does take time – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to click “undo”, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my infant. 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 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 significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most important job 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 demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. 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 solution we provided could aid.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my feeling of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to weep.