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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled 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 vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed 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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to click “undo”, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments triggered by the unattainability of my protecting her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to cry.