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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. That day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge towards seeking optimism: “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 had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we addressed 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 unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that button only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not turning 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 transformative.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to erase events, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour 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 task you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem endless; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were plunging 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 lost to us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions provoked by the impossibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to ingest and absorb 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 hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with 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 being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel great about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my sense of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to cry.