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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 never felt better, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those moments 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 feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that option only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this desire to reverse things, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the task you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her appetite could seem endless; my milk could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she hated 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 distant from us, that no solution we provided could help.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process 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 in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity developing within to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.