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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, quietly devastating 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 feeling a tug 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip 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, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and accepting the pain and fury for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy 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 freedom.

I have frequently found myself caught in this wish to reverse things, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. 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 completed the change you were handling. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – 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 embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, 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 supported in building a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience great about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity evolving internally to recognise that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to sob.