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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: I did not. That day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: 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 getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument 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 talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of 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 wish to click “undo”, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – 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 not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my shielding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a ability to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel great about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my feeling of a ability evolving internally to understand that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I actually want is to weep.