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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: mine was not. That day we were scheduled to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, 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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of experiencing sadness 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 aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. 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 patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is impossible and accepting the pain and fury for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this urge to click “undo”, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the task you were changing. These everyday important activities 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 satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; 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 cried as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my feeling of a skill evolving internally to recognise that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to weep.