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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. The very day we were planning to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, 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 never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling 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 allowed myself 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 was feasible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this desire to reverse things, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the change you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed 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 crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings triggered by the unattainability of my guarding her from all distress. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, 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 difference, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a ability to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience great about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a skill developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to sob.