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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will really weigh us down.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, 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 down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's just a trip, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and embracing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this urge to click “undo”, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour 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 ended the task 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 sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments caused by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction 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 desire to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to weep.