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

From this situation I learned something significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 didn't improve, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I wanted 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 sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this desire to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging 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 lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments triggered by the impossibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a ability to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to accept 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 developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my awareness of a ability evolving internally to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to weep.