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I trust your a pleasant summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and release.

I have often found myself stuck in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period 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 day-to-day precious tasks 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 feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem endless; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings triggered by the impossibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my awareness of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to sob.