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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: I did not. That day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, 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 depressed. And then I would bump up against 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 enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. 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 needed was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that arrow only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is impossible and allowing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as feeling bad – 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 energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this wish to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs 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 doing it once more before you’ve even finished the task you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments triggered by the infeasibility of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her pain 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) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the urge to click erase and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a capacity developing within to recognise that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to weep.