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I trust your a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

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

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept sensing an urge 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 remained low, just a bit down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those times 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 being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself caught in this urge to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even finished the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions provoked by the unattainability of my shielding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to manage her sentiments and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to accept my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a skill developing within to recognise that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.