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I hope you had a good summer: mine was not. On the day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, I kept sensing an urge 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 didn't improve, just a bit depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, 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 cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a wish I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to endure, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the impossibility of my protecting her from all distress. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her suffering when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have excellent about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

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 hope in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.