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I trust your a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. That day we were planning to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, 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, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, 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 never felt better, just a bit depressed. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a limited time window for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be honest with myself. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and allowing the grief and rage for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have frequently found myself caught in this urge to click “undo”, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even completed the change you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and wept as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the intense emotions triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her feelings journey of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the urge to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity evolving internally to recognise that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to sob.