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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something important, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more routine, quietly devastating disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of being down and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and allowing the pain and fury for things not working out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself stuck in this wish to click “undo”, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped 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 changing again before you’ve even completed the task you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised 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 unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her appetite could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel great about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to endure 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 seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find hope in my awareness of a capacity growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to sob.