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I trust your a good summer: mine was not. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something 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 everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness 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 liberty.

I have often found myself caught in this desire to erase events, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the change you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my milk could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could help.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments caused by the impossibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience great about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to cry.