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I hope you had a pleasant summer: mine was not. On the day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, 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 everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, 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 didn't improve, just a bit depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line 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 smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – 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 repressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have frequently found myself caught in this wish to click “undo”, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the change you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her appetite could seem endless; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were plunging into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel great about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity evolving internally to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to sob.