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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 waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, I kept sensing an urge 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 blue. 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 pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I required was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and allowing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to erase events, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. 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 ended the swap you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon understood that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. 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 no comfort we gave could help.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments caused by the impossibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her distress when the milk didn’t come, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have great about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my feeling of a skill growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to cry.