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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: mine was not. On the day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our getaway ideas were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something significant, 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 common, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that option only points backwards. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and embracing the grief and rage for things not happening how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can promote a transformation: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and liberty.

I have often found myself caught in this desire to reverse things, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my infant. Not only the nursing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the swap you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem endless; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to digest her emotions and her suffering when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being helped to grow a skill to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the wish to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a capacity developing within to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to sob.