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I trust your a good summer: I did not. The very day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, I kept sensing an urge towards finding the positive: “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 down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be honest with 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 feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that option only looks to the past. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this desire to click “undo”, but my toddler is helping me to grow out of it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nursing – 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 finished the task you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the feelings requirements.

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 not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem unmeetable; my supply could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the desire to click erase and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my feeling of a skill developing within to understand that this is not possible, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to cry.