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I trust your a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent agonising dressing changes, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I needed was to be truthful to 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 put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen 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 goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and embracing the pain and fury for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this urge to reverse things, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour 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 finished the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem endless; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to endure, and then to assist her process the intense emotions triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience great about executing ideally as a ideal parent, and instead developing the capacity to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to sob.