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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to go on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something significant, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a limited time window for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted 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 facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and release.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this wish to reverse things, but my toddler is supporting my evolution. As a recent parent, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even finished the swap you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my milk could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my protecting her from all distress. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her pain 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) 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 being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where things are ideal. I find faith in my sense of a skill growing inside me to recognise that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to sob.