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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our travel plans were forced to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, 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 didn't improve, just a bit down. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a limited time window for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that button only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and disappointment and joy and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this wish to reverse things, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon discovered that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the infeasibility 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 manage her sentiments and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was suffering, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between aiming to have excellent about performing flawlessly as a perfect mother, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the wish to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my sense of a skill evolving internally to recognise that this is not possible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.