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I hope you had a pleasant summer: I did not. The very day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth important, 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 common, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, 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 depressed. And then I would bump up against 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 shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and vitality, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this urge to reverse things, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the task you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem endless; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon discovered that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions caused by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to help bring meaning to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my attempting to halt her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to sob.