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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. That day we were planning to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth significant, 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 routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 agonising dressing changes, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve granted myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that option only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and embracing the grief and rage for things not happening how we expected, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have often found myself stuck in this wish to click “undo”, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the task you were handling. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What shocked me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. 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 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 discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about performing flawlessly as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the desire to click erase and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my sense of a ability evolving internally to understand that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to cry.