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I trust your a pleasant summer: I did not. That day we were planning to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually experience them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but could not be, 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I used that reasoning too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even was feasible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Acknowledging the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the pain and fury for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can promote a transformation: from denial and depression, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of anger and sadness and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have often found myself trapped in this urge to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the task you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that no solution we provided could assist.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings caused by the unattainability of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to feel every emotion. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to accept my own imperfections in order to do a sufficiently well – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel reduced the wish to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my sense of a skill evolving internally to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I truly require is to weep.