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I trust your a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were supposed to be take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something valuable, 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, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually experience 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 never felt better, just a bit down. 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 finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be sincere with my feelings. In those moments when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to smile, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to appreciate our moments at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like pressing a reset button. But that option only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is impossible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a repressing of anger and sadness and letdown and happiness and life force, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish to erase events, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, 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 – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem endless; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she despised 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 distant from us, that no comfort we gave could help.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the powerful sentiments triggered by the unattainability of my guarding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions 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) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the contrast, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a skill to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have great about executing ideally as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to endure my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she required to weep.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel less keenly the urge to click erase and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to recognise that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.