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I trust your a enjoyable summer: I did not. The very day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things go wrong. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually acknowledge 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 depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it's merely a vacation, 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 talked about it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a individual in analysis: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that button only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and embracing the grief and rage for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – 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 pressing down of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have often found myself caught in this wish to click “undo”, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These everyday important activities 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 shocked me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was not possible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my protecting her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to manage her sentiments and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between wanting to feel great about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and understand my daughter’s discontent and rage with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the urge to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find hope in my feeling of a skill growing inside me to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.