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I trust your a enjoyable summer: mine was not. On the day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this episode I learned something valuable, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to stop fighting off 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 difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like pressing a reset button. But that option only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and embracing the pain and fury for things not working out how we hoped, rather than a false optimism, 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 consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow 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 release.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this wish to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the task you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and sobbed as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. 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 aid.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments triggered by the unattainability of my shielding her from all distress. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to manage her sentiments and her distress 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, 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 contrast, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel not as strongly the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my sense of a skill developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.