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I trust your a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth valuable, 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 everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept experiencing a pull 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 never felt better, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, 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 cease resisting the disappointment and we addressed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and hatred and rage, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like pressing a reset button. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be life-changing.

We consider depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a suppressing of frustration and sorrow and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have frequently found myself stuck in this urge to erase events, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even completed the change you were changing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a comfort and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she despised being changed, and wept as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs 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 important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to help her digest the overwhelming feelings provoked by the unattainability of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to digest her emotions and her suffering when the supply was insufficient, or when she was suffering, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to support in creating understanding to her sentimental path of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being supported in building a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have excellent about performing flawlessly as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and grasp my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she needed to cry.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the desire to press reverse and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my sense of a skill evolving internally to understand that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I really need is to sob.