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I wish you enjoyed a good summer: my experience was different. On the day we were planning to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements needed 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 major catastrophes, but the more everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – without the ability to actually experience them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but were not, 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 didn't improve, just a bit down. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgian coast. So, no vacation. Just discontent and annoyance, hurt and nurturing.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, 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 halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were facing it as a team. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even was feasible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes observe in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like clicking “undo”. But that option only goes in reverse. Confronting the reality that this is not possible and accepting the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we expected, 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 needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have often found myself trapped in this wish to click “undo”, but my young child is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the amazing requirements of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the change you were doing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a comfort and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What shocked me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had believed my most primary duty as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon came to realise that it was unfeasible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she demanded it. Her appetite could seem unmeetable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a dark vortex of doom. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could aid.

I soon realized that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the overwhelming feelings triggered by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to build an ability to process her feelings and her pain when the milk didn’t come, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through 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 not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between desiring to experience wonderful about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead building the ability to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a good enough job – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to hit “undo” and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find optimism in my feeling of a ability growing inside me to recognise that this is unattainable, and to understand that, when I’m occupied with attempting to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to sob.