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I wish you enjoyed a pleasant summer: my experience was different. That day we were planning to take a vacation, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements had to be cancelled.

From this episode I gained insight significant, 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 everyday, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but could not be, 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 depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just letdown and irritation, pain and care.

I know worse things can happen, it's just a trip, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those instances when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we talked about it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and loathing and fury, which at least felt real. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps undo our negative events, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be transformative.

We view depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a pressing down of frustration and sorrow and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of honest emotional expression and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this urge to reverse things, but my toddler is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times burdened by the incredible needs of my baby. 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 outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even ended the task you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the sleep deprivation – were the psychological needs.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was unfeasible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my milk could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were descending into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could help.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to survive, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments triggered by the impossibility of my protecting her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, loathing, discontent, need. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things being less than perfect.

This was the difference, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being helped to grow a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel great about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my seeking to prevent her crying, and recognizing when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel not as strongly the desire to press reverse and change our narrative into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my awareness of a capacity developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to comprehend that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.