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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: my experience was different. On the day we were supposed to be go on holiday, I was stationed in A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have prompt but common surgery, which meant our vacation arrangements needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to experience sadness when things take a turn. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more routine, gently heartbreaking 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 sensing an urge towards looking for silver linings: “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 remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would confront the reality that this holiday was permanently lost: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an relaxing trip on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, hurt and nurturing.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be sincere with my feelings. In those times when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and hatred and rage, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a wish 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 arrow only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is impossible and accepting the grief and rage for things not turning out how we anticipated, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have repeatedly found myself stuck in this wish to click “undo”, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a new mother, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my baby. Not only the nursing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the change you were changing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the feelings requirements.

I had thought my most primary duty as a mother was to satisfy my child's demands. But I soon understood that it was not possible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her hunger could seem endless; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – 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 hugs we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were separated from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon learned that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments provoked by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to ensure everything was perfect, but to assist in finding significance to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was seeking to offer her only positive emotions, and instead being assisted in developing a skill to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience great about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead developing the capacity to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The contrast between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the wish to click erase and alter our history into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my awareness of a skill developing within to acknowledge that this is impossible, and to understand that, when I’m focused on striving to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to cry.