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I hope you had a enjoyable summer: I did not. That day we were scheduled to travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this experience I realized a truth important, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to experience sadness when things don't work out. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will significantly depress us.

When we were meant to be on holiday but weren't, 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 bump up against the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery required frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an relaxing trip on the Belgium's beaches. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, such a fortunate concern to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those instances when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we addressed 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 granted myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even turned out to value our days at home together.

This brought to mind of a desire I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also witnessed in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way erase our difficult moments, like hitting a reverse switch. But that button only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and accepting the grief and rage for things not working out how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to growth and possibility. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as experiencing negativity – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and vitality, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of honest emotional expression and release.

I have repeatedly found myself trapped in this desire to erase events, but my little one is supporting my evolution. As a new mother, I was at times overwhelmed by the incredible needs of my baby. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for a lengthy period at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the swap you were doing. These routine valuable duties among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had believed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her craving could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she disliked being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that nothing we had to offer could aid.

I soon discovered that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to persevere, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions provoked by the impossibility of my shielding her from all discomfort. As she developed her capacity to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her pain when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to make things go well, but to help bring meaning to her emotional experience of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was attempting to provide her only positive emotions, and instead being supported in building a capacity to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the difference, for me, between desiring to experience excellent about doing a perfect job as a perfect mother, and instead building the ability to endure my own far-from-ideal-ness in order to do a sufficiently well – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and understanding when she required to weep.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel less keenly the urge to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find hope in my awareness of a ability growing inside me to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I really need is to sob.