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I trust your a good summer: mine was not. That day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, anticipating him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our getaway ideas needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight valuable, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to acknowledge pain when things don't work out. I’m not talking about profound crises, but the more common, gently heartbreaking disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but were not, I kept sensing an urge 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 remained low, just a bit depressed. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery involved frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the Belgium's beaches. So, no vacation. Just letdown and irritation, suffering and attention.

I know graver situations can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to smile, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least appeared genuine. At times, it even became possible to value our days at home together.

This reminded me of a desire I sometimes see in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that option only points backwards. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and embracing the sorrow and anger for things not turning out how we hoped, rather than a insincere positive spin, can facilitate a change of current: from rejection and low mood, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be transformative.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of deadening of all emotions, a suppressing of rage and grief and frustration and delight and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of truthful emotional spontaneity and liberty.

I have often found myself stuck in this wish to reverse things, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a first-time mom, I was at times overwhelmed by the astonishing demands of my infant. Not only the feeding – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the diaper swaps, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even ended the swap you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – practicality wrapped up in care – are a solace and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had believed my most important job as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. 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 insatiable; my nourishment could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she disliked being changed, and wept as if she were plunging 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 solution we provided could aid.

I soon learned that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments provoked by the unattainability of my guarding her from all unease. As she grew her ability to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was hurting, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to grow through her (and my) irritation, anger, hopelessness, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her emotional experience of things being less than perfect.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only good feelings, and instead being helped to grow a skill to experience all feelings. It was the distinction, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to accept my own shortcomings in order to do a sufficiently well – and comprehend my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel reduced the desire to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find faith in my sense of a skill developing within to understand that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rearrange a trip, what I truly require is to sob.