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I wish you enjoyed a enjoyable summer: mine was not. The very day we were scheduled to take a vacation, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, expecting him to have necessary yet standard surgery, which caused our travel plans needed to be cancelled.

From this situation I gained insight important, all over again, about how difficult it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, subtly crushing disappointments that – without the ability to actually feel them – will truly burden us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but were not, I kept experiencing a pull 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 never felt better, just a bit down. And then I would face 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 pleasant vacation on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know more serious issues can happen, it’s only a holiday, what a privileged problem to have – I know because I tested that argument too. But what I wanted was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were going through something together. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to bitterness and resentment and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This recalled of a desire I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only looks to the past. Acknowledging the reality that this is not possible and allowing the sorrow and anger for things not happening how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can facilitate a change of current: from avoidance and sadness, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We view depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a pressing down of rage and grief and disappointment and joy and life force, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but feeling whatever is there, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have frequently found myself trapped in this wish to erase events, but my little one is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times burdened by the amazing requirements of my newborn. Not only the nursing – sometimes for more than 60 minutes at a time, and then again less than an hour after that – and not only the changing, and then the changing again before you’ve even ended the swap you were handling. These routine valuable duties among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, relentless and draining. What surprised me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most key role as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon understood that it was impossible to satisfy every my baby’s needs at the time she required it. Her craving could seem unmeetable; my supply could not come fast enough, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she despised being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a gloomy abyss of despair. And while sometimes she seemed consoled by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon realized that my most important job 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 enhanced her skill to ingest and absorb milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her distress when the nourishment was delayed, or when she was in pain, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to make things go well, but to support in creating understanding to her feelings journey of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between experiencing someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to acknowledge all sentiments. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own imperfections in order to do a good enough job – and grasp my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me. The distinction between my attempting to halt her crying, and understanding when she needed to cry.

Now that we have evolved past this together, I feel not as strongly the desire to hit “undo” and rewrite our story into one where things are ideal. I find optimism in my sense of a capacity growing inside me to acknowledge that this is unattainable, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I actually want is to sob.