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I hope you had a good summer: I did not. On the day we were planning to travel for leisure, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, expecting him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our getaway ideas had to be cancelled.

From this situation I learned something significant, all over again, about how challenging it is for me to feel bad when things take a turn. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more routine, subtly crushing disappointments that – if we don't actually experience them – will really weigh us down.

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, 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 depressed. And then I would face the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery required frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, 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 tested that argument too. But what I required was to be honest with myself. In those times when I was able to cease resisting the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of experiencing sadness and trying to appear happy, I’ve granted myself all sorts of unwanted feelings, including but not limited to hostility and displeasure and aversion and wrath, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even turned out to appreciate our moments at home together.

This reminded me of a wish I sometimes see in my counseling individuals, and that I have also seen in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could somehow reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is impossible and accepting the pain and fury for things not happening how we expected, rather than a false optimism, can promote a transformation: from avoidance and sadness, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it does take time – this can be life-changing.

We think of depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing 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 truthful emotional spontaneity and freedom.

I have often found myself caught in this urge to reverse things, but my young child is supporting my evolution. As a first-time mom, 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 soon after after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the doing it once more before you’ve even finished the swap you were changing. These everyday important activities among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a great honor. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What astounded me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the emotional demands.

I had thought my most primary duty 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 required it. Her craving could seem endless; my supply could not arrive quickly, or it flowed excessively. And then we needed to change her – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were plunging into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed comforted by the embraces we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no comfort we gave could assist.

I soon realized that my most crucial role as a mother was first to persevere, and then to assist her process the powerful sentiments caused by the unattainability of my guarding her from all discomfort. As she grew her ability to consume and process milk, she also had to develop a capacity to digest her emotions and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other difficult and confusing experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to assist in finding significance to her sentimental path of things not working out ideally.

This was the distinction, for her, between having someone who was trying to give her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a ability to experience all feelings. It was the contrast, for me, between aiming to have wonderful about executing ideally as a flawless caregiver, and instead cultivating the skill to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The distinction between my trying to stop her crying, and recognizing when she required to weep.

Now that we have developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the urge to press reverse and rewrite our story into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my feeling of a capacity growing inside me to understand that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m focused on striving to rebook a holiday, what I actually want is to sob.