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I hope you had a good summer: mine was not. On the day we were planning to go on holiday, I was waiting at A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which caused our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

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

When we were supposed to be on holiday but could not be, I kept experiencing a pull 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 didn't improve, just a bit blue. And then I would bump up against the reality that this holiday really was gone: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent painful bandage replacements, and there is a short period for an pleasant vacation on the shores of Belgium. So, no getaway. Just discontent and annoyance, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it's merely a vacation, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those moments when I was able to halt battling the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of being down and trying to put on a brave face, I’ve given myself permission all sorts of difficult sentiments, including but not limited to anger and frustration and loathing and fury, which at least seemed authentic. At times, it even became possible to enjoy our time at home together.

This reminded me of a hope I sometimes observe in my therapy clients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a patient in psychoanalysis: that therapy could in some way reverse our unwanted experiences, like hitting a reverse switch. But that arrow only points backwards. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the pain and fury for things not working out how we anticipated, rather than a insincere positive spin, can enable a shift: from denial and depression, to development and opportunity. Over time – and, of course, it needs duration – this can be transformative.

We view depression as feeling bad – but to my mind it’s a kind of numbing of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The alternative to depression is not happiness, but experiencing all emotions, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have often found myself trapped in this desire to erase events, but my young child is assisting me in moving past it. As a recent parent, I was at times swamped by the astonishing demands of my newborn. Not only the feeding – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again soon after after that – and not only the changing, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even finished the task you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – functionality combined with nurturing – are a reassurance and a tremendous privilege. Though they’re also, at moments, unceasing and exhausting. What surprised me the most – aside from the exhaustion – were the psychological needs.

I had assumed my most primary duty as a mother was to fulfill my infant's requirements. But I soon came to realise that it was impossible to fulfill each of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her hunger could seem insatiable; my nourishment could not be produced rapidly, or it was too abundant. And then we needed to swap her diaper – 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 distant from us, that nothing we had to offer could assist.

I soon learned that my most key responsibility as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the intense emotions triggered by the impossibility of my guarding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to develop a capacity to process her feelings and her pain when the supply was insufficient, or when she was in pain, or any other challenging and perplexing experience – and I had to develop alongside her (and my) annoyance, fury, despondency, aversion, letdown, craving. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the distinction, for her, between being with someone who was attempting to provide her only good feelings, and instead being supported in building a capacity to feel every emotion. It was the difference, for me, between wanting to feel excellent about doing a perfect job as a flawless caregiver, and instead building the ability to tolerate my own shortcomings in order to do a adequately performed – and comprehend 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 developed beyond this together, I feel less keenly the wish to press reverse and change our narrative into one where all is perfect. I find faith in my feeling of a capacity evolving internally to acknowledge that this is not possible, and to realize that, when I’m occupied with attempting to reschedule a vacation, what I really need is to sob.