You can’t just press ‘undo’ on your life. To move forward, you must first feel your grief and rage

Many of us try to reframe our disappointments, to put a happy face on sad circumstances. But the path to growth is paved with difficult emotions, and we have to experience them honestly

I hope you had a good summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be going on holiday, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have urgent but routine surgery, which meant our travel plans had to be cancelled.

From this experience I learned something valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to feel bad when things go wrong. I’m not talking about life-altering traumas, but the more everyday, quietly devastating disappointments that – unless we can actually feel them – will really weigh us down.