Released On 09 February 2026

Steph's blog: Great Expectations

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching,” Dickens wrote — but it took an unlucky roll of the genetic dice for me to realise that expectations, specifically the unmet kind, are often what give rise to suffering. My daughter has a rare genetic lung disease, which makes life challenging for our family. And because we are not a hugely dysfunctional one, I am often met with comments like, “You’re so strong, I don’t know how you’re managing all this.”

For the first year or so, I believed that I was strong because I was coping. There is, of course, a degree of physical stamina required to deal with exhaustion (supplemented with lots of coffee), but I’ve come to realise that coping has far less to do with strength than with perspective. It isn’t about building up enough mental fortitude to deal with the enormous lemon life has thrown at us; it’s about recognising the lemon as already there — and adjusting expectations accordingly.

What has enabled me to manage is not capability so much as a shift in perspective. Expectations quietly shape how we experience most things: what we expect of parenthood (more fulfilment, less loss of self), of our jobs (more innovative work, less data entry), or even of daily life (that the rubbish will be collected without half of it being redistributed across the driveway).

From a young age, we are taught that if we do A, we can expect B — study hard and you’ll get a good job; be kind and others will reciprocate. When we do A and get C instead, we are often left with a sense that something has gone wrong: this isn’t fair, this wasn’t the deal, I didn’t sign up for this.

That realisation crystallised for me one morning at the playground with my daughters. Previous visits had ended in waves of grief as I watched other children on the slides and zip wires and realised my youngest would never be able to join them. This time, though, I noticed how many expectations I was carrying about what she should be able to do, and what a family trip to the playground should look like. I consciously reset them: this is what our playground trips look like — swings, yes; slides, no. What struck me was that neither of my daughters seemed particularly troubled by this. My eldest mostly gravitated towards equipment her sister could use, and my youngest accepted her physical limits without fuss. It was me who had been struggling; for them, this was simply normal family life.

Recalibrating expectations turns out to be a powerful skill. It helps reframe the mundane — don’t expect a seat on the train — as well as the profound: her development is remarkable given the setbacks she’s faced. Dickens was right that suffering teaches, but the lesson I keep returning to is this: I don’t manage because I am especially strong. I manage because I’ve stopped expecting a different version of our life. When expectations shift, suffering doesn’t disappear — but it becomes more proportionate, and far less personal.

Steph juggles a full time job in sustainable finance, 2 wonderful daughters aged 6 and 3 (the younger one is disabled and has a genetic lung disease), and a supportive husband. She lives in south London and works in the City.