Jennette McCurdy on Reclaiming Her Voice

This episode includes discussion of eating disorders, including anorexia and bulimia. Listener discretion advised. This might be one of the most powerful conversations I’ve ever had on How To Fail. I don’t say that lightly - I’ve had some amazing guests - but there’s something about how Jennette puts the female experience into words that I find truly electrifying. Raised Mormon in Orange County, Jennette had a difficult, abusive childhood which she chronicled with unflinching honesty in her 2022 memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died - a book that spent more than 90 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Her new novel, Half His Age, follows 17-year-old Waldo as she embarks on an affair with her 40-year-old creative writing teacher. It’s a startling, powerful story about discomfort, agency and self-determination and it became a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in its first week! In this episode, we talk about her upbringing, her experience of disordered eating, the writing process and the grounding partner she’s been with for nine years (who I was lucky enough to meet). Plus: setting boundaries, finding your voice, rage, recovery and autonomy. Recorded in our London studio. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Introduction 03:27 Speaking Up and Setting Boundaries 04:15 Reception of 'Half His Age' 07:22 Exploring Mormonism and Guilt 14:36 Failures and Creative Process 30:09 Calorie Restriction Lessons from My Mother 30:58 First Encounter with Anorexia 32:45 The Turning Point: Mother's Death and Recovery 32:58 Struggles with Bulimia 35:41 Therapy and the Road to Recovery 36:47 Understanding the Value of Eating Disorders 38:59 Healing Through Relationships 42:58 Finding My Voice and Inner Peace 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: I think oftentimes a woman is perceived as difficult if the person around her can't meet her standards. It’s time that women start speaking up in any capacity - and not worrying about being 'too much'. There is nothing more powerful than a woman's intuition. I believe our bodies have inherent knowledge... denying our bodies is nothing but a disservice to a better life path for ourselves. If you feel resentment, it's time to set a boundary. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Jennette’s new book Half His Age is available to buy now Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ 📚 WANT MORE? Dolly Alderton – writing personal truth and navigating public scrutiny swap.fm/l/XM98joc3GFEMTsLfkEfR Matt Haig – mental health and transforming suffering into storytelling swap.fm/l/amHeyBr7x2jg3Isw3JxG Jameela Jamil – body image, disordered eating and unlearning harmful conditioning swap.fm/l/D0j8oJQ52OwiJu6W3T4o 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Elizabeth and Jennette (who is a naturally brilliant agony aunt) answer listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I think oftentimes, a woman is perceived as difficult if the person around her can't meet her standards. Growing up in that religion, there's a lot of inherent guilt to the culture, sexual guilt, and just kind of almost a guilt for existing. Challenges build character. I could afford less character. Like, I don't need to be resilient. I can afford less character. Let's go, baby.

• 0:21Elizabeth Day?

  I feel this interview is just, it's so serendipitous. Everything that you are saying is feeding directly into my soul. Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that believes all failure is a portal to self-discovery. Before we get into this conversation, please do remember to subscribe and follow so that you never miss a single episode.

• 0:45Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialized treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's exposure and response prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable, so

• 1:28Elizabeth Day?

  you can live more of the life you want to live. If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail. Confession time. I have a tendency to postpone certain decisions for far longer than is sensible. Not the big life decisions, oddly enough, those I can usually handle. It's the smaller ones that somehow become disproportionately complicated. For me, rugs fall squarely into that category. I've known for a long time that a rug can completely change how a room feels, but I've always found sizing for a space tricky. That's why...

• 2:10Elizabeth Day?

  Ernesta appealed to me. Ernesta makes designer quality rugs custom cut to the exact dimensions of your space. So instead of making do with something that's close enough, you're choosing something made specifically for your home. I also love the fact that you can order five oversized 12 by 12 samples for just $10 before committing and Ernesta's design team will help with sizing completely free of charge. Visit ernesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you'll get $50 towards any rug of your choice. That's ernesta, E R N E S T A, dot com. Jennette McCurdy's novel Half His Age tells the story of a 17 year old girl called Waldo

• 2:52Elizabeth Day?

  embarking on an affair with Mr. Corgi, her 40 year old creative writing teacher. It is an astonishing book, partly because of its empathetic refusal to judge its protagonists, but also because in her observation of adolescent female anger and insecurity, McCurdy takes Waldo on a journey through her discomfort to a place of powerful agency and self determination. In McCurdy's hands, rage transmutes into power. It's an impressive feat for a debut novelist and unsurprising that the book has been a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, becoming a Sunday Times number

• 3:34Elizabeth Day?

  one bestseller in its first week of publication. But McCurdy did not start out as a writer. Growing up Mormon in Orange County, California, McCurdy was six when her mother decided her only daughter would become an actor. Soon she was supporting her mother and three brothers full time through work. It was a difficult and abusive upbringing, a story told with unflinching honesty in her 2022 memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, which spent more than 90 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Writing, she says, has been such a profound source of identity for me. It's been the place where I have found myself.

• 4:17Elizabeth Day?

  Jennette McCurdy, welcome to How to Fail.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me. What a beautiful intro.

• 4:22Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so honoured to have you and thank you so much for the gift of your words. You have this rare ability to be courageous enough to tell the truth and to help readers see themselves and their experience on the page. So I want to start with that.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Well, it's so funny you say that, the sort of courage to tell the truth, because I feel that it is honestly something that people say a lot about my writing. And I've kind of been thinking about that recently, where like 90% of my thoughts are things that you really shouldn't say out loud in any sort of social setting or capacity. And yet, writing them down, they're then sort of hailed as like so brave, where if I just were to say the same things at a dinner, the forks would, you know, stop. Everyone would look at me and be like, okay, no, that's not what we say here. Yet, you know, in writing, it's sort of not only allowed, but really, really rewarded. And it's just, it's interesting to think about.

• 5:19Elizabeth Day?

  It's so interesting. And I wonder if that truthfulness has felt like such a liberation for you. Because, I mean, as many women do, we've sort of been raised, so many of us, to please others and to be nice.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Yes, 100%. Be accommodating at the expense of your own feelings. Make everybody else in the room feel okay. Who cares how you're feeling? Just all you have to do is be there for everybody else. Show up for everybody else. Get them to feel the way that they need to feel. I'm really sick of that. I think it's time that women start speaking up for ourselves in any capacity. Not worrying about, you know, we're told, oh, don't be difficult, don't be, don't be too much. And, you know, you want to get ahead. So, but it's really actually counterproductive. And I think this messaging keeps us down. I think oftentimes, a woman is perceived as difficult if the person around her can't meet her standards.

• 6:15Elizabeth Day?

  What has been the most surprising thing for you about the reception to half his age?

• 6:22Speaker 00

  To be totally honest, the amazing critical response, I really, really, I don't want to jinx it, but I thought there would be a lot of pushback, I guess, just because of the success of the memoir. I thought there would be kind of a real, you know, kind of arms-crossed skepticism and kind of a like, okay, little girl, let's see what you got, kind of snarky attitude. And that hasn't been the case at all. And it's, I stay away from reviews, but people send me nice stuff. So that's, that's been, you know, seeing reviews in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and, you know, Sunday Times, and all these places where it's really, my work is being respected and appreciated has been like, beyond meaningful to me. I want to sit here and go, oh, reviews don't matter. And, you know,

• 7:07Speaker 00

  and I definitely don't write from that. I'm never writing going, what are the reviews going to say? That would be disastrous. But just to feel that the work is understood is ultimately meaningful. It does mean something to me. I am getting those articles framed. Like, that's the, that's the, that's the reality.

• 7:25Elizabeth Day?

  You really deserve it. There's no seamless link to this next question, but you grew up Mormon.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Go for it.

• 7:32Elizabeth Day?

  I want to talk about Mormonism, because the Brits have a longstanding fascination with Mormonism.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Really?

• 7:38Elizabeth Day?

  Well, we don't really get it.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Okay. I saw, I saw that the play is going here.

• 7:42Elizabeth Day?

  The play is going, yeah. Book of Mormon has been a huge hit because we want to understand more. And

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:46Elizabeth Day?

  I feel like Mormonism is having such a cultural moment in the most unexpected way. Like, the real secret lives of Mormon wives.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Yes, I've heard about this. I haven't seen it. But is this, so this is something, it's here as well. Okay, okay.

• 7:59Elizabeth Day?

  That's here as well.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  It started on TikTok or something, or?

• 8:02Elizabeth Day?

  Exactly. It started as Mom Talk, because there was a swingers scandal involving these Mormon women who were all in their early twenties, but like, married with kids.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Mormons have really changed. If there's like swingers happening, that is like, quite the opposite of what the premise is, but.

• 8:17Elizabeth Day?

  But can I ask you about Mormonism, and whether you think that has shaped, in any way, your creative output?

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Wow. What a, what a deep question. I

• 8:29Speaker 00

  I think it has shaped, certainly it has really kind of shaped who I am or the way that I think about things. And by that, I mean guilt. You know, there's a lot of sort of, growing up in that religion, there's a lot of inherent guilt to the culture, sexual guilt, and just kind of almost a guilt for existing. I think a lot of those people-pleasing tendencies, specifically as a woman, really can be traced back to that, though I think we've all kind of been told that in one way or another, Mormon or not, or wherever we've grown up, it's just we're told to be accommodating to others. In that culture, growing up, it was really, you know, these are the expectations of a woman, and it's that you stay home, you have kids, you do the dishes, you make your husband dinner, and you have it on the table at six. And you smile while you're doing it, and you're grateful that that's

• 9:14Speaker 00

  what you are able to do, what you are allowed to do. And if that's what somebody wants to do, amazing, that is beautiful. But if it's not what you want to do, and you're just being constantly told that that's what you've got to do, it's really, really frustrating. But you're not allowed to be frustrated. You know, you gotta be, as a Mormon, you've really got to be happy and grateful, and just show up sort of with a smile on your face, and find the positive in everything. And there's not always a positive in everything, you know, and I think finding reality is far more important and far more beneficial, and then you can find the positive from there. But just kind of living in a world where you're pretending everything's fine, when some things really are not, I think it's

• 9:57Speaker 00

  a way to just kind of keep a person down. And I say this actually with a certain tenderness for the religion, because it did feel like a safe environment for me. Now I see it as completely not that. But growing up, you know, in a household with so much chaos, there was something quite peaceful about just being in a pleasant, clean space, and I really appreciated that. And I did appreciate the sense of community. I did appreciate the morals, though of course now I see there's such a kind of complexity there, because how can you have certain morals while you're doing things that are so kind of harmful to certain groups, and that makes zero sense. But it certainly shaped who I am and how I think.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  And but I don't think it has shaped my sort of creative output, other than just, I mean, there's a character in half his age who's Mormon.

• 10:46Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  That's really, yeah.

• 10:47Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  I couldn't help but do a little nod.

• 10:49Elizabeth Day?

  Do you still carry the guilt?

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Um, let me think. Let me check in with my body. I think in some instances, and like, I don't really have an example off the top of my mind, but um, certainly not, you know, there's not sexual guilt and, you know, sex is really a theme that comes up in this, in this book a lot and writing sex in an honest way was so important to me. Maybe I, you know, maybe there's some element of that, that, that, um, that early sexual guilt that sort of led to this path, but there's no kind of direct line that I can see. And then generally, I would say I don't, I don't have a lot of guilt. I think I, I live in a way that I have values that I try to make my choices off of. I try to let those values guide my life, but beyond that, um, if I'm doing that,

• 11:34Speaker 00

  then I don't think there's really much room for guilt.

• 11:37Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. My best friend is a therapist and she always says that guilt is a signal that you've done something wrong.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 11:43Elizabeth Day?

  So if you haven't done something wrong, there's no need to feel guilty.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. I'm curious if she, there's, there's something I heard from a therapist, which is, if you feel resentment, it's time to set a boundary.

• 11:52Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, that's so good.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that so good?

• 11:55Elizabeth Day?

  That's so good. And can I just say how much I love hearing you answer questions?

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you.

• 12:01Elizabeth Day?

  We were talking.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  I was so, I was like, I was so long with the Mormon thing. I'm already judging it.

• 12:04Elizabeth Day?

  No.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Maybe there is guilt.

• 12:05Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Let me relieve you from the need to judge. That was an incredible answer and so nuanced. And we were talking before we started recording about how as writers, we feel that it's better to, or easier to express ourselves on the page because we can redraft. But when we're in the moment and talking, there's that inner critic constantly saying, you could have said that better.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  I hate 90% of what I say. Literally after I leave here, I will go, oh, why did I say? That was too, I could have said that differently. I wish I would have done that. Ugh. And it's, it's exhausting and I find writing so freeing in a way because you can just get it right. You can say it the way that you want to say it. You can revise it until it's exactly how you want it to be said. Um, that's not the case with, with anything else.

• 12:49Elizabeth Day?

  I also just want to acknowledge that in talking about your work, you are often asked by interviewers like me to trawl over really difficult trauma.

• 13:03Elizabeth Day?

  And I just wanted to sort of say that because I know that it doesn't come without a cost.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 13:10Elizabeth Day?

  And I don't want you to feel that any of your experiences are being cheapened here. And I want you to feel held.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  I'm quite moved by you saying that.

• 13:18Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, oh, Jeanette. Well, I'm moved by your response and I just want you to know that I see you and it's important.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Excuse me.

• 13:25Elizabeth Day?

  No, please, take your time, honestly.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  I really appreciate you saying that.

• 13:31Elizabeth Day?

  You look so pretty when you cry. Is that an inappropriate thing to say? You really do.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  That is so kind and it is so felt, it is so felt from you, the generosity and the depth and insightfulness that you ask with this. It's not always the case and I understand that this is a part of the job and, you know, I really want my, my, I care about my work. I put my heart and soul into, you know, into half his age for years and, and, and this is a part of the job and I want, and I'm grateful to have a platform where I'm able to, to do this, you know, these various press interviews and things to, to be able to have a platform for the book. I want people to read it. I care about people reading it. I think it's really, you know, it's, it's worth their time and I, I don't think, I think, you know, people really ought to value their time most of all. And I do think this is a book worth their time, but it can be challenging when, you know, when, when things are, things

• 14:23Speaker 00

  can get personal or when, you know, people will ask questions about the memoir, which I wrote years ago and it's something I'm so proud of, but ultimately it's like to sometimes be kind of touted out and just be like, so that abusive mom of yours, it's like.

• 14:35Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  Can we just not for a second?

• 14:38Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  And so I really appreciate you saying that.

• 14:40Elizabeth Day?

  Of course. Let's get on to your failures because your first one is about the novel.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:47Elizabeth Day?

  Because you were writing a different novel and this is your first failure is that you didn't finish it. So tell us about that novel that you didn't finish.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  I was, and I think this is such a key kind of element of the creative process and I hope it's useful for somebody, for any creative out there. But I was working on another novel that I really, really liked. I was about, you know, six months in, pretty deep in. I had had, you know, multiple drafts at this point and was, was really in the thick of it. And I think this thing happens with creative ideas where. Initially, you tell me if you feel this way, if you agree, right? Initially, they're so attractive.

• 15:20Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  They're so sexy.

• 15:22Elizabeth Day?

  Such a good way of expressing it.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Right? It's the honeymoon phase.

• 15:25Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  You're dating, you're having sex a lot, like, it's great. And then it becomes work, inevitably becomes work, and the honeymoon phase kind of fades. And it's like, OK, now we're really in the thick. We got our, you know, pants pulled up and we're in there. And then every other idea you have ever had starts to look real hot.

• 15:42Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  And you think, ah, if I could just not be in this, if I could just date that other one for a little bit, it'd be so nice, or they're so beautiful if I could just... Um, and so that's what happened here, where I was six months into this other process, and I was so deep in the project, and Half His Age was just really pushing itself up on me. And it was so intense that it got to the point where it was undeniable. And I said, OK, I will give Half His Age a week. I will, because I can't stop thinking about it, I will put the brakes on this other idea for a week. I'll work on Half His Age. I figured I would get it out of my system and then return to the other one, sort of going, oh, I'm so grateful to be in this long-term relationship, and we are meant to be together.

• 16:21Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  That is not what happened at all. And 30 days later, I had a first draft of Half His Age. I just physically could not return to the other one. I'm very much a bodily writer, and so, I mean, clearly, I'm emotional. And so I kind of have to just work with it. I can't work against it. It doesn't work for my life, I've learned. So I had to go, OK, the excitement's in Half His Age, let me get this out. I got the first draft out, and then I went back into the second, third, you know, every subsequent draft from there. And now, you know, nearly whatever, 20 drafts in two years later, this is clearly the one that was meant to be, because it's the one that is.

• 16:51Elizabeth Day?

  So fascinating, so much I want to ask you about that. That idea of feeling it in your body and having learnt that you have to pay attention to that instinct is so powerful.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 17:02Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think that part of the reason you couldn't ignore this is because you'd spent so many years in a kind of control dynamic where you weren't able to follow your instincts?

• 17:14Speaker 00

  Oh, my god. The only person who's put that, that has so brilliantly said, um, such a, such a wow, insightful connection. Yes, I think that's exactly it. I am, you know, I had eating disorders from, from age 11 through my, my early kind of twenties. And there was so much body denial. And I really, you know, it's what I had to do for the time. It's an important part of recovery is really accepting like, you know, you did what you had to do and that's what it was for me. But it is so sad to me, looking back on it, the amount of, it was a real betrayal to my own body and a real denial because of feeling things so intensely and knowing if I would have literally come into contact with any of my emotions,

• 17:57Speaker 00

  all they would have been telling me would be to get out of all the situations I was in. And you can't do that when you're 14.

• 18:03Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  So then, you know, thank God I had some sort of defense mechanism, some sort of coping mechanism. It might sound strange to say, given that it was such an unhealthy one, but it really was important to getting me through kind of that phase. It was all that I had. But there was so much body betrayal. And now, you know, as a 33 year old woman who is in touch with her emotions,

• 18:27Speaker 00

  painfully, like so in touch with her emotions. It is so clear to me that there is nothing more powerful than a woman's intuition. I believe that about all of us. I believe our bodies have inherent knowledge that if we try to kind of analyze our way, oh, and we can, maybe if we can, no, our bodies know. And denying our bodies is nothing but a disservice to our, to a better life path for ourselves. If we could just accept our emotions, allow our emotions, let them inform our decisions. I think 100% of the time puts our, puts our, our lives on a, on a better path. And that's definitely something that I continue to kind of relearn over and over through the years.

• 19:05Elizabeth Day?

  Wow. That is exactly what I believe. Thank you so much for putting it into words. When this idea kept pushing itself against you, that's, does that work, that phrase? Yes, I think it does.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like it has to be, it had to be birthed. Like it was so in my body, you know, it was just, it's time.

• 19:25Elizabeth Day?

  You had an age gap relationship when you were 18.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:29Elizabeth Day?

  When you first had the idea. Did you think, is this another memoir? Was there ever a point where you thought, am I writing myself here?

• 19:38Speaker 00

  No, there was never, never a point or a question in my mind about that because so much of the book, the novel is told entirely through the point of view of the protagonist, Waldo. And really, her voice was feeling very clear to me and who she is and what she wants and how she operates. And it is, you know, she's entirely her own character and the novel is entirely its own sort of story. And I'm aware people will project me onto it because I just know that's going to happen. I do think it would be a misread if that, if people do that. But, but I get that that's kind of part of it. Although I will say, to your point of being in an early, you know, an age gap relationship when I was 18, I do find it really important that there's some sort of significant personal

• 20:23Speaker 00

  connection to whatever it is that I write, especially fiction, I would say. I think it's so important there's something deep in my bones that I really, really understand about kind of the core of the subject matter, that I trust myself to tell that story. I trust myself to carry that kind of story. And then also, it's just so much more fun to be able to build out and expand and get into various characters' points of view. And it's quite liberating to not be limited by life experience.

• 20:53Elizabeth Day?

  And I read somewhere that you, in a later draft, had included more from Mr. Corgi's perspective, not in his words, but you were kinder to him in later drafts, even though he comes across brilliantly, but ultimately is this kind of pathetic figure. It's Waldo who has the power by the end of it. There's this one scene, it's just so telling, where he's, he's, he's left his marriage and he's able to blue tack up his poster of a clockwork orange. And it's, and there's one corner of it that just keeps flapping down. And Waldo sees it and it's such a metaphor for just how his life is just sort of a flapping down.

• 21:34Elizabeth Day?

  But what was that like for you, sort of setting yourself that challenge of seeing, of not demonizing him?

• 21:42Speaker 00

  I'm glad you mentioned this because I think it does go back to kind of the not, not being finger wagging or moralistic. In earlier drafts, he was a bit more mustache, twirly villain, a bit more on the nose, right? And I would read those drafts back and feel, I could feel myself kind of writing defensive, both wanting to defend Waldo, protect Waldo, rather, protect Waldo, and then also, I think, wanting to defend myself. This is, this is how I feel about this. This is a bad situation. This is how I, the writer, feel about this, right? And I could feel myself kind of intervening. And it's, did not read well, you know, it didn't read well. He wasn't believable. He wasn't grounded. Ultimately, I do believe that people are trying their best and failing miserably. Everybody. I think that is just a part of life. It's who we are. It's who I am. It's

• 22:26Speaker 00

  who everybody I believe is. And I also think nobody ever thinks they're the bad guy. So I know we're going to be reading this and we're going to be, most of us, if not all, if not 100% of us, will be viewing Corgi a certain way and putting, placing that judgment on him. But he doesn't feel that about himself. He believes he is making the best decision that he can at any moment and that he has the best of intentions. And so I wanted that to kind of come through. And so I really had to sit with the point of view of what is it like to be a 40-year-old man who has really not fulfilled any of the things that he thought, hoped, or expected that he would? And I did, I did feel for him. As uncomfortable as that is to say, I do think it was important to writing him believably and ultimately

• 23:12Speaker 00

  to believing Waldo, because she has to be a reliable narrator. The moment we discredit her as a narrator is the moment we're off. Knowing that we're all older than her, we're reading this thing from somebody 10, 20 years younger than us, you know, how do we make sure that we don't discredit her? And if she's painting him a certain way, we're going, well, then why did you fall for him in the first place? And it was so important to really make sure that Waldo was reliable.

• 23:37Elizabeth Day?

  That's such a great point. How much, if at all, did that process help you re-categorize or, or reanalyze your own age gap relationship?

• 23:52Speaker 00

  Oh, I I'm thinking now, I'm like, I don't even know if I was, I think I was so kind of in the thick of it that I wasn't really processing my own. I think ultimately some processing did wind up happening. Some closure was kind of found through the writing of it. But I wasn't really putting my own experience on it or kind of reflecting back. To me, that might have been distracting or or limiting, you know, in a way. Maybe I would have put more judgment on it or something. I don't know. I'm working this out in real time here, but it really did feel like I was operating from, you know, I believe Mr. Corgi is a he really feels real to me. Waldo feels so, so real to me. And so I was kind of just working out the dynamics through who these people are.

• 24:36Elizabeth Day?

  The other relationship that I found so compelling in this novel is the relationship between Waldo and her mother. I think you paint that really beautifully. Why was that important for you to explore?

• 24:48Speaker 00

  I think family dysfunction or complicated family dynamics are something that I will always explore. I just wouldn't know how to write, you know, clean, kind of, healthy family dynamics. Like, I would have not the first idea. Yeah, I'm literally like trying to think of what a line would be with a healthy dynamic. Here's your dinner, sweetheart. Have a great night. How was school? Like, I'm bored. I'm bored. Yeah, I think there's something sort of so much more juicy and interesting. And it's also just, it's what I know. And I think it is, writing is oftentimes a way for me to kind of find closure and

• 25:28Speaker 00

  work through things that I don't have the answers to myself. Sit with those uncomfortable aspects of of families. And so I think I think that's just something I'll always write.

• 25:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  I'm so, if I can ask, why are you so interested in failure? I'm really curious.

• 25:45Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, what a lovely question.

• 25:49Elizabeth Day?

  I think the short answer is that I think failure has stripped me of my old certainties about how I thought life was going to be and introduced me to the truth of who I really am.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 26:04Elizabeth Day?

  And what I mean by that is like so much of life is driven by ego and also by social conditioning.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:10Elizabeth Day?

  What we've inherited from our parents, what we've inherited from society or culture or the amount of rom coms we've watched. And so I grew up with this very sort of conventional notion of what my life might be like. And it did not go according to that plan by some metric. And so I found myself feeling like such a failure at the age of 39. I'd gone through a divorce, I tried and failed to have children. And online at that stage, it felt like everyone had perfect lives on Instagram. And so I was interested in the disconnect because it also made me feel alienated.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Wow, wow.

• 26:45Elizabeth Day?

  And since then, I've kind of become obsessed with it. I've learnt so much through it, through talking to people like you who are so brilliant and wise and smart. I learn every time I have a conversation like this.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Wow, so it's sort of a switch at about 39 and just kind of life events. Wow, yeah.

• 27:00Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, that's why I think you're so ahead of your time. You're 33, you are way ahead of where I was. I mean, thank goodness.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't know about that.

• 27:09Elizabeth Day?

  That's why.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  It makes, it makes so much sense and I really, I completely agree. I love sort of the premise of the podcast. I do think that, you know, the universe, whatever you want to identify it as, does know more than we do. And I think there are so many things and I'm so sort of this, I'll set my, my sights on some, I'll set my eyes on one thing and I'll just go, that's what it has to be and it needs to be this and I, and I think I know best. And I never do, literally, I can treat anything in my life where I've thought, this is what's going to be best for me. Life goes, actually, no. And it shows me what is going to be best for me.

• 27:43Elizabeth Day?

  Absolutely. So moved by that, you've totally nailed it. And, and my not having the baby that I thought I always wanted has actually been.

• 27:55Elizabeth Day?

  I think the uncovering of my life purpose, part of it is that I now strongly feel that part of my purpose is to speak for those people who don't and can't.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:06Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:07Elizabeth Day?

  So, things like that are just so meaningful and profound.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Yes, you never really know why things are happening until after they've happened.

• 28:14Elizabeth Day?

  So true. The thing that you do know is that you can have more faith that you're going to survive it because of how much you've survived already.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. You, oh, I can navigate this. Oh, you know what? I'm more adaptable. I'm more, this word can be kind of cringy, or I find it kind of cringy, but resilient.

• 28:30Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Because I always think like, well, I'd rather not have to be fucking, can I say fuck?

• 28:33Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, please swear I love sex.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 28:35Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  I'd rather not have to be resilient. Wouldn't it be great? Or like, oh, you know, challenges build character. I could afford less character. Like, I don't need to be resilient. I can afford less character. Let's go, baby. But, you know, I guess these are, these are, these just happen, you know?

• 28:52Elizabeth Day?

  Jennette McCurdy could afford less character is the best, is just the best line.

• 28:58Elizabeth Day?

  Let's get on to your second failure. And I want to preface this by saying how grateful I am that you are going to talk about it.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 29:04Elizabeth Day?

  I know it will speak to so many people. And it's that early on in your eating disorder recovery, you had lots of, as you put it in quotation marks, slips or failures. Can we go back to the genesis of your disordered eating?

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:20Elizabeth Day?

  And the first memory you have of it?

• 29:25Speaker 00

  I woke up when I was, I think I was 11 years old, and I'd had a lump in my breast. And I thought, oh, no. My mother had cancer when I was two years old. She, you know, but it eventually recurred and she passed away when I was 21. But she had breast cancer when I was two. And so I was always kind of hyper, hyper, hyper aware of breast cancer is a scary looming thing. You know, it's hereditary. I could get it at some point. So I'm 11, I feel a lump in my breast. I think I've got breast cancer. I'm dying. Of course, it was just breast tissue. It was just a little bit of breast tissue developing. And my mom kind of told me that I was, oh, you're getting boobs. And it was a very hysterical, intense reaction. She really, you know, had a lot of fear around me growing up. She didn't

• 30:10Speaker 00

  want that to happen, I think for a number of reasons. That's its own podcast. But, but so she, she taught me calorie restriction. And she was really, she really struggled herself. I didn't know this at the time, of course. I just thought my mom had very specific eating habits, which included not eating most of the time. She'd just have a tea with nothing in it for breakfast every day. Yeah, she had these, these sort of quirks around her, her eating that she then really taught to me. And it was as gross as it is to say it was a bonding opportunity for us. I perceived it as a bonding opportunity. For me, it was like, like a fun sequence in the parent trap where they're like doing hand jobs, but we're like counting calories together. And it just seemed like this little secret that we have that nobody else knows about,

• 30:55Speaker 00

  and we do it in private. And how great, because that makes us even closer, and we're best friends, and we're so enmeshed and, and codependent. And so I learned, you know, how to calorie restrict, and was really, really intensely restricting my calories, and very quickly developed anorexia, and was hyper, hyper-monitoring everything that went into my, my body, until eventually I was at, you know, a, a doctor. And, you know, the, I, the doctor pulled my mother out of the room and said that she was, you know, concerned that I, I may have anorexia. It's the first time I've heard this word. And I thought, literally, my first thought was like, oh, that sounds like a dinosaur, like anorexia. But I could tell by the tone of her voice and how she was speaking with my mom, that something was wrong. Because I think, you know, as kids, we're so, we're so perceptive, and we pick up on these emotional cues, better than many adults. Because by adulthood, we've

• 31:40Speaker 00

  stifled and suppressed, and we're blocking, we're just avoiding at all costs, so many times, so much of the time. But as kids, we're just hyper in tune with these cues. So I knew something's wrong, but I also couldn't go near the reality of what that wrong thing was, because my mom would never do that. And I needed my mom on that pedestal to survive. So it took a long, long time before I was able to kind of recognize that. This is something that I recognized, you know, after my mother passed at 21, 22. This is not something at 11. I'm like, well, I've got anorexia. You know, I didn't, I wasn't piecing it together.

• 32:11Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so sorry that you went through that. And this is not a podcast about your excellent memoir, which by the way, I listened to on audio.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 32:22Elizabeth Day?

  That was a whole experience and you did an incredible job of narrating it. But that memoir opens with you at your mother's bedside as she's dying, saying, I've reached my goal weight because you felt like that was the thing that would most excite her and keep her alive.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Believe that with all my heart, yeah. And it's also funny.

• 32:41Elizabeth Day?

  It's also darkly comic.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  And it's hilarious.

• 32:44Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  I'm like, mommy, I'm almost 86, whatever it was, pounds.

• 32:48Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. So your mother died and then you felt able to explore recovery. How did that happen?

• 32:58Speaker 00

  I think because it had to, you know, it got to the point where I had kind of hit a rock bottom. I had lost a tooth from, at this point, the anorexia had morphed into bulimia. So yeah, from 11 until 23, and it was really, really, that was incredibly intense. And, um, and complicated because people don't really talk about this, but sort of bulimia to, to any person with an eating disorder feels like a failure off the bat. Like you're, you've failed, you're never aiming for bulimia. You were aiming for anorexia. You failed at anorexia. You landed at bulimia. So you're constantly kind of just sitting in this cycle of shame and there can be, um, you know, I say this with caution. This is, this is, there's truly nothing worse than an eating disorder.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  And I believe it is such a colossal waste of time and often happens to really smart people who have so many better things they could be doing with their time. So I say it with this caveat, but, um, and there could be a power to anorexia. There could be a real sense of, you know, accomplishment to it. That was, is of course grotesque and deeply disturbed, but, um, but bulimia, there is none of that. It is just, you are mired in shame. You are walking around feeling like everything you do is just, you are a loser, a failure. It is, it feels awful. And I think I could just, I couldn't tolerate that anymore. I lost a tooth from bulimia. This was on a, you know, a flight to do a really intense press trip and, and I, you know, a number of things that kind of collided at once. And I think it was just like, okay, I have to, I have to deal, I can't avoid this anymore. I have to deal with it. It's time.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  My body finally, finally was just saying, I, I can't have you betray me anymore. Hey, you're gonna have to listen. I mean, thank God for my body. It finally said, we're done. We're done.

• 34:38Elizabeth Day?

  Can I ask you, what I hope doesn't sound like an ignorant question.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 34:43Elizabeth Day?

  When you were in the grip of your eating disorders, did you feel physically weak?

• 34:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exhausted.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  I'd also be sort of, you know, during the bulimia phase, it was, you know, I'd run 13 miles multiple days a week. And so I was constantly kind of in this state of exhaustion, which I think was helpful in avoiding emotion, because there was no time, there was no space to kind of face anything. I'd feel the anxiety build up and then a purge, and then I'd feel kind of a relief. And I'd feel so tired that I'd fall asleep, you know, and this would be, I mean, throughout, I would purge many times a day. This is, you know, but there was just, I was operating from such a place of phenomenal exhaustion that there was no time to go, oh, wow, I really don't like much of my life. And how do I put it on a path that I do like? And, you know,

• 35:37Speaker 00

  there was no space to consider anything else because it was just perpetuating the cycle, the addiction.

• 35:42Elizabeth Day?

  Wow. Thank you for explaining it like that.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:46Elizabeth Day?

  So what was the first step in your recovery? Was it therapy? Or was it a decision that you made internally?

• 35:53Speaker 00

  It was, it was a therapist that wound up this, that did not kind of work out with that therapist, which I also think is key, is you've got to find the right person. But then I, I did find the right person in, I was on a shoot in Toronto and I found an amazing therapist who did a blend of dialectical behavioral therapy and schema therapy, or schema-based therapy, I don't know the exact name. And that worked really effectively for me. It's very pen and paper. You're very much, you know, a scientist experimenting with your life and just getting it all out on the page. In terms of like, there's a lot of different methods and homework every day that you're doing. And that, that was transformative for me. I don't know if I would have recovered if I hadn't had those forms of therapy. And I also unfortunately don't think they would work for everyone. But I think if you have

• 36:38Speaker 00

  a personality type similar to mine, that's the way to go. I think, I, I, I think that therapist and those forms of therapy were transformative.

• 36:48Elizabeth Day?

  Was this the therapist who asked you to consider what good your eating disorder was doing for you?

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Yes, that's exactly it.

• 36:55Elizabeth Day?

  I found that fascinating.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Isn't it so intriguing? Very early on in recovery, because I'm, I'm sitting there assuming, okay, or I've hated sort of my body for so long and I've hated just, there's so much. There's so much complexity there. How do I then turn this eating disorder into the villain so I can get over it? That's what I thought would be the case. And instead, he's saying, maybe the first session. You know, what value does your eating disorder bring you? And I'm sitting there going, I'm paying you good money to get over this. I don't want to know what value it brings me. Like, help me get over it. And he's saying, well, it's actually very, very important that you find the value because we need to find something of equal or greater value to to bring in. Because you it will, there will be a void. There's going to be a void in your life when this goes away. And it is going to be, you're going to need something to fill it.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  And it was fascinating to sit there and go, OK, what value has it offered me? And to piece that together and to really, I mentioned earlier, sort of appreciating it. And that was a key part of recovery.

• 37:50Elizabeth Day?

  That, is it appropriate to ask you what that was?

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Hmm, let's see if I can remember. Well, you know, I sort of touched on this, but but I didn't have space for my emotional experience, which I think was too much for me to carry at that time. I don't think I was at a place where, you know, certainly at 11, 12, 13, if I'm going, if I accept the reality, OK, my mom taught me an eating disorder. My mom's teaching me, that is like, honey, you've got to leave. Where to? Where do you go at 11? So it was kind of a, it was a protection.

• 38:21Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  I think it was protection from the the weight of fame, from the confusion of having an identity that was not my own, that was so public facing. And feeling like my own identity was faced by no one. I mean, no parent, no adult figure, no, there was, there was no one. I think that's, while anecdotal, I think it's very common for people who grow up in the spotlight, where it's just you are a product, you are a good, and you are viewed as that. You know, even if people are well intentioned, it's just really, really, it's tricky for people to separate fame from a person. Like, it's, it's tough.

• 39:02Elizabeth Day?

  I'm very moved by that.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:04Elizabeth Day?

  This failure, quote unquote, specifically addresses your slip ups in recovery.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:11Elizabeth Day?

  And I think that it's very important for people to know this, that it's not linear. Recovery, authentic recovery can never be linear.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:20Elizabeth Day?

  So tell us a little bit about those slip ups and what they taught you.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  So this is another kind of aspect early on in recovery. Therapist had said, hey, give me a pamphlet and told me the importance of not letting slips become slides. He said, this is not going to be, you know, one stop shop. You say you're ready to recover and then that's all that it takes is just conviction and determination and a strong, you're good.

• 39:45Elizabeth Day?

  Discipline.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Discipline.

• 39:47Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Especially, you know, to a person with an eating disorder, like there is that discipline is so much a part of kind of the dysfunction of it, that to assume that discipline is all you need and then to have a slip up, it's so common. Also, black and white thinking is really common for people with eating, who experience disordered eating.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  It's so common for that person to go, oh, I've had a slip. I'm a failure. It's all, it's all gone to waste. Okay, I'm off the wagon, so I might as well just have another slip and another and another because now I'm a failure. So this is how I identify. So I'm a failure. So I'm a failure. So and you're just, again, perpetuating that cycle and you're stuck in it and just kind of mired in it. And he emphasized the importance of not letting slips become slides. So when you have a slip, you sit with your, you sit with yourself and you go, what can I learn from this? If you have a slip, a failure, you go, what is this telling me so that I can prevent it from happening again? How, what, what is all the information that I can glean from this? This is actually useful for me. That truly, yeah, changed my life. There were slips, there were many slips, but being able to go, I don't have to let

• 40:54Speaker 00

  this become a slide every single time. What can I glean from this? I will take my slip. I would literally just sit and I'd say, okay, I had four slips this week. Let's, let's get to the bottom of them. And we would explore all of those slips in depth and, you know, what were the vulnerability factors surrounding those slips and why did this happen? When? And it was such a useful part of the process.

• 41:17Elizabeth Day?

  All failure is data acquisition, I often say.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Brilliant.

• 41:20Elizabeth Day?

  The perfect example of it.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Brilliant.

• 41:24Elizabeth Day?

  There are so many things I wish I'd known when I started this podcast and my production company, Daylight. Like, why am I spending hours trying to make a website look good? Why am I designing everything from scratch? And why am I spending all my time just doing admin? What I really needed was one place that could do all of this for me. Enter Shopify. Shopify has beautiful, ready-made templates that make your website look polished without needing to become a graphic designer overnight. Its AI tools can help you get your site up and running quickly, and Shopify Checkout makes it really easy for customers to actually go from, "Ooh, I like that," to, "Yes, I'll have one."

• 42:05Elizabeth Day?

  If Shopify had existed when I started out, I could have saved myself a lot of time, stress, and some rogue design choices. If you're ready to hear the

• 42:15Elizabeth Day?

  of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.co.uk/fail to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at Shopify.co.uk/fail. Two Girls One Ghost.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Two Girls One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky, and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 42:57Elizabeth Day?

  How do you feel today you are in alignment with your body?

• 43:02Speaker 00

  Hmm. Checking in with my body. It's sort of buzzing right now. It feels pleasant. It feels safe. That's great. It feels really safe. I notice, you know, if I feel constricted or if I feel... My body feels a no. Oof. And so much of my life, going back to kind of the accommodating and the people-pleasing and all of that, was about suppressing my no. And how can I... Ooh, I feel it. I feel the rage. I feel it in my face. This is how I'm in touch with my body. I started, I started listening to it and then it's like, it's tricky when you start telling your body, when you start really listening to it, it goes, okay, here you go. And it like throws you so much and you go, oh, can I handle this?

• 43:42Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  And we can, you know, we can, but it's, but it doesn't mean it's not intense. And so, you know, thinking back to those, those times when it would be so much about, you know, how can I turn my no into somebody else? It was more important to make my no into anybody else's yes. Didn't even matter if I respect that person, liked that person. It was just about accommodating them and being more convenient for them. And now I listen to my nos.

• 44:09Elizabeth Day?

  That is so fucking incredible. I feel this interview is just, it's so serendipitous. Like everything that you are saying is feeding directly into my soul.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, I'm so glad to hear it. Oh, my God.

• 44:23Elizabeth Day?

  I, thank you. I feel like, well, not only do we speak the same language, you elevate the language that I try to speak.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Is there a no coming to mind, whether or not you want to share, but is there something coming to mind? Okay, okay. Great. Wow.

• 44:35Elizabeth Day?

  For years, I didn't have a voice. I thought I did, but it wasn't my voice. And I was in a very dysfunctional, emotionally abusive, romantic relationship. And I used to get tonsillitis a lot. And it was only afterwards that I made the connection that I was like, oh, that's because I literally kept losing my voice. And recently, I was lucky enough to go, bear with me, to this Swiss wellness clinic.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm in.

• 45:06Elizabeth Day?

  And this woman, she was a bioenergetic medical expert.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:11Elizabeth Day?

  I don't know what that means, but she was amazing. And I walked into her room and she said, oh, you're very tight here. And she like clutched her own neck. She was like, you're so tight here. You're breathing from your chest, you're not breathing properly. And she basically identified something that I'd lived with all of my life without knowing, which is that I wasn't sufficiently in my body. I wasn't fueling my body with enough air in order to be able to speak. She said, you actually have a very deep voice. And she got me to do these rounds of breathing. And my voice, literally, I became like Old Man River. But it felt so rooted.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Embodied.

• 45:46Elizabeth Day?

  Embodied is the word.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:48Elizabeth Day?

  And I was like, this is my voice and I feel so at one with the earth.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 45:54Elizabeth Day?

  It was an extraordinary revelation.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Wow. So was your voice, was your voice quite different before? Was it sort of?

• 45:59Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, well, I feel like it's got deeper. Maybe Hannah, the producer, can tell me that it has. But it was, it just felt in my, trapped in my chest. It was like I was scared, literally scared of going deeper.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  And it's like coming from a sturdier kind of place.

• 46:12Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Wow, wow.

• 46:13Elizabeth Day?

  And like you, although we have different life paths, I was just an extreme people pleaser. And it meant that I lost all connection with my own desires and I ended up saying yes to really unhealthy things. And spoiler alert, that ended in divorce, like all of that sort of stuff. And now I'm remarried to someone who I really feel able to communicate with. And I haven't had tonsillitis, touch wood, since.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Wow, wow. It's, it's incredible what our bodies tell us.

• 46:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 46:42Elizabeth Day?

  And that piece around rage.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:44Elizabeth Day?

  Again, I thought I was sad for so long. And then my best friend, the therapist was like, do you think you're sad or do you think it's an acceptable mask for what you're actually feeling?

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Ah, yes.

• 46:55Elizabeth Day?

  Which was anger.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Yes, certain things are allowed, but heaven forbid a woman feel rage. There's always quote, hell hath not, what is it? Hell, what is it?

• 47:01Elizabeth Day?

  Have no fury like a woman scorned.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, damn fucking straight.

• 47:05Elizabeth Day?

  I know.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Yes, watch out.

• 47:07Elizabeth Day?

  Watch us, exactly.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  Instead, it's just this thing that's like, oh, we can't be a scorned woman. No, we are scorned.

• 47:12Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  We're angry.

• 47:13Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, fucking right. Okay. Oh, Jeanette, this is the most amazing conversation of all time. Thank you.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 47:20Elizabeth Day?

  Your final failure is relationships.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:24Elizabeth Day?

  I, I can't wait to get into this because it's got such a happy ending. Spoiler alert. But failed relationships, what did they teach you?

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Well, at the time, you know, there's so much.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  I would have this kind of this feeling when I would be at the on the cusp of a new relationship or it'd be this instant attraction and it was this all consuming, I have to be with that person now, now, now, now, more, more, more, please, please, please. And the relationships would really start out with a deep, deep intensity. There's also a real kind of certain kind of person I would I would tend to fall for, but there was just so much dysfunction, so much dysfunction, like an amount that's embarrassing to admit, that I think, actually think a lot of us experience this level of dysfunction, but I think, again, we're kind of just tiptoeing around it and not really talking about it. But it was real chaos and real kind of shameful behavior, I think on both of our parts,

• 48:20Speaker 00

  certainly on mine, I'll own mine. But I just had this feeling like something's not right, ultimately, like underneath, I was just like, this is not how I want a relationship to look, this, this, this is too reminiscent, not, you know, not where my parents' relationship, it didn't go that far, but, but it went too far and it didn't feel like what I wanted from a relationship, even remotely. I wanted something healthy, I wanted something sturdy, I wanted something that felt really, like we were both growing separately as individuals and together and that was not the experience.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  I finally just started getting like honestly self-help books and I would just kind of see myself in all these relational patterns and, you know, taming your, I think there's one called like taming your outer child and books on whatever codependency, all these different kind of potential issues in relationships. And I took that really seriously. And as I remember the relationship that I was in, when I kind of started getting all these books, and I could really feel the fear in him as I was getting these books, because it was like, oh, you could sense kind of a threat, oh, what does this mean? And I completely understand that, I empathize with that, it can be, oh, this person's changing, will I be safe, you know?

• 49:43Speaker 00

  But ultimately, I remember taking kind of a, I love a list. And I had taken a list to him of like, here's the things that I wish were different. I wish it was this, this, this. I wish I were more this way. I wish we were more this way. And, and then he said, well, I kind of see a path too for the relationship. And he just like drew me a little figure and it was like, it sounds really, it's, I was gonna say it sounds worse than it, than it was, but maybe it's not the case. It was literally like a doodle of just like a rainbow.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  And it's like, and then, you know, we're there at the end with kind of a pot of gold. He's, he's sounding worse than he was. He was really, really, really, he was a deeply kind of person. But right then, it was just like that sinking feeling in, in my gut. And I know, okay, this has got it. This is not gonna, this is not somebody who wants to do the work, who's willing to work with me. I'm not saying that a relationship has to be from the get go, perfect, razy, roses and daisies. But I'm saying it has to be somebody who's willing to find a common, a common language and a common engine that will get us through conflict. You have to be able to resolve conflict effectively as a couple, or it's just not gonna work. Cause there is gonna be conflict. And if people say, there's people who I know who say like, oh, there's, we never had conflict. You're hiding shit. You're suppressing. You are. You are in denial. You are lying.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  And also there's this element of, have you heard of walk away wife syndrome? No, tell me more. Okay. It's sort of this idea that you have cried so many tears throughout the course of the relationship. That by the time you are ready to leave, you're wiped out. You're almost stone cold. That was me. Oh, my God. Right? I was a walk away wife. Right. I feel like it's so common for, for, for us women because we've tried, we've tried everything we can. We've said, we've said what we need as many ways as we know how, as many times as we know how. We have said it and said it and said it and said it. Then we feel needy and we feel like we're too much for saying, oh, can you, can you, can you, what if you just please? Or how about, and then you're trying to change yourself to be more accommodating for him. Meanwhile, no changes are happening.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  I mean, not always the case, but a lot of the times. And then it gets to a point where it's, okay, you know what? I, I'm so emotionally exhausted and depleted that I have literally nothing left to give. So I guess now I have to leave because I feel nothing for you anymore. I feel nothing. And that was the case for me, every relationship that I left. It got to a point where there were, there were no tears left. There was no pain left. It was just a, a, a very kind of almost stoic breakup that would, was confusing to them. Cause then they're going, wait, what, what's happened? And it's what's happened? The past year and a half has happened. Have you not been here? You were here too. It's been so painful. It's been so painful. And of course there are great moments as well. You wouldn't be in it, but it's, there's so much pain that's just brutal.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  And so I think those realities, the walk away wife syndrome, and then I need somebody who can kind of resolve conflict with me and be willing to be in the trenches with me. Was transformative and also somebody who's compatible. Like it's so basic. And yet I think we, we overlook it and think that we can wedge ourselves in, or maybe potentially get them to wedge into what we need. And it just doesn't, it's just, you gotta be similar in some key ways or it's not going to work. I really, I, I believe that.

• 52:51Elizabeth Day?

  The walk away wife syndrome has explained something to me that I really struggled with in myself. Because I have felt shame around the fact that I was able to leave. And you're so right to identify that numbness. It wasn't a lack of feeling, it was having felt too much.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  For too long.

• 53:09Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  You're wiped out.

• 53:10Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  You're exhausted.

• 53:11Elizabeth Day?

  Let me ask you something else about a, a therapy adjacent.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:14Elizabeth Day?

  Which I think part of my journey has been parenting my inner child. I think part of the reason I'm not a parent in the conventional biological sense is potentially because I needed to do that work before I was ready for the romantic relationship that I'm now in, which is one of equals. Do you feel you went on that journey too?

• 53:36Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. Yeah. Inner child work was, um, was key for me. Have you ever done the artist's way?

• 53:42Elizabeth Day?

  I haven't and I've got an inner resistance to it and I'm not sure why.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  Really?

• 53:46Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. I know you've done it several times, haven't you?

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Wait, I guess I'm so, I've done it three times. I'm like embarrassed. The third time I did it with a friend and she like stopped, you know, six weeks in or something. And she's like, ah, I stopped. And I was like, me too. Cause I was too embarrassed to say that I was doing it for a third time.

• 54:03Elizabeth Day?

  I think it's just that, do you have to get up and write three pages?

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 54:07Elizabeth Day?

  The thing is, is that my life, already I have so much writing and so much work in it.

• 54:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:11Elizabeth Day?

  Not that it's work, would, it's so interesting. The resistance I have is interesting.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Fascinating.

• 54:16Elizabeth Day?

  But that's another podcast episode, so.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  I'm, I'm really curious, I hope to offline with you about that. But yeah, the, the morning pages are very much just like stream of consciousness. You can't, the idea is, if you can't even, just don't even pause your pen. Just kind of keep it flying. It can even be, it can be complete, you know, I, I took a sip of tea. Why am I writing this? I hate that I'm writing this. This is so boring. I have to, I have to write so much for work already. This is, you know, whatever. And you're just kind of getting, the idea being you're getting out of your system, the things that are rattled, will be rattling around all day anyway. So might as well get them out on the page. Ultimately, the way I view it is really a course in inner child healing.

• 54:52Elizabeth Day?

  What can you tell us about your partner who you've been with for nine years?

• 54:57Speaker 00

  He's my best friend. I'll check in with my body. He's my best friend. I mentioned earlier, sort of this instinct of, that I'd had with, with previous partners. It doesn't even feel like the appropriate term, to be honest. But with people that I'd been with, where there was that instinct of like, I have to be with them now. It was this urgency. I met him through a mutual friend and I was instantly extremely attracted to him, but had a sense of calm in my body. There was zero urgency. This is from somebody who'd had a hijack nervous system their whole life. Like, for there to not be urgency is odd. That's why I noticed it. No urgency and this sense of, this person is very significant to my life.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  I don't know how, I don't have to know how. I don't have to know when, that's fine. This person is significant. And then, you know, we were friends and we'd kind of hang out in, in group settings. And then we'd actually lost touch for over a year. And then he called me out of the blue. I thought it was a butt dial because I hadn't heard from him in so long. I thought that's so random. And then he called me a second time and I honestly can't remember whether I picked up when we spoke then or whether we reconnected later. But then we got coffee and we talked for like four hours and we've been together for nine years. Nine years, that's crazy.

• 56:14Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so happy for you.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 56:16Elizabeth Day?

  It makes me feel calm when you talk about him. I'm lucky enough to have met him because he's actually here.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:22Elizabeth Day?

  He does have a very calm aura.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  Doesn't he?

• 56:24Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  Really, he's a really sturdy person. He's that person for all of his... He's the person that every one of his friends goes to for like, I need advice. I need advi... Like, he's everyone's sort of rock.

• 56:37Elizabeth Day?

  Jeanette, I've adored every second of this conversation. Thank you so much.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 56:44Elizabeth Day?

  For trusting me and for opening up in your beautiful, eloquent, compassionate, heart-led way. I don't for a second take it for granted and I am so grateful for the existence of you.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Thank you. You too. You too.

• 57:03Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How To Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.