Poorna Bell: "Women want more, not more to do!" How to put yourself first

What more do you want from life? What more do you want for yourself? Award-winning journalist and author Poorna Bell reckons it’s time to start really asking ourselves these questions. In this chat with Fearne, Poorna explains why it’s important to aim for goals you set for yourself, not the ones set by society. They talk about why challenging the narrative that women become invisible as they age is so important, and why we should be turning to elders for life wisdom. Poorna also reflects on what she wishes she’d known about marriage before her wedding, and how we can all strengthen our relationships with our parents and children. Poorna’s book, She Wanted More, is out now. If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Poorna’s first Happy Place episode https://pod.fo/e/14299 Ashley James https://pod.fo/e/38b6c2 Paloma Faith https://pod.fo/e/245bab Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To mark it, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Seventy-five percent of women who seek menopause care don't receive it. The lying awake at 3am, wondering what's happening to your body, ends now. Midi is virtual care built for women in perimenopause and menopause with clinicians who specialise in women's health. Plus, it's covered by most major insurances. Getting started is easy. You can book your first visit with a clinician right away. Midlife needs Midi. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit today. That's join M I D I dot com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Hello, this is Susie Ruffel.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  And Maisie Adam.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  And together we host Big Kick Energy. Hey Mais, what is it?

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Only the best podcast ever.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Yes!

• 1:07Speaker 03

  A comedy entertainment podcast with a focus on all things women's football, all things hilarious, all things friendship. It's a laugh is what it is, Ruffel.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a fair bit of gossiping too.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  Oh, and a lovely bit of gossip. Chow down on the gossip.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, just need to search Big Kick Energy.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Grab a knife and fork and tuck in, baby.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Sometimes the way I phrase things to her, I would never talk to anyone else like that. And I just, and I really have to have a talk with myself afterwards and I'm like, you know, that really is not, that's not okay. Failure, like just being okay with the idea of failure and okay, that thing didn't work, it's okay. It doesn't mean that I'm terrible or that I'm an idiot or I made a mistake. It just means that I need to do something different. It is literally just the fundamental belief that you are worth something, you are of a person of value.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  You've got to like yourself.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  You've got to like yourself. And if you can give love and service to everyone else in your life, that has to start with you. And if that's not starting with you, then... That is a problem and that's maybe the first problem to try and fix.

• 2:19Fearne Cotton?

  Poorna, I am so happy to not only see you in the flesh, but also to revisit a conversation with you. Because we initially had a chat on Happy Place back in 2018.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Whoa, has it been that long?

• 2:34Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  How?

• 2:35Fearne Cotton?

  Yours was the first podcast I ever, ever did. I popped my cherry, my podcast cherry with you.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  I'm honoured.

• 2:43Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, we've had a chat about this off mic that neither of us knew what the hell we were doing. I was just starting a podcast and asking my mates to be on it, quite frankly.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  In your living room?

• 2:52Fearne Cotton?

  In my living room. And we were fumbling through this podcast landscape, trying to work out how to have deep conversations. And you had written one book at this point, two books at this point, maybe?

• 3:05Speaker 03

  I think my second had just, just come out in 2018. No, oh gosh. No, I just finished writing my second book, so my first one would have come out. Chase the Rainbow.

• 3:16Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and we talked about Chase the Rainbow a lot, which is a book that I absolutely devoured. And it's still a massively inspiring piece of writing to me. The way that you storytelling that book is exceptional. So anyone that wants to know more about that, go spool back eight years on the podcast feed, because you'll find that chat there. But we both said since, just when we've been chatting on voice note mainly, that we would have loved to have done it differently. And this is our opportunity to have that chat now. We're eight years wiser.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Very much so.

• 3:47Fearne Cotton?

  And we've got more lived experience, somewhere at a different part in our lives. And we're women in the thick of our 40s. What do we want to talk about? And this is exactly what your new book, She Wanted More, the best title,

• 4:03Fearne Cotton?

  is really saying. It's all about that exact topic. You know, being at that point in your life, you're looking at women who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. When did you get that unimagining before writing this book? You had a little spark of, oh, I need to write this. This feels like that book. Like, I need to get this out of me. When did that hit you?

• 4:27Speaker 03

  I think it was maybe a couple of years after I wrote my last nonfiction, which was called Stronger. So that would have come out actually very, very fresh into the pandemic, so twenty twenty one. And there was one chapter in there that's that really stuck with me, which was the chapter that featured older women. So it was interviewing older women who pursued some form of physical movement for whatever reason. Not necessarily pro athletes, but these are usually like amateur athletes. And I also finished that chapter with a kind of charting of, you know, this is what your future could look like. But I remember A, reading a lot of inspirational stories of women, especially in their kind of fifty, sixties and seventies,

• 5:10Speaker 03

  who were just doing things for, and like there's this one woman who was pole vaulting in her seventies. And during the pandemic, strung up a washing line in her back garden to practice hurdles, because all of the athletics grounds had like closed, right? And that really, really stayed with me because I think when I, when that book came out, I was just, just turned forty. And it was something that really started to overturn that aging narrative in my head. Because even though forty came with a sense of clarity, especially around time, it, it did feel like a constant dance between me trying to kind of gas myself up and empower myself,

• 5:51Speaker 03

  but also being surrounded by a world that has a, you know, very, very, um, I think quite destructive narrative around aging.

• 5:59Fearne Cotton?

  For women, sure.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so that absolutely, that, I think that was the seed. And I just thought, oh, maybe I should feature inspirational stories of women. And I just thought, I just don't think that that's going to cut it. I need to tap into what also makes me angry and makes other women angry. And then the anger came over time and that coalesced into a book.

• 6:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I love a book that's fueled by a bit of rage.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 6:24Fearne Cotton?

  It's the best read. It's the best read because I think many of us have felt really suppressed when it comes to, well, not only how we choose to do life and what society puts on us and the pressures that are there, but also like what we can say out loud and what it's okay to be angry about. And although this isn't a book of you like, sat there ranting away, you can tell it's fueled by this deep burning passion for you to have your voice, you know, speak on these subjects, but also the stories of all these brilliant women. There's a line in the book where you say, I want more, I want more, I want more. And I wonder when you first either said that aloud or really had that thought and believed that you deserved it.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  I think it definitely came about a couple of years ago. And I think that partly it was realising that I felt like I was in a state of limbo. So I felt like I was inching further and further into my mid 40s. And I felt like there was all this power that I should be feeling, but at the same time, I didn't know how to navigate my way through, you know, that narrative around aging, which just seems to be around how you look, you know, and how you present yourself. And I just felt that there had, I knew that there was more to it already from just my journey with like something like physical activity. And so I, as one of my hobbies, do weightlifting and I could see

• 7:51Speaker 03

  how I was getting physically stronger and stronger year on year, which seemed to me to be evidence that this narrative that we're told about aging, which is that you, you know, the default is that you get weaker, the default is diminishing.

• 8:05Fearne Cotton?

  And disappearing.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  And disappearing and invisibility. Yeah. And you know, when you're, when you, let's say if you're competing as a woman wearing a singlet, like lifting a very heavy barbell, you are very visible, you know, on a platform like that. And so I think I just felt that there was the narrative, which just seemed to be designed to make me shrink or was constantly telling me that I just wasn't as good, I wasn't good enough. And who I was and who I wanted to be, I needed to aim for different things. And I think there was also realisation, which I think is is why a lot of that rage and fury starts in our forties and fifties. Which is just realising that we are surrounded by institutions that are never really going to hand us that power. And they're never going to sort of pat us on the back and go, you know what?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  You don't need to spend all of this money with us, or you don't need to do all of these things that make you easier to control. They are going to want you to do those things because we live in a patriarchal system. And so I think I realised that I needed to chart my own path. That wasn't, you know, it's not just based on what I think and what I want. I'm very much inspired by other women around me. But that was the moment where I just thought, this is bullshit and I just can't accept this any longer. And and so I'm just going to create something new for myself.

• 9:19Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, that's just magical on every level because we live in this society, yes patriarchal and also obsessed with youth. And, you know, we're we're all buying into it to a degree, whether we're looking at who's on the red carpet at a film premiere. Or which pop stars are at the Grammys or whatever it might be. And everyone's in their twenties and, you know, I I used to be that person in my twenties being, you know, when I was on the radio. And people taking pictures of me like the paparazzi and I'd be like, what's the, what's the big deal? Why am I, why is everyone taking my picture? And then you hit an age where it's like, oh, boring, we don't need to take your picture anymore. And actually, what we've done there is wipe out the notion of the elder, which in so many cultures is still held in such high esteem.

• 10:00Fearne Cotton?

  That you look to the older women, you know, maybe it's in Mexico, it's the grandmothers who you look to. And you ask for their wisdom, their lived experience. And I've certainly got friendships that are intergenerational or women in my life that I would be absolutely buggered without. Who are in their sixties and seventies. And it's those women that I go to when I'm in turmoil or I need help. Or I need a greater lived experience and and a soundboard of that nature. And when our culture doesn't in any way give any credit to aging and the.

• 10:39Fearne Cotton?

  Just pure amazingness that comes from having lived a very, very full life.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  I completely agree with that. I think that there it's so it's this cognitive dissonance, right, where you have cultures and countries and, you know, my cultural heritage is is Indian, where age is wisdom and that is something to be respected and revered. And at the same time, however, I would say that within my own culture, there is absolutely a, you know, an expectation of frailty, the older you get. So on the one hand, you're revered for your mind and your perspective and your experience. But on the other hand, I I do think that there is a missing piece around, you know, the physicality of things. So encouraging people to move and so on. So I I don't necessarily know that we always have things perfect in

• 11:27Speaker 03

  in those regards. But absolutely, I would say, you know, in like the West, in the Global North, there is its invisibility. And and worse than that is this narrative around women's voices. So when we think, for example, about how something like menopause or women of a menopausal age are have historically been depicted, you know, in films or TV shows, it's ridicule, you know, it's they are governed by their hormones. So their voices don't count. Or, you know, they're they're clearly hysterical, that word, I absolutely hate that word.

• 12:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  And so all of that disenfranchises the voices of those women that actually, quite frankly, to me, for younger women, provide wisdom, of course, a sense of perspective as well, and also reinvention. And I think that when we're younger, this is something I feel quite strongly about. I think that we can feel really stuck around certain decisions or paralyzed by certain decisions, because we believe that those decisions are going to shape our entire lives, or that we will have to contend with them for our entire lives. And so the idea of being able to change your mind about things, you know, if something doesn't work out for you, I think it also taps into bigger things around failure, like just being okay with the with the idea of failure. And okay, that thing didn't work.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  It's okay. It doesn't mean that I'm terrible, or that I'm an idiot, or I made a mistake. It just means I need to do something different. And I think if you don't have those older people in your life, if we don't even leverage those older voices in like media and advertising, we rob ourselves of such an important perspective of being able to look further down the line and seeing how things can change and improve. And I I do feel very, very strongly that we have been missing those voices for a really long time, but I also do feel positively that those voices are coming back. Social media is one of those things where there's less gatekeeping around certain things. So I've definitely seen women be able to like leverage that more and be a bit more visible.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  But it's still really tough. I still don't think that women's voices, especially older women's voices, are valued as much.

• 13:34Fearne Cotton?

  No, but I love like, you know, even in the book, you say you sense a shift and as a journalist, you you sense a zeitgeist shift like a dog smelling sausages. Like that is just something inherently within you. You're like, oh, I can feel it in my waters. There's like, there's something is is a foot here. And that feels exciting. And I think we need to hear that because we could be so bogged down with the state of things at the moment and also how some progress that's been made for equality in terms of, you know, female rights is actually now being diminished. So I think we need to hear those hopeful stories and those individual stories and those cases that you bring forward of, it doesn't have to be a whole collective of women, but of one woman deciding to do things differently.

• 14:16Fearne Cotton?

  You know, they want to live life differently, so therefore they will. I think we need to hear that.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's important. And also, the reason why I focused on women who are in their 40s, 50s and 60s is because that specifically is a generation or is, you know, I mean, yes, it does straddle two different generations, but we grew up in an analog time and we're living in a digital world. And I think that that perspective on things is really interesting to me. And our lives also don't look anything like our mothers' lives. You know, it was really important for me to to remind people of that. My mother, who is in her mid 70s, was in her mid 20s when the law was changed around whether or not a woman could take out a mortgage. And so one of the biggest things that that is

• 15:02Speaker 03

  driving, I think, this change amongst women absolutely is, you know, things like financial autonomy and independence. And yes, we we're not, not everyone is emancipated around their finances and there's so much work that needs to be done. And we've had a really terrible few years in terms of the economy. But in terms of that financial autonomy, what our lives look like is very different to what it looked like for our mothers and our grandmothers. And that, to me, is an enormous source of power. And One of the things about marking that zeitgeist shift is also saying that this doesn't have to be about ejecting, you know, from your life or ditching it entirely or making really dramatic changes.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Because I think that scares the shit out of people who think, oh, my God, am I going to have to like burn my entire life down? It can literally be a very, very gentle inventory that women undertake in their lives. And again, it's not saying you shouldn't get married, you shouldn't have kids. It's not pushing women one way or another. What it's saying is you, as you exist in the world, you should be allowed to exist in safety in whatever way you want, in whatever way you choose to live your life. But that is not the world that we live in. We unfortunately live in an inequitable world for women. So within this structure, what is it? What is the smallest thing that you can do to make you feel like you have agency and advocacy in your life? And that's literally, if that's the minimum that someone takes away from the book,

• 16:27Speaker 03

  I hope that they take that away, that it's not me telling you what you should be doing with your life, right? So I think that for me, that it was very important to chart that. And I do believe that that shift is happening.

• 16:37Fearne Cotton?

  It is, and I completely agree. I think, you know, that is the, what you've just summarized there being the choice that we now have. But what you still have to do is mitigate the judgment because there is still semi double standards when it comes to women making choices about whether it's not getting married, not having children, however they choose to live, work. There is still judgment that men do not receive. And it can be, it's not judgment necessarily from men. It's, you know, we've been totally conditioned for women to judge other women for making certain decisions or not. And that's something where I think, God, you need to double down and be so resilient to get through outside commentary on your choices. And you talk about a lot of these subjects in the book, like marriage. And we touched on this in our first chat.

• 17:20Fearne Cotton?

  You got married relatively young and for choices that you've now sort of later down the line examined and, and sort of looked at it with a different perspective. How do you think your, your visions of marriage have changed since your twenties?

• 17:36Speaker 03

  I think when I was in my twenties, especially my late twenties, which is when I met my late husband, Rob. So I would have been about twenty eight, I think, from memory. Is that that was the goal, you know, I was never the type of person that planned my wedding as a girl or, you know, young, even a young woman. But I knew that that was something that I really wanted to do. And I think that the idea of being chosen by someone, there being a sort of a finished product to your life. Was something that it wasn't pushed upon me by my family, uh, but it was something that I knew I was supposed to do, right, complete. And so when I met Rob and I knew he was the person that I wanted to be with and to get married to.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  I don't think I really questioned or interrogated some of the things that I now know. We really should have had conversations around at the time. And I'm not saying that, you know, with the best will in the world, whoever it is that you're with, you you can't sort of sit them down with a checklist and go. Okay, so I've ticked off everything on my list and now we're gonna get married and and you it life just doesn't work like that. And also what I've since learned is, I think that that's actually quite a codependent thing. I'm a massive codependent. Where you think that because you've asked all these questions and you tick these things off, that you're safe and life is gonna be cool now. And when the other person breaks that rule, then you can, you don't have to take the blame, right, for it.

• 19:03Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  And so I but I definitely know that when I got married, I didn't think about. The practicalities of it. I just thought about us being in love and I just thought, this is the person that I want to just spend every single day with for the rest of my life and build a life with. And I think that looking at where I am at now, because the question I sometimes get asked is, you know, would I get remarried and so on? The answer is no, I I I.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  I'm not saying it's it's a hundred percent no, I'm I'm saying it's pretty much a ninety nine percent no. Because the person that I would have to meet in order for them to fulfill what I think I want from marriage is the chances are are quite slim. But I think that there was so much I wish I knew. And it turns out that speaking to other women about this, especially women who have either lost their partners or definitely women who have been divorced, is that these are a lot of the same things that they also wish that they had known when they were younger. And I think one of the things I think we do such a disservice, especially to younger women, is we get them so hyped up and excited about the goal of getting married and the wedding day,

• 20:14Speaker 03

  that we don't actually have a chat ever really about what the practicalities of it, what are the realities of it. Because that's almost deemed to be too cynical, too darker conversation. But then when you are having to deal with the real time consequences of things going wrong, it is horrific. So I think we should be talking about that a bit more.

• 20:35Fearne Cotton?

  I agree. I mean, and you talk about again, a lot of this in the book about the share of responsibilities within a relationship, within a household, if there's kids in the mix, the share. And we and we know that, yes, there's, you know, people are doing this in their own way. And there are some brilliant examples where people manage this very, very well. But I'd say the vast majority of heterosexual couples still find themselves in a role, whether the the mum or the partner, the wife is full time at work or not, taking the lion's share of household duties, the emotional burden, the responsibilities. And there was a line that I literally was like cheering from the rooftops about in the book,

• 21:17Fearne Cotton?

  where you say something along the lines of, women want more, but we don't want more to do. And that is such a clear definition of of all of this. Like, yes, we we should have the space to say, I want more for myself. I I desperately want more for myself. I don't want more to do. I really, really don't. And that still seems to be a massive issue in terms of, well, it doesn't even have to include marriage. But when you're in a heterosexual partnership, with that discussion happening as to who the hell is gonna do what.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  The, yeah, that, the, the having it all thing, right, which is something that, yeah, which is bullshit. And it is definitely something which a lot of, especially older Gen X women, also reference quite a lot, uh, that I mentioned in the book, which was that having it all was the biggest load of bullshit that was ever sold to women. It just created a rod for iron backs and just added way more stuff onto a list that was already quite full.

• 22:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, so you've got to be, you can go be the CEO, but, but please make sure that you've done the hoovering at the same time as being the CEO, just, just to make sure that you know that, that's how the rules work.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And, and I get that we, you know, if you are in a long-term relationship or a marriage, um, you know, there are some women who are very deeply frustrated at having to carry the extra load and are okay with it. And it's, it's worth the price of their relationship. And there are some women who have reached the absolute end of their fucking tether with it and don't want to put up with it anymore. And that, it should be okay to say that that is a legitimate reason to exit a relationship if you have tried to have a conversation about it. And, you know, your, your other half is just not, is not getting on board with it, is not changing their behaviour. Because I think historically, you know, and I get that this is also to do with the fact that no-fault divorce only came in fairly recently.

• 23:08Fearne Cotton?

  Very recently, yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  You know, so, so we've all been brought up with this idea that to exit a, a marriage in particular, it needs to be something like cheating. It needs to be this horrific betrayal. And actually, a lot of these like little things are small betrayals. If your partner is perfectly happy for you to carry a lot of the excess burden in that relationship, it's okay for you to exit that relationship and not feel guilty about it. I think that one sort of bit of positivity to say is that I asked women who were in like 10-year-plus relationships, um, had they ever had that chat with their partner, like an inventory of what worked for them, what's not working for them, how can they change things? Um,

• 23:51Speaker 03

  and the ones that said that, yes, they, you know, they had managed to do that, especially the ones that were in, you know, 20, 30-year-plus relationships. I mean, you, you're not going to be surprised by this, but it's communication and it's willingness for the other person to want to evolve and change as well. It is completely unrealistic that the person you're going to meet in your twenties or your thirties is still going to be the same person in your fifties, sixties and seventies. But the, the, And it doesn't mean that that person is ever gonna be the perfect person or will always do the things that you want them to do, but it was the willingness for them to sit down and have the conversation and to understand that they are an equal partner in it and that things like emotional load, like having to tell someone to do something

• 24:36Speaker 03

  is still an extra bit of

• 24:37Fearne Cotton?

  Fucking boring.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's still an extra bit of labour.

• 24:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  In addition, it doesn't matter if the other person has unloaded the fucking dishwasher. If you had to tell them to do it, that is still an extra bit of load that you have to do. But that, that like communication thing, that actually did give me quite a bit of unexpected hope, I would say, in terms of like long-term partnership.

• 24:54Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, because that is an app, that is demonstrative of a woman saying in that situation, I want more for myself. And that might be more time, more space, more freedom to think about other stuff other than logistics. I think that's such a great example of it.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Seventy-five percent of women who seek menopause care don't receive it. The lying awake at 3am, wondering what's happening to your body, ends now. Midi is virtual care built for women in perimenopause and menopause with clinicians who specialise in women's health. Plus, it's covered by most major insurances. Getting started is easy. You can book your first visit with a clinician right away. Midlife needs Midi. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit today. That's join m i d i dot com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  Help I Sexed My Boss is the podcast where manners meets mayhem. I'm William Hanson.

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• 26:15Fearne Cotton?

  You did this survey initially to sort of kickstart, I'm imagining the themes of the book and how you might go about tackling some of the issues that many women in this part of life feel. And you asked them certain questions and one of them was, what would you, I don't know how you phrase it exactly, but what do you want more of, if I ask you that question, what do you want more of? Were you surprised by the answers that you read?

• 26:38Speaker 03

  I wasn't wholly surprised by it, but there were a few that were a very pleasant surprise, I would say. The survey initially, I thought, okay, well, if my demographic is mainly women in their 40s, 50s and 60s. But I would say that it's for women of all ages and younger women have found it very useful to figure out what their older life is going to look like. But I did, I set the bar from 25 plus because I wanted to see the shift in what, how women were thinking in terms of the group. So for example, that showed up in terms of asking them, you know, what do you wish that your mother had had? Or your relationship with your mother and so on.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  And definitely like as in looking at your mother's relationships and her life, what do you want more for yourself? And that was actually a very fascinating look from, you know, women in their 20s to women in their 50s. But I would definitely say that with the, when I asked women what they wanted more of, you know, unsurprisingly, some women said, you know, I want better sex. Some said, I would like some sex. And others said things like, you know, just more time, like more time to do things that they love doing. But the one that really surprised me, because this was one of the most common, was move by the sea. Like go and live by the sea, which I just, I loved.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  And I felt like, to me, and this is subjective, because not it's subjective, but this is my own interpretation of it. So I don't have a definitive answer, but I think it's because the sea is also a metaphor for freedom.

• 28:11Fearne Cotton?

  I think it's an absolute metaphor for people want an expanse of like the unknown ahead of them. It's like whenever I'm by the sea, I'm like, what's out there? Like you feel excited and I think.

• 28:24Fearne Cotton?

  Again, the narrative is you get to the this age or the ages that you're talking about. And it's like, oh, well, the rest of your life just plays out as we're going to tell you it plays out. And you're going to retire at some point, you know, doodle about a bit, grow some vegetables in the garden. You're like, but I don't want that. I want the expanse of the sea and the unknown and the excitement I used to feel in my twenties. And I think how beautiful that so many women had that as an answer. I want, I want that. I love that. It sort of moves me. I love it so much. Going back to what you were saying a moment ago about the, the mother daughter relationship. I text you the other day because I actually, you, you lay out some questions in the book of, as to what you might ask your mum.

• 29:04Fearne Cotton?

  Some, some questions about how she feels about romance, how she feels, what she feels about you as a, as a daughter and your relationship. And these really big questions that, you know, we rarely ask people that are in our intimate circles. Because, you know, you're, you're in a pattern of your mum comes around or whoever it might be, your, your brother, your sister, whoever is familial. And, and, and you go, how are you? Yeah, great. What's new? Or my mum always goes, what's the gossip? Like you have these set things that you ask and it would be sort of utterly weird and maybe awkward to go.

• 29:37Fearne Cotton?

  What, what were your childhood dreams? Like out of the blue, we don't ever create this space to ask these big questions. And I felt really prompted by reading that in your book that I would, I didn't call my mum, but I text her. Cause I thought I want her to have a bit of time to mull over these answers. And there were two surprising things. One of them was I assume my mum would come back. And I don't think she'll mind me saying this, with kind of jokey answers or something that was maybe a bit sarcastic. Cause that's usually, she's got a great sense of humour and it's usually her way of deflecting from things that she doesn't want to talk about. And equally, I didn't know if she'd even bother answering them. And so it was surprising that she instantly texted me and said, give me a moment. I'm going to look at this now.

• 30:20Fearne Cotton?

  And secondly, her answers had zero humour. They were deadly serious. And that really took me by surprise because.

• 30:31Fearne Cotton?

  It was, I actually felt quite sad, like I've not taken the time to, to ask these questions and to show her that I have great interest in her thoughts and her life and, and her dreams from before, or what she thinks about certain situations today. And again, it shows that communication is so key in our intimate relationships, that we show other people interest and we give them the time and the space to, to, to really consider life and, and to talk about it. And it was sort of instantly, you know, like a lovely moment of maybe a slightly deeper bit of bonding that I hadn't done with her for a long time. It was amazing.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  I mean, I love that you did that because I, I know we spoke about it, but I, I would hope that people would be able to have that conversation. But I know that not all of us, you know, most of us do have a complicated relationship with our, with our mothers. And so it is really difficult to have those direct conversations, right? But I think I actually stumbled across that by accident. I didn't know what questions I was going to ask my mum before I interviewed her for the book. What I realised is the trick is to ask them questions that are not connected to their identity as your mother.

• 31:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Because I don't know how you, your mum is about this, but I feel like with our mums, there, there are regrets that they have around certain things that they probably will never really voice to us about it. And I think that any parent is always trying to do more, more or less is trying to in that moment, do the best by their kid. And that's all that they can do. And in retrospect, maybe some of that stuff wasn't the best decision making, but they don't necessarily know that at the time. So I want to have like a lot of grace for my mum and, and other people around that, right? But I think that when I asked my mum questions about herself, like before my sister and I were even a twinkle in her eye. There was a softness about it and there was an honesty about it.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  And you're absolutely right, because my mum does the exact same thing. She's a very, very funny woman and humour is one of the, one of her go-tos. But we didn't have a funny conversation. We had like quite a, an honest, sometimes sad, but also I just. Like, I love my mum a lot as a person, you know, not just because she's my mum. There are things that I admire a lot about her. But I also felt really protective over a version of her that I, you know, no longer exists. Because I've only got the understanding of her now as, as she relates to me as my mother. But there was a part of me that was really glad that I had that knowledge and that understanding

• 33:15Speaker 03

  that was directly from her, rather than someone else's account of her.

• 33:18Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's so important. It, it's so important for us to just see our parents as humans or to acknowledge they had a life before they had this role of, you know, the dynamic of mother and daughter. And I, I, you know, I even find it with my kids, if they ask me a question, like the other day, my, my kids, one of them asked me about, have I ever smoked? And I thought, I'm always going to be really honest with them. I was like, yeah, back in the day, I used to, you know, if I went to the pub and had a drink, I'd socially smoke. And they were sort of horrified, obviously. And I was like, look, I obviously then learned down the line, it was a good idea not to. But it was sort of watching their faces, see me as this flawed human and not just the mum who's putting the food on the plate and making them sit and like cleaning their teeth. It was like, oh my god, you used to do things, like stuff?

• 34:03Fearne Cotton?

  And it was kind of exposing to me, but in a good way. And I think it's so interesting to get to know those people that we just have that. It's quite a two-dimensional dynamic in ways, because it's just, this is the transaction. We know how it works, you're mum, I'm the kid, or vice versa. And this is how, this is our dance that we do.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And also, you know, let, let's be real here, my mum was not having these conversations with her mum.

• 34:26Fearne Cotton?

  Absolutely not.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  So I, I think it's just something that we, we do, we just get stuck in a rut, you know, with our parents, especially our mothers. I think that we, I definitely speak to my mother. In a way that I I've really tried to catch myself around this, but sometimes the way like I phrase things to her, I would never talk to anyone else like that. And I just, and I really have to have a talk with myself afterwards. And I'm like, you know, that really is not, that's not okay. Like, she's a precious little jewel. I treat her as such and be nicer to her. But then she just does something that drives me mad and then I forget, so.

• 35:00Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. Do you know what? This is sort of slightly unrelated, but it's just brought a thought up. I watched an Instagram video today of, I don't know, some psychologist, I can't remember the name of, but he was saying that it's all very well and good being like the good human we think we are when we're out, you know, in the coffee shop, being so nice to the person that's made your coffee or so lovely to the, you know, person who is struggling with their buggy up a stair or or a person that you sort of half know at work. The real test is how patient and

• 35:36Fearne Cotton?

  grounded and generous you can be in the four walls of your own home in a metaphorical sense, you know, with your, your parents, your siblings, your own children. Cause they're the people that mirror to us all of our own biggest fears, our flaws, that they, they can trigger us more than anyone. It shows up all of our own idiosyncrasies and worries. It's, it's there that we have to practise that. And I think, again, the mother daughter relationship is is often that one that it's, you can get so riled and irritated by something and it's it takes such a lot of practice to have the, the patience and generosity in that dynamic.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  It does. I also think that it has, it has gotten easier the older I've become.

• 36:21Fearne Cotton?

  Why do you think that is?

• 36:23Speaker 03

  I think because I'm just very aware of the passing of time and I think that.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  With my, with my parents especially, um, I get that there's a balance to be had, right? Which is, you can't live every single day as if that, that's the last time you're gonna see someone.

• 36:41Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  That's like very intense and bleak and stressful for everyone. And whenever we, we organise a family holiday, you know, my mum's always like, well, we don't know how much longer. And I was like, where are you going? Like, what plans do you have? So, so I do think you have to kind of like mitigate and, and sort of balance some of that out with, we, we cannot go into every family holiday thinking this is gonna be our last holiday, because no one wants that kind of energy. But I think the older I've gotten, I am aware that they're not gonna be around forever, you know? It, it's not something that I, I've really ever thought about when I was younger, but I am aware of the, of the passing of time. And so, in as much as I can, I do want to have those conversations with them.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  I also want to create memories with them, which are fun, that, you know, um, which are about us spending time together in a way that doesn't feel like enforced fun. And that definitely has made me be a bit more kind. But also, it's about reciprocity, right? So my parents, we had this conversation very recently where they understand that if I'm saying no to something, it's because I have a very good reason, you know? I'm not just saying no because I'm being a contrarian, or because I'm being lazy, or any of those kinds of things. And I think that that understanding and knowing has been a very, very important part of our relationship. For them to understand the motivation behind what I do and what I say, that I'm actually,

• 38:09Speaker 03

  I would like to think quite a considered person. So, that understanding on their side means that when I do say no to something, there isn't this immediate pushback or trying to get me to change my mind about things. And I have to be honest for, and that has been an absolute game changer in our relationship.

• 38:26Fearne Cotton?

  And I think that's probably quite rare of that generation, because, and I'm massively generalising here, but I do think our parents' generation were perhaps...

• 38:35Fearne Cotton?

  More inclined to be stoic about everything and like you just shut up and you do the thing. And it was quite boundaryless. I know my mum would even find the word boundary to be annoying. Like, oh, my god, all of this newfangled chat about having boundaries.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:49Fearne Cotton?

  So I think sometimes when you set a boundary and say no, it's badly, like, there's, there's a level of defensiveness that's come, coming from the other side of, of it. Or a lack of understanding that causes a bit of a flare up. So it's quite amazing. Did you have to sort of explicitly say, this is how we're gonna do this dance now? I'm gonna start saying no to things and you're gonna have to understand it?

• 39:09Speaker 03

  I think it was, it was a bit more gentle in the turn, in, as in very occasionally, I will say that if I say no to something, I, I will say, you know, do understand that I, I almost like ninety percent of the time will say yes to something that you're asking me to do, especially if I know that it means a lot to you. And I think that there has been a real level of understanding where, you know, when my mum is sometimes asking me to do stuff that I don't really want to do. She knows that I don't necessarily really want to do it, but I'm doing it for her. So she does acknowledge and she does see that. I, I definitely also think it is about me putting up boundaries in terms of when I say no to something, I give an explanation as to why I'm saying no to that thing.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  And so I'm not saying that that's always necessarily been, you know, understood in the moment. I think my parents are quite cool at like not letting me feel, or know exactly how they might be feeling about things or making me feel bad about, you know, they wouldn't make me feel bad about things. But it has been a gentle kind of asserting boundaries, a conversation around it, trying to have that conversation with kindness. And also, you know, absolutely to your point of, of that generation around stoicism, around saying yes to something because of how you might be perceived if you say no. I would hope and like to think that, you know, my mum has also taken something from us, me and my sister, in terms of

• 40:35Speaker 03

  giving herself permission to say, actually, I'm really tired and I don't know if I can say yes to that thing, so I'm probably not going to. I mean, I, I would still say, maybe, maybe. That is getting better in a way that I'm not witness to. But I I do think that that also might be, again, it's a two way street. I think she might be taking a bit more of that on herself.

• 40:54Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I'm sure she looks at you and your sister and is incredibly proud of the decisions that you've made for yourselves. Because as a mum, you want that. You want your your daughters, your children to be happy. And you talk about your sister a fair bit in the book and her decisions around leaving a marriage and the discussions that you've had around that since. And also for your mum to see how you've navigated immense grief and also making the right decisions for you at this point in your life. I mean, one of them, again, that you you talk about, which, again, there's so much judgment from men and women towards women that make the choice to not have children. And we've had a fair few discussions on Happy Place with other guests about that subject matter.

• 41:35Fearne Cotton?

  Deciding that it's not something that you want, but it not being this simple kind of, that's it, I'm drawing a line under it. That it is a really complex decision that actually lives with you long term. It's something that that sits with you.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, I love that we're having a lot more nuance around it as a conversation. And and definitely my views around, you know, being child free has evolved and changed. Like, I would have said, for example, even as recently as a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah, you know, I'm definitely like child free by choice, blah, blah, blah. But the truth is, eh, the, a more accurate definition of it would be that I thought I was going to have children. When Rob and I were married, we talked about having children. That was very much something that we were both going to do. You know, he had massive like health issues around struggling with both depression and addiction.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  And it was very clear towards the end of our marriage that whatever the state, so we were separated for the last three months of our marriage. And we didn't know whether or not we would reconcile or what would happen with that. But it was quite clear to us that children were probably not going to be part of our equation. Because the level of his addiction was so high that it just felt like too much of an uncertainty. And that wasn't necessarily even just coming from me. It actually was a conversation led by him. And when he passed away, I would describe myself as like child free by circumstance. Because, you know, the grief of that, my initial thought wasn't, oh, okay, you know, better get back back on the dating circuit.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  It was literally just trying to figure out a way of surviving the next few years after that and and to have some semblance of a of a life, let alone anything that involved another person or children. And I would say that when I turned forty, that's when it felt very definitive, because I think up until that point, I was still umming and ahhing about, you know, would I would I have children via a donor? Would I do it solo? Because my my literary agent, Rowan Lawton,

• 43:38Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, I love Rowan.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Rowan is such a huge inspiration. She had a her child in her mid thirties.

• 43:45Fearne Cotton?

  Do you know why I weirdly bumped into having her child in a souk in Morocco? Like, how random. But she is the most phenomenal force.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  She she really is. I mean, she just how she had the conversations with her parents and her brother around the support system that they would create around Kit, her daughter, you know, so I looked at what Rowan was doing and and there was a part of me in my late thirties that I thought maybe I could do what Rowan's doing because, you know, she seems to just be so sorted. And and then when I hit forty, I I couldn't really tell you definitively what it was, but I there was just a peacefulness around my decision. And I was like, actually, I don't think I want children and I really like my life the way that it is. And I don't know that I have it in me to have and and rear a child, like take care and nurture a child in in that way.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  And there was there was a huge sense of peacefulness that came around that decision. I would say, though, that it's not black and white.

• 44:47Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  There there is definitely a part of me, especially when I look at a relationship between a mother and a daughter. And so when I go, for example, to my my nail salon, you sometimes see mother and daughters going in there and they just have this like gorgeous like interchange where the daughter's probably taking the piss out of the mum. And they're just having like a little like they're planning what to do on their holiday and all of that. And there's a moment when I look at that and I just think that is such a beautiful relationship. And there is like a slight pang of like, oh, damn, you know, it would be so great to have that. And then I go home and I just sit in my life and I'm like, I actually really like my life. I can't momentary.

• 45:26Fearne Cotton?

  Fucking great, do whatever you want.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, and because what I'm looking at is I'm looking at the best version of that relationship. And I'm so glad that it exists for people. I'm so glad that people have that relationship with their kids. But I just don't have what it takes to also deal with all of the other stuff. I don't think I have what it takes anyway, nor do, is it something that I necessarily feel I'm able to give? Of what it takes of the other side of parenting, which you know full well, which is all of the other stuff that comes along with it, right? So I think that is, that's my experience with it so far. But I also think it's really, it's really interesting because some people make a shorthand of the fact that you've chosen not to have children, which is they assume you don't like children.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  And that's really not the case for me. I think that, you know, my niece, who is now eleven, my, um. We have a very, very close relationship and I see my role in her life as being one that also is helping to shape her as a person.

• 46:28Fearne Cotton?

  Of course.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  And I take that role really seriously. So I also am very interested in the conversations that while I don't think anyone should ever expect a woman to nurture just because she is a woman, some women may not choose to do that at all. As a child free woman, that part of nurture of like helping to raise a child is a very important part of my identity.

• 46:50Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, but that's what it's all about. And that's what so many women are missing is that collective helping raise their children because we're living in these nuclear families now, or you know, fractured families and it's so full on for the mum, it's so full on. And if you've got this amazing bevy of other people that wanna be party to helping shape that person and mould, that mould the child as they grow through life, what a beautiful thing.

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• 48:49Fearne Cotton?

  So what I'm really thinking, and what I was thinking throughout reading the whole of this book is so many women are going to be reading it going, I do want more. And maybe they've never even allowed themselves to think that before. Or it's a fetal thought and they're like, I know I want more. I do want more out of my life. I want more for myself in whatever area of life it might be, whether it's their relationships, their work life, geographically where they live, their stress levels, time, space, whatever. What I guess you need to make any change, because any change feels big when you're used to rumbling along in the same way, is confidence. And of course, one of the things that we're again told in this era of life is that that's probably going to dwindle, that we're not necessarily feeling as confident.

• 49:34Fearne Cotton?

  That might be true. It might come along with perimenopause, menopause, that your confidence starts to dwindle. Life experience, you know, potholes in the road that you have to deal with, of course can erode your confidence. And both you and I have been through that in various ways. How do you think, or I don't know if you want to talk about your own personal story or how you might offer advice to women listening to this now? If they want to make a change, if they desperately want more out of their life experience and they've got an inkling that they deserve more.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  What is that first step if you're lacking in confidence to making a change in the right direction? I think that having a support system around you is really important, but I am very aware that some people don't have that support system. And we have this phrase, it takes a village. Not everyone has a village, you know, to help out. And I think that when you feel stuck, it can be really difficult to to know, because you, at some point, you have to make a decision, however micro that decision is. And at some point, that decision might lead you to have to communicate that to other people. And if other people are not necessarily as supportive

• 50:48Speaker 03

  of that, especially, for example, if it involves taking up, taking time away from them, or something that requires them to do more so that you can do less. Not everyone is necessarily supportive of that. But there is, I think it begins with you, and I think it begins with a decision that you have to make yourself before you do anything, you know. And one of the women who I interviewed for the book, which is the incredible author, Marianne Keys, I just said to her, you know, do you have any words of wisdom for women who are feeling stuck, who who just want to know that it's okay to to make a change for for themselves? And

• 51:30Speaker 03

  and I'm going to very clumsily paraphrase this, but what Marianne said was that, you know, very often, women are told that their purpose is service, right, to others, and that your needs have to be at the back of everyone else's needs. And she said that, you know, she acknowledges that neither her nor I have children, but in our separate relationships, not together. But sorry, I realised how weird that sounded. But she said that, you know, obviously, if you have children, that's a very hard way to argue your way out of, because, you know, of course, especially if your your children are younger and they're not adults, they need you for things.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  But there is, there is a percentage or a portion of your life which is just for you, which is, does not have to be in service for other people, that you don't have to justify your time via your productivity or what you produce. And I think that for me, if I would say there's a baby step that you can take, it is figuring out, like even if it is one area of your life that you want to change, it's figuring out what you would like your life to look like. Literally, like in, you know, it doesn't even have to be that far down the line. It could literally be a month's time or maybe six months' time or a year. For some people, looking at the overall picture is really overwhelming, you know?

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Like if you take a relationship, like a bad relationship as an example. I know people who are in bad relationships who, if you were to say, you know, you just need to get out of that relationship, it's too much. And so it's breaking that down into, I think, manageable chunks. Like what is, if you break it down into a tenth of a decision that feeds into that overall thing, what is like the first thing that you can do around that? I definitely think that following um behavioral change people really helps. Like Sharu Izadi, who is an expert in this field. She will work, talk you through how to do that in a very, very compassionate way. But for me, I think it is about, it's not even about necessarily the idea of reinvention

• 53:36Speaker 03

  or, you know, reclamation, because for many of us, we're reclaiming something that actually never existed in the first place, and that's really, really difficult. I think the first and the most simplest thing is that if there is a story that you have been telling yourself about you, whether that's, I'm bad at money, I tend to pick this kind of guy, whatever it is, that's a story that you've told yourself and you can change that story. You don't have to do it overnight, you know, it doesn't have to be a dramatic change. But that story started from nothing and so you can go back to that place of nothing and create something new. That is what worked for me. It is what I've seen has worked for other women as well. It is literally just the fundamental belief that you are worth something,

• 54:20Speaker 03

  you are of a person of value.

• 54:22Speaker 07

  You've got to like yourself.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  You've got to like yourself. And if you can give love and service to everyone else in your life. That has to start with you. And if that's not starting with you, then that is a problem. And that's maybe the first problem to try and fix.

• 54:37Fearne Cotton?

  It is, because I think, again, culturally, we've been told you have to put yourself last. Like, that's been the narrative for women for hundreds of years. And I tend to think about my grandmas, I guess, in this conversation. Like, they're up there cheering me on, going, yes, do what we couldn't. Please do what we couldn't do. And I'm not throwing shade on, like, I had a lovely grandad called Phil. I'm not throwing any shade on late Phil whatsoever, because he was a great guy. But he was in a system that was deeply old fashioned, where, you know, he went to work and my nan stayed at home and looked after, you know, they were teenagers when they had kids, but they'd be looking after my mum and her sister. She didn't have that opportunity. So I often think of them in my mind's eye, going, do, like, do what we couldn't. There's the opportunity there now.

• 55:22Fearne Cotton?

  And we're all trying to progressively move forward and, and, you know, hopefully there's systems down the line, you know, grandchildren's grandchildren, where there is more parity and there is more understanding that women aren't here just to do everything for everybody. And that's how the world keeps moving.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  Completely. And also, for a visual imagery, like, if people struggle with that, well, what is the, what is the first step or whatever? There's a metaphor that my sister used, which is in the book, which I, I love so much. And I think that this, you know, she has a child, so I feel like this is especially important for people with children, women with children, rather, is that the sun doesn't orbit the earth. The earth orbits the sun. So for everyone else in your life to be okay, you have to be at the centre of it. You have to be okay. And I, I completely understand that for some people, that may feel like a selfish choice or selfish decision.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  I think that this is something that women struggle with a lot because of how we've been socially conditioned.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  I don't like to speak in generalisations, but I don't think that men struggle with selfishness in the same way.

• 56:38Fearne Cotton?

  Agreed.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  I don't think they ask themselves, am I being really selfish if I decide to go and play golf, go for a run, do this, do that? They have the conversation about it and then they do it and they're fine with it and they can sleep easy at night. I think that because of the way that we've been socially conditioned to always be in service of other people is that we feel that we have to almost like do a timesheet of our lives and account for every single second a minute and I just don't want to fucking do it anymore.

• 57:08Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, come on, P. Yes. Oh my god, I'm feeling every word. Totally. I mean, I I've definitely been the beneficiary of like unsolicited commentary about this in so many ways. I remember like years ago, this week, because these things stick with you. I put like a yoga video up, whatever, I'm doing yoga in my front room or whatever. And another woman had commented saying like, where are your ki- like who's looking after your kids right now? Or or something like that, or like, oh, good for you that you get to do that. And bear in mind, I'd got up before the kids had got up, so I could do it to then go and do the school run afterwards. Would someone say the same to Joe Wicks, who's doing a workout? Of course they wouldn't, because they think, oh, his wife's probably got the kids. Subconsciously, they're thinking that.

• 57:51Fearne Cotton?

  There is so much under like subterranean judgement that lives in all of us, men and women. I'm not, this is not like a I hate men conversation, love men, they're the fucking best. But this is a patriarchal conditioning that we've all been under. And it's in us and we and we have to all check ourselves and go, who am I? Why am I judging this other woman? Why am I judging someone else's decision? Because this person wants to live in an entirely different way to the way I'm living. And actually, is any of that a bit of a mirror? Because I I want that. I mean, if I were to ask you today, right this second, Poorna, what do you want more of? What are you saying?

• 58:28Speaker 03

  Oh, that is such a tough question.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  This, this isn't a cop out. The thing that I want more of is I just want women to live in joy. And I just want us to be able to exist however the fuck we want. And for us to stop policing each other and, you know, judging each other's choices. I just think that joy is such a, it's such a vital compass for how you've, how you live your life. Because someone who is living their life in joy is not gonna write some shitty comment about you doing yoga. You're not focusing on what someone else is doing unless someone else is also making you feel bad and scrutinized for your choices.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  So I do think that the more freedom that we have in our lives, the more joy that we have in our lives. No one, no one should have the right to tell you how to live your life. And I feel like if we could just stop that cycle, you know, if someone is doing it to you, stop that cycle, so then you will stop doing it to someone else, so that person will stop doing it. And then maybe we will create a less shitty world than the one we live in.

• 59:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, please. I mean, your book feels like an absolute revolution to read. It's like, it's, it's a community. It's like starting, it's like a movement. I'm, I'm so here for it. And I loved reading this book and I know so many other women will get so much from it. Before we round things off, two quick questions. The first one is, we are making a happy place playlist of songs that make you feel fucking great. This could be related to the book and the, the energy behind this book, or just a song that makes you feel good. What would you like to put on our happy place playlist?

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  I think it has to be Rolling Tina Turner's version.

• 1:00:16Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  It just, I, when that plays, I cannot not dance, you know?

• 1:00:21Fearne Cotton?

  In that dress with those heels, I just, everything about Tina, everything about Tina. I love that choice. That's so going on.

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:00:29Fearne Cotton?

  And where is your happy place?

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  Oh, my happy place is my living room, surrounded by all of my plants with a blanket that my friend Agar crocheted for me, watching something with my hand in a bag of crisps.

• 1:00:45Fearne Cotton?

  It's so specific.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:00:47Fearne Cotton?

  It's in my mind's eye. I can see it so well. You can taste the salt on your tongue.

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  I can, yeah.

• 1:00:54Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, it's just been the best talking to you. I mean, we could do this for hours and hours and hours and we'll have to do a part two at some point, but I urge anyone who's listening to this who feels it in their bones, that they want more, that they deserve more, to get this book and to feel boosted by all the brilliant case studies and stories that you've got in there of women who are living life exactly as they want to. Because it is, it's fired me up, and I know it will for so many other people out there.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  I really appreciate you Fern.

• 1:01:23Fearne Cotton?

  Appreciate you.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  Love you, mate.

• 1:01:26Fearne Cotton?

  Love you too.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT. With AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right. It's a new workday.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Hello, this is Susie Ruffel.

• 1:01:51Speaker 07

  And Maisy Adam.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  And together we host Big Kick Energy. Hey Mais, what is it?

• 1:01:55Speaker 07

  Only the best podcast ever.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 07

  A comedy entertainment podcast with a focus on all things women's football, all things hilarious, all things friendship. It's a laugh is what it is, Ruffel.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a fair bit of gossiping too.

• 1:02:09Speaker 07

  Oh, and a lovely bit of gossip. Chow down on the gossip.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Just need to search Big Kick Energy.

• 1:02:17Speaker 07

  Grab a knife and fork and tuck in, baby.