Author Jojo Moyes: Me Before You, Rejection & Starting Again In Her 40s

What if success is not the end of the story, but the beginning of becoming yourself? In this episode of Begin Again, bestselling author Jojo Moyes joins Davina to talk about rejection, reinvention, and the story behind becoming one of the world’s most loved writers in midlife. Jojo opens up about the years before Me Before You, when books were rejected, sales were low, and she wondered whether she would have to find a new career. Then everything changed. Her work went on to sell millions around the world, but success brought new challenges: emotional responsibility, pressure, and the painful realisation that she had no boundaries. Davina and Jojo also explore childhood loneliness, becoming fiercely independent, learning to ask for help, and the cost of always saying yes. They discuss why achieving the life you once dreamed of does not protect you from having to begin again. Jojo speaks honestly about divorce, and how even when it is messy and complicated, handling it with kindness can bring a clarity you never expected. They talk about identity, midlife loneliness, dating again and motherhood. How ambition and trusting yourself are the secrets to protecting your peace after years of pushing through. At its heart, this is a conversation about what happens when the life you dreamed of finally arrives, and you still have to learn how to live inside it. Jojo Moyes reminds us that beginning again is not about starting from nothing. It is about learning to honour who you are now, not just who you had to become to survive. Buy We All Live Here: https://amzn.to/4dQHepU 🌟 Follow for more honest conversations about identity, growth, and beginning again. Follow us here:📸 www.instagram.com/beginagain🎥 https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod ✨Follow Jojo: https://www.instagram.com/jojomoyesofficial/?hl=en ✨Sign up for the Begin Again newsletter for all your behind the scenes access, recommendations and much much more at: https://linkly.link/2g2xm (00:00) Intro (02:07) What Is A Narcissist? (09:26) Identifying A Narcissist (15:48) The Different Types Of Narcissists (21:57) How Narcissistic Parents Affect Their Children (30:08) What Is Gaslighting? Narcissism In Relationships (34:18) Shopify Ad (35:19) Why Some People Are Attracted To Narcissists (43:47) Why It’s So Hard To Leave A Narcissistic Relationship (53:15) Narcissism In Kids (01:03:29) Why People Go Back To Narcissists (01:06:04) Narcissism In The Workplace Sponsored by: Do Health - The waitlist is open. Begin Again listeners get fixed early access pricing when they sign up today at dohealth.co/beginagain use code BEGINAGAIN Saily - Download from the app store and use code DAVINA at the checkout for 15% off Shopify - Shopify.co.uk for £1 a month trial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Six rejections come back. I'd written three books by then, but then I pitched Me Before You. I went from selling a handful to sixty million, and that all happened in my forties and fifties.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Wow, Jojo. You are a fantastic wordsmith and a worldwide bestseller writer.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  Me Before You went round the world. I used to joke that I was like a cockroach. Terrible things can happen, but there is something in me that just keeps plowing on. If I'm honest, I would have liked to feel less lonely, but I read a lovely thing recently, which was, I bet you turned into the adult that you needed as a child.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Oh God, sorry.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  What are you doing to me?

• 0:38Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  I was trying on versions of myself and then suddenly in a newsroom, I suddenly had a focus.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  You getting into journalism was the first step towards the power of the written work.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  So I wrote Me Before You and suddenly got so many offers of work in Hollywood.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  What happened then?

• 1:00Speaker 00

  My mum died and I got divorced and then it was just survive.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  That's a lot of grief.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  The world will have its way with you. You just have to keep bouncing back.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  I want to ask you about dating in midlife, but also your top bits of advice for anybody watching this who is getting divorced. The very, very first thing is.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  First of all, I just want to say welcome to our humble abode, Jojo. Do you know, it's funny because we've met before.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  We did. We met at quite a strange period of both our lives.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I want to tell you that I knew we were kindred spirits.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Well, we cut straight to the bristle, didn't we, that evening?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  And I couldn't wait to get you on here because of the number of times that you have pivoted or begun again, and I love the way that you are able to verbalize that because obviously you are a fantastic wordsmith and.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  A worldwide bestseller writer, but also you are a very wise and sage woman and it's just nice to have you on, so welcome.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  That's really kind of you, thank you.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  So I often, I don't do this, I don't start at the beginning, but I would like to start with your upbringing in the East End and with your parents, because you had quite different parents for the era, like they were quite bohemian.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Yes, it's quite funny, because you always assume that your own parents are the norm. And it was only when I kind of got quite a bit older that I thought, no, not everybody's parents had a tortoise walking around the house.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Free roaming.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Free roaming and sort of, yeah, they, someone described them as hippies with a work ethic, and I think my dad would bristle slightly at the idea of him being a hippie. But if I look at the pictures, they're not far off. They, they were very hardworking though, both of them. So there was never any kind of lying around getting stoned, it wasn't that kind of a hippie. I think they just, they were very arts minded, they were a bit alternative, they, but my abiding childhood memories of them working. I was either out with my dad in a van, or I was sitting under my mum's desk while she painted. She was an illustrator and he set up a company that moved works of art. So that, that's my childhood memories is working.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  And both, both of those jobs based around extremely creative process.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it was kind of an extraordinary childhood when I look back, because my dad set up this company called Mo Mart, which grew. And, and it was basically lots of warehouses that were full of works of art. Everything from kind of priceless, I don't know, David Hockney's or Van Gogh's, to Paul McCartney storing the Beatles' uniforms from Sergeant Pepper.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  So, you know, I was a cleaner there for a while and I would just sort of potter around and, you know, you'd be confronted by these extraordinary things. And I think you take on some of it by osmosis. I didn't ever want to be a visual artist, but I think there's definitely something about being around all that creativity that fed in. But I think that the most. Important thing I saw with them was just work. You you copy what you know and they were always working. So I just thought that's how you exist in this world. You work and and I grew up in the seventies and eighties at a time when you could still rely on working hard to get you somewhere. I think it's much harder for young people now.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Um, but yeah, I just, I loved meeting all the people that came through. I I remember meeting some kind of amazing artists. I I watched um the people that my mum worked with, creating amazing things. My mum's partner, who she went on to marry, was working with Stanley Kubrick on doing um on set work for two thousand and one. So there was sort of pictures of, you know, Mr Kubrick on set. So everywhere I looked, there was something interesting going on. Yeah, but I I think I was also a bit mulish. I didn't want to do what they wanted me to do.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  So, yeah, that's how I ended up in words rather than pictures.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  And I mean, you grew up in Hackney.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  I did.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  The East End.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Very different.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  What what was it like?

• 5:23Speaker 00

  My mum used to hate this, but my abiding feeling when I was growing up was not safety.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Uh, it was, I was tiny and blonde at a time when to be those things was not the safest. And so very early on in life, I learned to put my keys through my hands. When I got off the bus, I got followed home from school numerous times. Uh, we got broken into a lot. Um, it's funny, you you grow up and you kind of absorb all this stuff and it's just your life experience. But it shows up later in life in different ways. I remember my daughter kind of wearing a short pair of shorts once when she was going out. And I said, you can't wear that. You you know, you you don't understand what's going to happen if you provoke that sort of response. And she just looked at me and went, mum, this is Saffron Walden, not Hackney.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  It's like, I'm fine. Um, but I I think I was hypervigilant for a long time. I moved out of London when I was thirty. And it just felt extraordinary to me, the safety. Like I could walk through a wood and not feel unsafe. And I felt safer and safer. As I've grown older, but I don't remember feeling safe in my childhood. And my parents were working, so I was a latchkey kid. So I spent an awful lot of time on my own, uh, which I have spent many years in therapy kind of undoing.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Oh, it's um, my, me too.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Um, not the latchkey kid thing, but but I was thinking about things that happened to you when you were a kid. Um, if something difficult happens to you when you're an adult, often the old feelings from that experience of trauma, whatever you want to call it, will be echoed again in this present day issue, unless you learn to deal with it.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  So that's what I've used therapy to help me with, and in particular in the last year and a half. But the word that my therapist, God, listen to me, who am I?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  No.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  I've changed. Um, the word that my therapist uses when my parents, my, well, particularly my mum would leave me. And back in those days, they did a lot.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  They did.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  They just did.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  Kids and eighties kids, it was a very different experience. Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Um, she said, you weren't left, you weren't forgotten, you were abandoned. And you need to use that because it's not, it's not what they meant to do. They didn't, they just were saying, you'll be fine, you'll, you, you, you know, you'll, you'll be safe. But to a child, and they didn't know this, the parents, at the time, so it's not their fault. But they did, you felt abandoned. Not, not you.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  No, no, it's, but it's, no, it's really interesting because I was also thinking there was also a big bit of me that protected them from the things that happened. Um, I remember being chased with knives uh, by some guys uh, with two of my girlfriends when we were about fourteen. And it was only because we knew the very labyrinth thine back of the flats on the estate near where we lived, that we could shake them off. And I remember us collapsing indoors, slamming the door and kind of falling onto the mat, like staring at each other, like, what just happened? And my mum calling from upstairs, did you have a nice evening? And we all just went, yes. Because you knew that.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  They couldn't cope with the knowledge and also the the risk of not being allowed out. I think it's really hard to convey either to this generation or to men often, what it was like to be female in the low seventies, early eighties.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  It was different.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Uh, it was completely different. I mean, I think Benny Hill had a really big influence on men's behaviour. The amount of being chased around.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Did you hate, I hated it.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Oh, so much.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I was so angry by Benny Hill.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, and but also the feeling that you couldn't fight back because it was just part of being a woman.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Now if someone touched me on a bus, I'd punch their faces in. But then you just tolerated so much. And I do think, well, there's a lot of things that have got worse for women. I do think the fact that women, young women can name it and understand what it is and push back against it is a really important development.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Every single woman I speak to from this era has had the same experience. And I know you have three children and my my youngest is nineteen now. And I literally feel so proud of myself that I've got them through life without anything terrible happened to them.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  But we did it a very different way.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  I think if anything, you know, I've had the the the brakes I've had to put on myself is to not be a helicopter parent. Because, you know, I think every generation decides they're going to do it differently to the one before, don't they? And I just knew that I wanted my kids to feel that I was there, even if I was emotionally tuned into something else, my work. But I was in the house, they could come to be for stuff. I didn't have much of a social life. I didn't do very much for a long time while my kids were growing up, other than work or be with them. And so they had a very different childhood to me. And they also had each other, although I'm sure like my siblings, they would sometimes have rather been on their own.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Um, but I think, I hope they would say it was a really happy childhood. Because we just kind of bummed around in the house and garden and had chickens and all that kind of stuff. And, well, you know what it's like, yours had a rural, semi-rural childhood too. I think it's a really nice thing. It's certainly better than running from the number seventy-three bus stop with your keys through your knuckles.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. When you look back at little Jojo.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  But what does it feel like? You you must be proud of her.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Ah, do you know, I read a lovely thing recently, which was. I bet you turned into the adult that you needed as a child.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Right?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Oh, God, sorry.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  I know, it's quite a thing when you think about it, and I.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  What are you doing to me?

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Oh, sorry.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Isn't it?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Bet you turned into the adult that you needed as a child.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  And.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 11:44Speaker 00

  I.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, like you said, our parents did the best they could with the knowledge they had at the time, and my mum was very young, as was my dad. My mum was nineteen when she had me. So I totally.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Get also, they were broke, so they had to work. So but. Uh. If I'm honest, I would have liked to feel less lonely. I was without siblings and I spent a lot of time in on my own in a house that I was afraid of because we'd been broken into a lot. Um. And I, and this is gonna sound very woo woo, but I once got hypnotized and I went in really skeptically thinking. You know, because I'm I was a journalist for ten years. So I'm like, well, I don't know how this is gonna work. And I was a bit nervous and I was like, I'm gonna keep one part of my part of my brain.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I can I can lock that bit away.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, you better not mess around with me. And then it was one of the most weirdly moving things has ever happened to me because this guy took me into my childhood and oh, this is gonna sound a bit weird, but um because I was afraid from when we'd been broken into. Uh, we had an old church pew in our front hall and I used to get home from school and I would sit on the pew. Until my parents came home because I was afraid to go upstairs because if people broke in, I wouldn't have a way out. It was one of those tall, thin Victorian houses. And this hypnotist somehow, I'd forgotten this and he got me to sit next to my,

• 13:28Speaker 00

  I don't know, twelve year old self on this bench. And, and I was really conscious that I was hypnotized at one level, but also I wasn't like I was also aware of the two sides of myself. It was a really strange experience. And then he said, what would you do with that girl? Um, because I was a mother by the time I had this hypnosis. And I said, oh, I want to take her into the kitchen and give her some toast because I know, and, and then I cried buckets. And it, it really hit me then like, oh, you were just quite anxious, quite a lot of the time. With good reason as well. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a great place to grow up, to be honest. Um, and so that's what I did. I took my

• 14:13Speaker 00

  twelve year old self to the kitchen and made us some toast and peanut butter and then cried buckets.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  So when you came out of your hypnotism.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  What were the things that you noticed changed in your present life?

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, that's an interesting question. Um, I'm not sure if there were any immediate changes. But I think I had to start acknowledging the parts of my character that had come from that. And, and honestly, I think there were a lot of positives. I, I am a very uh, practical person and very capable. The downside is I am hyper independent. I find it very hard, almost physically impossible to ask for help.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, because also it just feels sort of horribly self-indulgent. Again, if you're a girl of the eighties, you just, you just muscle on, get, get on with it.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Um, and it was girl power before girl power, right?

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, it's cosmopolitan. You can do anything. You just have to make sure you're skinny enough, work hard enough, you know, know all the sex tips and just get on with it. Uh, that, that was the ethos. And I, half of me, you know, when my daughter's generation is taking their mental health days or, you know, complaining about some kind of what I would have considered in my age, almost non-existent sexual harassment. Half of me wants to applaud them because I'm like, oh, you guys are really taking care of yourselves. And then I have to fight this slightly regressive part of me just going, oh, come on, just get on with it. And, you know, my partner says to me quite often, you can be quite tough, you know, just get on with it.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I'm much tougher with my girls than I am with my son because I'm a girl.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I think it's also because you know what they're going to be up against. So you're trying to give them armour.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  That's, I hadn't thought about it like that. It's, I'm trying to make them strong.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  I mean, they are, you know, I mean, they're, they're amazing. I'm quite interested in how you came to look at journalism because, um, journalism is quite a tough.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Um, like line of work to go into.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  So what, what was it that first?

• 16:27Speaker 00

  It was kind of an accident. I, I didn't go to college for two years. I was quite happy doing my thing. And then I was working for a bank, uh, doing statements for blind people. And I, they sent me on a management training course at Oxford University. And for the first time, I was suddenly surrounded by young people my age who were fiercely ambitious. And you talk about pivots and there was a real pivot that happened at this point because I had been engaged up till then. I'd, I think because I was, uh, I was a bit estranged from my parents from the age of sixteen.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Things had not gone well after their divorce and I spent a period of time where I kind of just did my own thing. I was living in lodgings on the Balls Pond Road with a very nice family. And from there I went to university. Wow. Um, because I just realised after I met all these people at, at Ox, it was, it was in Oxford University. It was a one week course. I mean, if you've been living in a room with flock wallpaper and a picture of the Laughing Cavalier and the windows shake every time the number seventy two bus comes past, I can promise you suddenly to be in the dreaming spires, you're like, and then there's all these people who are going, yeah, yeah, no, I want to travel the world and then I'm going to do this. And I was thinking, God, I'm just working at the pub in the evenings and doing statements for blind people in the day.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  And I remember my then fiance came to pick me up on the last day and I broke off my engagement on the way home. Because I was suddenly transfixed by these people who had a really wide horizon. Everybody had a big horizon. Everyone I was mixing with didn't leave their own postcode. It was just. Right. Very small lives. And I think my parents slightly despaired of me at that point because I had rejected everything to do with their lives, art, culture. I was working in a pub. I didn't care. I was, you know, engaged way too early. I think because he had a huge family and I wanted to be part of a big family. It was the Waltons thing, you know, it was just like. Oh, my God, I wanted to be in the Waltons. Yes, I just wanted to be embedded somewhere.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  And so I, yeah, ended my engagement, didn't go down terribly well, understandably. And then I got a place at Royal Holloway in Bedford New College. Honestly, I hadn't thought about what I wanted to do. I just liked the building. It was really pretty. It looked a bit like Oxford. I never made strategic choices. Wow. I just kind of was buffeted along. But can I, can I ask you? Yeah. You did, when an opportunity arose. Take it. Take it. Yes, I think there's always been a really strong sense of self preservation in me. I think I'm resilient. Yes, you are. And that's the difference. And that's the thing I try and teach my own kids is just

• 19:21Speaker 00

  the world will have its way with you and you just have to keep bouncing back, which I think is the point of your podcast. Yes, well, I, I, I mean, I, I always.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Try and explain it in in the simplest of terms, but it's really, I want you to live a life you've loved.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So you can die happy.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Do you know, my friend Sophie Kinsella died just before Christmas of a brain tumor. And she wrote a letter to be read out at her funeral, which was

• 19:50Speaker 00

  so good and so funny and heartbreaking. But one of the first things she said is, oh, but I have been so lucky. And having known her for twenty years, I totally got it. She was married to the same man that she adored for thirty five years. She had five glorious children. She'd had this career that she could only have dreamt of. And that was how she chose to meet it. It was not, why me? You know, I've I have all these things to do. That wasn't in her nature. She just, that's exactly how she viewed it. I have been so lucky. And it was very liberating for all of us who loved her to hear it.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's

• 20:35Speaker 00

  For that exact reason.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yes. Um. And you're gonna miss her. She leaves an enormous hole in your life.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Oh, every day.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  But

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  But you are at peace with her death.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Which is a gift from her.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  But I think this idea of grasping opportunities, even when you weren't sure.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  If it was something that you wanted to do, but it was an opportunity and not being afraid to fail.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  You were quite fearless, really, but.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Oh, I have failed so many times. I mean, I The first really lucky thing that happened was I, when I was at university, I started work on the student paper. And then I found out there was a local paper that might take, you know, interns. And so I popped in and I said, look, I can make tea and I can um empty bins and I can photocopy for you. And I think I just really pushed them until they agreed. I was just this annoying person who would turn up a couple of times a week. And then eventually they let me start writing pieces. And I thought, this is my thing. And I remember walking into that tiny newsroom and everybody was working on typewriters with three sheets of carbon paper. It was so old school.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  But I just remember thinking, oh, here are my people.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  And you, I had never felt at home anywhere until that point. I didn't feel it at school. I didn't feel it. At work, in the pub, any, you know, I was always sort of trying to fit in, but I didn't feel like that was me. I was trying on versions of myself. And then suddenly, in a newsroom, I thought, oh, okay, I can just relax here. I can be who I am. So from that point, I suddenly had

• 22:17Speaker 01

  A focus.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  A focus. And I think that's the best thing you can be given in life, is to know the thing that you want to do.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  Because that was it then for the next ten years.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  I think, um, you know, you, you getting into journalism was the first step towards putting words in an order of realising the power of the written word.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  I just loved storytelling.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  I realised that from the start. I loved talking to people.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And then everything changed when you had your first child.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  In terms of, you know, journalism and.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Well, I started writing books. I also at The Independent was Helen Fielding, who wrote Bridget Jones. And I remember watching her do that column from afar and thinking, oh, wow, that could have been me if I'd tried harder or been as talented. Um, but it was like someone accessible was doing it right in front of me and succeeding. And then there was a sort of huge tranche of, I think they were called chick lit novels in the nineties and lots of novels about being young and in London. And I kept thinking, well, if they can do it, why can't I, is that thing. So I started to write in my spare time. And Charles, my husband, was very understanding and used to take

• 23:36Speaker 00

  our daughter out when she was a toddler to the park on Saturday morning so that I could have some uninterrupted writing time. And I would get back from work and I would write, or I would get up early before work and write. I ended up writing three books in my spare time. And. What happened was, the first one got rejected, but someone I knew who knew an agent, showed it to them. And they said, well, it's not publishable, but you've got a voice, you should keep going. And that was all the encouragement I needed. And then I wrote a second one, and that got me an agent, even though it wasn't good enough. And then the third one did go out on submission to six different publishers. And I was so excited. I thought that, that was it. And I was pregnant with my second child then, very sickly. I was hopeless at being pregnant. And I also had this thing. Synphysis pubis.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Synphysis pubis, and you can't stand on one leg. Standing on one leg is like literally stabbing you in the vagina. I had the same thing.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  So, so here I am, picture this grey blomange, bit weepy, on crutches, really gorgeous.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Peak Jojo.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Advertisment of being pregnant. And then six rejections come back, one after the other. And I'd written three books by then, and I just thought, clearly this is not going to happen. I can't use up all my free time when I've got a baby and I've got another one coming. And I have this very understanding husband who cannot keep letting me, you know, use up half family time to do this. And I cried for about two days.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  A book is a very vulnerable thing because you are giving of yourself.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  I used to say, it's like someone saying, sorry, your baby's ugly. Because it is, it's, you've poured everything into it, all your love, all your thoughts, all your, you know, so much of yourself. And it's just like, no, we don't want this. So I have huge sympathy for people who, whose books are rejected, because it's not just a piece of work, it's a piece of you. They don't want it.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  And I mean, how, how long would it take you to write a, a novel?

• 25:32Speaker 00

  About eighteen months to two years at that point. Yeah.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  You'd taken six, nearly six years, five or six years out of your life to do three books. And no one wanted you. It's like, that's a long

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  time. And you're thirty at this point.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Uh, yes, I was just, because I had my second child at thirty one. So, yes. And I just thought, okay, we're done. We're done here. I can't keep trying.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  You know when you've got that little idea in the back of your mind, something that you think, you know what, I might do that one day. And then life gets kind of busy and it just sort of stays there. Well, I was thinking about how sometimes overwhelming it can feel when you actually try to start something, design, writing, photography, payments, tech, all of it.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  It's a lot. Well, Shopify, who sponsors Begin Again, sort of takes that chaos and it makes it feel achievable because it gives you a place to build your shop without needing to be an expert. It's got templates, it's got tools that help you write product descriptions and nudge you along a bit when you get stuck. It means that you can just start. If you've been sitting on an idea, or you could just maybe have a look, try it out. Go to Shopify.co.uk if you want to. You can sign up for one pound per month trial and you could actually start selling right away. I partnered with Do Health for this episode and I want to tell you why.

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• 27:46Speaker 01

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• 28:10Speaker 01

  Where did Me Before You come from?

• 28:13Speaker 00

  It wasn't Me Before You.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it wasn't.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  It was a book called Sheltering Rain.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sheltering Rain, of course.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  And it was talking to my grandmother, who was Australian. And she had married my grandfather after two weeks of knowing him. And she'd actually been attached to another man at the time, but just met my grandfather, fell in love. They were happily together until he died. But she told me this story and I'd never really got into how they'd met. So I was like, hang on, he was Scottish, you were Australian, how did you meet? And she told me this story and I said, how did you know after two weeks? And she said, oh, well, you know, dear, you just know, don't you? And I thought, well, no, I can't even pick a brand of air conditioner and stick with it. So, and it got me thinking about how different generations of women have viewed choice.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  And how sometimes, how having loads of choice might actually be not the best thing for you. Because she just made this commitment and she stuck with it. And I suddenly thought, oh, I want to write about different generations of women. And unbeknownst to me is where chance and luck came in. Maeve Binti, Rosamund Pilcher, all those great doyens of female literature had suddenly announced either they were retiring or they'd written their last book. And so publishers were casting around, looking for a multi-generational story. So I wrote three chapters of this story in a synopsis. And I sent it to this agent and she just sent it back going, I want more. And I went out heavily pregnant and met six different publishers.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  And they all bid on this book.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  So you were suddenly in a bidding war, having been literally, no one would go anywhere near you.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  No one would touch me.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  You were in a bidding war.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  And then I remember, I have a friend who works in publishing and he was advising me and telling me, you know, just sit tight, you don't have to, because I was in a spin now, it's just like, just say yes, I don't care. I just, and he said, well, what do you want? And I said, I just want to be able to redo my bathroom. That's, that's all I want. And he was like, I think you're going to do a bit better than that. And I, I didn't end up going with the highest bidder in the end. I went with the one that I felt most.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Aligned.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Aligned to, which was Hodder and Stoughton. But I was with them for a further eight books and it wasn't.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  I didn't have a single bestseller with any of them, for whatever reason. I thought that once I got published, everything was gonna be fine. And then you find out, no. Because you're grafting away, you're doing your little library tours and you're showing up and you're turning your books surreptitiously face out and all the local bookshops and.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Oh my god, Jojo, did you do that?

• 30:52Speaker 00

  I still do.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  I still do. And any writer who says they don't is lying.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Those eight books?

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  So you are at a stage now where none of them are bestsellers.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  No, I keep writing these books. I put everything into them and for whatever reason.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  You don't know why?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  They're just not taking off.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  And is anybody going, try a bit more this, try a bit more? It's like, nobody knows why.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  No, nobody knew why. They they all loved my writing. They would read the books, they would make them cry. Um, they would try new marketing strategies. Uh, there was one that everybody thought was gonna be huge. And then the Richard and Judy list had just come out three weeks early and it was like being run over by a steamroller because everyone at that point just went for the Richard and Judy books and I just saw my little book just disappear under the, under the big rolly thing. And you just don't know what people are, what's going to appeal. And my problem was I kept writing very different kinds of books and the supermarkets were very dominant in book selling at the time. And so they wanted to know that their customers could trust what they saw on the cover.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  And mine didn't fit into anything. Cause one minute I was writing something historical, the next minute I was writing a kind of almost a murder mystery. The next time I was writing something else and I didn't, they couldn't jacket me in a way that said, oh, you know, here's this thing, like Cozy Crime is massive at the moment. You know what you're gonna get. It's a cozy crime. It's a Richard Osman type thing. None of my books fit that mould. So I'd started to sense that my publishers, although they'd been incredibly supportive and tried really hard, they were losing interest in me. And then I was looking after, helping look after my aunt who had multiple sclerosis.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  I had another close friend who I'd trained with as a journalist who also had late-stage multiple sclerosis. And so I'd spent a lot of time considering the issues of dignity and hope when, when you have someone in your life who is. Uh in need of twenty four hour care just to stay alive. And then there was this court case that I read about, well, I heard about it on the radio first. Uh a young man, and it wasn't a court case, so it was a case of a young man called Daniel James, who was a rugby player, young rugby player. Who had ended up quadriplegic after a an accident. And after a few years had persuaded his parents to take him to Dignitas. And I remember being really shocked by this story and the journalist in me.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Wanted to read more about it. So I I was sort of reading all the information that I could, because. I at first I felt quite judgmental of the parents and then I realised that. Your brain seeks certainty, but actually a lot of issues are far more grey than that. And it I suppose because of what was going on in my own family and my. Attempts to make my aunt happy when there was nothing for her to be happy about or look forward to anything. And I knew that if she had known about Dignitas before. She had got ill, that that's the route she would have chosen because she was furious and unhappy about.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  The indignities that she had to suffer as a woman who could no longer take care of herself.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  It's a lot. It's a lot of things that you don't even think about as an able bodied person. And I came up with this story idea. And I told my publishers and they kind of looked at me like. Oh, oh, okay. Uh and then the I think if we're going to talk money, I'll tell you, they offered me. One sixth of the amount that they'd been offering me. And Penguin Michael Joseph, who had been. I wouldn't say courting me, but they'd certainly let me know that they'd be interested. Um their managing director Louise had. Loved a couple of my books and was sort of furious on my behalf that they hadn't done better.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  And so I had lunch with her and she laid out exactly what she would do. And she said, we're not going to be able to rebuild you quickly because your sales history is terrible. But we can do it and we love your work and we think. You know, and they offered me the same amount of money. But I just felt that.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yes, more aligned.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  More aligned. She was so enthusiastic. More important is she had this vision that I trusted. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with me. And I thought, I've got nothing to lose. I'm gonna switch to these people. And then Richard and Judy picked up this book. And the rest is history because it started a kind of snowball.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  And I remember a friend saying to me that for about the first three years of actual big success, I looked like a rabbit in headlights.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 35:38Speaker 00

  I just, I was, I kept thinking, well, it's gonna stop now.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Did you, did you keep it like thinking it was gonna get taken away from you?

• 35:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  You couldn't trust it?

• 35:46Speaker 00

  No, absolutely not. And it was about three years before I finally thought, oh, okay, so the next book sold okay. And now the backlist, the, the books that I'd written before, the other eight were starting to sell. Oh, maybe this is okay. And, and then me before you went round the world and.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  I mean, can we just talk about.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Numbers there, how many countries, how many languages, I mean, something like forty six languages.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  I think it's sold about fifteen million copies so far. And then the rest of them have sold another forty five on top of that. So I went from selling.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  A handful, like, I don't think I'd made six figures to, I think now it's in the region of sixty million. And that all happened in my forties and fifties.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a real, um, a, a, a really solid, loud message.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yes. It's about resilience.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  And also.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Keep going.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Never give up.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  On your dream.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Never.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  It, it, you know, sure, like, do different jobs, do whatever you need to stay afloat, but never give up.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  No.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Because anything can happen.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Yes, and also love the process because.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Love the process.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  I.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  When I pitched me before you, I remember pitching it to my hairdresser, lovely Frank. And he always used to ask me what I was working on. I said, oh, well, I've just started this book. It's a bit weird. It's about a, a quadriplegic who's decided he wants to end his life. And it's about, um, you know, this carer. And he just looked at me. And I said, okay, let me change how I describe this. I said, it's about a man who has everything and then decides that because he can't live the life that he had, he wants none of it. And it's about a woman who falls in love with him and decides to try and change his mind. And he went, oh, that I would read. Then my dad, when I first, he, he read it and he said, well, darling, it's, it's very

• 37:50Speaker 00

  good, but I think, you know, you're going to get in terrible trouble with the Catholic countries, they're not going to like it. And the truth is, for the first three years that that book went out into the world, I think I got, I, I was delude with the emails. I cannot, well, I've got them at home still, but like probably thousands of emails from people who were either in a similar position, they were carers, they were people suffering life limiting illnesses, or they were people who, who were in a wheelchair. And people responded to it in this extraordinary way. So I used, by the end of that three years, I had to take every Sunday simply to respond to all the messages. And in all that time, I only had one message while it was just the book, from a woman who was furious with me.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  And it, and I entered into a correspondence with her and it turns out her daughter had taken herself to Dignitas without telling her. And she was so angry and we, I can completely understand it. And so we, we talked for a while and we came out on good terms with each other.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Jojo, can I ask you something?

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Is that, you've just told me that Sundays were spent answering people and you had this woman, you entered into a discussion with her. Is that really important to engage with people? And how exhausting is that? Because it's an awful lot of giving of yourself.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Well, I had to stop in the end because it became very overwhelming. And I'm quite a kind of porous person, so I would take on a lot of their things. You know, I, I underst, I'm a lot older now and I've had a lot of therapy, so I understand about boundaries, but I didn't have any. I just felt, I've had all this luck. And I remember hearing about J K Rowling once talking about the guilt she felt when she was successful. And I thought, how ridiculous, just enjoy it. And then I got it because I'd written this book that was very specifically about.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  You know, terrible things happening to people. And and suddenly people were asking me to share their experiences and and wanting to tell me and and being incredibly vulnerable. And so I I had to answer them. It was like the least I could do.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  And listen, you think, wow.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  And also, finally, I had some readers. That was the other thing I wanted to.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Thank them and respond and make them feel like they they hadn't wasted their time. But then it becomes too much. And then some of the people want to answer you again and again. And then uh we my I'd taken on a friend Jackie as an assistant by them because I couldn't cope with the volume of stuff. And so we set up an arrangement where I would answer the first one and then she would answer subsequent emails. But then people would get unhappy with that because they felt that somehow I was blocking myself off from them. And then I realised that I got to a point where I couldn't make anybody happy.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Because I couldn't answer all the emails. And so we had to take the contact button off.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  You went from just being desperate to get into this and then thinking, my god, and you actually hit a bit of overwhelm, like where you were.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  I did.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  I actually, I'm I'm a bit broken. What what happened then? Do you know what an eSIM is? Be honest. It does the same job as a physical SIM, but it's built into your phone digitally. And Salee, who sponsors Begin Again, is an eSIM app that I love because it gives you a safe, secure internet data connection overseas without having to pay expensive roaming fees. It's available in over two hundred destinations and it comes with built in cybersecurity. But the best part is that it lets you change your online location to home while you're away. If you've been watching a show, for example, then you go on holiday and suddenly you can't access it anymore. Well, with Salee, you can. Give it a try.

• 41:42Speaker 01

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• 41:58Speaker 02

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• 42:28Speaker 00

  So, the thing about achieving some success after a long period of not being very successful is that you find it very hard to say no. I mean, I don't know if you've experienced this in your life, but you're very conscious that fortunes can rise and fall. And so you feel like I've got to milk every opportunity as it comes. And I wrote the screenplay for the film of "Me Before You", and it was a big commercial success. So I suddenly got so many offers of work in Hollywood. So, I... My kids were all school age. So I was getting up and doing whatever they needed in the morning. Then I would be writing books in the day. And then, in the evening, I would be on LA time, working on scripts and...

• 43:13Speaker 01

  So never free, never?

• 43:15Speaker 00

  And I... In fact, I was thinking about one year, I think it was 2017, where I had one week's holiday. And we all got food poisoning. Just being so gutted. It was in October, we were in Lisbon, and we'd been to a fish restaurant two days into our holiday. And I'd been so excited about this holiday. I was so uncool on the plane, I was pretty much bouncing. And so I've never been very good at giving myself rest. I like working, and I'm really lucky to do the thing that I love. So I find it really hard to step away from that. And I think it's not unusual for freelancers, and I think it's especially not unusual for women. And so, that was going on.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  My mum got cancer. They said she would last six months, and she ended up lasting four and a half years. And anyone who's been on that cancer journey knows that it is not a straight trajectory. It is an absolute roller coaster of hope, despair, treatments, no treatments.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Is she gonna make Christmas this year, is she not, you know, it, you are. Or I was trying to manage my children's feelings about it. I was trying to help her. I was having my own feelings about it. While dealing with work and I was touring a lot. So I. And the books were so successful at this point that every publisher wanted me at the same time. So I was often doing back to back. And I remember. Doing a really crazy tour. I think it was about three and a half weeks, nonstop. And.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  I ended up on the west coast of America. It was Denver and I flew out of Denver. And there was something like. Whatever flight it was, and I had to appear in the Frankfurt Book Fair the next day. That was when I stopped. And I'd said, I'm not sure about this because.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  The time change and I don't, I wasn't sleeping as well. I, I've always been a intermittent insomniac. And at that point I was lucky to get four hours a night. And I didn't sleep very well on planes. So I was like, I don't know how this is gonna work because. I'm at the end of this tour, all the way across America, and you're often zigzagging every day. You're flying every day. It's not glamorous. I mean, it sounds glamorous, but it's really not glamorous. So I'd gone from Denver at the end of, I think. Three weeks and then flown to Frankfurt. And there was a big publishing lunch for me with lots of my international publishers. And I remember.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  Not, I, I didn't even know where I was at this point. And then. Sitting at this lunch and someone told a joke and I started to laugh and then it became tears. And I couldn't stop crying and everyone was completely horrified. And I felt mortified, you know, I was a forty something year old woman. Weeping at a table full of people. And, and at the height of my. Success, like what did I have to cry about? But I. Got home, my best friend rang me and I didn't sleep for about three nights because my. Body clock was so messed up at that point and she got really angry with me and she just said, you have to learn to say no, you have to advocate for yourself.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  And I didn't, I learned the lesson a bit, but if I'm honest, I didn't learn it properly. Uh, because then my mum died. And that was it. I did learn. So this is such, this is gonna sound so darkly humorous. But I thought after that, I thought, okay, I'm gonna take a year off. I've done okay. I'm gonna give myself that rest. And I thought I'm gonna travel a bit. And I'm gonna hang out with the kids and I'm gonna do some horse riding. I'm just gonna have a lovely time. I'd moved to a new house, which I loved. I had all my dogs. I had loads of rescue animals, horses, you name it. Um, my kids had absolute freedom to kind of bomb around and do whatever they wanted.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  And that, that little crack up had happened in October twenty nineteen. And I thought, right, twenty twenty is gonna be my year of rest and relaxation. And instead, my mum died, uh, I got divorced and we had a pandemic. So, God. I never got my year. Um, and then it was just surviving.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  So, but I was just gonna say it's survival. We all went on to survival mode, but like losing a parent, losing your mum. And, you know, losing a, a, a marriage and a mum at the same time, that's a lot of grief.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  It was a lot of grief.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Change. It's, it's huge.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  It was so huge. And I don't think I realised at first. And I remember, um, saying to this doctor, I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't stop crying. And she said, all right, talk to me. Like, I would be introduced. I remember meeting the scriptwriter Sarah Phelps and I went up to her and shook her hand and then I just burst into tears and went, I'm sorry, I'm not normally like this. And she just looked at me like, okay, you need to see a doctor. She's a very capable woman. And I saw this doctor and she just said, talk me through what's going on. And I told her. And she said, I think you have a completely understandable depression. Like, it's a completely natural reaction to everything that you're going through.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Could, could I ask you something?

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Was, were you perimenical?

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Yes, but I didn't know it at the time. And I wish with hindsight that instead of antidepressants, I'd been given HRT. Cause I.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  If I'd have been talking to you, I think I said this is.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  But I don't, I think the vocabulary changed.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Well, they don't, and also, you know, GPs and it's not their fault, but they don't learn about it in med school, so.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  No, what is it? They're given one?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Well, they don't, they don't even have to do that if they don't.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Oh, it's an optional.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  But yeah, and so you can learn more about it if you want, but the college, um, the Royal College of Psychiatrists have just made a mandate that, um, a midlife woman or a woman in her forties, mid forties, and if she presents with low mood, she needs to be told about menopause, menopause, that HRT is a good option to go and speak to somebody and not be routinely prescribed antidepressants. Did the antidepressants work for you at all?

• 49:32Speaker 00

  They did, they did, but I then read up about coming off them a couple of years later, and that was very scary because it can really send you haywire. So I was very badly advised by an online GP that I should take a couple of weeks, and actually I took nine months. I came off them super slowly, at a kind of extraordinary slow rate. And I am really grateful to not need them anymore, but I do take HRT because that's what keeps me, I don't know, trucking, I guess.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  How did you meet Charles?

• 50:06Speaker 00

  At work, yeah. I was his boss, strictly speaking, because I became news editor, um, in the late nineteen nineties. And he was the technology correspondent, um, or science and technology. And I just thought, oh, he's a good person, he's really smart. There was a huge round of redundancies going on, so it felt like every three months would be in the pub saying goodbye to a bunch of people, and then we kind of built our relationship from there. Being drunk and saying goodbye to people, which was kind of how most people in the nineties started their relationships.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  And everything changed, you know, as you know, um, it is a. Even if it's done amicably, which mine was, it is such a dislocating thing to live through. Because it's a shift of your identity.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  There is something to do with walking into a room and people knowing, even if he's not there, that you are a. A wife or a misses or, you know, you are a partner to somebody. And then to go in by yourself is somehow really hard. And there's some people who find it very difficult that you've done this. And so I was sort of quite shocked by some people's reactions and.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  That's always a funny thing, isn't it?

• 51:34Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Other people's reactions to your divorce is such a strange.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Especially if you are a woman who works hard and is visibly successful because it's automatically down to you. It's um, it's your fault for not being more present or for not working harder. And the one thing I, all I can tell you is that I work hard at everything, relationships, you know. Some things just end.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  And, you know, nobody needs to know more than that, but I. You know, we discussed earlier on that you and I shared a divorce lawyer.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  My, one of my proudest possessions is the email she sent me after I got divorced. Saying I wished all couples could handle it with the grace and kindness that you two showed each other. And my ex-husband is still my friend and we speak every week and he has Christmas with us.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  So I would really like to just ask for your top, you know, it can be three, it can be four, it can be five, whatever.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Um, bits of advice for anybody watching this who is getting divorced.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Because you never hear that, that couples. And it's, it often, it might start, oh, we're going to be amicable and then it's not. And you, you've done it.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  How did you do it?

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Okay, uh, the very, very first thing is never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Wait, what?

• 52:59Speaker 00

  So are they a kind person? Do they treat people with respect? Do they talk badly about their exes? All these are key indicators of how that person is gonna be about you once you're no longer.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  That, I, can I say something?

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Go on.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  You've literally blown my mind. I have never heard that. Don't marry a man that you wouldn't be prepared to be divorced, like.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  Or you wouldn't want to be divorced from.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Like.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Like, I don't mean that, like, you're not thinking about divorce.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  You're not thinking about divorce, but it's like.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  If you were in conflict with this person, how do you think they would behave?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yes, this, that is the most, because that is who they are at their core, right? Are they a good person is what you're saying?

• 53:42Speaker 00

  Yes, and my ex-husband is a good person.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Okay.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  But also, the second biggest one is just, it's actually not about you, it's about your kids. You've made a decision that is going to profoundly affect them. Even the best divorce is gonna have a negative effect on them and you have to acknowledge that. And so even when your ex, you might want to kind of stick pins in a dolly or, you know, you kick the wall or whatever, you don't do it in front of the kids. Nothing, they get none of it, absolutely none of it. Get some therapy, get a best friend, punch a pillow, whatever. None of this is going to your kids because even if you are tight-lipped and polite about your ex, they will feel it.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  They will pick up on every vibration. So I would also say, pick your battles. Like, does it really matter? I mean, I had dinner with Catherine Bedford, this divorce lawyer, and she was telling me about how, you know, some people will literally bankrupt themselves over who gets the guinea pig. And you have to just say, does this really matter? Does it matter? And one of the other really important things was, uh, when we divided up the things in the house.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Although there were things that I loved that I let go of, and we'd agreed that any family heirlooms should stick with.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yes, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  But I wanted the kids, when they went into his house, to see things they recognised and to feel like they were at home. I wanted them to be comfortable and I think he felt the same way. So we were generous with each other at every point.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  I mean, that sounds very healthy.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not gonna say it was fun.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  No, of course, but you'd be still married if it was.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  It's not meant to be fun, but you did do it in a respectful way.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  And because he was a good man, we were able to talk honestly. And at a point when some lawyers were advising me not to be honest with him, I was honest with him and trusted that he was still essentially the person that I'd married twenty two years earlier. And so it was. And so now we talk about stuff all the time and, you know, not just the kids, we'll still check in with each other. We buy each other birthday gifts.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  He is part of my family. I'm not married to him anymore, but he's the father of my kids. I want them to be able to come to me if they've got concerns about something that's going on with him and not feel, oh god, can't talk about dad. And, and, yeah, he, he, he has been. Yeah, he's someone who will always be in my life and I, I never have any regrets about having married him because he gave me the three best kids in the world. And, and I'm not sure I would have had the career that I had without his, the way he was with me and my career, if I'm honest.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Hmm. I want to ask you about dating in midlife because there will be men and women watching this. Who are our age, who are like, we didn't have apps.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  No.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Like, what, like, what do we do?

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Well, that was frankly terrifying.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Um, and I didn't do it. Uh, I.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think I could.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  No, I, I came out of my marriage. We ended up living together for fifteen months because it was Covid. And because it was more important to have the kids have stability and, um.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  And then I was on my own for a year and I was completely unprepared as a very independent person for how lonely I would feel.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Really, you felt lonely?

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and and also because I had huggy kids for a long time and then suddenly they were gone or mostly gone or certainly not at an age when they particularly want hugs.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  And I really missed just that physical.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Physical touch.

• 57:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, in a way, and you know, I've always had dogs and I had horses, so there was a lot of kind of hugging of animals, um but it's not the same. And then I found that I got quite anxious going into social situations as well, so I.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Had you been like that before?

• 57:53Speaker 00

  No.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  No, wow.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Um but I think it was a combination of, uh, there was a brief period where I was recognised and I don't know how you do it because I was very bad at it. I did not like, you know, I like being an a name on a spine. I don't really, I'm not very good at being visible. And so I found that I would be totally hopeless at proper fame because it's that thing when you have a conversation with someone you don't know and you suddenly become aware that you're becoming material to them, that that anything you tell them is going to become an anecdote for somewhere else. And so you stop being a human being and you stop being a kind of thing.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:37Speaker 00

  And I I had a few occasions where I'd go out and you'd and you must have seen it for the last however many years, but it's that thing, there's a slight change in expression. And and my level of fame was that compared to say yours, because I'm not a visible person, but I was so bad at it. And and I'd had a few occasions where I had had those sorts of experiences or I went to a book launch where I could hear my name being whispered behind me as I walked and it was really discomforting and I I'm just not built for it. I'm just not built for it. So I went to a a party. Um, was my friend, best friend's party and I said to her, I'm gonna come for two hours and then I'm gonna go.

• 59:20Speaker 00

  And she knew me and she knew how I was at that point and she just said, that's totally fine. And I was quite sad, I think, at the time as well. I was, I was kind of fine on the outside, but I'd go home and, you know, cry a bit. It's, it's just adjusting as well, isn't it? You're used to having a unit and suddenly I was not part of a unit. I was sort of rattling around by myself and, um, and I bumped into someone I'd known, a friend of my best friend's. Uh, I'd known him in Paris sort of thirty years ago.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Someone I'd had, we'd had no interest in each other at all, like not each other's type, um.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  So funny, isn't it?

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I knew he'd been through a lot of stuff because I'd heard on the kind of group grapevine. And he just, he's a very huggy man and he just said, oh, come and give me a hug. I hate your life's been a shit show or something kind of. And he gave me this hug and I just remember thinking, oh, that's nice.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  And then we agreed we would check in every hour and have another hug. And we've been together ever since. And that's been, yeah, six years.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Now, a big lesson there, I feel, and I need to really point this out to people.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Go on.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  So we were in our fifties. I was fifty.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, you too.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  And, you know, if you'd have seen him on an app in your thirties, you would have swiped.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  We had nothing in common.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Nothing, not your type.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  I don't think we would have got together any time up until.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  We were the same.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Like just not.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  It not looking at each other like that at all. So forget type, forget apps, they're just too light. There's no.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Also, I think the things you're looking for are very different at this age. I don't need anybody else's money. I don't need anybody else to get married to. I don't need to have children with somebody. I, there, there is no tick list of things that I'm working towards. All that matters is, does this person have a good heart? Do they make me happy? And John has a heart as big as kind of Northumberland and he makes me laugh all the time. I don't know.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  That's so random. I love that. You've got a heart as big as Northumberland.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  But possibly not slough. Yeah, I don't know. Um, but um, and I I'm not gonna say it's all been easy. It hasn't. It's involved therapy. And what I've discovered, you know, you you you, when you've been married for a long time, you settle into certain groups

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  of behaviour. So I had

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  There's habits.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, ways of being, ways of arguing, ways of handling conflict or disappointment or vulnerability. And you just get used to how you're doing it. And then suddenly, you're with someone else who is a completely different kettle of fish and they don't play by your rules.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  And is it healthier, would you say, because you are examining things, that you are behaving in a way where you like yourself more?

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, that's an interesting question.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  Um, I I'm sorry, the thing that's just making me laugh is when you get together with someone you knew when you were essentially a teenager, there is a large part of you that remains a teenager. So there is a big part of our relationship that's really childish and stupid.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  And fun.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  And fun, yeah. But I think I am a lot more mindful about how I show up. And I think he is too. And one of the reasons this has worked is because he is that unicorn of a thing, a man who is prepared to do the work on himself. And that I know from a lot of my girlfriends who are my age, who might be navigating similar situations, is actually quite rare. And I'm really grateful that he uh, does the work too. And so it sounds so kind of Americanized and such an awful phrase, doing the work, but

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Oh, it sounds

• 1:03:19Speaker 00

  there is a reason why a lot of second relationships fail statistically. And it's because you're coming in with children, baggage, you know, habits, behaviours that are quite ingrained and and having to navigate quite tricky situations. And it requires a lot of being a grown up. And sometimes we don't wanna be grown ups. We wanna just stamp our feet and go, I don't like this. And you can't. You have to just bring your best self to the table.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  And sometimes it might take me twenty four hours to locate that best self, but I'm getting there. And I think the difference is I'm grateful. I'm really, really grateful to have a second chance.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  And

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  And to have somebody who really loves me in as kind of huge a way as he does to be loved by John is quite an extraordinary thing because he has no inhibitions about saying it or showing it whatsoever. It's it's all out there. In fact, you know, he he jokes that I was hilarious for the first year because he would sort of say, I love you, and I would just go, okay.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  You go, don't panic. I love everybody. It's all cool. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I don't take anything for granted. You know, we're here and it's good. And that's all I ask for.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  So last year

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  um, was another kind of reassess everything. Can you tell me about that?

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, so twenty twenty was my annus erribilis. It was just terrible. I then had to rebuild. So I moved to London, uh, which was the place that I'd grown up in. And uh, I took up some hobbies, which was something that

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Wait.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  women never do.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I really want to talk to you about this. Isn't it interesting? Men have golf.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Men did this. We what do we do? We don't do anything. We're so bad at hobbies.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  I remember my this therapist saying to me, and it was her who made me do it. She said, what do you do when you're not working? And I I was to say, well, I'm with my kids. And she said, and and she said, yes, but what do you do for you? And I said, well, I I walk my dogs. And she went, no, that's walking the dogs. And I went, uh, okay, well, I I do training. You would like, no, that's to stay fit and well. I said, um, I love a hot bath and reading a book. She was like, no, that's just self care. That's not you. And I really thought about this. And then I was asking my friends, what what do you do for you? And they were doing the same thing. And I suddenly thought, this is really strange. Why are women so bad at doing things for ourselves? So when I moved to London, I took up pilates,

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  which I know makes me an absolute North London cliché. But I really loved it. And I've always loved horses, but I used to do what my husband called hacking and yakking. Which was just getting lost in the woods and talking to my daughter or with a friend. And so I took up classical dressage, which was really niche, really ridiculous, has no purpose in life beyond what it is. So I started competing again, which was the first time I went to a competition, I didn't sleep. I I think I was awake till four A M. And and I think I won the first one. It was only very low level. And I really love it. So I have lessons every week. I I go away to Portugal.

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  Um. To train at a special place there and and they, that has been an incredible thing for me. I go by myself.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Sometimes and I I so it was so interesting, you know, we talked about depression. And I carried it over for a long time and in the mornings were my hardest times. So I used to get up, walk the dogs, walk it off. And then I'd be in a good place.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  And I called John from the first time I stayed at this place in Portugal and I said, something really weird's happened. And and he said, what? I said, I'm not depressed in the mornings. And he said, oh, like, he said, is it because I'm not there? And I'm like, no, no, I just, I think it's because I'm basically being fourteen. I'm being fed, looked after. I don't have to worry about anybody else. And I'm getting to learn the thing that I absolutely love. Doing and it occupies my body, it occupies my mind, it occupies my emotion, it's given me a community. And and I really think it's important for women, especially when they're older, to claim something for themselves, whether it's.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Good piece of advice.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  I don't know, fishing or, you know.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Anything.

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  Anything, like doing a maths A level, I think is brilliant.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Look, I've got this lovely list that you talked about. Um. Doing in twenty twenty five, all the things you did.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  In twenty twenty five, and I'm gonna read it to you because this is so joyful and anybody watching, men or women, just know that you could go and do. Anything you like.

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  And nothing's a barrier.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  Know what you're gonna say now.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  So, this is what I've done in July instead of writing.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Got three piercings.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had to get one gone because I couldn't wear earbuds with it.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Helped my daughter adopt a half-tailed cat.

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  Yes, Stanley.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Ridden a horse in fancy dress in torrential rain.

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, I was dressed as a potato.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Helped with an eight-year-old's four-hour birthday party.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  That was a lot.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Not even your eight-year-old, like just an eight-year-old. And turned my garage into a gym.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  I did.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Well done. Had some business meetings.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Walked my dogs eight hundred times. Wow. Had a mammogram.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Yes, important, self-care.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Can you make your machine softer one day, please? I agree with that. Here, here. Read some books.

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Uh, chatted to servers at my local cafes. I love that because I know you're a little bit of an introvert, like you're not a natural.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  No, I'm not. I have to work at it, but I really love being somewhere where people know you. And I used to live somewhere where I didn't see people for days at a time.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  But London.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  I love it. Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's changed your life.

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Cut down some diseased hedging.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Looking after nature. Stayed up late. That was one of my favourites. On my deathbed, am I gonna regret not getting eight hours of solid sleep every single night? No.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Am I gonna be happy I stayed up late sometimes?

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  You are, but it's just gonna take you four hours, four days to recover from it.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Get over it, yeah.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Went swimming in Cornwall.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  I did, yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Gorgeous. Accidentally opened a neighbour's bill for semen storage.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  Oh, God, I did. And then I didn't know what to do because I didn't even know that was a thing.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:09:55Speaker 00

  I may have got rid of the letter.

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  I'm sorry. I think that's illegal. I probably just admitted to a crime. I was so stunned by the word semen storage that I didn't know what to do.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Made some new friends.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  Yes, so nice.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Um, continued my unbroken forty five day Duolingo run of Portuguese.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Uh, two hundred and eighty seven days.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 00

  Agora.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Um, Portuguese is so difficult.

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  Difficult and it well.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Well done.

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  Can I just tell you, I learned about day two hundred that what I've been learning is Brazilian Portuguese rather than European Portuguese. So it's pretty much useless, but I'm still going.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, when you go to Brazil, it's gonna be good.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  I'm gonna go back to Brazil.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Failed to paint my toenails. Why is that so good?

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  Cause I'm, uh, I don't think it matters.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Great. Um, and I just want to say, um, thank you for that list. It brought me personally such joy. Um, it was a beautiful thing and I also want to say, um, this is your latest book.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  And it is out now and it's out now in paperback.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Um, and it's called, uh, We All Live Here.

• 1:11:16Speaker 00

  And it's about a lot of the things that you and I have been discussing about women carrying everything and trying not to fall apart at the seams and having a laugh while they're doing it.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  And ain't that, um, what we all want to aspire to do and be. And I think reading it in words is thought provoking for women our age because if we're not doing it. But we read about people who are even in fiction. It's inspiring.

• 1:11:46Speaker 00

  I think seeing ourselves.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  We see ourselves.

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  And thank you for seeing us.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Well, thank you for having me.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Jojo.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  Been such a delight and I'm so glad I bought it.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Ridiculously brilliant.

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  I love you.

• 1:11:58Speaker 00

  Oh, I love you.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  So just in case you missed this episode here, um, if you love this episode, I know you're gonna love that.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.