Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Hello, it's Kateline Brooke here. You already know Sally Hepworth.
Speaker 2: You know her and you love her as the best
Speaker 2: selling author on the Unleash Couch. She has that Louis
Speaker 2: Thurroux type curiosity, very funny and sharp observations and brutally
Speaker 2: honest advice to the others. But what else do you
Speaker 2: know about her? Well? I was lucky enough to sit
Speaker 2: down with Sally Hepworth recently on my show No Filter,
Speaker 2: and it was just amazing, a conversation that was so
Speaker 2: layered and compelling and honest and peppered with humor. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it was so good. We had quite a response. She's
Speaker 2: funny and sharp and so completely Sally, and I think
Speaker 2: you're going to love it. So here's Sally Hepworth as
Speaker 2: you know her, but much deeper and maybe even more herself.
Speaker 3: I have the scars and I do feel like I
Speaker 3: lost a layer of skin. You know, everything was raw,
Speaker 3: everything I felt things is more beautiful and sadder. You know,
Speaker 3: is marriage good for women? I've thought about that a lot.
Speaker 2: You know, when someone seems like they've got it all together, hmmm,
Speaker 2: For instance, best selling author, gorgeous, family, thriving career, beautiful
Speaker 2: to boot and then you find out they've been quietly
Speaker 2: rebuilding their life from scratch. Well that is Sally Hepworth.
Speaker 2: She sold millions of books around the world. She's written
Speaker 2: a best seller every year since twenty fifteen. But what
Speaker 2: you might not know is that over the last couple
Speaker 2: of years, Sally Hepworth's life completely imploded. Today we talk
Speaker 2: about that divorce, grief, the shit box. Yes you'll find
Speaker 2: out what that is. We talk about female friendship and
Speaker 2: falling in love again when you swore you wouldn't. This
Speaker 2: is a conversation about what it means to let go
Speaker 2: of the life you thought you wanted and build a
Speaker 2: new life that actually fits. Sally Hepworth. You of the
Speaker 2: lemon water, the cleansing lemon water. Welcome to No Filter.
Speaker 2: Thank you. And here we are both early in the morning.
Speaker 1: After thinking that it was ten am instead of nine.
Speaker 2: Both of us thought that what a miracle that we made.
Speaker 2: And here we are. But what Okay, you have shared
Speaker 2: so much of yourself, but kind of in disguise, I
Speaker 2: think through your car directors, yeah, which have resonated with
Speaker 2: millions literally millions of people, and you have had this
Speaker 2: is so remarkable a best seller every year since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: So that's a lot. It's a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like a lot when it's going to
Speaker 3: be the tenth this year. In a couple of months,
Speaker 3: my book will be care right, And yeah it does.
Speaker 3: It feels amazing to think back to when I started
Speaker 3: writing in two thousand and nine, when I was pregnant.
Speaker 2: With my first child. Yeah.
Speaker 3: All I wanted was to get a novel published. Yes,
Speaker 3: and then oh that's a dream. Yeah, and then the
Speaker 3: gold post kept moving. Then I wanted to make a
Speaker 3: career out of being an author, and then I wanted
Speaker 3: to become a best seller. You know, some people say
Speaker 3: they didn't dream of that, but I did. I had
Speaker 3: big dreams.
Speaker 2: And when like, how long had you had those dreams?
Speaker 3: Well, I suppose as soon as I got my foot
Speaker 3: in the door and I started to get published, you
Speaker 3: know what might not dream big. I mean, I didn't
Speaker 3: know that I was going to make it, but you
Speaker 3: have to kind of aim for something.
Speaker 2: I do always. I do like to say to friends,
Speaker 2: miracles happen. There's no reason that it can't be. The
Speaker 2: miracle for you. But the miracle is often hard work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the miracle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess to write a novel, you're doing
Speaker 3: the hard work, right like everyone who's written one. To
Speaker 3: get in the game, you have to do the hard work.
Speaker 3: And then there's the magic of you know, are your
Speaker 3: books going to resonate? Are people going to buy them?
Speaker 3: Are they going to in some cases hit at the
Speaker 3: right time that that's going to become popular. Sometimes that
Speaker 3: retroactively happens these days, and books take off years after
Speaker 3: they've come out. I don't know why, but I really
Speaker 3: do feel so fortunate to be while also allowing that,
Speaker 3: you know, I've done the work and I do think
Speaker 3: that I past imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1: I think I'm good at it now. I really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Oh what a good feeling. Yeah. When did that come?
Speaker 2: Was it as a result of outside affirmation or is
Speaker 2: it something that comes from inside?
Speaker 1: Great question.
Speaker 3: I suspect probably started to come after a little bit
Speaker 3: of outside affirmation.
Speaker 2: That does help.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would like to say it was internal.
Speaker 3: I think by the time I wrote my fifth book,
Speaker 3: I remember that was The Mother in Law.
Speaker 1: Was the book that I kind of.
Speaker 3: You know, broke out as they say, and then each
Speaker 3: book since then has kind of built on it. And
Speaker 3: sometime between then and now, I just started to think
Speaker 3: to myself, when you know, I've written a couple of
Speaker 3: short stories recently, and I've never written a short story.
Speaker 3: I mean before I wrote the first one, and I
Speaker 3: remember Amazon approaching me to write it, and I said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll do it.
Speaker 1: And then I hung and I immediately.
Speaker 3: Googled how to write a short story because I thought, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can do it. Well, of course I can do it,
Speaker 3: and that snuck up on me because I didn't always
Speaker 3: feel that way.
Speaker 2: Of course, the mother in Law was a really interesting
Speaker 2: one because it showed that you have a capacity which
Speaker 2: I think you always have to do as a writer.
Speaker 2: It showed you have a real capacity to see the
Speaker 2: other side of someone, and you do that with all
Speaker 2: of your characters obviously, but that was a really seminal
Speaker 2: one because I think it's so hot, Yeah, isn't it? Sticky?
Speaker 2: A mother in law? And yet you always were you're
Speaker 2: handling of the concept, and even in your conversations around it,
Speaker 2: were very understanding of what it means to be a
Speaker 2: mother in law.
Speaker 3: I hope, so That's always been the interesting part of
Speaker 3: writing for me is there are books, I assume that
Speaker 3: have been written about awful mothers in law, and movies
Speaker 3: and monsters in law and jokes and jokes, and so
Speaker 3: what was interesting to me about tackling it was to,
Speaker 3: you know, to reverse engineer or to look at the
Speaker 3: other side and what if you know mothers in law
Speaker 3: aren't awful, because they're not. I mean, my mum is
Speaker 3: a mother in law and she's beautiful. I adore her.
Speaker 2: I also know that she irritates my sisters a lot sometimes. Well, yes,
Speaker 2: there's always that that kind of tension, there's that rab
Speaker 2: A point that you've made is that a mother in
Speaker 2: law is in a unique position because she loves the
Speaker 2: same man more woman, daughter or son, but has no
Speaker 2: say in it. The people that are trust together. But
Speaker 2: I'm curious, particularly about your understanding of human nature, which
Speaker 2: I believe to be immense well just partly through your
Speaker 2: research on every character and situation, and you have had
Speaker 2: your characters often have confronted every type of rupture you know.
Speaker 2: And now this is what I'm curious about, because you've
Speaker 2: encountered that own rupture yourself, and you've changed your life
Speaker 2: drastically since the last time you were on no filter
Speaker 2: with me the last two times year on. How has
Speaker 2: that been You're now divorced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, all of these experiences, they become
Speaker 3: a part of you, and so they leak out onto
Speaker 3: the page, I think. But I will say that every
Speaker 3: my books in a way have followed the trajectory of
Speaker 3: things that I've gone through, motherhood, you know, even not
Speaker 3: being able to get pregnant and all of those things.
Speaker 3: And now with the divorce, I think that's been the
Speaker 3: most significant thing that's happened to me. I mean, and
Speaker 3: I say this acknowledging that this makes me very lucky,
Speaker 3: but it's the most significant thing that's happened to me
Speaker 3: in my life.
Speaker 2: The most difficult thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's just coming up to two years ago.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, it's just gone over two years since we separated.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking about it, knowing that we were
Speaker 3: going to talk about it today, and I was thinking,
Speaker 3: am I, How am.
Speaker 2: I about that?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Am I over it? Am I?
Speaker 2: And I'm not.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's I wonder if it'll be one of
Speaker 3: those things like the grief of death, that it changes,
Speaker 3: but it's always with you. Yeah, I wonder. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know. And as you say, I'm so curious
Speaker 3: about people. I'm curious about you know, the last two
Speaker 3: years marriage, you know, I've been looking around at marriages
Speaker 3: and thinking what makes a marriage work, what makes them fail,
Speaker 3: what makes people so angry after they get divorced, what
Speaker 3: makes people nasty?
Speaker 1: What makes a good divorce?
Speaker 2: And how is your divorce? By the way, look a
Speaker 2: little bit of everything, I guess along the way, but
Speaker 2: if overall, yeah, look what you know.
Speaker 3: The thing that I have learned from this is that
Speaker 3: whenever someone would get divorced in my life, prior to
Speaker 3: it being me, I used to want to know what happened.
Speaker 3: And when I asked that question, I expected the answer
Speaker 3: to be a sentence or two sentences, and something that
Speaker 3: attributed blame.
Speaker 1: To one person. There was a victim and a perpetrator.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I wanted to hear he had an affair or she
Speaker 3: was crazy, which can't yes, and so you immediately know
Speaker 3: that's what happened. And what I've discovered since then, and
Speaker 3: in my own case this is true. I mean, you
Speaker 3: might be able to, for the sake of conversation, boil
Speaker 3: it down to one or two things. But ultimately you
Speaker 3: could write a book. It's not one or two sentences.
Speaker 3: You could write a book, and maybe I will.
Speaker 2: Well, it is. It is fascinating, and because it's such
Speaker 2: a common experience and for it to be so traumatic, yes,
Speaker 2: and so common and yet not really, I don't think
Speaker 2: it's really given the full weight that it deserves, the
Speaker 2: significance in a person's life.
Speaker 3: I agree strongly, and in fact, look, I don't know
Speaker 3: if my experience is true of everyone, and of course
Speaker 3: it's not.
Speaker 1: Everyone has a different experiences.
Speaker 2: But I was so.
Speaker 1: Knocked to my ass from it, and.
Speaker 3: Even myself, if I heard someone was divorced before it
Speaker 3: happened to me, I would have said, oh, that's a shame.
Speaker 1: It certainly wasn't par with.
Speaker 3: You know, other terrible things that happen to people, like
Speaker 3: a disease, like an that's.
Speaker 2: A terrible thing. And it is kind of a death. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a death of I mean all those things that
Speaker 2: lead you to get married in the first place. Yes,
Speaker 2: the hope, the love, the starry eyed whatever it was.
Speaker 2: It's the antithesis of that. So it is in some ways.
Speaker 3: That it is and on top of all that, I mean,
Speaker 3: that is the big part. And then on top of that,
Speaker 3: there's the life up people. You know that there's worries
Speaker 3: about financial worries, there's emotional concerns for the children.
Speaker 2: Children, there's you know, I mean that.
Speaker 3: Part is so hard that you're going through something so difficult,
Speaker 3: and yet you have to do the best parenting of
Speaker 3: your life, you know, in order to hopefully get your children.
Speaker 2: Well, how do you do that? Because like, you've got
Speaker 2: three children, You've got two teenagers and an eight year old,
Speaker 2: I do I mean, I like to say that children
Speaker 2: are resilient. I think that underestimates often the impact of
Speaker 2: major emotional shifts for children. I think we like to
Speaker 2: say they're resilient because it makes it easier for us
Speaker 2: to kind of push through what we have to push
Speaker 2: through with. I don't even think that they're resilient. What
Speaker 2: they are is adaptable and good at hiding stuff that
Speaker 2: they might be feeling because they're all antenna yes.
Speaker 1: Or showing it in different way.
Speaker 3: I mean, my daughter, my youngest was six at the time,
Speaker 3: and so I saw her dealing with it in ways
Speaker 3: that were not you know, she wasn't expressing it directly,
Speaker 3: but she was having a lot of trouble with you know,
Speaker 3: nightmares and you know, just behavioral stuff, whereas my older
Speaker 3: too and have my older too when you're a divergent
Speaker 3: and so that had its own host of things.
Speaker 2: Did they process it differently? Yeah? Yeah, how could you like?
Speaker 2: In what way?
Speaker 3: Well, even between the two of them, my son and
Speaker 3: my daughter, they prosed it, sessed it differently. My son
Speaker 3: didn't talk about it at all. In fact, it's funny
Speaker 3: when we told him, we said, have you got any questions?
Speaker 3: And he we told him alone, just because of the
Speaker 3: world that we told the girls separately, and we went
Speaker 3: through it and he said, if you got any questions,
Speaker 3: and he said, where will the dog be living?
Speaker 2: Actually a very good question, yes, and so where does
Speaker 2: the dog we live?
Speaker 3: We have a divorced dog who shared We share custody,
Speaker 3: so the dog goes with the kids, which was something
Speaker 3: that they wanted and it has worked really well. The
Speaker 3: other thing that worked well in the early days is
Speaker 3: that we did birds nest parenting.
Speaker 2: The Swedish is that the Swedish model Danish something.
Speaker 3: Everything good comes from. Okay, So because we had the
Speaker 3: family home, as a lot of people do. It was
Speaker 3: going to take time to sell. So we got a
Speaker 3: a little apartment not far away, and we would do
Speaker 3: week on and week off. One of us would would
Speaker 3: leave and go to the apartment and the other one
Speaker 3: would stay in the.
Speaker 2: House with So the idea is that children are not
Speaker 2: they stay routed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, and that you know, looking back, that was
Speaker 3: horrible for us or horrible for me. It was amazing
Speaker 3: for the kids. And I would do it again for
Speaker 3: the kids. And what why was that horrible for you?
Speaker 3: Like just the the packing up of your life every.
Speaker 2: Friday, which is normally what the kids have to do. Yes,
Speaker 2: And that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 3: It really gave me such and that's one of the
Speaker 3: best things from it, such an understanding of what they
Speaker 3: have to go through, and we delayed that by a
Speaker 3: year by by.
Speaker 1: Us doing it.
Speaker 3: It's made me so much more sympathetic, so much more
Speaker 3: likely to you know, if they've forgotten their something.
Speaker 2: I will be in the car, you know, driving it
Speaker 2: off to school, which you know how it feels. Yeah, Hey,
Speaker 2: who was it for? Do you think in that nesting
Speaker 2: bird nesting time? Who was more adaptable with that? Obviously
Speaker 2: it was hard for you, how is Christian your husband
Speaker 2: with it?
Speaker 1: I also also I think not great.
Speaker 3: It's a strange thing as well because the apartment that
Speaker 3: we had was very much like an airbn but it
Speaker 3: didn't feel like home.
Speaker 2: No, and because it didn't really belong to either of you. No. Yes.
Speaker 3: And it's also I have to say, it's a privilege
Speaker 3: to be able to afford to have an it was
Speaker 3: a small apartment, but not everyone has the ability to know.
Speaker 2: That's right to do that. The other thing about divorce
Speaker 2: divorce is expensive.
Speaker 3: Is expensive, and there's an uncertain period which is just
Speaker 3: really difficult, and sharing space with that person is so difficult.
Speaker 3: And I found that really really hard.
Speaker 2: It's almost like in a way that when you're navigating
Speaker 2: the divorce with someone and there are children involved, so
Speaker 2: you have to be very mind full of that that
Speaker 2: in a way you have to work together so intensely.
Speaker 2: Do you at some point think why are we getting
Speaker 2: divorced if we can actually manage a divorce?
Speaker 3: Look, I think the thing that happened with us, which
Speaker 3: I see happening with so many people, is that you
Speaker 3: start I started off with a desire to do everything perfectly.
Speaker 3: You know, this thing of Okay, this our life's going
Speaker 3: to change. The children's life is going to change. I
Speaker 3: read all the books you know on children, and I
Speaker 3: quickly realized that that wasn't going to work. That we
Speaker 3: weren't going to be working together like that Christian and
Speaker 3: I and that took some adjusting. And it's actually the
Speaker 3: thing that when I look back, I wish I had
Speaker 3: realized earlier that we're not married anymore, and so we
Speaker 3: don't necessarily we're not going to be on the same
Speaker 3: page always in an ideal world.
Speaker 1: Co parenting is wonderful.
Speaker 3: I now have a lot of divorced friend I've sought
Speaker 3: out divorced people because I'm so traumatized.
Speaker 2: I've got a divorced.
Speaker 3: Group of women that we call ourselves the Golden Girls,
Speaker 3: and we share information. And in every case, even when
Speaker 3: they've come to the other side and now can co parent,
Speaker 3: there's a part in the middle that we call the
Speaker 3: mean part.
Speaker 1: And it helped me to call it.
Speaker 3: That because it was a part something that had a
Speaker 3: beginning and an end, and it wasn't personal, and it
Speaker 3: wasn't you know.
Speaker 1: And I think every divorce has a mean part.
Speaker 2: I agree, and with girlfriends in money even I ended
Speaker 2: a relationship after nine years and we weren't married, but
Speaker 2: we were embedded. And particularly in my experience, the mean
Speaker 2: part often comes around money, yep. And it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: if you're breaking up with the nicest guy in the world.
Speaker 2: There's something about money suddenly that really brings out that e.
Speaker 3: But it's not even this is my thing, because I
Speaker 3: think about these things a lot. I think it is security,
Speaker 3: you know, at which money represents a lot of security.
Speaker 2: I think it's suit freedom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and fear, you know, you don't know, and you
Speaker 3: go from being even if you have plenty of money,
Speaker 3: you're suddenly half You've got half as much or whatever
Speaker 3: that looks like.
Speaker 1: And that's scary.
Speaker 3: And if you're you know, I'm in my mid forties
Speaker 3: Christians fifty and so that is a very real fear
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you know, am I prepared for
Speaker 3: retirement or am I?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And I was in the really lucky position that I've
Speaker 3: never stepped out of work. I earn a good income.
Speaker 2: The best seller every year since twenty fifteen, which.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean that sounds wonderful. It's still you know,
Speaker 3: you look at the numbers and I've got three kid course,
Speaker 3: and you go. But I definitely, I definitely was happy
Speaker 3: to you know, to keep things nice. I was like, yep,
Speaker 3: you know, I wasn't fighting. But I also think that
Speaker 3: you can do everything right and it can still be.
Speaker 2: Hard, of course, and maybe it has to be. Maybe
Speaker 2: it does maybe to you know, cleave apart what God
Speaker 2: put together, do you know what I mean? Or whatever
Speaker 2: the saying is, maybe it has to have that component
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 3: Look, I mean, I'm sure there are people who've got
Speaker 3: some whimsical, wonderful divorce, but then you know, why are
Speaker 3: they getting divorced?
Speaker 2: Are there any in your extended group of girlfriends?
Speaker 3: Now there's a few, you know, sort of five years
Speaker 3: plus down the tracks that now are working well together.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I had to and look, I actually this was the
Speaker 3: best thing I ever did. I had to accept that
Speaker 3: I was in charge of what happened in my house
Speaker 3: and Christian was in charge of what happened in his house.
Speaker 3: And it's the most unknow natural thing when you are
Speaker 3: a parent, even to you know, not have your kids
Speaker 3: with you half the time, but to let go of
Speaker 3: things that are really important in your life, like this
Speaker 3: is what time they go to bed. Things you're used
Speaker 3: to having control over this, This is what they eat,
Speaker 3: this is they shower. There are so many things that
Speaker 3: you have to that kind of stuff, bedtime, showering, whatever.
Speaker 3: I felt so much better when I stopped, and you know,
Speaker 3: you keep it to the important things, and there weren't
Speaker 3: any of those, you know, like they were alive and
Speaker 3: looked after well by their dad. And suddenly I unclenched,
Speaker 3: you know, And that too, is a really important thing
Speaker 3: to sort of letting go of the marriage, that you
Speaker 3: do kind of have to understand that when you're married,
Speaker 3: you work together as a team. Of course you should,
Speaker 3: and now I think we're much better at teamwork. But
Speaker 3: that was a bit of a process too, of just
Speaker 3: going well, you know, when not controlling. You know, we
Speaker 3: can't control each other anymore. Maybe I look a lot
Speaker 3: too it my part.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't like that idea that you know, he's a narcissist,
Speaker 3: she's crazy. Everyone thinks their X is crazy or a narcissist.
Speaker 3: I don't think that. I see he does.
Speaker 2: He thinks I'm crazy. I think that.
Speaker 3: I think that both of us made mistakes, and especially
Speaker 3: in the early days, I was much more interested in
Speaker 3: finding out what I what my part was, because that's
Speaker 3: the only part I comes back to control. I can't
Speaker 3: control why he's doing stuff that I don't agree with
Speaker 3: or why, and it's not my business anymore, only in
Speaker 3: so far as it affects my children. My role is
Speaker 3: to look at me, to heal and to hopefully not
Speaker 3: bring that kind of those difficulties into my life with
Speaker 3: my children.
Speaker 2: After the break Sally unpacks the part she played in
Speaker 2: the breakdown of her marriage. What do you think the
Speaker 2: role was that you played.
Speaker 1: I think that the let me step back.
Speaker 3: I always wanted to be married, you know, I remember
Speaker 3: that from a youngish age.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I liked the idea of having a partner.
Speaker 2: My brother's twins. I wonder if that had something to
Speaker 2: do with it younger or older.
Speaker 3: Older brothers and Mum said, when we were little, I
Speaker 3: used to say, where's my other one? You know, like
Speaker 3: there was something missing. And I don't know, like maybe
Speaker 3: I'm reading too deeply into it, but I loved the
Speaker 3: idea of having a partner for life. I mean, come
Speaker 3: back to it, but I have so many partners for
Speaker 3: life in my girlfriends and that's the sort of full
Speaker 3: circle that I've come to.
Speaker 2: But I was.
Speaker 3: Looking for that, and I had an idea of what
Speaker 3: my life was going to look like, and it was
Speaker 3: going to be a partner, it was going to be kids,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe some travel career for me, career. You know.
Speaker 3: I had those kind of fairly maybe normalish, you know,
Speaker 3: traditional ideas. And I do wonder now if I was
Speaker 3: really holding on to something idyllic that maybe couldn't match
Speaker 3: up to what real life looked like. And when things
Speaker 3: did get tough, which they did, you know, several times
Speaker 3: through the marriage, as they always do, I found that
Speaker 3: really difficult. I found the I just didn't understand why
Speaker 3: it wasn't looking like the picture in my mind of
Speaker 3: what it should be like. And disagreements I found really hard.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't think, oh, we're disagreeing about this. I would think, oh,
Speaker 3: my god, a relationship. I've married the wrong person. This
Speaker 3: is terrible. I really see that now, and I'm in
Speaker 3: another relationship now, and that's something that I've really changed.
Speaker 3: And you know, I see how communication clear, communication and not. Also,
Speaker 3: I think keeping the peace was something that was really
Speaker 3: important to me in because I wanted I wanted harmony
Speaker 3: and happiness, and I think my mum was also a
Speaker 3: real peacekeeper in our family.
Speaker 2: Which is an interesting thing because a peacekeepers beautiful thing,
Speaker 2: but a peacekeeper can also be.
Speaker 1: You can breed resentment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, because you're subjugating every natural instinct to
Speaker 2: just preserve this piece on behalf of who of a.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was it was often, you know, I
Speaker 3: was holding things in that that should have come out.
Speaker 1: I think my career played a role.
Speaker 3: And again I don't think it's as simplistic as saying.
Speaker 3: And a lot of people will say, do you think
Speaker 3: that men can't handle a woman's success or versions of that,
Speaker 3: and I always think, I don't know if it's that simple,
Speaker 3: as simple as that. I know Christian was quite supportive
Speaker 3: of me doing well and wanted that It's maybe to
Speaker 3: do with purpose and drive. I think that then, you know,
Speaker 3: I was at home with the kids early in our relationship,
Speaker 3: and I was writing as well.
Speaker 2: And then you swapped and he was.
Speaker 1: He was the state home parent, right, which.
Speaker 2: My husband also was for a long time. Right. So
Speaker 2: I'm very curious about this dynamic. It's an interesting one. Firstly,
Speaker 2: there's the external to us. It made sense and at
Speaker 2: the time I was doing breakfast radio and it made
Speaker 2: sense for us rather than outsourcing to someone. But there
Speaker 2: is something about it externally the world is do you
Speaker 2: do do other?
Speaker 3: Mean?
Speaker 2: Even? Yeah, Yeah, it's weird, isn't it. It is so
Speaker 2: it's a strange thing. It takes an exceptional man to
Speaker 2: take on that role. Yeah. In my case, my husband,
Speaker 2: at some point we could tell he was done with it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was just done with it, I mean fair enough. Yes,
Speaker 2: And we had four under six and that was a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I and we both because I was
Speaker 3: not home, I was working. We went from Christian had
Speaker 3: the main job as the earner when we were first together.
Speaker 2: Right, what was his career an accountant, right, you know?
Speaker 1: And he was very good at that success.
Speaker 3: I went moved over to Canada together because he was
Speaker 3: sent over there, and then we had the babies, and
Speaker 3: then I was at home with them, and then I
Speaker 3: was also writing, and then we were both working and
Speaker 3: we had the kids in a combination of childcare. I
Speaker 3: had some flexibility. I found it difficult. I still felt
Speaker 3: like I was carrying the mental load though, and together
Speaker 3: with working, I was burnt out. So also not my
Speaker 3: best yo, know you were No, No, you don't know
Speaker 3: at the time, do you.
Speaker 1: Well, though I knew something.
Speaker 3: I've got this memory of being on tour in America and.
Speaker 2: Which book was this? Which give me an era? I
Speaker 2: think it worth the era. I think it was The
Speaker 2: Soul Mage right, okay.
Speaker 3: Because it was right after Mum and Mia came out
Speaker 3: with their podcast. But are you happy that Claire Stevens
Speaker 3: was hosting? And I saw it and I thought I
Speaker 3: looked at it on my phone because I would listen
Speaker 3: to all the Australian podcasts while I was there, just
Speaker 3: to keep on top, and I thought, no, when it's
Speaker 3: but are you happy, I've got nuh, And it just
Speaker 3: dropped in Yeah. And again it wasn't that moment. There
Speaker 3: was a series of moments and things that happened that
Speaker 3: led to it. But that was the first time I thought, huh,
Speaker 3: because objectively everything was going so well, you know, and
Speaker 3: my career was was, you know, wonderful, and my kid
Speaker 3: and the interesting thing to jump forward a little bit
Speaker 3: is that once my marriage ended and I got through,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of early part of the pain
Speaker 3: of that one thing that I guess I felt quite
Speaker 3: good about was that my life was actually everything in
Speaker 3: my life was wonderful. I've got this beautiful group of
Speaker 3: girlfriends that we've been friends since we were ten, and
Speaker 3: this is separate.
Speaker 2: To the Golden Girls. Some crossover.
Speaker 3: There is some crossover in fact, because as soon as
Speaker 3: I became divorced, I didn't really know anyone who was divorced,
Speaker 3: and so I sought out, Yeah it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2: And that's I.
Speaker 3: Guess maybe part of what was it? Part of what
Speaker 3: made it hard for me. I don't know one element.
Speaker 3: One of the Golden Girls was my friend's older sister,
Speaker 3: and so I nabbed her, and then a friend of hers,
Speaker 3: and then one friend of mine, and then there was
Speaker 3: a girl I went to school with who has heard
Speaker 3: she got to and I hadn't spoken to her for
Speaker 3: years and years and years, and as soon as I
Speaker 3: heard she got divorced, I messaged her and said, I
Speaker 3: just wanted to say that if you're not okay, I
Speaker 3: know we haven't spoken and this might be really presumptuous,
Speaker 3: I'm happy to come and talk to you.
Speaker 1: We can have a coffee.
Speaker 3: I just felt like I wanted to acknowledge since I'd
Speaker 3: gone through it, how awful it was, and so together
Speaker 3: we were started The Golden Girl, which is mostly now
Speaker 3: memes about being a single parent, which is so funny,
Speaker 3: and sometimes it's how do I deal with this? To
Speaker 3: do with the children, how do I deal with We
Speaker 3: developed something which we call the ship box from The
Speaker 3: Golden Girls, and the ship box is an actual box,
Speaker 3: physical box that the kids put their shit in, not
Speaker 3: their like their stuff that goes to.
Speaker 1: Their dad's house.
Speaker 3: I was like, how do you and someone said, we
Speaker 3: have a ship box, and so they put it. It's
Speaker 3: just a box that goes inside the door. And the
Speaker 3: day that they're going to their dad's, how do you
Speaker 3: say to the kids, put your stuff in the ship box?
Speaker 2: And they put it in, and then that gets taken
Speaker 2: to their We've forgotten the ship and they'll say, I'll say,
Speaker 2: where's your shoes? It's they're in the shipbox. How big
Speaker 2: is the ship box? Like a laundry basket.
Speaker 3: It's so those kind of wondrous things basicle come out
Speaker 3: of the Golden Girls. But to link back, I guess
Speaker 3: I realized, Okay, my marriage has ended, but I've got
Speaker 3: these girlfriends who really had stepped up for me in
Speaker 3: a way that you know, my first night in the
Speaker 3: apartment after we broke up, they all came and slept over.
Speaker 3: You know. One of them arrived with a box of tools.
Speaker 3: You know, they just use the tools girlfriends of mine
Speaker 3: who got drilled.
Speaker 2: And then there comes a certain sort of pride in
Speaker 2: I can fix your rod, I know, and it is
Speaker 2: very satisfying.
Speaker 3: But it's extraordinary the things that you can do that
Speaker 3: you just didn't do in.
Speaker 2: A traditional sort of compartmentalization of what needs to be
Speaker 2: done in it. In the family life.
Speaker 3: I can clean I have a pool at the house
Speaker 3: that I'm renting at the moment, I can clean the pool.
Speaker 3: I always thought that pools were some like foreign thing
Speaker 3: that only men could understand. And you know, because they've
Speaker 3: got chemicals, and it's always a pool boy.
Speaker 2: The pool boy. It's always a poor boy. It's never
Speaker 2: a poor boy.
Speaker 1: Maybe one day fingers crossed one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I think you said
Speaker 2: that marriage is maybe not good for women.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, look, this has been a two year deep
Speaker 3: dive into my.
Speaker 2: Two years is not long, though you've really and compressed
Speaker 2: it or had experienced a lot in that two years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like I say, I don't think I'm over
Speaker 3: it and over It's a funny thing. I am in
Speaker 3: a new relationship and I'm very happy. It's not that
Speaker 3: I'm not over him. I'm I'm happy. I feel like I,
Speaker 3: you know, I have a great life. I have my career,
Speaker 3: I have my girlfriends, I have my family, I have
Speaker 3: my children. Life is so wonderful. I have the scars,
Speaker 3: and I do feel like I lost a layer of skin.
Speaker 3: You know, everything was raw. Everything I felt things is
Speaker 3: more beauty, full and sadder and so my you know,
Speaker 3: is marriage good for women? I've thought about that a lot.
Speaker 3: And I also looked around in the early days at
Speaker 3: relationships and thought whose marriage would I want, you know,
Speaker 3: looking at my friends, looking at my parents, looking at
Speaker 3: and I did find some there were some relationships that
Speaker 3: I thought I wanted. They weren't the majority, like I
Speaker 3: had to seek them out. Acknowledging that you never know
Speaker 3: what truly is gone on in someone else's real you know.
Speaker 2: That reminds me of a girlfriend of mine who had
Speaker 2: a brutal divorce. She said one of the worst things
Speaker 2: that she experienced was that when friends would hear she
Speaker 2: was getting divorced. They were like they started talking about
Speaker 2: how much they hated their husbands, and she said it
Speaker 2: was just like suddenly they felt like they had an
Speaker 2: outleaish to say, yeah, permission. And she said at that
Speaker 2: period it was the worst thing because what she actually
Speaker 2: needed was to believe in romantic love, yeah, not to
Speaker 2: have everyone go I wish I was you. And as
Speaker 2: she said, also she hadn't done anything magical. She was
Speaker 2: going through something really difficult. Yeah, And so they also
Speaker 2: had the capacity to She's like, why are you telling
Speaker 2: me this and not addressing it with the person that
Speaker 2: you're so happy to slag off to me? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's the thing.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I see that a lot.
Speaker 3: I see a lot of unhappy women in relationships and
Speaker 3: presumably unhappy men.
Speaker 1: It's just that I spend more time with women.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I do wonder if this whole idea.
Speaker 1: Of marriage, like it makes me think, what.
Speaker 3: In an ideal world, if you're unhappy, you could move
Speaker 3: on without this whole But you look at it and think, oh,
Speaker 3: I can't. I mean in that time where I was
Speaker 3: burnt out and everything and I knew and there were
Speaker 3: a few things that made me.
Speaker 1: Go Okay, this, this is it, this is.
Speaker 2: The end for you or yeah, for the relationship.
Speaker 3: For the relationship, but that I couldn't look away anymore.
Speaker 3: But I think I really understand why if you're not
Speaker 3: pushed to that point, why you might go it's too
Speaker 3: I can't go through that because it's so hard. There
Speaker 3: is happiness on the other side, but there's also there's
Speaker 3: also you are changed.
Speaker 2: I'm changed in the nature of a relationship though a
Speaker 2: lot a long term. How long were you married sixteen
Speaker 2: sixteen years to get to I'm twenty one, twenty marriage congratulations?
Speaker 2: Sometimes you knows well sometimes everyone yeah, correct. So part
Speaker 2: of what I imagine is one of the things that
Speaker 2: you have to work out for yourself is in any
Speaker 2: long term relationship, it will have peaks and it will
Speaker 2: have ebbs. And so you know that you've worked through
Speaker 2: ebbs before, how do you know that it's not an
Speaker 2: ebb and that it's something that you can't that you're
Speaker 2: not going to then be able to surf the next
Speaker 2: wave onto the beach with.
Speaker 1: It's when they are not interested in working with you.
Speaker 2: To fix it right for whatever reason.
Speaker 3: Whatever reason, and when you feel like you have tried
Speaker 3: everything in your power, and it's except this the way
Speaker 3: that it is, or try something else, and it's your
Speaker 3: last alternative.
Speaker 1: That's what it was for me.
Speaker 3: Every relationship is different and they have different reasons. It
Speaker 3: might be, I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: The feelings are the same, aren't they. The circumstances might be.
Speaker 2: Whoever said some writer, one of those who was it
Speaker 2: that said every happy family resembles each other, but every
Speaker 2: unhappy family is uniquely unhappy? Who was that?
Speaker 3: Someone?
Speaker 2: Clear? But I do often think about that because there's
Speaker 2: there's just a pataina of happiness that you know, you
Speaker 2: might live in different circumstances or whatever, but happy is happy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but unhappiness has so many flavors and textures, each more
Speaker 2: gruesome than the last. Yeah, they do.
Speaker 3: And yeah, look, it's funny because I came out of
Speaker 3: that experience that the divorce and I and maybe this
Speaker 3: makes me very basic, and maybe everyone does this, but
Speaker 3: I certainly wasn't thinking that I was going to repartner.
Speaker 2: I you were like, I'm not doing that again.
Speaker 3: And even without not from a bitter place, it was
Speaker 3: almost the opposite. It was from a place of I'm
Speaker 3: so content and I heard I've heard a lot of
Speaker 3: women say that they have been lonely after they've got
Speaker 3: divorced or they've had these certain difficulties. I didn't feel
Speaker 3: that I was never lonely. I was surrounded by love.
Speaker 3: I mean, which is just so bet and it's funny.
Speaker 3: I would say I was lucky. And I remember one
Speaker 3: of my friends saying, because I said, I've got an
Speaker 3: army of support, and my friends said to me, you're
Speaker 3: not lucky. You've got an army because you've fought in
Speaker 3: the battalion.
Speaker 2: You know, you fought for us, and where are you
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 1: And I thought that's nice.
Speaker 2: Next, Sally rethinks what love really looks like thanks to
Speaker 2: the women who carried her through heartbreak. I think that
Speaker 2: when a relationship is failing and it's one that you're
Speaker 2: really committed to, you teen to try and put res
Speaker 2: sources into it to the exclusion of other relationships. So
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people pop out like a mere cat
Speaker 2: to a very bleak savannah. Yep.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I did have that difficulty, which was to
Speaker 3: do with all of the horrible stuff about ending a relationship,
Speaker 3: but my life outside of that, I thought, well, this
Speaker 3: is good. I actually have got quite a good landscape,
Speaker 3: and I was thinking more and more that why is
Speaker 3: romantic love the pinnacle? I have got these women in
Speaker 3: my life, I mean so many, but particularly the ones
Speaker 3: that I've been friends with since I was ten.
Speaker 1: They're my life partners. They're the ones.
Speaker 3: Who have been with me before any of us met
Speaker 3: our partners. They are with me after partners. They've been
Speaker 3: through me, with me, you know, through birth, and we've
Speaker 3: all been together. Recently, one of those friends, her father died,
Speaker 3: and I remember I went up with her when she
Speaker 3: did the eulogy and we looked back and I saw
Speaker 3: all of our girlfriends were in the front row, and
Speaker 3: I thought, it's something moved me about it. I thought, usually,
Speaker 3: you know, you see the family and the parents and whatever,
Speaker 3: and no, that was us, that was and that made
Speaker 3: complete sense to me.
Speaker 2: Your significant ones.
Speaker 3: They were We've always been a family. And even if
Speaker 3: there was an is and there now is a romantic
Speaker 3: love again. My life partner partners are those women.
Speaker 2: And are there any men in that number?
Speaker 1: Not in that I have got male friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have those relationships change?
Speaker 3: Well, one of my best male friends has been divorced twice.
Speaker 2: Okay, he was in.
Speaker 3: The Golden girls for a little while, but then he
Speaker 3: couldn't handle it because there were all these memes about
Speaker 3: how we didn't like men. So I also my brothers
Speaker 3: were incredibly closed and they were huge. What's to me
Speaker 3: throughout that I'm not a hater of men in any way?
Speaker 1: I love men.
Speaker 2: No, I'm just always it seems, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 2: our times, or maybe it's been ever thus Really I
Speaker 2: don't know, but there's such a gold mine the female friends. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't seem to be the same crossover with me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean they're nourishing in a different way.
Speaker 2: They are, and it's good. I do believe very much
Speaker 2: in Yin and yang, and I'm not fully on board
Speaker 2: with women. We're fantastic. We're fantastic and men are fact,
Speaker 2: which seems to be some kind of very reviling in
Speaker 2: very much, very much. And I'm like, when did we
Speaker 2: start to think we were so perfect? It's true, it's
Speaker 2: not helpful. And I, by the way, I do think
Speaker 2: that about myself. That's how I recognize it that you
Speaker 2: have to pull yourself up and go hang on a minute, Yeah,
Speaker 2: why am I always trying to knock the top off
Speaker 2: this scab as though, yeah I'm the dermatologist. I'm not
Speaker 2: the dermatolic.
Speaker 3: We're the dermatologists of our own lives. Well we are,
Speaker 3: and it's good to somebody healing.
Speaker 1: Someone's got to be healed. The ointment, Yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Made me write.
Speaker 3: My thoughts on men are separate from my thoughts about
Speaker 3: romantic love. I think that is what has changed for me,
Speaker 3: as romantic love being the relationship to end all relationships,
Speaker 3: the one who you know, you fill out on your paperwork,
Speaker 3: the one who you know when you die. They're the
Speaker 3: chief mourner, you know, all of those things.
Speaker 2: That notebook yep, the crying in the rain. Romantic love.
Speaker 3: You can have that, right like I've got the most beautiful,
Speaker 3: beautiful man. That that came out of thinking I was
Speaker 3: never going to meet anyone. I wasn't looking for anyone.
Speaker 3: I was you know, my friends were all pressuring me
Speaker 3: to go on Tinder or bumble or whatever it was. No,
Speaker 3: I don't want, you know, I'm happy. And then I
Speaker 3: met this in real life.
Speaker 2: How in real life, because that does not happen now,
Speaker 2: not even in novels. Yeah I know, Well, so this
Speaker 2: is a good story.
Speaker 3: So I actually did have one date before I met Dan,
Speaker 3: who's my partner. I had one date that was from
Speaker 3: whatever the app was. That was when i'd been away
Speaker 3: on with all my girlfriends. We go away to Nusagh
Speaker 3: every year and we have a girl's trip, and they
Speaker 3: were it was for them, you know how you married
Speaker 3: friends are just desperate for you know, there's a.
Speaker 1: Single go on there and there.
Speaker 2: They know more of.
Speaker 3: Up and I've been swiping the wrong way and I'm
Speaker 3: looking at some guy called Shane with no teeth that I've.
Speaker 1: Just you know.
Speaker 3: And I had one date and it actually it went
Speaker 3: quite well. I mean it was not I wasn't looking
Speaker 3: for a relationship, but it was.
Speaker 1: He was a gentleman. It was you know, we had
Speaker 1: a nice Did you do it in NUSA? No, they
Speaker 1: set it up for winter.
Speaker 3: So I came back from NUSA the next night, went
Speaker 3: out a night date. It was like six o'clock for
Speaker 3: a drink. It's all changed since our days. Yes, so nervous.
Speaker 3: He also didn't live in Melbourne, which I thought was
Speaker 3: better because I didn't you know, I just wanted to
Speaker 3: have a nice time and I don't know what I
Speaker 3: didn't think I wanted. Okay, great question, I wore jeans
Speaker 3: and a like nice sparkly ballet flat and a black
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: Wearing a white top and all the girls are like, no,
Speaker 1: you've got to wear this.
Speaker 2: It has been a very heavily workshop.
Speaker 3: And a I think I had on a leather jacket
Speaker 3: or something like that. I felt very unlike me. It
Speaker 3: wasn't the kind.
Speaker 2: Of thing, almost like you'd put on a costume, yes,
Speaker 2: which is the Sally goes on a day costures in
Speaker 2: her forties look. And it was.
Speaker 3: He was so lovely. He was really handsome and made
Speaker 3: me feel great. And I went away from it thinking
Speaker 3: that was really nice. I don't know if I'd do
Speaker 3: it again. So then I was in getting my boatox
Speaker 3: and it was in there and my lady was doing
Speaker 3: her botox and I was telling her about it, and
Speaker 3: you know, they're like hairdresses.
Speaker 2: She's like, tell me more.
Speaker 3: And then she said, you know what, I've got a
Speaker 3: friend who's been separated recently and he's gorgeous and you
Speaker 3: should meet him. And I was like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And then she said can I give him your number?
Speaker 3: And I said all right, And then he messaged me.
Speaker 4: Oh I know, And you know What was funny is
Speaker 4: that he he said, so he lived away, lived in
Speaker 4: on the Gold Coast, but he was from Melbourne originally.
Speaker 1: And he said, I'm going to be in Melbourne this week.
Speaker 1: Do you want to have dinner? And I said yes?
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, King, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: will or not, like I was very on the fence.
Speaker 3: And on the day I thought, oh, I don't know
Speaker 3: if I'm going to go, and but I just at
Speaker 3: the last night I thought, yeah, I'll go.
Speaker 1: And it's funny.
Speaker 3: I found out later that he'd just flown down for
Speaker 3: the day, like imagine.
Speaker 2: And look it, he flew down just for the day.
Speaker 2: God love him. Oh that's amazing. What was his hunch, Well,
Speaker 2: he said.
Speaker 3: That he had heard about me from this friend and
Speaker 3: his cyberstalked me and thought that I looked nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that's amazing. And it wasn't you know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't sparks.
Speaker 3: It was just you seem like a really nice person,
Speaker 3: and I really I'd like to get to know you
Speaker 3: more like that really kind of mature and and then
Speaker 3: it grew over. I think by date three, I was thinking, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is I'm getting a bit swept off.
Speaker 2: How was the geography. He's moved back to Melbourne. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: after how many dates?
Speaker 3: Well, no, it was about nine months, and so there
Speaker 3: was a nice period of us going back and forth.
Speaker 3: But he worked, he had worked in Melbourne, so he'd
Speaker 3: becoming regular anyway. And it was lovely and I I'm
Speaker 3: so happy.
Speaker 2: I'm so different in this relationship. It's amazing. Way I
Speaker 2: am the poor.
Speaker 3: Thing, because you know, I now I do not let
Speaker 3: one thing go that annoys me.
Speaker 2: Ah right, okay, so the peacekeepers, I just now to
Speaker 2: have a chat all the time.
Speaker 3: Now you know the thing that you did, I don't
Speaker 3: like that, right, And I encourage him to do that too,
Speaker 3: and he's so good about like what I love. I
Speaker 3: think the most masculine trait that exists is for you
Speaker 3: to give them feedback and for them to say, oh, okay, ah,
Speaker 3: thank you for telling me that you know, and not
Speaker 3: being threatened at all or defensive or you know. I
Speaker 3: just think that's so so you're so sure of yourself
Speaker 3: and secure to be able to to.
Speaker 1: Take that on board and not feel emasculated, or.
Speaker 2: Just to actually have a curiosity.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I realized that's all I need. I don't
Speaker 3: even need them to immediately change. It's not that they
Speaker 3: won't do it again. It's that they've said, you're giving
Speaker 3: you know, you're telling me what you want, and I
Speaker 3: want to know that you know, I'm not. I want
Speaker 3: to know what makes you happy. I want to I
Speaker 3: hear you, I see you. I want to work that
Speaker 3: kind of softens you. Yes, all you need, I think,
Speaker 3: is to know that someone wants that for you, that
Speaker 3: they're in it for you as well. And it's not
Speaker 3: just that that's been really healing for me because I
Speaker 3: am like that, like I will I have.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of.
Speaker 3: Faults, but I really if someone says something or if
Speaker 3: I do the wrong thing, I will say I'm so sorry,
Speaker 3: you know, mea culpa and I don't feel threatened by that.
Speaker 3: And so when people do get defensive, and that was
Speaker 3: one of the problems in my marriage is that you
Speaker 3: don't get anywhere you know you you know, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to tell you that I feel this way. Well, I
Speaker 3: don't do that, and by the way, it's you know,
Speaker 3: then it goes nowhere and you just park it and
Speaker 3: it continues to simmer. Whereas I feel like we have
Speaker 3: really in the new relationship, We've really got to know
Speaker 3: each other and find our stride and our own rhythm
Speaker 3: together because we do listen and and you know, and
Speaker 3: work together.
Speaker 2: We want it, But you don't live together, No, and
Speaker 2: you won't. I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Look, I always say I'll never do something, and then
Speaker 3: you know, five minutes later, I think. What's really important
Speaker 3: to me now is that I have my three kids.
Speaker 1: I've got my own house.
Speaker 3: I want them to have their house that is just Mum's,
Speaker 3: you know, not even house, it's their house. I don't
Speaker 3: want Mum and Dan's house or you know. I don't
Speaker 3: know what's going to happen at Christian's house. But I
Speaker 3: want them to have a space that's theirs. And they
Speaker 3: don't need any more people. They don't need to be
Speaker 3: blending families or to I just don't want that.
Speaker 2: Take on some other emotional load.
Speaker 1: I don't want that for them.
Speaker 3: And so maybe there's a time in the future where
Speaker 3: they've gone and who knows, you know, I'm really happy
Speaker 3: in this.
Speaker 2: How do you think your writings changed now?
Speaker 1: Some writers said once, I don't know who it is.
Speaker 1: Obviously we know the sayings. We don't know the writer.
Speaker 3: But they said, these characters are a third someone you know,
Speaker 3: a third made up and a third yourself. And while
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily, what I think is myself is the
Speaker 3: narrative that comes on the page. It's not necessarily a
Speaker 3: character or a thing, but it's the wisdom that I'm
Speaker 3: searching for in that book. Yes, and I have a
Speaker 3: new book coming out later this year. It's called Mad Maybe.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've read Mad Maybe part way through with Maybe,
Speaker 2: which is so different than anything that you've done. I think,
Speaker 2: so we'll just I love having a character who's in
Speaker 2: her eighties. I find that, yeah, just amazing, but also
Speaker 2: that we get to see her in her youth. It's
Speaker 2: really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I haven't had a lot of people read it yet,
Speaker 3: so it's been I love hearing.
Speaker 2: In the Yeah, in the early it's a like a binder.
Speaker 2: Oh they sent your boundary, Yeah, I've got Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know what that's.
Speaker 1: Well, that's even different from an advanced reader copy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I've seen the cover online and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's that's how it's going to look.
Speaker 3: Well, I think so the big thing that's come out
Speaker 3: of my life experience is that book In its essence,
Speaker 3: And it's funny because you read the blurb and it's
Speaker 3: about an eighty one year old curmudgeonly you know, I
Speaker 3: had so much joy writing that character who finds her
Speaker 3: neighbor dead and no one suspects anything until they find
Speaker 3: out that she, in fact was not a serial killer,
Speaker 3: like was convicted of murders when she was fifteen years old,
Speaker 3: and then we go back in time to find that out.
Speaker 3: But the book, Unlikely as it seems, is about friendship,
Speaker 3: and that comes, of course off the heels of my
Speaker 3: These last two years have been about friendship for me,
Speaker 3: so much hurt and everything, but the way that friends
Speaker 3: can save you. And this book what I wanted to
Speaker 3: explore was can one friend save you? Is that enough?
Speaker 3: And what if you don't have one friend? And what
Speaker 3: happens to you then?
Speaker 2: And so I don't. It's funny because she's been the
Speaker 2: sort of because she's so prickly and combative. It's almost
Speaker 2: like she's wanted to keep the world at bay. But
Speaker 2: she's also you can't help but love her good.
Speaker 3: Well, she's vulnerable, like even the people that want to
Speaker 3: keep the world at bay, they're probably the most vulnerable
Speaker 3: there's a reason that you do that. As humans, we
Speaker 3: want to connect and yeah, like there is a kind
Speaker 3: of hope, a layered story about that, and all of
Speaker 3: that comes from my experience over the last couple of
Speaker 3: years and the importance that friendship has. And it's dedicated
Speaker 3: to my best friend Sash, who has just been diagnosed
Speaker 3: for the second time with triple negative breast cancer. She's
Speaker 3: going through treatment at the moment again. You know, it's
Speaker 3: been so difficult. But the thing, and she talk about
Speaker 3: it all the time is I've got my girls, you know,
Speaker 3: I've got and we just know what to do and
Speaker 3: we just rally and we support and we'll get her
Speaker 3: through it. And there is the it's so horrible and
Speaker 3: it's so difficult for her, you know, it's so difficult
Speaker 3: to watch her go through that. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: and this is what I felt about my divorce, there's
Speaker 3: this beautifulness of it, of the way that we just
Speaker 3: move around each other at these difficult times, and that's
Speaker 3: the stuff that it just moves me in a way
Speaker 3: that I don't think any I don't know, like, I
Speaker 3: don't know why that love doesn't have that same company.
Speaker 2: My girlfriend of mine had breast cats last year before last,
Speaker 2: and it does. What it makes you do is you
Speaker 2: you can't hold anything back, No, because it's a currency.
Speaker 2: You've just got to spend. Yeah, and sometimes the watching
Speaker 2: everyone bring it is, like you said, just beautiful, cruel
Speaker 2: but beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always think, look to the helpers.
Speaker 3: You know. Another one I don't know who said that.
Speaker 2: Someone did say that, look to the helper. Who was it?
Speaker 2: It was someone that was not a writer. I think
Speaker 2: that was like a Michelle ob like that. She always
Speaker 2: says the good things.
Speaker 3: But yeah, oh I don't have it. No, I'm fine.
Speaker 3: That's what friendship is. It's the hard and it's the beautiful.
Speaker 3: And I don't know anyone who's you know, I'm forty
Speaker 3: five and I don't know any forty five year olds
Speaker 3: that haven't been through something really difficult. And we know
Speaker 3: more difficult stuff's going to come, you know, hopefully, because
Speaker 3: that means we're alive, and that's more difficult things.
Speaker 2: I always say that in yoga class. I'm always like, yeah,
Speaker 2: because there are it is if you're about discomfort, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: it's about discomfort. And so they'll often say the temporary
Speaker 2: discomfort in the in this class or in the practice
Speaker 2: of yoga, helps you take on the discomforts that are
Speaker 2: coming for you in life. I've always I can't wait,
Speaker 2: but it is true.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I heard a similar saying, which was, you know,
Speaker 3: it was something to do with waves. So it's you know,
Speaker 3: you stand in the water in the ocean and the
Speaker 3: waves come. You know, hopefully you get a gap between them,
Speaker 3: but your role is to learn how to swim, because
Speaker 3: you know the next one is coming. You know, you
Speaker 3: can't just get bold, you know, if you do, just
Speaker 3: get bold over. But if you learn to swim, then
Speaker 3: that each time you learn a bit more than you're
Speaker 3: going to be ready for the ones that are coming.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's very interesting because as that is, I like that.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think that we don't allow ourselves or we
Speaker 2: don't emphasize enough how much agency we play in our
Speaker 2: own lives, or how much opportunity there is given. As
Speaker 2: you said earlier, like it's a privilege to be able
Speaker 2: to even think like that, really, because some people are
Speaker 2: just bowled over by waves and can't even get back
Speaker 2: on their knees. But you've got to teach yourself to swim,
Speaker 2: you do, and really probably teach yourself, as you have
Speaker 2: done with your girlfriends, to not only save yourself, but
Speaker 2: try and save someone else while you're at it.
Speaker 3: That is almost the I think it's the key to
Speaker 3: getting through something is to focus on someone else, right,
Speaker 3: And I you know, as terrible as you know my
Speaker 3: friend's illnesses, I do think that it pulled me out
Speaker 3: of a depression. I think I've been in a mild
Speaker 3: depression for a couple of years, and as soon as
Speaker 3: I knew that she needed me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3: You know, then you you're out of it and there's
Speaker 3: something more important than you. And I think that is
Speaker 3: the key to you know, you steal yourself and you heal,
Speaker 3: but then look out to the world again, because it's
Speaker 3: not you know, you can spend so much time looking
Speaker 3: inward and there's self love and everything, but actually sometimes
Speaker 3: the most loving thing is to look outwards and go
Speaker 3: and help someone.
Speaker 2: Else because also then that reminds you once again of
Speaker 2: what you're capable of. Yeah, it's a strange gift to
Speaker 2: be given.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and it's almost you know, having friendship is such
Speaker 3: a blessing, but it's even better to be a friend.
Speaker 3: You know, that actually is a better feeling in a way.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, someone said it's better to give than receipt.
Speaker 2: Someone smart.
Speaker 3: Just attribute them to like random people people that is
Speaker 3: so far let us know who said them all.
Speaker 2: Hey, what's Sally Hepworth's future?
Speaker 3: Well on the tenth of August, my first book to TV.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, serious, coming so many at once because it's
Speaker 2: the Family next Door. Also Darling Girls.
Speaker 3: So Darling Girls has been optioned and that is currently
Speaker 3: a writer has been attached and she's working on the script.
Speaker 2: Was that that Amy Pohler thing.
Speaker 1: Who Amy Polar optioned? The mother in law?
Speaker 2: The mother in law and.
Speaker 1: The soulmate has also been optioned.
Speaker 2: I saw that with Asher.
Speaker 3: Yes, Asha Kitty is attached, which is amazing and she's
Speaker 3: going to produce. And also my short story Uncharted Waters has.
Speaker 4: The short stories that you googled I don't know how
Speaker 4: to write a short story.
Speaker 3: And Blossom, which is Nicole Kidman's production company has optioned that.
Speaker 3: The thing about the options is that they come in
Speaker 3: that's so exciting.
Speaker 2: And then it goes quiet.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and sometimes nothing happens, or sometimes a lot
Speaker 3: of things are happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: And I'm getting on with my life.
Speaker 2: So optioning is when people a production company will say
Speaker 2: we love this, we want to do something with it.
Speaker 2: You enter into an arrangement. But as we know, it
Speaker 2: could take years for things to get produced.
Speaker 1: Ore and nothing can happen.
Speaker 3: What they do is they buy the rights to have
Speaker 3: no one else look at it for a period of time,
Speaker 3: so it's theirs to try and get it off the ground.
Speaker 2: To you also, like landing all at once, these little
Speaker 2: ships that you sent out to.
Speaker 3: See it does feel like over the last and finally
Speaker 3: over the last two years, as my personal life's been imploding,
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of things have been hitting
Speaker 3: do you think it's I do think that sometimes when
Speaker 3: you've gone through a period where you've set yourself free,
Speaker 3: that it's you enter this kind of flow state and
Speaker 3: suddenly things change.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's happened?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: I believe in that. I've also a woman of my forties.
Speaker 3: I also do yoga, I have crystals. I've become very
Speaker 3: much into the universe and you know, putting my feet
Speaker 3: in the grass and doing all of that. And I
Speaker 3: do believe so much in signs, in energy, in things
Speaker 3: falling into your lap at it all.
Speaker 2: To me too. I'm mad for it. Yeah, I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about buying an earthing sheet. I've got one. You got
Speaker 2: one with the core? Have you got one with you?
Speaker 2: Is it a plug in one or one where you run?
Speaker 2: I've been looking at a real bonkers one from Canada
Speaker 2: or whatever. You have to run a copper cable outside
Speaker 2: your window into.
Speaker 3: The ground, Yes, no, mind's not has the copper, but
Speaker 3: it plugs in.
Speaker 2: Plugs in. Does it work with electricity for grounding?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Like, how would you know if it works.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful thing about it. You look really healthy.
Speaker 1: That I'm going off. I oh everything like that I've done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that stut can't get enough of it.
Speaker 2: And I'm mad on supplements. This could go all day.
Speaker 2: This could go all day. Sally Hepworth, what a absolute
Speaker 2: duel you are in the crown of artists. I love this.
Speaker 1: That is that some something someone said?
Speaker 2: Is that a writer? We don't plain she wrote this
Speaker 2: book called chow Bella. It says it's not on that,
Speaker 2: but it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful.
Speaker 2: I've read chap Oh. I brought a gift for you
Speaker 2: because I've got your soul language. I loved a signed copy.
Speaker 2: I have it at home. Oh I wanted to give
Speaker 2: you that.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll still take it.
Speaker 2: Look and is it signed? You to sign the soul mate?
Speaker 2: But when I bought it, I already bought a signed one.
Speaker 1: Well I can personalize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, good, we're going to do that. I'll see
Speaker 2: you in five months. We'll have our chat about AI
Speaker 2: is now doing everything for you. Look forward and may
Speaker 2: your ship box always be full in the best way. Yes,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: This has been lovely.
Speaker 2: Sally and I could have talked all day, and in
Speaker 2: fact we very nearly did, and it just struck me
Speaker 2: how generous and open she is. Even sometimes in the
Speaker 2: parts of your life that are kind of shadowy and
Speaker 2: your inclination is to try and cover them up, She's
Speaker 2: just spreading sunshine through herself and to those around her.
Speaker 2: It's always fascinating when the storyteller becomes the story. Sally's
Speaker 2: life has changed in ways she never saw coming, and
Speaker 2: she's done what so many women do is carried on.
Speaker 2: But what stayed with me was this, when everything falls apart,
Speaker 2: Sally doesn't pretend to have the answers. She just keeps
Speaker 2: showing up. The executive producer of No Filter is Nama
Speaker 2: Brown and the senior producer is Bree Player. Audio production
Speaker 2: is by Jacob Brown and I am your host, Kate
Speaker 2: lang Brook. Thank you so much for sharing No Filter
Speaker 2: with me. That was Sally Hepworth on No Filter with Me,
Speaker 2: Kate lang Brook. I hope you love that conversation as
Speaker 2: much as I did. If you want to make sure
Speaker 2: you never miss a beat with the Unleashed crew, make
Speaker 2: sure you hit follow right here in this feed and
Speaker 2: for more deep, honest conversations like this one, search for
Speaker 2: No Filter wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: The Unleashed team will be back with a brand new
Speaker 2: episode next Tuesday. Mamma Mia acknowledges the Tree additional owners
Speaker 2: of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on