Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on. I have the scars,
Speaker 2: and I do feel like I lost a layer of skin.
Speaker 2: You know, everything was raw, everything I felt things is
Speaker 2: more beautiful and sadder. You know, is marriage good for women?
Speaker 2: I've thought about that a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, when someone seems like they've got it all
Speaker 1: together hmmm. For instance, best selling author Gorgeous, Family, thriving career,
Speaker 1: beautiful to boot, and then you find out they've been
Speaker 1: quietly rebuilding their life from scratch. Well, that is Sally Hepworth.
Speaker 1: She sold millions of books around the world. She's written
Speaker 1: a best seller every year since twenty fifteen. But what
Speaker 1: you might not know is that over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, Sally Hepworth's life completely imploded. Today we talk
Speaker 1: about that, divorce, grief, the shit box. Yes, he'll find
Speaker 1: out what that is. We talk about female friendship and
Speaker 1: falling in love again when you swore you wouldn't. This
Speaker 1: is a conversation about what it means to let go
Speaker 1: of the life you thought you wanted and build a
Speaker 1: new life that actually fits. Sally hepworth you of the
Speaker 1: lemon water, the cleansing lemon water. Welcome to no filter,
Speaker 1: thank you, and here we are both early in the morning.
Speaker 2: After thinking that it was ten am instead of nine.
Speaker 1: Both of us thought that, what a miracle that we made.
Speaker 1: And here we are. But what okay, you have shared
Speaker 1: so much of yourself, but kind of in disguise. I
Speaker 1: think through your characters, which have resonated with millions, literally
Speaker 1: millions of people, and you have had this is so remarkable,
Speaker 1: a best seller every year since twenty fifteen. So that's
Speaker 1: a lot. It's a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like a lot when it's going to
Speaker 2: be the tenth this year. In a couple of months,
Speaker 2: my book will be care right, and yeah, it it
Speaker 2: feels amazing to think back to when I started writing
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine, when I was pregnant with.
Speaker 1: My first child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all I wanted was to get a novel published and.
Speaker 1: Then oh, that's a dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the gold post kept moving. Then I
Speaker 2: wanted to make a career out of being an author,
Speaker 2: and then I wanted to become a best seller. You know,
Speaker 2: some people say they didn't dream of that, but I did.
Speaker 2: I had big dreams.
Speaker 1: And when like, how long had you had those dreams?
Speaker 2: Well, I suppose as soon as I got my foot
Speaker 2: in the door and I started to get published.
Speaker 1: You know what, might not dream big.
Speaker 2: I mean, I didn't know that I was going to
Speaker 2: make it, But you have to kind of aim for something.
Speaker 1: I do always. I do like to say to friends,
Speaker 1: miracles happen. There's no reason that it can't be the
Speaker 1: miracle for you. But the miracle is often hard work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the miracle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess to write a novel, you're doing
Speaker 2: the hard work, right, like everyone who's written one. To
Speaker 2: get in the game, you have to do the hard work.
Speaker 2: And then there's the magic of you know, are your
Speaker 2: books going to resonate? Are people going to buy them?
Speaker 2: Are they going to in some cases hit at the
Speaker 2: right time that that's going to become popular. Sometimes that
Speaker 2: retroactively happens these days, and books take off years after
Speaker 2: they've come out. I don't know why, but I really
Speaker 2: do feel so fortunate to be while also allowing that,
Speaker 2: you know, I've done the work, and I do think
Speaker 2: that I'm past imposter syndrome. I think I'm good at
Speaker 2: it now. I really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Oh, what a good feeling. Yeah, when did that come?
Speaker 1: Was it as a result of outside affirmation or is
Speaker 1: it something that comes from inside? Great question.
Speaker 2: I suspect probably started to come after a little bit
Speaker 2: of outside affirmation.
Speaker 1: That does help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would like to say it was internal. I
Speaker 2: think by the time I wrote my fifth book, I
Speaker 2: remember that was The Mother in Law was the book
Speaker 2: that you know, broke out, as they say, and then
Speaker 2: each book since then has kind of built on it.
Speaker 2: And sometime between then and now, I just started to
Speaker 2: think to myself, when you know, I've written a couple
Speaker 2: of short stories recently, and I've never written a short story.
Speaker 2: I mean, before I wrote the first one, I remember
Speaker 2: Amazon approaching me to write it and I said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll do it. And then I hung up and I
Speaker 2: immediately googled how to write a short story because I thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: I can do it.
Speaker 1: Well, of course I can do it.
Speaker 2: And that snuck up on me because I didn't always
Speaker 2: feel that way.
Speaker 1: Of Course, The Mother in Law was a really interesting
Speaker 1: one because it showed that you have a capacity, which
Speaker 1: I think you always have to do as a writer.
Speaker 1: It showed you have a real capacity to see the
Speaker 1: other side of someone, and you do that with all
Speaker 1: of your characters obviously, but that was a really seminal
Speaker 1: one because I think it's so hot, Yeah, isn't it sticky?
Speaker 1: A mother in law? And yet you always were you're
Speaker 1: handling of the concept, and even in your conversations around it,
Speaker 1: were very understanding of what it means to be a
Speaker 1: mother in law.
Speaker 2: I hope so that It's always been the interesting part
Speaker 2: of writing for me is there are books, I assume
Speaker 2: that have been written about awful mothers in law, and
Speaker 2: movies and monsters in law and jokes and jokes, and
Speaker 2: so what was interesting to me about tackling it was to,
Speaker 2: you know, to reverse engineer or to look at the
Speaker 2: other side and what if you know mothers in law
Speaker 2: aren't awful because they're not. I mean, my mum is
Speaker 2: a mother in law and she's beautiful. I adore her.
Speaker 2: I also know that she irritates my sisters a lot sometimes.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, there's always that that kind of tension, there's
Speaker 1: that rab A point that you've made is that a
Speaker 1: mother in law is in a unique position because she
Speaker 1: loves the same man more woman, daughter or son, but
Speaker 1: has no say in it the people that are trust together.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, particularly about your understanding of human nature,
Speaker 1: which I believe to be immense well, just partly through
Speaker 1: your research on every character and situation, and you have
Speaker 1: had your characters often have confronted every type of rupture.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: And now this is what I'm curious about, because you've
Speaker 1: encountered that own rupture yourself, and you've changed your life
Speaker 1: drastically since the last time you were on no filter
Speaker 1: with me, the last two times you're on. How has
Speaker 1: that been. You're now divorced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, all of these experiences, they become
Speaker 2: a part of you, and so they leak out onto
Speaker 2: the page, I think. But I will say that every
Speaker 2: you know, my books in a way have followed the
Speaker 2: trajectory of things that I've gone through, motherhood, you know,
Speaker 2: even not being able to get pregnant and all of
Speaker 2: those things. Now with the divorce, I think that's been
Speaker 2: the most significant thing that's happened to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: and I say this acknowledging that this makes me very lucky,
Speaker 2: but it's the most significant thing that's happened to me
Speaker 2: in my life. The most difficult thing yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: just coming up to two years ago. Sorry, it's just
Speaker 2: gone over two years since we separated, and I was
Speaker 2: thinking about it, knowing that we were going to talk
Speaker 2: about it today, and I was thinking, am I, How am.
Speaker 1: I about that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Am I over it? Am I? And I'm not.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's I wonder if it'll be one of
Speaker 2: those things like the grief of death, that it changes
Speaker 2: but it's always with you. Yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: And as you say, I'm so curious about people. I'm
Speaker 2: curious about you know, the last two years marriage, you know,
Speaker 2: I've been looking around at marriages and thinking what makes
Speaker 2: a marriage work, what makes them fail? What makes people
Speaker 2: so angry after they get divorced, what makes people nasty?
Speaker 2: What makes a good divorce?
Speaker 1: And how is your divorce? By the way, look a
Speaker 1: little bit of everything, I guess along the way, but
Speaker 1: if overall, yeah, look what you know.
Speaker 2: The thing that I have learned from this is that
Speaker 2: whenever someone would get divorced in my life, prior to
Speaker 2: it being me, I used to want to know what happened.
Speaker 2: And when I asked that question, I expected the answer
Speaker 2: to be a sentence or two sentences and something that
Speaker 2: attributed blame to one person. There was a victim and
Speaker 2: a perpetrator. You know, I wanted to hear he had
Speaker 2: an affair or she was crazy, which is cut. Yes,
Speaker 2: and so you immediately know that's what happened, and and
Speaker 2: what I've discovered since then, and in my own case
Speaker 2: this is true. I mean, you might be able to,
Speaker 2: for the sake of conversation, boil it down to one
Speaker 2: or two things, but ultimately you could write a book.
Speaker 2: It's not one or two sentences.
Speaker 1: There's nothing. You could write a book, and maybe I will.
Speaker 1: Well it is. It is fascinating, and because it's such
Speaker 1: a common experience and for it to be so traumatic, yes,
Speaker 1: and so common, and yet not really, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's really given the full weight that it deserves, the
Speaker 1: significance in a person's life.
Speaker 2: I agree strongly, and in fact, look, I don't know
Speaker 2: if my experience is true of everyone, and of course
Speaker 2: it's not. Everyone has a different experiences.
Speaker 1: But I was so.
Speaker 2: Knocked to my ass from it, and even my if
Speaker 2: I heard someone was divorced before it happened to me,
Speaker 2: I would have said, oh, that's a shame. It certainly
Speaker 2: wasn't on par with you know, other terrible things that
Speaker 2: happened to people, like a disease, like an it's.
Speaker 1: A terrible thing, and it is kind of a death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a death of I mean all those things that
Speaker 1: lead you to get married in the first place. Yes,
Speaker 1: the hope, the love, the starry eyed whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it's the antithesis of that. So it is in some
Speaker 1: ways that it is.
Speaker 2: And on top of all that, I mean, that is
Speaker 2: the big part. And then on top of that there's
Speaker 2: the the life up people. You know that there's worries
Speaker 2: about financial worries, there's emotional concerns for the children, children,
Speaker 2: there's you know, I mean that part is so hard
Speaker 2: that you're going through something so difficult, and yet you
Speaker 2: have to do the best parenting of your life, you know,
Speaker 2: in order to hopefully get your children.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you do that because like you've got
Speaker 1: three children, you've got two teenagers and an eight year old?
Speaker 1: I do I mean people like to say that children
Speaker 1: are resilient. I think that underestimates often the impact of
Speaker 1: major emotional shifts for children. I think we like to
Speaker 1: say they're resilient because it makes it easier for us
Speaker 1: to kind of push through what we have to push
Speaker 1: through with. I don't even think that they're resilient. What
Speaker 1: they are is adaptable and good at hiding stuff that
Speaker 1: they might be feeling because they're all antena, yes.
Speaker 2: Or showing it in different way. I mean my daughter,
Speaker 2: my youngest was six at the time, and so I
Speaker 2: saw her dealing with it in ways that were not
Speaker 2: you know, she wasn't expressing it directly, but she was
Speaker 2: having a lot of trouble with you, nightmares and just
Speaker 2: behavioral stuff, whereas my old to and have my older too,
Speaker 2: when you're a divergent and so that had its own
Speaker 2: host of things.
Speaker 1: Did they process it differently? Yea, yeah, how could you like?
Speaker 1: In what way?
Speaker 2: Well, even between the two of them, my son and
Speaker 2: my daughter, they prosed it, sessed it differently. My son
Speaker 2: didn't talk about it at all. In fact, it's funny
Speaker 2: when we told him, we said, have you got any questions?
Speaker 2: And we told him alone just because of the world,
Speaker 2: and we told the girls separately, and we went through
Speaker 2: it and he said, if you got any questions, and
Speaker 2: he said, where will the dog be living?
Speaker 1: Actually a very good question, yes, And so where does
Speaker 1: the dog we live.
Speaker 2: We have a divorced dog who shared We share custody,
Speaker 2: so the dog goes with the kids, which was something
Speaker 2: that they wanted and it has worked really well. The
Speaker 2: other thing that worked well in the early days is
Speaker 2: that we did birds nest parenting.
Speaker 1: The Swedish is that the Swedish model Danish something everything
Speaker 1: good comes from me.
Speaker 2: So because we had the family home, as a lot
Speaker 2: of people do, it was going to take time to sell.
Speaker 2: So we got a little apartment not far away, and
Speaker 2: we would do week on and week off. One of
Speaker 2: us would would leave and go to the apartment and
Speaker 2: the other one would stay in.
Speaker 1: The house with So the idea is that children are
Speaker 1: not they stay routed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and that you know, looking back, that was
Speaker 2: horrible for us or horrible for me. It was amazing
Speaker 2: for the kids and I would do it again for
Speaker 2: the kids.
Speaker 1: And what why was that horrible for you?
Speaker 2: Like just the the packing up of your life every Friday.
Speaker 1: Which is normally what the kids have to do. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 2: It really gave me such and that's one of the
Speaker 2: best things from it, such an understanding of what they
Speaker 2: have to go through and we delayed that by a year.
Speaker 1: By by us.
Speaker 2: Doing it, it's made me so much more sympathetic, so
Speaker 2: much more likely to you know, if they've forgotten their something,
Speaker 2: I will be in the car, you know, driving it.
Speaker 1: Off to school, which you know how it feels. Yeah, Hey,
Speaker 1: who was it harder for? Do you think in that
Speaker 1: nesting bird nesting time? Who was more adaptable with that?
Speaker 1: Obviously it was hard for you. How was Christian your
Speaker 1: husband with it?
Speaker 2: I also also I think not great. It's a strange
Speaker 2: thing as well, because the apartment that we had was
Speaker 2: very much like an airbnb. It didn't feel like home.
Speaker 1: No, and because it didn't really belong to either of
Speaker 1: you no, yes.
Speaker 2: And it's also I have to say, it's a privilege
Speaker 2: to be able to afford to have it, and it
Speaker 2: was a small apartment, but not everyone has the ability.
Speaker 1: To know that's right to do. That's the other thing
Speaker 1: about divorce. Divorce is expenses.
Speaker 2: Expensive, and there's an uncertain period which is just really difficult,
Speaker 2: and sharing space with that person is so difficult and
Speaker 2: I found that really really hard.
Speaker 1: It's almost like in a way that when you navigate
Speaker 1: the divorce with someone and there are children involved, so
Speaker 1: you have to be very mindful of that that in
Speaker 1: a way, you have to work together so intensely. Do
Speaker 1: you at some point think why are we getting divorced
Speaker 1: if we can actually manage a divorce.
Speaker 2: Look, I think the thing that happened with us, which
Speaker 2: I see happening with so many people, is that you start.
Speaker 2: I started off with a desire to do everything perfectly.
Speaker 2: You know, this thing of okay, this our life's going
Speaker 2: to change, the children's life is going to change. I
Speaker 2: read all the books you know on children, and I
Speaker 2: quickly realized that that wasn't going to work. That we
Speaker 2: weren't going to be working together like that Christian and
Speaker 2: I and that took some adjusting. And it's actually the
Speaker 2: thing that when I look back, I wish I had
Speaker 2: realized earlier that we're not married anymore, and so we
Speaker 2: don't necessarily we're not going to be on the same
Speaker 2: page always in an ideal world, co parenting is wonderful.
Speaker 2: I now have a lot of divorced friend I've sought
Speaker 2: out divorced people because I'm so traumatized.
Speaker 1: I've got a.
Speaker 2: Divorced group of women that we call ourselves the golden girls, and.
Speaker 1: We share information.
Speaker 2: And in every case, even when they've come to the
Speaker 2: other side and now can co parent, there's a part
Speaker 2: in the middle that we call the mean part. And
Speaker 2: it helped me to call it that because it was
Speaker 2: a part and something that had a beginning and an
Speaker 2: end and it wasn't personal, and it wasn't you know.
Speaker 2: And I think every divorce has.
Speaker 1: A mean part. I agree, and with girlfriends in mine
Speaker 1: even I ended a relationship after nine years and we
Speaker 1: weren't married, but we were embedded. And particularly in my experience,
Speaker 1: the mean part often comes around money, yep. And it
Speaker 1: does matter if you're breaking up with the nicest guy
Speaker 1: in the world. There's something about money suddenly that really
Speaker 1: brings out that.
Speaker 2: But it's not even this is my thing because I
Speaker 2: think about these things a lot. I think it is security,
Speaker 2: you know, at which money represents a lot of security.
Speaker 2: I think it's freedom, yeah, and fear you know, you
Speaker 2: don't know, and you go from being even if you
Speaker 2: have plenty of money, you're suddenly half You've got half
Speaker 2: as much or whatever that looks like. And that's scary.
Speaker 2: And if you're you know, I'm in my mid forties,
Speaker 2: Christians fifty and so that is a very real fear
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you know, Am I prepared for
Speaker 2: retirement or am I?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, And I was in the really lucky position
Speaker 2: that I've never stepped out of work. I earn a
Speaker 2: good income.
Speaker 1: Best seller every year since twenty fifteen, which you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that sounds wonderful.
Speaker 2: It's still you know, you look at the numbers and
Speaker 2: I've got three kid course, and you go. But I definitely,
Speaker 2: I definitely was happy to you know, to keep things nice.
Speaker 2: I was like, yep, you know, I wasn't fighting. But
Speaker 2: I also think that you can do everything right and
Speaker 2: it can still be hard.
Speaker 1: Of course, and maybe it has to be. Maybe it
Speaker 1: does maybe to you know, cleave apart what God put together,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Or whatever the saying is,
Speaker 1: maybe it has to have that component to it.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean, I'm sure there are people who've got
Speaker 2: some whimsical, wonderful divorce, but then you know, why are
Speaker 2: they getting divorced?
Speaker 1: Are there any in your extended group of girlfriends?
Speaker 2: Now there's a few, you know, sort of five years
Speaker 2: plus down the track that now are working well together.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I had to and look, I actually this was the
Speaker 2: best thing I ever did. I had to accept that
Speaker 2: I was in charge of what happened in my house
Speaker 2: and Christian was in charge of what happened in his house.
Speaker 2: And it's the most unnatural thing when you are a parent,
Speaker 2: even to you know, not have your kids with you
Speaker 2: half the time, but to let go of things that
Speaker 2: are really important in your life, like this is what
Speaker 2: time they go to bed. Things you're used to having
Speaker 2: control over this, This is what they eat, this is
Speaker 2: they shower. There are so many things that you have
Speaker 2: to that kind of stuff, bedtime, showering, whatever. I felt
Speaker 2: so much better when I stopped, and you know, you
Speaker 2: keep it to the important things, and there weren't any
Speaker 2: of those, you know, like they were alive and looked
Speaker 2: after well by their dad.
Speaker 1: And suddenly I unclenched, you know.
Speaker 2: And that too, is a really important thing to sort
Speaker 2: of letting go of the marriage that you do kind
Speaker 2: of have to understand that when you're married you work
Speaker 2: together as a team. Of course you should, and now
Speaker 2: I think we're much better at teamwork. But that was
Speaker 2: a bit of a process too, of just going well,
Speaker 2: you know, when not controlling, you know, we can't control
Speaker 2: each other anymore. Maybe I look a lot too it
Speaker 2: my part. You know, I don't like that idea that
Speaker 2: you know, he's a narcissist, She's crazy. Everyone thinks their
Speaker 2: X is crazy or a narcissist. I don't think that.
Speaker 2: I see he does. He thinks I'm crazy. I think
Speaker 2: that I think that both of us made mistakes, and
Speaker 2: especially in the early days, I was much more interested
Speaker 2: in finding out what I what my part was, because
Speaker 2: that's the only part I comes back to control. I
Speaker 2: can't control why he's doing stuff that I don't agree
Speaker 2: with or why, and it's not my business anymore, only
Speaker 2: in so far as it affects my children. My role
Speaker 2: is to look at me, to heal and to hopefully
Speaker 2: not bring that kind of those difficulties into my life
Speaker 2: with my children.
Speaker 1: After the break Sally unpacks the part she played in
Speaker 1: the breakdown of her marriage. What do you think the
Speaker 1: role was that you played.
Speaker 2: I think that the let me step back. I always
Speaker 2: wanted to be married, you know, I remember that from
Speaker 2: a youngish age.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I liked the idea of having a partner my
Speaker 2: brother's twins. I wonder if that had something to do with.
Speaker 1: It, younger or older.
Speaker 2: Older older brothers, and Mum said, when we were little,
Speaker 2: I used to say, where's my other one? You know,
Speaker 2: like there was something missing. And I don't know, like
Speaker 2: maybe I'm reading too deeply into it, but I loved
Speaker 2: the idea of having a partner for life. I mean,
Speaker 2: come back to it, but I have so many partners
Speaker 2: for life in my girlfriends, and that's the sort of
Speaker 2: full circle that I've come to. But I was looking
Speaker 2: for that, and I had an idea of what my
Speaker 2: life was going to look like, and it was going
Speaker 2: to be a partner. It was going to be kids,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe some travel, career for me, career, you know.
Speaker 2: I had those kind of fairly maybe normalish, you know,
Speaker 2: traditional ideas. And I do wonder now if I was
Speaker 2: really holding on to something idyllic that maybe couldn't match
Speaker 2: up to what real life looked like. And when things
Speaker 2: did get tough, which they did, you know, several times
Speaker 2: through the marriage, as they always do, I found that
Speaker 2: really difficult. I found the I just didn't understand why
Speaker 2: it wasn't looking like the picture in my mind of
Speaker 2: what it should be like. And disagreements I found really hard.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't think, oh, we're disagreeing about this. I would think,
Speaker 2: oh my god, a relationship. I've married the wrong person.
Speaker 2: This is terrible. I really see that now and I'm
Speaker 2: in another relationship now and that's something that I've really changed,
Speaker 2: and I see how communication clear communication. And also I
Speaker 2: think keeping the peace was something that was really important
Speaker 2: to me because I wanted I wanted harmony and happiness.
Speaker 2: And I think my mum was also a real peacekeeper
Speaker 2: in our family.
Speaker 1: Which is an interesting thing because a peacekeeper's beautiful thing,
Speaker 1: but a peacekeeper.
Speaker 2: Can also be you can breed resentment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, because you're subjugating every natural instinct to
Speaker 1: just preserve this piece on behalf of who.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was it was often, you know, I
Speaker 2: was holding things in that should have come out. I
Speaker 2: think my career played a role. And again I don't
Speaker 2: think it's as simplistic as saying. And a lot of
Speaker 2: people will say, do you think that men can't handle
Speaker 2: a woman's success or versions of that, and I always think,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's that simple, as simple as that,
Speaker 2: I know Christian was quite supportive of me doing well
Speaker 2: and wanted that. It's maybe to do with purpose and drive.
Speaker 2: I think that then, you know, I was at home
Speaker 2: with the kids early in our relationship, and I was
Speaker 2: writing as.
Speaker 1: Well, and then you swapped and he was he was
Speaker 1: the state home parent, right, which my husband also was
Speaker 1: for a long time. Right, So I'm very curious about
Speaker 1: this dynamic. It's an interesting one. Firstly, there's the external
Speaker 1: to us. It made sense and at the time I
Speaker 1: was doing breakfast radio and it made sense for us
Speaker 1: rather than outsourcing to someone. But there is something about
Speaker 1: it externally the world is look do you do do other?
Speaker 2: Mean?
Speaker 1: Even? Yeah, Yeah, it's weird, isn't it. It is, so
Speaker 1: it's a strange thing. It takes an exceptional man to
Speaker 1: take on that role. Yeah. In my case, my husband,
Speaker 1: at some point we could tell he was done with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was just done with it, I mean fair enough. Yes,
Speaker 1: And we had four under six, and that was a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I and we both because I was
Speaker 2: not home, I was working. We went from Christian had
Speaker 2: the main job as the earner when we were first together, right.
Speaker 2: What was his career an accountant, right, you know? And
Speaker 2: he was very good at that successful. We went moved
Speaker 2: over to Canada together because he was sent over there,
Speaker 2: and then we had the babies, and then I was
Speaker 2: at home with them, and then I was also writing,
Speaker 2: and then then we were both working and we had
Speaker 2: the kids in a combination of childcare. I had some flexibility.
Speaker 2: I found it difficult. I still felt like I was
Speaker 2: carrying the mental load though, and together with working, I
Speaker 2: was burnt out. So also not my best.
Speaker 1: You know you were No, No, you don't know at
Speaker 1: the time, do you.
Speaker 2: Well, though I knew something. I've got this memory of
Speaker 2: being on tour in America and.
Speaker 1: Which book was this? Which give me an era? I
Speaker 1: think it worth the era.
Speaker 2: I think it was the Soul Mage right, okay, because
Speaker 2: it was right after Mum and Mia came out with
Speaker 2: their podcast but are you Happy that Claire Stevens was hosting?
Speaker 2: And I saw it and I thought I looked at
Speaker 2: it on my because I would listen to all the
Speaker 2: Australian podcasts while I was there, just to keep on top.
Speaker 2: And I thought no. When it said but are you happy,
Speaker 2: I thought nuh, and it just dropped in yeah. And
Speaker 2: again it wasn't that moment. There was a series of
Speaker 2: moments and things that happened that led to it. But
Speaker 2: that was the first time I thought, huh, because objectively
Speaker 2: everything was going so well, you know, and my career
Speaker 2: was was, you know, wonderful, and my kid and the
Speaker 2: interesting thing to jump forward a little bit is that
Speaker 2: once my marriage ended and I got through, you know,
Speaker 2: the kind of early part of the pain of that,
Speaker 2: one thing that I guess I felt quite good about
Speaker 2: was that my life was actually everything in my life
Speaker 2: was wonderful. I've got this beautiful group of girlfriends that
Speaker 2: we've been friends since we were ten.
Speaker 1: This is separate to the Golden Girls. This is the
Speaker 1: gold some crossover.
Speaker 2: There is some crossover in fact, because as soon as
Speaker 2: I became divorced, I didn't really know anyone who was divorced,
Speaker 2: and so I sought out, Yeah it is, isn't it.
Speaker 2: And that's I guess maybe part of what was it
Speaker 2: a part of what made it hard for me. I
Speaker 2: don't know one element. One of the Golden Girls was
Speaker 2: my friend's older sister, and so I nabbed her, and
Speaker 2: then a friend of hers, and then one friend of mine,
Speaker 2: and then there was a girl I went to school
Speaker 2: with who has heard she got to and I hadn't
Speaker 2: spoken to her for years and years and years, and
Speaker 2: as soon as I heard she got divorced, I messaged
Speaker 2: her and said, I just wanted to say that if
Speaker 2: you're not okay, I know we haven't spoken and this
Speaker 2: might be really presumptuous, I'm happy to come and talk
Speaker 2: to you. We can have a coffee. I just felt
Speaker 2: like I I wanted to acknowledge since I'd gone through it,
Speaker 2: how awful it was. And so together we westarted The
Speaker 2: Golden Girl, which is mostly now memes about being a single,
Speaker 2: which is so funny, and sometimes it's a how do
Speaker 2: I deal with this? To do with the children, or
Speaker 2: how do I deal with We developed something which we
Speaker 2: call the ship Box from The Golden Girls, and the
Speaker 2: ship box is an actual box, physical box that the
Speaker 2: kids put their shit in, not their like their stuff
Speaker 2: that goes to their dad's house. I was like, how
Speaker 2: do you and someone said, we have a ship box,
Speaker 2: and so they put it just a box that goes
Speaker 2: inside the door. And the day that they're going to
Speaker 2: their dad's, how do you say to the kids, put
Speaker 2: your stuff.
Speaker 1: In the ship box?
Speaker 4: And they put it in and then that gets taken
Speaker 4: to their dumb, We've forgotten the ship and.
Speaker 1: They'll say, I'll say, where's your shoes? They're in the
Speaker 1: ship box. How big is the ship box? Like a
Speaker 1: laundry basket.
Speaker 2: It's so those kind of wondrous things come out of
Speaker 2: the golden girls that to link back, I guess I realized, Okay,
Speaker 2: my marriage is but I've got these girlfriends who really
Speaker 2: had stepped up for me in a way that you know,
Speaker 2: my first night in the apartment after we broke up,
Speaker 2: they all came and slept over. You know. One of
Speaker 2: them arrived with a box of tools. Tool. You know,
Speaker 2: they just use the tools a.
Speaker 1: Girlfriends of mine have got drilled. And then there comes
Speaker 1: a certain sort of pride in I can fix a
Speaker 1: c and rody, I know, and it is very satisfying.
Speaker 2: But it's extraordinary the things that you can do that
Speaker 2: you just didn't do if.
Speaker 1: You clicked in a traditional sort of compartmentalization of what
Speaker 1: needs to be done in it. In the family life, I.
Speaker 2: Can clean I have a pool at the house that
Speaker 2: I'm renting at the moment, I can clean the pool.
Speaker 2: I always thought that pools were some like foreign thing
Speaker 2: that only men could understand. And you know, because they've
Speaker 2: got chemicals, and.
Speaker 1: It's always a pool ball the poor boy. It's always
Speaker 1: a poor boy sought.
Speaker 2: A poor boy. Maybe one day fingers crossed, you've got one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I think you said
Speaker 1: that marriage is maybe not good for women. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, look, this has been a two year deep dive into.
Speaker 1: My two years is not long, though you've really and
Speaker 1: compressed it or had experienced a lot in that two years. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And like I say, I don't think I'm over it
Speaker 2: and over it's a funny thing. I am in a
Speaker 2: new relationship and I'm very happy. It's not that I'm
Speaker 2: not over him. I'm I'm happy. I feel like I
Speaker 2: you know, I have a great life. I have my career,
Speaker 2: I have my girlfriends, I have my family, I have
Speaker 2: my children. Life is so wonderful. I have the scars,
Speaker 2: and I do feel like I lost a layer of skin.
Speaker 1: You know, every thing was.
Speaker 3: Raw.
Speaker 2: Everything I felt things is more beautiful and sadder and
Speaker 2: so my you know, is marriage good for women? I've
Speaker 2: thought about that a lot. And I also looked around
Speaker 2: in the early days at relationships and thought whose marriage
Speaker 2: would I want, you know, looking at my friends, looking
Speaker 2: at my parents looking at and I did find some
Speaker 2: there were some relationships that I thought I wanted, they
Speaker 2: weren't the majority, Like I had to seek them out.
Speaker 2: Acknowledging that you never know what truly is going on
Speaker 2: in someone else's real you know.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of a girlfriend of mine who had
Speaker 1: a brutal divorce. She said one of the worst things
Speaker 1: that she experienced was that when friends would hear she
Speaker 1: was getting divorced, they were like, they started talking about
Speaker 1: how much they hated their husbands. And she said it
Speaker 1: was just like suddenly they felt like they had an
Speaker 1: outleadish to say, yeah, permission. And she said, at that
Speaker 1: period it was the worst thing because what she actually
Speaker 1: needed was to believe in romantic love, yeah, not to
Speaker 1: have everyone go I wish I was you. And as
Speaker 1: she said, also she hadn't done anything magical. She was
Speaker 1: going through something really difficult. Yeah, And so they also
Speaker 1: had the capacity too, She's like, why are you telling
Speaker 1: me this and not addressing it with the person that
Speaker 1: you're so happy to slag off to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, that's the thing. I think I see that
Speaker 2: a lot. I see a lot of unhappy women in
Speaker 2: relationships and presumably unhappy men. It's just that I spend
Speaker 2: more time with women, and I do wonder if this
Speaker 2: whole idea of marriage like it makes me think, what
Speaker 2: in an ideal world, if you're unhappy, you could move
Speaker 2: on without this whole But you look at it and think, oh,
Speaker 2: I can't. I mean in that time where I was
Speaker 2: burnt out and everything and I knew and there were
Speaker 2: a few things that made me go, Okay, this, this
Speaker 2: is it. This is the end for you or yeah,
Speaker 2: for the for the relationship that I couldn't look away anymore.
Speaker 2: But I think I really understand why if you're not
Speaker 2: pushed to that point, why you might go, oh, it's
Speaker 2: too I can't go through that because it's so hard.
Speaker 2: There is happiness on the other side, but there's also
Speaker 2: there's also you are changed.
Speaker 1: I'm changed in the nature of a relationship though a
Speaker 1: lot a long term How long were you married? Sixteen
Speaker 1: sixteen years to get to I'm twenty one, twenty marriage congratulations?
Speaker 2: Sometimes you know, well sometimes for everyone, yeah, correct.
Speaker 1: So part of what I inagen is one of the
Speaker 1: things that you have to work out for yourself is
Speaker 1: in any long term relationship, it will have peaks and
Speaker 1: it will have ebbs, and so you know that you've
Speaker 1: worked through ebbs before, how do you know that it's
Speaker 1: not an ebb and that it's something that you can't
Speaker 1: that you're not going to then be able to surf
Speaker 1: the next wave onto the beach with.
Speaker 2: It's when they are not interested in working with you.
Speaker 1: To fix it right for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Whatever reason, And when you feel like you have tried
Speaker 2: everything in your power and it's except this the way
Speaker 2: that it is, or try something else and it's your
Speaker 2: last alternative. That's what it was for me. Every relationship
Speaker 2: is different and they have different reasons. It might be
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the feelings are the same. The circumstances might be.
Speaker 1: Whoever said some writer, one of those one of those
Speaker 1: who was it that said every happy family resembles each other,
Speaker 1: but every unhappy family is uniquely unhappy? Who was that? Someone? Someone? Clear?
Speaker 1: But I do often think about that, because there's there's
Speaker 1: just a pataina of happiness that you know, you might
Speaker 1: live in different circumstances or whatever, but happy is happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but unhappiness has so many flavors and textures, each more
Speaker 1: gruesome than the last.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do and yeah, look, it's funny because I
Speaker 2: came out of that experience that the divorce and I
Speaker 2: and maybe this makes me very basic, and maybe everyone
Speaker 2: does this, but I certainly wasn't thinking that I was
Speaker 2: going to repartner.
Speaker 1: I you were like, I'm I'm not doing that again.
Speaker 2: And even without not from a bitter place, it was
Speaker 2: almost the opposite. It was from a place of I'm
Speaker 2: so content. And I heard I've heard a lot of
Speaker 2: women say that they have been lonely after they've got
Speaker 2: divorced or they've had these certain difficulties. I didn't feel
Speaker 2: that I was never lonely. I was surrounded by love,
Speaker 2: I mean, which is just so bet And it's funny.
Speaker 2: I would say I was lucky. And I remember one
Speaker 2: of my friends saying, because I said, I've got an
Speaker 2: army of support, and my friends said to me, You're
Speaker 2: not lucky. You've got an army because you fought in
Speaker 2: the battalion.
Speaker 1: You know, you fought for us, and where are you
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: And I thought that's nice.
Speaker 1: Next, Sally rethinks what love really looks like thanks to
Speaker 1: the women who carried her through heartbreak. I think that
Speaker 1: when a relationship is failing, and it's one that you're
Speaker 1: really committed to, you tend to try and put resources
Speaker 1: into it to the exclusion of other relationships. So I
Speaker 1: think sometimes people pop out like a meerkat to a
Speaker 1: very bleak savannah. Yep.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I did have that difficulty, which was to
Speaker 2: do with all of the horrible stuff about ending a relationship.
Speaker 2: But my life outside of that, I thought, well, this
Speaker 2: is good. I actually have got quite a good landscape.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking more and more that why is
Speaker 2: romantic love the pinnacle? I have got these women in
Speaker 2: my life, I mean so many, but particularly the ones
Speaker 2: that I've been friends with since I was ten. They're
Speaker 2: my life partners. They're the ones who have been with
Speaker 2: me before any of us met our partners. They are
Speaker 2: with me after partners. They've been through me with me,
Speaker 2: you know, through birth, and we've all been together. Recently,
Speaker 2: one of those friends, her father died, and I remember
Speaker 2: I went up with her when she did the eulogy
Speaker 2: and we looked back and I saw all of our
Speaker 2: girlfriends were in the front row, and I thought, it's
Speaker 2: something moved me about it. I thought, usually, you know,
Speaker 2: you see the family and the parents and whatever, and
Speaker 2: no that was us, that was and that made complete
Speaker 2: sense to me.
Speaker 1: Your significant ones.
Speaker 2: They were We've always been a family. And even if
Speaker 2: there was an is and there now is a romantic
Speaker 2: love again, my life partner partners are those women.
Speaker 1: And are there any men in that number? Not in
Speaker 1: that I have got male friends, Yeah, have those relationships change.
Speaker 2: Well, one of my best male friends has been divorced twice.
Speaker 1: Okay, he was in the.
Speaker 2: Golden Girls for a little while, but then he couldn't
Speaker 2: handle it because there were all these memes about how
Speaker 2: we didn't like men. He okay, was like I Also,
Speaker 2: my brothers were incredibly close and they were huge supports
Speaker 2: to me throughout that. I'm not a hater of men
Speaker 2: in any way.
Speaker 1: I love men. No, I'm just always it seems, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's our times or maybe it's been ever thus
Speaker 1: really I don't know. But there's such a gold mine
Speaker 1: the female friends. Yeah, and it doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: the same crossover with me. Yeah, I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: they're nourishing in a different way.
Speaker 2: They are, and it's good.
Speaker 1: I do believe very much in Yin and yang, and
Speaker 1: I'm not fully on board with women. We're fantastic. We're
Speaker 1: fantastic and men are fact, which seems to be some
Speaker 1: kind of very reviling, very much, very much. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: when did we start to think we were so perfect?
Speaker 1: That's true, it's not helpful. And I, by the way,
Speaker 1: I do think that about myself. That's how I recognize it.
Speaker 1: What you think you have to pull yourself up and
Speaker 1: go hang on a minute. Yeah, why am I always
Speaker 1: trying to knock the top off this scab as though? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm the dermatologist. I'm not the dermato.
Speaker 2: We're the dermatologists of our own lives.
Speaker 1: Well we are, and it's good for someone healing.
Speaker 2: Someone's got to be healed. The ointment, Yeah, the made
Speaker 2: me write My thoughts on men are separate from my
Speaker 2: thoughts about romantic love. I think that is what has
Speaker 2: changed for me, as romantic love being the relationship to
Speaker 2: end all relationships, the one who you know you fill
Speaker 2: out on your paperwork, the one who you know.
Speaker 1: When you die.
Speaker 2: They're the chief mourner, you know, all of those things
Speaker 2: that notebook yep, the crying in the rain.
Speaker 1: Romantic love.
Speaker 2: Think you can have that right, Like I've got the
Speaker 2: most beautiful, beautiful man. That that came out of thinking
Speaker 2: I was never going to meet anyone. I wasn't looking
Speaker 2: for anyone. I was you know, my friends were all
Speaker 2: pressuring me to go on Tinder or bumble or whatever.
Speaker 2: It was. No, I don't want, you know, I'm happy.
Speaker 2: And then I met this in real life.
Speaker 1: How in real life because that does not happen now,
Speaker 1: not even in novels. Yeah, I know, Well, so this
Speaker 1: is a good story.
Speaker 2: So I actually did have one date before I met Dan,
Speaker 2: who's my partner. I had one date that was from
Speaker 2: whatever the app was. That was when i'd been away
Speaker 2: on with all my girlfriends. We go away to Nusah
Speaker 2: every year and we have a girls trip, and they
Speaker 2: were it was for them, you know how you married
Speaker 2: friends are just desperate for you know, there's a single
Speaker 2: go on there and they.
Speaker 1: Know more of the.
Speaker 2: Up and I've been swiping the wrong way and I'm
Speaker 2: looking at some guy called Shane with no teeth that
Speaker 2: I've just you know, And I had one date and
Speaker 2: it actually it went quite well. I mean it was
Speaker 2: not I wasn't looking for a relationship, but it was.
Speaker 2: He was a gentleman. It was you know, we had
Speaker 2: a nice did you do it in No, they set
Speaker 2: it up for winter. So I came back from NUSA
Speaker 2: the next night went out a night date. It was
Speaker 2: like six o'clock for a drink. It's all changed since
Speaker 2: our days. Yes, so nervous. He also didn't live in Melbourne,
Speaker 2: which I thought was better because I didn't you know,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to have a nice time and I
Speaker 2: don't know what I don't think I wanted. Okay, great question.
Speaker 2: I wore jeans and a like nice sparkly ballet flat
Speaker 2: and a black I was wearing a white chop and
Speaker 2: all the girls are like, no, you've got to.
Speaker 1: Wear it's been a very heavily workshop.
Speaker 2: And a I think I had on a leather jacket
Speaker 2: or something like that. I felt very unlike me.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the kind of thing, almost like you'd put
Speaker 1: on a costume, yes, which is the Sally goes on
Speaker 1: a first day costures.
Speaker 2: In her forties.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, and it was. He was so lovely.
Speaker 2: He was really handsome and made me feel great and
Speaker 2: I went away from it thinking that was really nice.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'd do it again. So then
Speaker 2: I was in getting my Boatox and it was in
Speaker 2: there and my lady was doing her botox and I
Speaker 2: was telling her about it, and you know, they're like hairdresses.
Speaker 1: She's like, tell me more.
Speaker 2: And then she said, you know what, I've got a
Speaker 2: friend who's been separated recently and he's gorgeous and you
Speaker 2: should meet him. And I was like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: And then she said can I give him your number?
Speaker 2: And I said all right? And then he messaged me, oh,
Speaker 2: I know. And you know what was funny is that
Speaker 2: he he said, so he lived away, lived in on
Speaker 2: the Gold Coast, but he was from Melbourne originally, and
Speaker 2: he said, I'm going to be in Melbourne this week.
Speaker 2: Do you want to have dinner? And I said yes?
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, I don't know if I will
Speaker 2: or not, Like I was very on the fence. And
Speaker 2: on the day I thought, oh, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I'm going to go, and but I just at the
Speaker 2: last night I thought, yeah, I'll go. And it's funny
Speaker 2: I found out later that he'd just flown down for
Speaker 2: the day, Like imagine.
Speaker 1: And look at what he flew down just for the day.
Speaker 2: God love him.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. What was his hunch?
Speaker 2: Well, he said that he had heard about me from
Speaker 2: this friend and he'd cyberstalked me and thought that I
Speaker 2: looked nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, that's amazing. And it wasn't you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't sparks.
Speaker 2: It was just you seem like a really nice person,
Speaker 2: and I really I'd like to get to know you
Speaker 2: more like that, really kind of mature and and then
Speaker 2: it grew over. I think by date three, I was thinking, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is I'm getting a bit swept off.
Speaker 1: How was the geography?
Speaker 2: He's moved back to Melbourne?
Speaker 1: Oh okay after how many dates?
Speaker 2: Well, no, it was about nine months, and so there
Speaker 2: was a nice period of us going back and forth.
Speaker 2: But he worked, he had work in Melbourne, so he'd
Speaker 2: becoming anyway, and and it was lovely and I I'm
Speaker 2: so happy. I'm so different in this relationship.
Speaker 1: It's amazing him what way I.
Speaker 2: Am the poor thing? Because you know, I now I
Speaker 2: do not let one thing go that annoys me.
Speaker 1: Ah right, okay, so the peacekeepers, I just now to
Speaker 1: have a chat all the time.
Speaker 2: Now you know, the thing that you did, I don't
Speaker 2: like that, right, And I encourage him to do that too,
Speaker 2: and he's so good about like what I love I
Speaker 2: think the most masculine trait that exists is for you
Speaker 2: to give them feedback and for them to say, oh, okay, ah,
Speaker 2: thank you for telling me that you know, and not
Speaker 2: being threatened at all or defensive or you know. I
Speaker 2: just think that's so so you're so sure of yourself
Speaker 2: and secure to be able to to take that on
Speaker 2: board and not feel emasculated, or just.
Speaker 1: To actually have a curiosity.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I realized that's all I need. I don't
Speaker 2: even need them to immediately change. It's not that they
Speaker 2: won't do it again. It's that they've said, you're giving
Speaker 2: you know, you're telling me what you want, and I
Speaker 2: want to know that you know.
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I want to know what makes you happy. I want
Speaker 2: to I hear you, I see you.
Speaker 1: I want to work that kind of softens you. Yes.
Speaker 2: All you need, I think, is to know that someone
Speaker 2: wants that for you, that are in it for you
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: And it's not just that.
Speaker 2: That's been really healing for me, because I am like that,
Speaker 2: like I will I have. I have a lot of faults,
Speaker 2: but I I really if someone says something or if
Speaker 2: I do the wrong thing, I will say I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: You know, mea culpa and I don't feel threatened by that.
Speaker 2: And so when people do get defensive, and that was
Speaker 2: one of the problems in my marriage is that you
Speaker 2: don't get anywhere. You know, you you know, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to tell you that I feel this way. Well, I
Speaker 2: don't do that. And by the way, it's you know,
Speaker 2: then it goes nowhere and you just park it and
Speaker 2: it continues to simmer. Whereas I feel like we have
Speaker 2: really in the new relationship, we've really got to know
Speaker 2: each other and find our stride and our own rhythm
Speaker 2: together because we do listen and you know, and work together.
Speaker 2: We want it.
Speaker 1: But you don't live together, no, and you won't I
Speaker 1: don't think so.
Speaker 2: Look I always say I'll never do something, and then
Speaker 2: you know, five minutes later, I think. What's really important
Speaker 2: to me now is that I have my three kids.
Speaker 2: I've got my own house. I want them to have
Speaker 2: their house that is just Mum's, you know, not even house,
Speaker 2: it's their house. I don't want Mum and Dan's house
Speaker 2: or you know, I don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 2: at Christian's house, but I want them to have a
Speaker 2: space that's theirs, and they don't need any more people.
Speaker 2: They don't need to be blending families or to I
Speaker 2: just don't want that to.
Speaker 1: Take on some other emotional load.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want that for them, And so maybe
Speaker 2: there's a time in the future where they've gone and
Speaker 2: who knows. You know, I'm really happy in this.
Speaker 1: How do you think your writings changed now?
Speaker 2: Some writers said once, I don't know who it is.
Speaker 1: Obviously we know.
Speaker 2: The sayings, we don't know the writer. But they said,
Speaker 2: these characters are a third someone you know, a third
Speaker 2: made up and a third yourself. And while I don't necessarily,
Speaker 2: what I think is myself is the narrative that comes
Speaker 2: on the page. It's not necessarily a character or a thing,
Speaker 2: but it's the wisdom that I'm searching for in that book. Yes,
Speaker 2: and I have a new book coming out later this year.
Speaker 2: It's called Mad Maybe.
Speaker 1: Yes, i've read Mad Maybe part way through with Madbe,
Speaker 1: which is so different than anything that you've done, I think. So.
Speaker 1: I love having a character who's in her eighties. I
Speaker 1: find that, yeah, just amazing, but also that we get
Speaker 1: to see her in her youth. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't had a lot of people read it yet,
Speaker 2: so it's been I love hearing in.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, in the early it's a like a binder.
Speaker 1: Oh they sent your bound, Yeah, I've got Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know what.
Speaker 2: That's that's even different from advanced reader copy se.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I've seen the cover online and I'm like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's what that's how it's going to look.
Speaker 2: Well, I think so the big thing that's come out
Speaker 2: of my life experience is that book in its essence,
Speaker 2: And it's funny because you read the blurb and it's
Speaker 2: about an eighty one year old curmudgeonly you know, I
Speaker 2: had so much joy writing that character who finds her
Speaker 2: neighbor dead and no one suspects anything until they find
Speaker 2: out that she, in fact was not a serial killer,
Speaker 2: like was convicted of murders when she was fifteen years old, and.
Speaker 1: We go back in time to find that out.
Speaker 2: But the book, unlikely as it seems, is about friendship,
Speaker 2: and that comes, of course off the heels of my
Speaker 2: These last two years have been about friendship for me,
Speaker 2: so much hurt and everything, but the way that friends
Speaker 2: can save you. And this book what I wanted to
Speaker 2: explore was can one friend save you? Is that enough?
Speaker 2: And what if you don't have one friend? What happens
Speaker 2: to you then?
Speaker 1: And so I don't know. It's funny because she's been
Speaker 1: the sort of because she's so prickly and combative, it's
Speaker 1: almost like she's wanted to keep the world at bay.
Speaker 1: But she's also you can't help but love her good.
Speaker 2: Well, she's vulnerable, Like even the people that want to
Speaker 2: keep the world at bay, they're probably.
Speaker 1: The most vulnerable.
Speaker 2: There's a reason that you do that. As humans, we
Speaker 2: want to connect. And yeah, like there is a kind
Speaker 2: of hope, a layered story about that, and all of
Speaker 2: that comes from my experience over the last couple of
Speaker 2: years and the importance that friendship has. And it's dedicated
Speaker 2: to my best friend Sash, who has just been diagnosed
Speaker 2: for the second time with triple negative breast cancer. She's
Speaker 2: going through treatment at the moment again you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's it's been so difficult. But the thing, and
Speaker 2: she talks about it all the time, is I've got
Speaker 2: my girls, you know, I've got and we just know
Speaker 2: what to do and we just rally and we support
Speaker 2: and we'll get her through it. And there is the
Speaker 2: it's so horrible and it's so difficult for her, you know,
Speaker 2: it's so difficult to watch her go through that. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, and this is what I felt
Speaker 2: about my divorce, there's this beautifulness of it, of the
Speaker 2: way that we just move around each other at these
Speaker 2: difficult times, and that's the stuff that it just moves
Speaker 2: me in a way that I don't think any I
Speaker 2: don't know, Like, I don't know why that love doesn't
Speaker 2: have that same company.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend of mine had breast catcer last year before last.
Speaker 1: And it does. What it makes you do is you
Speaker 1: can't hold anything back, no, because it's a currency you've
Speaker 1: just got to spend. Yeah, and sometimes the watching everyone
Speaker 1: bring it is, like you said, just beautiful, cruel but beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I always think, look to the helpers, you know. Another
Speaker 2: one I don't know who said that.
Speaker 1: Someone did say that look to the helper? Was it?
Speaker 1: It was someone that was not a writer. I think
Speaker 1: that was like a Michelle O. But like that, she
Speaker 1: always says the good things. But yeah, oh I don't
Speaker 1: have it.
Speaker 2: No, I'm fine. That's what friendship is. It's the hard
Speaker 2: and it's the beautiful. And I don't know anyone who's
Speaker 2: you know, I'm forty five and I don't know any
Speaker 2: forty five year olds that haven't been through something really difficult.
Speaker 2: And we know more difficult stuff is going to come,
Speaker 2: you know, hopefully, because that means we're alive, and that's
Speaker 2: more difficult things.
Speaker 1: I always said that in yoga class. I'm always like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because there are is. If you're about discomfort, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's about discomfort. And so they'll often say the temporary
Speaker 1: discomfort in the in this class or in the practice
Speaker 1: of yoga helps you take on the discomforts that are
Speaker 1: coming for you in life. And I can't wait, but
Speaker 1: it is true.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I heard a similar saying, which was, you know,
Speaker 2: it was something to do with waves. So it's you know,
Speaker 2: you stand in the water in the ocean and the
Speaker 2: waves come. You know, hopefully you get a gap between them.
Speaker 2: But your role is to learn how to swim because
Speaker 2: you know the next one is coming. You know, you
Speaker 2: can't just get bold, you know, if you do, just
Speaker 2: get bold over But if you learn to swim, then
Speaker 2: that each time you learn a bit more than you're
Speaker 2: going to be ready for the ones that are coming.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's very interesting because that is. I like that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think that we don't allow ourselves or we
Speaker 1: don't emphasize enough how much agency we play in our
Speaker 1: own lives, or how much opportunity there is given. As
Speaker 1: you said earlier, like it's a privilege to be able
Speaker 1: to even think like that, really, because some people are
Speaker 1: just bowled over by waves and can't even get back
Speaker 1: on their knees. But you've got to teach yourself to swim,
Speaker 1: you do, and really probably teach yourself, as you have
Speaker 1: done with your girlfriends, to not only save yourself, but
Speaker 1: try and save someone else while you're at it. That
Speaker 1: is almost.
Speaker 2: I think it's the key to getting through something is
Speaker 2: to focus on someone else, right, And I you know,
Speaker 2: as terrible as as you know my friend's illness is,
Speaker 2: I do think that it pulled me out of a depression.
Speaker 2: I think I've been in a mild depression for a
Speaker 2: couple of years, and as soon as I knew that
Speaker 2: she needed me, Yeah, it does. Yeah, you know, then
Speaker 2: you you're out of it and there's something more important
Speaker 2: than you. And I think that is the key to
Speaker 2: you know, you steal yourself and you heal, but then
Speaker 2: look out to the world again because it's not you know,
Speaker 2: you can spend so much time looking inward and there's
Speaker 2: self love and everything, but actually sometimes the most loving
Speaker 2: thing is to look outwards and go and help someone.
Speaker 1: Else because also then that reminds you once again of
Speaker 1: what you're capable of. Yeah, it's a strange gift to
Speaker 1: be given.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and it's almost you know, having friendship is such
Speaker 2: a blessing, but it's even better to be a friend,
Speaker 2: you know. That actually is a better feeling in a way.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, someone said it's better to give than receipt.
Speaker 1: That would have been someone smart.
Speaker 2: Just attribute them to like random people people that is,
Speaker 2: so let us know who said them all.
Speaker 1: Hey, what's Sally Hepworth's future?
Speaker 2: Well, on the tenth of August, my first book to TV.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, serious coming so many at once because it's
Speaker 1: the Family next Door. Also Darling Girls.
Speaker 2: So Darling Girls has been optioned and that is currently
Speaker 2: a writer has been attached and she's working on the script.
Speaker 1: Was that that Amy Pohler thing.
Speaker 2: Who Amy Polar optioned the mother in law, The mother
Speaker 2: in law and the soulmate has also been optioned.
Speaker 1: I saw that with Asher.
Speaker 2: Yes Asha Kitty is attached, which is amazing, and she's
Speaker 2: going to produce. And also so my short story Uncharted
Speaker 2: Waters has been.
Speaker 4: Short stories that you googled how to write a short story,
Speaker 4: and Blossom, which is Nicole Kidman's production company has optioned that.
Speaker 2: The thing about the options is that they come in
Speaker 2: that's so exciting, and then it goes quiet. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and sometimes nothing happens, or sometimes a lot of things
Speaker 2: are happening behind the scenes and I'm getting on with
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: So optioning is when people a production company will say
Speaker 1: we love this, we want to do something with it.
Speaker 1: You enter into an arrangement. But as we know, it
Speaker 1: could take years for things to get produced.
Speaker 2: Ore and nothing can happen. What they do is they
Speaker 2: buy the rights to have no one else look at
Speaker 2: it for a period of time, so it's theirs to
Speaker 2: try and get it off the ground, to.
Speaker 1: Try also landing all at once, these little ships that
Speaker 1: you sent out to see.
Speaker 2: It does feel like over the last and finally the
Speaker 2: last two years, as my personal life's been imploding, a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of things have been hitting. Do
Speaker 2: you think it's I do think that sometimes when you've
Speaker 2: gone through a period where you've set yourself free, that
Speaker 2: it's you entered this kind of flow state and suddenly
Speaker 2: things change.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's happened? I do, I do.
Speaker 2: I believe in that. I've also a woman of my forties.
Speaker 2: I also do yoga, I have crystals. I've become very
Speaker 2: much into the universe and you know, putting my feet
Speaker 2: in the grass and doing all of that. And I
Speaker 2: do believe so much in signs, in energy, in things
Speaker 2: falling into your lap.
Speaker 1: At all mad for it. I'm thinking about buying an
Speaker 1: earthing sheet. I've got one. Have you done with the core?
Speaker 1: Have you got one with you? Is it a plug
Speaker 1: in one or one where you run I've been looking
Speaker 1: at a real bonkers one from Canada or whatever. You
Speaker 1: have to run a copper cable outside your window into.
Speaker 2: The ground, Yes, no, mind's not mine. It has the copper,
Speaker 2: but it plugs.
Speaker 1: In, plugs in. Does it work with electricity for grounding?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Like, how would you know if it works?
Speaker 2: That's a beautiful thing about it.
Speaker 1: You look really healthy that I'm going off.
Speaker 2: I oh everything like that I've done. Yeah, I love
Speaker 2: that stut can't get enough of it.
Speaker 1: And I'm mad on supplements this could go all day.
Speaker 1: This could go all day, Sally, hepworth. What an absolute
Speaker 1: duel you are in the crown of artists.
Speaker 2: I love this. That is that some something someone said?
Speaker 2: Is that a writer? We don't Lainbrook.
Speaker 1: She wrote this book called chow Bella. It says it's
Speaker 1: not on that, but it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful I've read.
Speaker 1: Oh, I brought a gift for you because I've got
Speaker 1: your soul package I loved.
Speaker 2: I can have a signed copy.
Speaker 1: I have it at home. Oh, I wanted to give
Speaker 1: you that.
Speaker 2: We still take it, but look and sign.
Speaker 1: You to sign the soul mate. But when I bought it,
Speaker 1: I already bought a signed one. Well I can personalize. Yeah, okay, good,
Speaker 1: we're going to do that. I'll see you in five months.
Speaker 1: We'll have our chat about AI is now doing everything
Speaker 1: for you. Look forward and may your ship box always
Speaker 1: be full in the best way.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. This has been lovely.
Speaker 1: Sally and I could have talked all day, and in
Speaker 1: fact we very nearly did, and it just struck me
Speaker 1: how generous and open she is. Even sometimes in the
Speaker 1: parts of your life that are kind of shadowy and
Speaker 1: your inclination is to try and cover them up. She's
Speaker 1: just spreading sunshine through herself and to those around her.
Speaker 1: It's always fascinating when the storyteller becomes the story. Sally's
Speaker 1: life has in ways she never saw coming, and she's
Speaker 1: done what so many women do. She's carried on. But
Speaker 1: what stayed with me was this When everything falls apart,
Speaker 1: Sally doesn't pretend to have the answers, She just keeps
Speaker 1: showing up. The executive producer of No Filter is Nama
Speaker 1: Brown and the senior producer is Bree Player. Audio production
Speaker 1: is by Jacob Brown and I am your host, Kate
Speaker 1: lane Brook. Thank you so much for sharing No Filter
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 5: Hello, it's Naima here, the executive producer of No Filter
Speaker 5: bringing you a sample of Mamma MIA's women's health podcast Well,
Speaker 5: hosted by doctor Merriam and Claire Murphy. This week's episode
Speaker 5: is about pregnancy, but that's not all. They'll also take
Speaker 5: you to mad school to talk about why you might
Speaker 5: get a pair in your butt when you have your period,
Speaker 5: and do a quick consult about testosterone during Perry.
Speaker 1: If you want to.
Speaker 5: Hear the full episode, Well is your Full Body Health
Speaker 5: Check and drops every week on a Thursday.
Speaker 6: This episode of Well is brought to you in partnership
Speaker 6: with Clear Blue Australian Women.
Speaker 7: Welcome to your full body health check. I'm Claire Murphy
Speaker 7: and for the sake of today's episode, because we are
Speaker 7: talking about pregnancy, I'll let you know that I have
Speaker 7: been pregnant twice in my life. Once when I was
Speaker 7: a very young teenager, which is a pregnancy I chose
Speaker 7: to terminate and have zero regrets about. And then I
Speaker 7: got pregnant again at thirty five, where I was wonderfully
Speaker 7: called a geriatric pregnancy, and that resulted in my small human.
Speaker 3: And I'm doctor Mariam a GP, a mother and someone
Speaker 3: who has lived the full spectrum of the fertility journey,
Speaker 3: from the heartbreak of my firstborn, Samuel was still birth,
Speaker 3: to three miscarriages and two years of infertility. My path
Speaker 3: has been anything but easy, but it led me to
Speaker 3: my greatest blessings, my beautiful rainbow two boys, Zak and Jagin.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for sharing that. I know that
Speaker 7: sometimes with your self and with friends of mine who've
Speaker 7: really struggled to get pregnant and to have babies, it's
Speaker 7: it's a really emotional thing to talk about especially all
Speaker 7: the losses too. So but I think it's interesting to
Speaker 7: note that, like our pregnancy journeys could not be more different,
Speaker 7: Like it's such a vast array of experiences involved in
Speaker 7: getting pregnant, being pregnant, and having babies. Because I was
Speaker 7: the discussion with my husband worders went, should I just
Speaker 7: stop taking the pill? And like if it happens, it happens,
Speaker 7: and if it doesn't, it doesn't, and he's like, yeah, cool,
Speaker 7: and then it did and it was just like and
Speaker 7: then we're like, cool, do you it? I want to
Speaker 7: do it again? And we're like not really, it's one
Speaker 7: and done. We could yeah, very very different perspectives. And
Speaker 7: in case you haven't worked it out, we are talking
Speaker 7: about being up the Duff today with child prego bun
Speaker 7: in the oven however you would like to refer to it.
Speaker 8: We will find out what's.
Speaker 7: Happening to your internals and it is a lot. And
Speaker 7: we have a quick consult for Tony who's been seeing
Speaker 7: a bunch of people on her feed talking about a
Speaker 7: hormone that she thinks that maybe she might need to
Speaker 7: but her understanding is is that it's something that is
Speaker 7: exclusively for men now Mariam, I have found out something
Speaker 7: very interesting about women's buttholes.
Speaker 8: Go for it. I've said this before, I will say
Speaker 8: this again.
Speaker 7: I am a deeply immature human being, and I will
Speaker 7: laugh every time I see butoles.
Speaker 1: But here we go.
Speaker 7: Something happens to some of our buttholes during our period.
Speaker 1: Yep, we need answers.
Speaker 7: This is very serious medicine, Mariam.
Speaker 3: I want to know where this conversation is going.
Speaker 1: Let's go to med school. Welcome to med school, Mariam.
Speaker 7: We've discussed all types of pain that women might experience
Speaker 7: from various things, but have you you ever experienced a
Speaker 7: proctalgia fugax?
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 8: Now, this is something that.
Speaker 7: Happens to a lot of women when they have their periods.
Speaker 7: So you might just be, you know, walking along, minding
Speaker 7: your own damn business when you're hit with a really short,
Speaker 7: sharp pain in your buttthole that feels like someone shoved
Speaker 7: a hop knife up there for a second. Yep, it
Speaker 7: is like butt lightning. It's reportedly super normal, quite harmless.
Speaker 7: It's a spasm in the anal sphincter or pelvic floor muscles.
Speaker 7: The pain can last somewhere between a few seconds, which
Speaker 7: I think is what the majority of us have probably experienced.
Speaker 7: Two Way recorded ninety minutes, which sounds like the worst
Speaker 7: day ever. Marriam, do you get butt lightning on your period?
Speaker 8: Butt lightning?
Speaker 3: Yes, so proctalgia four gucks. It sounds like a Harry
Speaker 3: Potter spell. It steels more like a curse. Yes, I've
Speaker 3: had that surprise up and it's usually.
Speaker 8: Like surprise that it's exactly what that is.
Speaker 3: It's usually in the Coles freezer ales I've gotten us.
Speaker 8: That's where your butt decides to betray you to the
Speaker 8: bat or a butt triggered by the cold. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 7: So if you are just randomly sitting there and it's
Speaker 7: like Harry Potter ZAPPEDI with his wand in your buttthole,
Speaker 7: it's totally fine. Don't stress. From spiky buttholes to actually
Speaker 7: being up the dove.
Speaker 1: Today's check up is.
Speaker 7: All things pregnancy.
Speaker 6: When you're trying to get pregnant, timing is everything. With
Speaker 6: only a few precious days each cycle, it's not surprising
Speaker 6: that one in two couples may be trying to conceive
Speaker 6: at the wrong time. That's where clear Blue Advanced Digital
Speaker 6: Ovulation test comes in. You can double your chances of
Speaker 6: getting pregnant in your first cycle of use versus not
Speaker 6: using ovulation tests. Plus, you can download the free clear
Speaker 6: Blue Period and Cycle Tracking app to keep a diary.
Speaker 6: Double your chances of getting pregnant with the clear Blue
Speaker 6: Advanced Digital Ovulation Test. Always read the label and follow
Speaker 6: the directions for use.
Speaker 7: It's time for the checkup, okay, Maeric, can we talk
Speaker 7: about the first trimester? What is actually happening in your
Speaker 7: body when you conceive and why a first Trimestermum'm so tired.
Speaker 3: So when you conceive, your body immediately kicks into pregnancy gear, right.
Speaker 3: It wants to support that tiny new life. The fertilized
Speaker 3: egging plants itself into the lining of your uterus, which
Speaker 3: starts releasing hormones like hCG and progesterone. And those womens
Speaker 3: do a bunch of jobs. They keep the pregnancy going,
Speaker 3: they stop your periods, and they start preparing your body
Speaker 3: for the months ahead. So why are we all so
Speaker 3: exhausted during that first trimester? It's always the hormones, same hormones.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The progesterone, which we call the pregnancy hormone, relaxes your muscles,
Speaker 3: including your digestive tracks, so that can make you feel
Speaker 3: a little bit sluggish. Your metabolism is revving up, so
Speaker 3: your heart is working harder to pump that extra blood,
Speaker 3: and your body's busy building the placenta, which is like
Speaker 3: a new organ and other essentials, so your blood sugar
Speaker 3: and your blood pressure can dip as well, and that
Speaker 3: leaves you feeling wiped out. So you're adding that emotional
Speaker 3: rollercoaster as well. Sometimes you might get the nausea, the
Speaker 3: morning sickness, and it's no wonders that the first trimester
Speaker 3: is relentless. The good news is that it starts to
Speaker 3: ease up when you get to the second trimester, when
Speaker 3: your body starts to adjust. So if you're feeling wiped
Speaker 3: listen to your body. Rest when you can eat good foods,
Speaker 3: stay hydrated, and don't beat yourself up if you need
Speaker 3: that extra downtime. Your body's doing incredible. It's growing a human.
Speaker 3: But in saying that, I just wanted to have a
Speaker 3: conversation and want to see what your thoughts are. A
Speaker 3: lot of people don't like telling people about their pregnancies
Speaker 3: until they pass that twelve weeks because they feel like
Speaker 3: they're in the safe zone. But then this is when
Speaker 3: they need a lot of extra help and support, be
Speaker 3: because they're tired and they're wiped out. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: how am I going to tell my employer that I'm
Speaker 3: pregnant and I might miscarried? I want to tell my family?
Speaker 1: Well, that's it.
Speaker 7: It's the most common window for miscarriage, right, So, and
Speaker 7: if something happens to you and you haven't told anybody,
Speaker 7: it makes it hard.
Speaker 3: It does, But I kind of want to break that cycle.
Speaker 3: As females, when we see that positive pregnancy stick, there
Speaker 3: shouldn't be that stigma where we shouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 3: announce it. Unfortunately, one in four pregnancies do end in miscarriage,
Speaker 3: and that's when we need support. And if we haven't
Speaker 3: spoken about it, then how do we get that support?
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, acknowledging I'm pregnant, and if
Speaker 3: a miscarriage does happen, then acknowledging I need support and
Speaker 3: people knew about it.
Speaker 7: Can you answer me this question? Riddle me this, yes, Mariam,
Speaker 7: but can you please tell me how we predict a
Speaker 7: baby's due date and how accurate it is? Because there's
Speaker 7: some math going on here, but realistically, forty weeks, which
Speaker 7: is our normal gestation period, doesn't add up to nine
Speaker 7: months already. The math is not math for me. So
Speaker 7: how do we predict the day that baby's supposed to come?
Speaker 3: Okay, the magic date, it's the date we all obsess
Speaker 3: over as parents. It's a bit of a legend, to
Speaker 3: be honest. Okay, So the standard way we work it
Speaker 3: out here in OZ is you take the first day
Speaker 3: of your last menstrual period and you add two hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty days or forty weeks to that date. Sounds straightforward,
Speaker 3: but pregnancy isn't always a neat nine month package like
Speaker 3: the calendars.
Speaker 7: And a no, they're our cycle, ye exactly.
Speaker 3: So the forty weeks is based on an average twenty
Speaker 3: eight day menstrual cycle, assuming ovulation happens on day fourteen,
Speaker 3: But not everyone's cycle plays by those rules. Some females
Speaker 3: ovulate earlier, some later, and the date can shift. Plus
Speaker 3: months aren't all the same length, so you've got thirty
Speaker 3: day months, thirty day ones, and then you've got February
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: But here's the kicker.
Speaker 3: Only one in twenty babies will actually only arrive on
Speaker 3: their due date. Most babies will come either two weeks
Speaker 3: before or two weeks after, so the Jew date is
Speaker 3: more of a rough window, not a ticking clock. So
Speaker 3: early ultrasounds in pregnancy can help us estimate gesstational age
Speaker 3: if we're not really sure when our last mental period
Speaker 3: was or if this cycle regularity, and if things start
Speaker 3: to stretch beyond the Jude date, then you know you've
Speaker 3: got your treating team that will help you guide you
Speaker 3: through that. So don't stress about the Jude date. Baby
Speaker 3: is not likely to come at that date.
Speaker 7: Just be aware if your baby does come after the
Speaker 7: Jude date, like mine did, it might come out a
Speaker 7: lot hairer than you expected, just a little shock surprise
Speaker 7: that you might not be aware of. Mariam, What should
Speaker 7: very early pregnant mums be doing from the get go?
Speaker 7: I know there's a lot of talk about what you
Speaker 7: should have already done in the lead up to conception,
Speaker 7: like not drinking alcohol and taking FOL eight supplements, for example,
Speaker 7: But what are the first things you tell a newly
Speaker 7: pregnant woman to do.
Speaker 3: I love these consults, like I'm a GP shared antiinatal
Speaker 3: care provider, so I would start if you think you're pregnant,
Speaker 3: finding a GP with antiinatal experience and don't just wait
Speaker 3: to kind of book that consultation in early. And there's
Speaker 3: a lot what we can do to support a healthy
Speaker 3: pregnancy physically, emotionally, and logistically as well. So when you
Speaker 3: see your doctor, we will confirm the pregnancy with like
Speaker 3: a urinal blood test based on what I've said before,
Speaker 3: and if we're unsure, we'll do that dating scan for you.
Speaker 3: And then this is the most important part of the conversation.
Speaker 3: It's never always congratulations on your pregnancy. I always start
Speaker 3: the conversation with is this a congratulation? And it's important
Speaker 3: because you know, for some people it's a surprise. It's
Speaker 3: not at the right time. There are a reason.
Speaker 7: And when Ilse told when I was a teenager, I
Speaker 7: had a major breakdown. So yeah, it's not always.
Speaker 3: A welcome Yeah, that's right. And so your GP will
Speaker 3: walk beside you without judgment. They'll have that conversation and
Speaker 3: if termination is something that you're considering, will guide you
Speaker 3: through that process and make sure that you have the
Speaker 3: right supports. If you are thinking of continuing the pregnancy,
Speaker 3: it's ensuring that you're on the right supplement. So we
Speaker 3: spoke about folic acid and iodine, but then there are
Speaker 3: other things. So if you're at risk of preclamsy you've
Speaker 3: had preclamcy here before, you might need to be on
Speaker 3: ASP or calcium, so it's important we go through your
Speaker 3: medical surgical history, go through any medications you're on that
Speaker 3: might be teratogenic so they might harm the baby, or
Speaker 3: we might need to change dosages of some medications as well.
Speaker 3: Then we check whether your cervical cancer screening is up
Speaker 3: to date. So I'm going to break a myth, it
Speaker 3: is safe during pregnancy. There's also the self collection if
Speaker 3: you're really worried about anything touching the cervix, that self
Speaker 3: collection just touches the side walls of the vagina, so
Speaker 3: that's completely safe. We also might offer an STI screen
Speaker 3: for some people if that's relevant as well. We'll check
Speaker 3: if your immunizations are up to date, and we'll tell
Speaker 3: you about the schedule of immunizations during pregnancy, which are
Speaker 3: really really important. I know there's a lot of misinformation online.
Speaker 3: If you have any concerns regarding immunizations during pregnancy, please
Speaker 3: please speak with a trusted healthcare professional. Do not get
Speaker 3: your information from untrusted sources online. Then we'll talk about
Speaker 3: lifestyle and nutrition. So obviously no smoking, no vaping, alcohol,
Speaker 3: lisa drugs, and that includes passive smoking. Sometimes being around
Speaker 3: people that smoke can also harm the baby. And then
Speaker 3: there's the food safety. That's a big one. There are
Speaker 3: certain foods to avoid, soft cheeses, deli meats, or all seafoods.
Speaker 3: There's a whole bunch of foods. And it's not about
Speaker 3: instilling fear, you know. I still want people to go
Speaker 3: out and be able to eat healthy foods. I usually
Speaker 3: refer people to the New South World Food Authority Guide.
Speaker 3: It's a great resource, has a lot of information about
Speaker 3: it's got like a red light, green light, orange light
Speaker 3: system or things to just be cautious with. I usually
Speaker 3: print that out for them. And important conversation I also
Speaker 3: have is about domestic safety and emotional health. So this
Speaker 3: part is so important. We will ask gently and privately
Speaker 3: about your safety at home. Unfortunately, pregnancy increases the risk
Speaker 3: of DV. The questions aren't just routine, they're protective. We
Speaker 3: also talk about mental health. So peronatal anxiety is very
Speaker 3: very common and it's a risk factor for postnatal depressions.
Speaker 3: So we catch it early. We can put in those
Speaker 3: supports early and if anything's flagged, will help you access
Speaker 3: the right care. I I'm a bit of a Debbie
Speaker 3: down us. I've been through the miscarriage journey, and even
Speaker 3: as a health professional, I was also a bit annoyed
Speaker 3: that we don't have this conversation that one inful pregnancies
Speaker 3: unfortunately do anti miscarriage. So I think having that conversation
Speaker 3: at that first concert with the doctor saying this may
Speaker 3: not be your story, but I want you to be prepared.
Speaker 3: These are the signs and symptoms to look out for
Speaker 3: ectopic pregnancy. Education of the signs and symptoms to look
Speaker 3: out for. And it's not about, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: ruining the mood and the celebrations, but it's about providing
Speaker 3: them with that information that you know will be really,
Speaker 3: really helpful if it.
Speaker 7: Was to end that way, because we often find ourselves
Speaker 7: when we do experience those things asking why didn't anyone
Speaker 7: tell me about exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll have some antenatal bloods and potentially genetic screening
Speaker 3: if you haven't had that offered, and then we'll plan
Speaker 3: the antenatal journey. We'll talk to you about the options,
Speaker 3: whether you want to go privately or publicly through a
Speaker 3: midwife system or whatever that might look like, and we'll
Speaker 3: put those referrals in place and then we follow you up.
Speaker 1: My gosh, that's.
Speaker 8: A lot, it's a lot.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love those consoles and then obviously the physical
Speaker 3: examination as well, but no, it's a great, great console.
Speaker 3: I love those consultations.
Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to ask.
Speaker 7: You too, because it's something that I did not know
Speaker 7: how to face when I was pregnant, is how do
Speaker 7: you find a good ogbyn or midwife? Like, do you
Speaker 7: need a referral? Can you go and hunt one down
Speaker 7: for yourself?
Speaker 3: So you do need a referral from your GP, which
Speaker 3: is why the GPS your best starting point, and they
Speaker 3: can recommend someone based on your health needs, your location,
Speaker 3: or your birthing preferences. Most mid referee care is available
Speaker 3: through the public systems unless you wanted to go privately
Speaker 3: as well. I find the Facebook Moms group really great
Speaker 3: in terms of recommendations and experiences of obstetricians that they've
Speaker 3: had as well, so that's always a good place to start.
Speaker 3: You can look online, you know, if you've got specific issues,
Speaker 3: like your high risk We've got a twin pregnancy. There
Speaker 3: are also obstetricians that kind of look after those. It's
Speaker 3: all doing a bit of research on your part or
Speaker 3: speaking to your doctor about any preferences that they might have. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so your first port of call and they'll match you
Speaker 3: to the right team for you through your pregnancy journey.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 7: Okay, on the way, we're going to answer a quick
Speaker 7: consult for Tony who's on HRT but she thinks maybe
Speaker 7: it's missing something that most of us think only belongs
Speaker 7: to men. But next we're catching up with Associate Professor
Speaker 7: Kirsten Palmer to talk through all the basics of pregnancy,
Speaker 7: from like bigger feat to blood pressure, the food rules,
Speaker 7: and why medications may not work as well when you're expecting.
Speaker 5: If you want to hear the full episode, Well is
Speaker 5: your full Body Health Check and drops every week on
Speaker 5: a Thursday. We've popped a link in our show notes
Speaker 5: for you to like and follow.
Speaker 6: This episode of Well was brought to you in partnership
Speaker 6: with Clear Blue