Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on Hello, out louders, It's
Speaker 2: me Holly here with your Sunday special drop of out loud.
Speaker 2: This is an episode of Mid that I made in
Speaker 2: Season one of Mid last year. If you haven't listened
Speaker 2: to Med? What have you been doing with your life?
Speaker 2: Conversations for gen X women who are anything? But it
Speaker 2: is with the brilliant Catherine May. When I was making Mid,
Speaker 2: there were a few people I knew I wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to, and one of them was Katherine May because
Speaker 2: one of her books, which is called Wintering, literally changed
Speaker 2: my life. She has also written a book called Enchantment.
Speaker 2: She's a beautiful writer and she has a very interesting
Speaker 2: take on burnout. In this conversation, we dig into what
Speaker 2: burnout really looks like, especially for women in midlife, and
Speaker 2: discuss why a lot of the advice for how to
Speaker 2: not be burnt out anymore has not really been tailored
Speaker 2: to women. Let's just say it tends to involve in
Speaker 2: like get up at four and meditate for an hour
Speaker 2: and like it's just it's ridiculous. It's called the cure
Speaker 2: for burnout is cooked. I really hope you like it,
Speaker 2: and if you do, want to hear more from Catherine
Speaker 2: May and all the other wise women, go subscribe to
Speaker 2: mid For me, the first sign is always reading, as
Speaker 2: in I can't, which is awkward because reading and writing
Speaker 2: and reading and thinking and reading and talking is what
Speaker 2: I do who I am, so when I can't do it,
Speaker 2: I'm cut off from myself. For me, the inability to
Speaker 2: focus on anything longer than a SoundBite is the first
Speaker 2: sign of the disease of our post everything world burnout.
Speaker 2: That might not be the canary in your coal mine Yours.
Speaker 2: Might be sleep that you can't or you can't stop,
Speaker 2: or that, however much you do, you can't seem to recharge,
Speaker 2: or eating that you can't or you can't stop. It
Speaker 2: might be headaches, the eye twitch that keeps showing up,
Speaker 2: a rash, a dizziness that spins you suddenly off balance
Speaker 2: as you step off the bus. It might be your mood,
Speaker 2: a shortness, a low grind of frustration, irritation shifting into
Speaker 2: a fury about how everything just doesn't quite ever so
Speaker 2: slightly work. Is it Perry or the big m yes, probably,
Speaker 2: is it something catastrophic come knocking to up end your life?
Speaker 2: Hopefully not, Hopefully, It's just burnout, just that crushing exhaustion
Speaker 2: and anxious flutter, just that inability to focus, to stop
Speaker 2: the endless sobbing and scrolling and incessant, fritted multitasking, just
Speaker 2: the colds that keep showing up and never really leave,
Speaker 2: and just the gittering stress that keeps you in constant
Speaker 2: motion or glued to your bed. They say burnout is
Speaker 2: the modern disease, and they know what the common cure is,
Speaker 2: slow down, dar But that's easier said, because rest isn't
Speaker 2: real when it's served with the relentless guilt of what
Speaker 2: you should be doing at work, with the pinging and
Speaker 2: the dinging and the sorry to bother you. But at
Speaker 2: home with all the care caring, the actual caring, the
Speaker 2: carrying and wiping and feeding and shopping and cooking, and
Speaker 2: the mental load of caring for anyone, a partner, a parent,
Speaker 2: a host of small people, sick, family, struggling friends, that
Speaker 2: scrolling mental list of what has to happen when, for who?
Speaker 2: How can all that just slow down? I'm asking, of course,
Speaker 2: for a friend. Hello, I'm Holly Wainwright, and this is Mid,
Speaker 2: the show for Generation X women who are anything but
Speaker 2: Today's mid.
Speaker 1: Guest is Catherine May. She's a writer.
Speaker 2: She wrote a book that so many people read during
Speaker 2: those smudgy days of lockdown that it became a massive
Speaker 2: global bestseller and stayed one. It's called Wintering, and she
Speaker 2: wrote it before the word COVID existed. It was all
Speaker 2: about her own experience of understanding a literal need to winter,
Speaker 2: to retreat, and that sometimes a winter can be forced
Speaker 2: on you by circumstance, like an illnes or a recovery,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's a necessary period of time and rest
Speaker 2: and retreat, of pairing life back to the things that
Speaker 2: sustain us. And it's also about literal winter and embracing
Speaker 2: that special kind of shift it gives us, rather than
Speaker 2: only railing against it, waiting for summer to come back
Speaker 2: with a blast. Wintering is a beautiful book, and I'm
Speaker 2: one of many people who found it nourishing during a
Speaker 2: difficult moment. You'll hear my own professional gush about that
Speaker 2: at the beginning of our conversation, and please forgive me,
Speaker 2: but Catherine May is more than Wintering. Of course, her
Speaker 2: most recent book, Enchantment, is about finding beauty and awe
Speaker 2: in every day. She also has a podcast, A Substack
Speaker 2: is a parent and she lives in England by the Sea,
Speaker 2: which is where she was when I spoke to her
Speaker 2: about burnout. I listened to Wintering actually, because one of
Speaker 2: my signs that things are going a bit lopsided for
Speaker 2: me is similar to one of yours.
Speaker 1: It's that I stopped being able to read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yes, and I had just moved two hours
Speaker 2: out of Sydney to the countryside, started anew much longed
Speaker 2: for but still quite discombobulating change.
Speaker 1: We went into lockdown. I'm sure you hear this story all.
Speaker 2: The time, and I would listen to Wintering as I
Speaker 2: was walking our dog around this strange new place we'd
Speaker 2: moved to, and it was literally winter here in New
Speaker 2: South Wales at that time, and it was just so
Speaker 2: profoundly helpful to me.
Speaker 1: Catherine.
Speaker 2: So I know you must get this a lot, but
Speaker 2: I wanted to thank you for helping me reframe that time.
Speaker 2: Instead of thinking I've moved away from my friends, I'm lonely,
Speaker 2: I'm in this strange place. How do I recombobulate I'm
Speaker 2: not able to go out and do all the things
Speaker 2: i'd normally do. Wintering really helped me see it as
Speaker 2: a period of transition and important restoration.
Speaker 1: So thank you for that.
Speaker 3: Well, that makes me really happy to hear.
Speaker 4: I mean, I wrote it because I wanted to give
Speaker 4: that to people who it's delightful.
Speaker 3: But it's kind of worked.
Speaker 2: It definitely has. I've listened to Enchantment too. I actually
Speaker 2: think your books are wonderful for audiobooks, so thank you
Speaker 2: for that. Anyway, I wanted to talk about burnout because
Speaker 2: I think there is something that a lot of women
Speaker 2: listening to this show will be experiencing or have experienced,
Speaker 2: and in Enchantment, you right, that burnout is what happens
Speaker 2: when you repeatedly ignore your own needs.
Speaker 1: I'd love you to talk to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think it is necessarily a very
Speaker 4: modern phenomenon, but we are beginning to understand it as
Speaker 4: a pattern in the lives of people who are self
Speaker 4: identified as busy, let's say, which you know, is something
Speaker 4: that we have learned to put a lot of stock
Speaker 4: in this idea that we are so busy all the time,
Speaker 4: which means that we are in demand and needed, you know,
Speaker 4: which speaks to an anxiety of ours that we're not
Speaker 4: good in. And what that busyness often does is it
Speaker 4: it urges us to not pay attention to really ordinary
Speaker 4: signs of tiredness and exhaustion and jadedness and unhappiness.
Speaker 3: You know, we squash those down.
Speaker 4: Because the busyness, on one hand tells us that they're
Speaker 4: not important, but it also stops us from feeling them.
Speaker 4: We're in such a rush that we kind of gloss
Speaker 4: over the top. And if you pair that with the
Speaker 4: messaging coming from the outside that that busyness is the
Speaker 4: right way to live what you've got, there is a
Speaker 4: kind of gaslighting of ourselves, which then means that the
Speaker 4: true exhaustion happens well after the time that we can
Speaker 4: really do anything about it.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what burnout is.
Speaker 4: It's this kind of combination of psychological and physical exhaustion
Speaker 4: that it's very hard to crawl back out of.
Speaker 2: In a simple way, about experiencing burnout several times in
Speaker 2: several different ways. And one of your symptoms I've read
Speaker 2: about is similar to mine, the fact that it's the inability.
Speaker 1: To read, which is writers.
Speaker 4: It's very awkward, deeply ashamed of that when it comes.
Speaker 2: And you write about distraction too, about needing and wanting
Speaker 2: to go and sit down and work, but you write
Speaker 2: about how you sit at your desk and instead your
Speaker 2: frinner between Instagram and Twitter and the news and Twitter.
Speaker 1: And we've all been there as well.
Speaker 2: What have you learned about those sort of signs of
Speaker 2: that and what helps to bring you back in terms
Speaker 2: of your focus being so fractured.
Speaker 4: I think over the last few years, I've really learned
Speaker 4: to flip over what I think about those moments when
Speaker 4: my attention is really scattered and all over the place,
Speaker 4: because I used to see that as the cause of
Speaker 4: my suffering, and now I see it as a symptom.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I used to think that, oh, my attention isn't good enough,
Speaker 4: and therefore I'm unable to read, and therefore i'm you know,
Speaker 4: or I'm not getting enough out of life, or I'm
Speaker 4: not working hard enough. But actually what they are is
Speaker 4: often like an early signal that I'm very anxious or
Speaker 4: that I'm very overstretched. And when you start to read
Speaker 4: it like that, you know, that flicking between Twitter and
Speaker 4: Instagram and the news, and you know, all of these
Speaker 4: sources of information, you can begin to see them as
Speaker 4: reaching for safety, reaching for some kind of solid ground
Speaker 4: or something that tells you that everything's okay. And the
Speaker 4: problem with those media is that they're never going to
Speaker 4: tell you everything's okay because they're not set up to
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 2: Now, it's not good for their business model to tell
Speaker 2: you that everything's okay.
Speaker 4: It's very good for their business model to keep us
Speaker 4: in this constant state of checking, actually wondering and feeling
Speaker 4: like there's no resolution to anything, and also feeling like
Speaker 4: our response isn't good enough, or getting into conflict over
Speaker 4: those things, and you know, getting into conflicts that are
Speaker 4: really none of our business because they're not about things
Speaker 4: we know anything about. But we're still absorbed in that
Speaker 4: act of conflict anyway. And so we're turning to anxiety
Speaker 4: machines in order to alleviate our anxiety. And it's no
Speaker 4: surprise that we're feeling correctly anxious under the circumstances.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and that that's not going to work.
Speaker 2: So, with all that busyness, all the balls in the air,
Speaker 2: and our plates elves are flowing, how do we find
Speaker 2: the little bits of awe and rest in fact?
Speaker 1: In the day to day. That's next.
Speaker 2: I think to a point in the culture, we've sort
Speaker 2: of internalized that we do know what the cure for
Speaker 2: this is, which is it's meant to be mindfulness, meditation, exercise,
Speaker 2: diet boundaries. But some of those things are just exceptionally
Speaker 2: hard to implement. And there's a moment in Enchantment where
Speaker 2: you were talking about your meditation process and how you've
Speaker 2: at times drifted away from it, and then suddenly you.
Speaker 1: Were like, maybe a man designed.
Speaker 2: This process of me needing to take these two.
Speaker 1: Like time periods of time for me out of the day.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I learned to meditate, Oh goodness
Speaker 4: me about twenty years ago now, And it came up
Speaker 4: even then. You know that this man who was teaching
Speaker 4: a group of mainly women to meditate, had these very
Speaker 4: very firm rules about how it is done. You know,
Speaker 4: it must be twenty minutes twice a day, it must
Speaker 4: be before you've eaten in the morning, it.
Speaker 3: Must be every single day. Blah blah blah, on and
Speaker 3: on and on and on.
Speaker 4: And a woman sitting next to me at the time said,
Speaker 4: you know, what does your wife do when you're doing
Speaker 4: you know, who's looking after your children? And his response
Speaker 4: I think told me everything really at the time, which was, oh,
Speaker 4: she is really behind me meditating.
Speaker 1: I bet she is.
Speaker 3: She is. But you know, I.
Speaker 4: Think we do need to start really thinking about the
Speaker 4: solutions we're being offered, particularly the ones that are telling
Speaker 4: us that we don't have enough discipline or that we're
Speaker 4: not making enough time, because actually our sense of being
Speaker 4: overstretched is genuine. It's not some kind of thing that
Speaker 4: we've confected. And if only we organized ourselves more, we'll
Speaker 4: do it better. And I don't think that's ever more
Speaker 4: clear than in the case of people who are caring
Speaker 4: for somebody else, which so many.
Speaker 3: Of us are.
Speaker 4: We don't get to map our days out like that
Speaker 4: because actually our lives are more about responding to the
Speaker 4: needs of somebody else, and that's a good thing, right.
Speaker 4: We need to be able to do that with our society.
Speaker 4: But we also need to be able to have a
Speaker 4: different conversation about what a kind of a life of
Speaker 4: contemplation or a life with a spiritual dimension is, because
Speaker 4: we can't just step away from those roles in order
Speaker 4: to you know, take a two week you know, meditation
Speaker 4: really it just isn't possible. It's not a mindset issue.
Speaker 4: And therefore we need to start to acknowledge the spiritual
Speaker 4: life or the contemplative life, or the reflective life that's
Speaker 4: found in everyday life, because it is there.
Speaker 3: It's just not honored enough in our culture.
Speaker 2: And you right about finding a lot of that in
Speaker 2: nature as many as many of us do, and walking,
Speaker 2: do you have to work to find the awe in
Speaker 2: every day that's going to reset you? Or is there
Speaker 2: like a listen to me, I sound like I'm asking
Speaker 2: you for hacks, like, but is there.
Speaker 1: Which is which is the antithesis of what we're talking about?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 2: But is it almost become a practice in itself to
Speaker 2: learn to find those moments throughout the day in everyday
Speaker 2: life rather than this, Okay, I'm blocking out.
Speaker 1: You know, I've just done school drop off. Now I've
Speaker 1: got twenty minutes you know you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, why are you how.
Speaker 1: I argue you feed it in?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I am resistant to hacks and that's really because I
Speaker 4: was always looking for hacks until quite recently in my life,
Speaker 4: you know, and they always left me feeling really beref
Speaker 4: because there is no shortcut to.
Speaker 3: Looking after your engagement over the long term.
Speaker 4: You know, there's no one simple trick that you can
Speaker 4: click through to on the internet that will solve this
Speaker 4: for you forever. In many cases, it's about lowering your
Speaker 4: expectation of what you're going to get from these moments
Speaker 4: and allowing yourself to have many small experiences rather than
Speaker 4: one big, expensive, costly chance for lifetime experience. And it's
Speaker 4: also about something very boring, which is repetition and iteration, right,
Speaker 4: and keeping returning, and as part of that like failing
Speaker 4: all the time too, you know, constantly dropping off that
Speaker 4: wagon because things get busy and you've got a sick
Speaker 4: child at home, or you've got you know, an elderly
Speaker 4: parent who's demanding something for you, going back again to
Speaker 4: getting outside after that, repeat, repeat, repeat, For me, that
Speaker 4: is the very boring piece of advice that we don't
Speaker 4: want to hear, but it is the one that works.
Speaker 3: You know, it's going to it as a human being.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because you also have spoken about how back
Speaker 2: to the point about how busyness is almost a status symbol,
Speaker 2: high status in our society. That rest is crucial, but
Speaker 2: rest is not the same as doing nothing.
Speaker 1: You say, yeah, this was very.
Speaker 2: Pertinent during COVID and people were advised to get over it.
Speaker 1: All those things. You've got a rest and people will
Speaker 1: be like, what's rest?
Speaker 2: Like I'm lying in bed, I'm watching TV on my
Speaker 2: phone in bed, you know, Like it's that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: And what have we learned about that kind of restoration?
Speaker 4: Do you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Because I see rest as a change in action. I'm
Speaker 4: very bad at the kind of rest that is simply
Speaker 4: sitting still, like I just I've never been able to
Speaker 4: do it, and I still can't. But what I find
Speaker 4: RESTful instead, just to give an example, is to go
Speaker 4: into my kitchen and cook something that's like a very
Speaker 4: long process.
Speaker 3: You know. Like I talk a lot about love. I
Speaker 3: love pickling things.
Speaker 4: It's just this sort of weird fetish that my entire
Speaker 4: family seems to have. But what I love about that
Speaker 4: is it's not hard. It's not challenging, but it is slow.
Speaker 4: So you know, you have to chop everything up and
Speaker 4: you have to wait for the pot to boil, and
Speaker 4: you have to give it some patience. And while my
Speaker 4: hands are moving, my intention can kind of roam around
Speaker 4: a bit, and I can think, I certainly can't have
Speaker 4: my phone in my hand at that point. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's just one example, but I do think we need
Speaker 4: to reconceptualize rest and to take it away from this idea,
Speaker 4: this link with between rest and laziness. You know, rest
Speaker 4: is this essential part of restoring us back to equilibrium,
Speaker 4: and if we skip that step then we probably are
Speaker 4: doing ourselves harm. But equally, if we only see rest
Speaker 4: as sitting watching the TV, I just don't think that's
Speaker 4: very appealing to loads of us. I don't think we
Speaker 4: can rest like that, and it might not even be
Speaker 4: RESTful because it's not really restoring anything in us.
Speaker 2: This explains why I have become a midlife gardener and
Speaker 2: I have a veggi bed, and I get teased a
Speaker 2: lot by all my call journalist pals in the city
Speaker 2: for my gardening. They're like, no, really, Holly, tell us
Speaker 2: more about your zucchinis and your tomatoes. But I've found,
Speaker 2: possibly like you, is that I'm not very good at
Speaker 2: sitting down and doing nothing either, But I feel just
Speaker 2: remarkably reinvigorated after I've spent some time with my hands
Speaker 2: in the soil. It is absolutely owe to me to
Speaker 2: see a seed turn into a seedling turn into a
Speaker 2: front turn into a plant, like that's it's become. I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe that's sort of my kind of meditation
Speaker 2: in a way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's right. And it's it's this process that
Speaker 4: pulls you back. I mean, presumably nearly every day you
Speaker 4: have to. If you're growing veges, you really do have
Speaker 4: to keep checking back in on them, don't you.
Speaker 3: And I'm a really rubbish gardener.
Speaker 4: Actually, I feel like I should be better at it,
Speaker 4: but I think I probably travel too much and I
Speaker 4: neglect everything.
Speaker 3: But I have got that from owning a dog.
Speaker 4: You know, having been a committed cat person all my life,
Speaker 4: we got a dog because we saw this poor put
Speaker 4: that needed rescuing and we couldn't resist. And you know,
Speaker 4: you have to walk her every day, like that's some
Speaker 4: basic contract you make with your dog. And that's that's
Speaker 4: actually brilliant because it made me realize the number of
Speaker 4: times I actually, despite knowing I love walking, would not
Speaker 4: have walked. I'd have let something else take over. I'd
Speaker 4: I said, oh no, I've got to do this this morning.
Speaker 4: I won't do that for myself, but I will always
Speaker 4: do it for the dog. I have to do it
Speaker 4: for the dog. And she gets really fed up with me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Same in our house. It's it's sort of sacred time talking.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask because your reference there that you're
Speaker 2: traveling a lot, and I think that one of the
Speaker 2: things that people think about burnout and reset and looking
Speaker 2: after yourself is that, well, life goes on and demands
Speaker 2: things of us, and certainly for you. You know, you
Speaker 2: are a best selling author. I'm sure that you are
Speaker 2: invited to do a lot of festivals and tours, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's not like you can just turn off
Speaker 2: and retreat and winter.
Speaker 1: You know, what have you.
Speaker 2: Learnt about how to sort of ride that wave of
Speaker 2: opportunity of doing something you love, which I assume that
Speaker 2: you do, you know, work around your books and your
Speaker 2: podcast and your newsletter and not letting burn out over Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have to actually be quite firm with myself
Speaker 4: and say no to stuff, which is honestly, as an author,
Speaker 4: it's really hard.
Speaker 3: I mean I have been writing since my mid twenties.
Speaker 4: I'm now forty six, she says.
Speaker 3: Counting au frantically. And you know, like.
Speaker 4: I've spent many years with very few opportunities to get
Speaker 4: my work out there, and now I have an abundance
Speaker 4: of it, and I really do have to be very
Speaker 4: selective about what I do, and that means for me
Speaker 4: because my busiest time is over the winter in the UK,
Speaker 4: so not your winter, like you kind of catch me
Speaker 4: at the other end of the seasons.
Speaker 1: But we're just heading into winter.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we're just the days are just warming up
Speaker 4: for us finally after a very long time. But you know,
Speaker 4: like I now have a lot of demand on my
Speaker 4: time over winter. Everybody wants to talk to me. Everyone
Speaker 4: suddenly remembers I exist around about late September, and I
Speaker 4: just see the.
Speaker 3: Huge Arctic in my own box.
Speaker 4: And every year I say to my assistant, it's fine,
Speaker 4: it's a few years after the book's release now and
Speaker 4: they won't happen this year.
Speaker 3: It does, So you know, I do all I hand
Speaker 3: during that time.
Speaker 4: But what I won't do is books several days of
Speaker 4: events back to back. I keep too clear days a
Speaker 4: week in my calendar all year round because I need
Speaker 4: that I can't continually output, and over the summer I
Speaker 4: don't book anything. So July and August, you will not
Speaker 4: get yourself into my calendar unless you make me a
Speaker 4: really tempting offer because I need that break. I need
Speaker 4: that fire break actually, and I think yes, for creative people,
Speaker 4: that's a really important thing to think about, is how
Speaker 4: is the sort of balance between outputting and inputting. The
Speaker 4: temptation is to sort of always output because that seems prettive,
Speaker 4: that seems like visibly productive from the outside. But in
Speaker 4: order to make my work, I need quiet time, I
Speaker 4: need reading, I need thinking, and I need to not
Speaker 4: be hearing stuff from the outside.
Speaker 3: I need to go inwards.
Speaker 4: I've learned to really assert that time doesn't make me
Speaker 4: popular with everyone all the time.
Speaker 3: I say.
Speaker 2: So, if we all understand in theory how important it
Speaker 2: is to rest and recharge, why does it still come
Speaker 2: with a big serve of guilt. How do you stop
Speaker 2: yourself feeling guilty about doing well, nothing or close to nothing.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to talk about next.
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of women, particularly in middle life,
Speaker 2: feel guilty about not maximizing every moment and squeezing every
Speaker 2: bit of productivity.
Speaker 1: Out of the day.
Speaker 2: So we've talked about rest, but how do you deal
Speaker 2: with the guilt that might come alongside that. What have
Speaker 2: you learned about turning that off? Have you had to
Speaker 2: grapple with that yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, grapple with it all the time.
Speaker 4: And you know, the guilt is real and it's not
Speaker 4: easily solved, and there's not much messaging that will ever
Speaker 4: tell you that you shouldn't feel guilty if you're needing
Speaker 4: resources instead of generating resources. What I would say that
Speaker 4: the technique that I've been trying to use for years
Speaker 4: now is to acknowledge that needing other people and to
Speaker 4: keep noticing and to keep trying to accept the need
Speaker 4: to rest in other people, and therefore to then not
Speaker 4: see myself as an exception to that rule. It's not easy, though,
Speaker 4: I mean, I think, you know, we do have this
Speaker 4: desire to be productive and to be generating. The care
Speaker 4: is what puts us at the top of the pile, right,
Speaker 4: It's almost a power move. It's no surprise that we
Speaker 4: feel guilty and mid you know this the conversations that
Speaker 4: we have at a societal level, I think this is structural.
Speaker 4: I don't think this is something for the individual to solve, really,
Speaker 4: But I just hope that the more we talk about
Speaker 4: it collectively, the more we can begin to accept it
Speaker 4: in each other and to create an environment that it's
Speaker 4: much more normal.
Speaker 3: That's all we can really do.
Speaker 2: I think there was another little light bulb for me
Speaker 2: in enchantment was you were talking about during lockdown. But
Speaker 2: I think this is also very relevant to maybe families
Speaker 2: with small children. You were saying that you and your
Speaker 2: partner or spouse had never argued so much, and you
Speaker 2: realized it was because you're in competition for scarce resources,
Speaker 2: the primary of them being time, and that it revealed
Speaker 2: something primal. And that made me realize something about my
Speaker 2: family and many other families I know who are fighting
Speaker 2: about well, if you say yes to that, then I
Speaker 2: can't do this. And if it's this time and that time,
Speaker 2: and if you work in that space, then I can't
Speaker 2: work in that That it is something quite primal. We
Speaker 2: are scrapping over a juicy steak, except it's it is
Speaker 2: literal time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And actually I would say that we're actually.
Speaker 4: Scrapping over what feels like survival to us, because often
Speaker 4: the ability to do our work is connected in our
Speaker 4: minds to you know, being able to eat, being able
Speaker 4: to keep shelter, and yeah, for me, during the lockdown,
Speaker 4: because I've always worked from home as a writer of
Speaker 4: this Ley The first thing that happened was that my
Speaker 4: husband moved next to me onto my desk to do
Speaker 4: his nine to five job, which I found.
Speaker 3: I'm verb.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously relate.
Speaker 4: God he I remember turning to him once, this is
Speaker 4: not my proudest moment, saying, do you know you grunt
Speaker 4: when you type?
Speaker 2: My partner bangs when he types. It's this unbearable, and
Speaker 2: I was like.
Speaker 1: Could you type more quietly? And he's has ever said
Speaker 1: that to me before.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've never had.
Speaker 1: To share a working space with you before.
Speaker 4: I know, it was awful, and I found that I
Speaker 4: because my work is really different. My work's like a
Speaker 4: lot of staring into space and thinking I couldn't think
Speaker 4: with somebody working next to me and taking phone calls,
Speaker 4: and so that meant that I was the one that
Speaker 4: had to do childcare while he was working. And so
Speaker 4: but the logic of that is that my work then
Speaker 4: happened at these really awful edges of the day, like
Speaker 4: getting up at four point thirty in the morning to
Speaker 4: do some work and then working when he finished at five,
Speaker 4: And I felt like I was living this kind of
Speaker 4: borderline existence and it really it really made me think
Speaker 4: about how there is no equality in these moments. It's
Speaker 4: just you're literally scrambling to do what you can. And
Speaker 4: mine was the work that broke the easiest because I
Speaker 4: didn't have an offer that we're trying to, you know.
Speaker 3: Work simultaneously with me.
Speaker 4: It made me realize how fragile creative work is and
Speaker 4: how we don't, Yes, we find it really hard to
Speaker 4: give it the same value as other kinds of work.
Speaker 2: It's so true, and shove it into these little gaps
Speaker 2: that we can find, which actually isn't conducive to deep
Speaker 2: creative work obviously. So I wanted to ask you just
Speaker 2: to touch back on Wintering for a minute. You wrote
Speaker 2: a lot in that book about the necessity of ritual
Speaker 2: and marking chunks of time and passages that I found
Speaker 2: really interesting because in secular societies we've lost a lot
Speaker 2: of those kind of possible ceremonial moments that are like
Speaker 2: the beginning of a season and the end of the
Speaker 2: Why do you think that that is important to us
Speaker 2: to mark different periods of time in our lives and
Speaker 2: what are some examples of ways that you or we
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 4: That well, It's a question that I found so interesting
Speaker 4: that I'm now writing a whole book about I have
Speaker 4: a lot of thoughts, but I think i'd start by
Speaker 4: saying that ritual isn't something that was a big part
Speaker 4: of my life until I wrote Wintering.
Speaker 3: It was something that I felt.
Speaker 4: Very I felt a pulled towards, but I felt very
Speaker 4: awkward about that pull, and I didn't know how to
Speaker 4: express it. I have learned to recognize my need for that,
Speaker 4: and I think I think that that's about us coming
Speaker 4: to terms with the nature of time itself in lots
Speaker 4: of ways. I think what our rituals do is they
Speaker 4: they help us to understand the progress of human life.
Speaker 4: They help us to understand the cycles that are moving
Speaker 4: around us.
Speaker 3: All the time.
Speaker 4: And what they're really about is a constant situating of us,
Speaker 4: of ourselves within these bigger movements over which we have
Speaker 4: no control, and so they're like a moment of agency
Speaker 4: set again vast forces that are that we're tiny in
Speaker 4: the context of. And a lot of us don't do
Speaker 4: anything based on ritual or based on kind of pools
Speaker 4: or contemplation or reflection, because the only route we know
Speaker 4: to it is from kind of things like school assemblies.
Speaker 3: You know, and you know maybe.
Speaker 1: Festival, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Or maybe those people who've walked away from organized religion,
Speaker 4: you know, see that as intrinsic to the thing that
Speaker 4: they walked away from. But I am so interested in
Speaker 4: figuring out how we maintain that ritual life, which I
Speaker 4: think is really fundamental to our humanity, outside of feeling
Speaker 4: like it's about kind of being disciplined or being told
Speaker 4: what to feel and think.
Speaker 1: In the feeling tiny.
Speaker 2: I've heard you say about awe that, and this also
Speaker 2: resonated with me that when you were small and you
Speaker 2: thought about the scale of the universe, but you hated it,
Speaker 2: like it was it's an awful feeling to think of
Speaker 2: how tiny and insignificant you are, and you're like, that
Speaker 2: makes me feel strange. I don't want to think about that,
Speaker 2: But that as you have grown older and wiser perhaps
Speaker 2: or whatever we want to call that, you actually find
Speaker 2: it comforting.
Speaker 1: Why why is that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I just I remember the first time that somebody told
Speaker 4: me that the universe is probably infinite, that feeling so
Speaker 4: deeply unsettled by that, And I think I'm still thinking
Speaker 4: about what that means now. But actually, as an adult,
Speaker 4: I'm really glad to have that burden lifted off me
Speaker 4: of being the center of the world. I mean, I
Speaker 4: feel far too much like the center of my little
Speaker 4: realm already. I feel like everything is contingent on my
Speaker 4: attention and my action all the time. And to step
Speaker 4: outside of that immediate family situation, that immediate friendship group,
Speaker 4: that immediate work situation, and to realize what a kind
Speaker 4: of my new speck I am in a vast first country,
Speaker 4: you know, vast town alone, a vast universe. And you
Speaker 4: know that for me, that's about the practice of humility,
Speaker 4: which I work on in myself A lot is understanding
Speaker 4: how small I am, understanding how insignificant my needs are
Speaker 4: within this wider context, and therefore learning to kind of
Speaker 4: take action knowing that rather than thinking that I have
Speaker 4: to somehow crook claw my way to the top of
Speaker 4: a pile. It's a relief, honestly, it's a relief.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's interesting too, because in another interview I was doing,
Speaker 2: a woman said to me that she had to, as
Speaker 2: we were talking about earlier, say no to a lot
Speaker 2: of things because her mental health was suffering, step out
Speaker 2: of a lot of the responsibilities she had, and she
Speaker 2: thought that she was so central everything would crumble. But
Speaker 2: actually what she found is people stepped in and supported her,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I think that might be something that
Speaker 2: a lot of women who are caring and working and
Speaker 2: working and caring need to hear a bit, you know,
Speaker 2: that we can step away.
Speaker 3: Absolutely am into that.
Speaker 4: The insight that I have to give people over and
Speaker 4: over again from Wintering is that you know, these things
Speaker 4: are not choices, Like if we don't act on our
Speaker 4: sense of burnout, our sense of dislocation, it will visit
Speaker 4: us anyway. You know, we can't infinitely push these things away,
Speaker 4: and it's actually a great privilege sometimes to let ourselves
Speaker 4: be cared for. It's you know, we need to understand
Speaker 4: that care is a cycle and we can't choose to
Speaker 4: only output care. We must also learn to receive care,
Speaker 4: and when we do receive care from other people, despite
Speaker 4: what we been trained to think that it's a weakness
Speaker 4: and that we're, you know, leeching on society somehow. Most
Speaker 4: people who give care for privilege to give it, and
Speaker 4: we must learn to be generous in being vulnerable enough
Speaker 4: to allow people to care for us sometimes because if
Speaker 4: we don't, if we hold all the caregiving to ourselves.
Speaker 4: We're actually being quite selfish and quite self centered. Your
Speaker 4: children are waiting to care for you, Your parents are wanting
Speaker 4: to care for your friends are wanting to give care.
Speaker 4: The big skill is allowing that in and it's hard,
Speaker 4: but it's important to learn.
Speaker 2: You know. I listened back to that conversation with Catherine
Speaker 2: May and it was like everything slowed down.
Speaker 1: Did you hear that?
Speaker 2: It was like the way I talk, so I ask questions,
Speaker 2: of course, the thoughtful way she answers them.
Speaker 1: Now you know that on me.
Speaker 2: I want us to have a variety of conversations, ones
Speaker 2: that energize, ones that help, ones that and this was
Speaker 2: one of those for me, and I hope for you too.
Speaker 2: I hope you're already sending a message to a frazzled
Speaker 2: friend about letting herself be cared for sometimes, or about
Speaker 2: how it's not her fault that she can't meditate twice
Speaker 2: a day every day in the chaos of her life.
Speaker 2: And I hope you're thinking about what rest means to you.
Speaker 2: And then it looks like a lot of different things,
Speaker 2: but it's not selfish or lazy to want it. I
Speaker 2: hope you feel like I do that. I just sipped
Speaker 2: a warm bowl of something. Next week on MID we're
Speaker 2: bringing you something different again, almost the opposite.
Speaker 1: In fact, Helen.
Speaker 2: Thorn is a comedian who's been through a lot in
Speaker 2: her first few years of being mid betrayal, divorce, loss,
Speaker 2: but we're talking about possibly one of the hardest things
Speaker 2: to talk about in public. We're talking about bodies, deep breaths.
Speaker 2: Come and join us on MID next week. Massive thanks
Speaker 2: to my excellent producer, to Elizabeth As and wherever you're
Speaker 2: listening to MID, go give us a like a reviewer share.
Speaker 1: It means a lot about here next week