Speaker 1: Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout
Speaker 1: Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We
Speaker 1: pay our respect to their elders past and present and
Speaker 1: extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander
Speaker 1: peoples today.
Speaker 2: This episode is recorded on Gaddigal Land of the Aurora Nation.
Speaker 1: Hi guys, and.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura
Speaker 2: and I'm Britt, and I just want to say to
Speaker 2: anybody else who is fucking traumatized by watching Dama, I'm
Speaker 2: there with you.
Speaker 1: And by Dama, Laura means the Netflix show that is
Speaker 1: trends at the moment. I'm Jeffrey Darmo.
Speaker 2: It's the worst thing I've ever watched in my entire
Speaker 2: live I have so many feelings. Matt and I put
Speaker 2: on two episodes on Saturday and I'll never recover.
Speaker 1: And you feel bad for I don't even like to
Speaker 1: say the word trending in that sentence because it feels
Speaker 1: like it's the wrong word for what it's about. So
Speaker 1: if you don't know quickly, it's about Jeffrey Dahmer, who
Speaker 1: was a sick, sick man, he was a serial killer
Speaker 1: many many moons ago, but it's re exploring what that
Speaker 1: looked like for him, who he was, what he did,
Speaker 1: the crime, and it was very, very awful. But again
Speaker 1: I hate the word trending. It is trending. It's been
Speaker 1: like one of the most watched netflixes since Squid Games.
Speaker 2: We're squid Games, right, that was like the trending scary
Speaker 2: horror thriller of twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: It's Darma.
Speaker 2: Everyone's talking about it. So many people have watched it.
Speaker 2: It is one of the most downloaded I think it is.
Speaker 2: It is the most downloaded thing on Netflix. Makes me think,
Speaker 2: like how fucked are we? Like, actually, how messed up
Speaker 2: are we as a society that that's.
Speaker 1: What we want to watch.
Speaker 2: Matt may he didn't make me, he didn't like forced
Speaker 2: me down over my eyeballs, but like, we watched the
Speaker 2: first two episodes and I can't watch it, Like it's
Speaker 2: just too much for me. It's too traumatizing, I think
Speaker 2: because it's obviously so based within real life and based
Speaker 2: amongst like what's actually happened that for me, I just
Speaker 2: I cannot believe that somebody could do this and that
Speaker 2: is so much more frightening than a fictional, made up
Speaker 2: squid games based in.
Speaker 1: A country that you know feels very far away from me.
Speaker 1: But I think that's the conversation, right. This is why
Speaker 1: we as a society love it so much, is because
Speaker 1: we can't believe that there is someone that would do this,
Speaker 1: and we don't understand how there could be someone that
Speaker 1: could do this how they go about it. So I
Speaker 1: think that's where the fascination comes from. It's almost like
Speaker 1: it's in another world and another reality. And I think
Speaker 1: I don't think people look at it with these goggles
Speaker 1: on that this actually happened. I think they just sit
Speaker 1: back and are like, this guy's fucking crazy. But it's
Speaker 1: is it crossing this line? Is it crossing this line
Speaker 1: where we're glorifying these people, these horrible serial killers, and
Speaker 1: were almost putting them on a pedestal of look how
Speaker 1: crazy they are.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's glorifying them, but I guess
Speaker 2: the thing that sits uncomfortable with me is like, regardless
Speaker 2: regardless of whether it shines him in the most negative life, obviously,
Speaker 2: it's like it's truly humanly deplorable, like it's unbelievable. But
Speaker 2: it's also been made into a Netflix, Hollywood blockbuster hit, right,
Speaker 2: so we are being entertained. Ultimately, we're being entertained by
Speaker 2: people's immense tragedy. And for me, I think, like, what
Speaker 2: are the families getting out of this? What are the
Speaker 2: victim's families getting out of this? Have they received any
Speaker 2: of the money?
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is a bigger thing for us
Speaker 1: to unpack, and I think we have.
Speaker 2: Actually we've gone super rogue on today's podcast episode and
Speaker 2: we're going to tell you all about it. But I
Speaker 2: would love to unpack this whole situation more, unpack like
Speaker 2: the research behind the family statements that have been made
Speaker 2: since this docu series has come out, because there is
Speaker 2: a lot and I have a lot of feelings.
Speaker 3: Let's hit that on Thursday's episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is something we'll do. But I've I mean,
Speaker 1: like I am one of those people. I've watched it,
Speaker 1: which is strange to me because I couldn't watch the
Speaker 1: Good Games, so it took me like eighteen months to
Speaker 1: watch I only watch Italy.
Speaker 3: Fine.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't understand why everyone's so I
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, I'm traumatized, but it's like I quite
Speaker 2: enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: I was hooked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's so we're so different. But it is
Speaker 1: something we need to unpack because I have I've got
Speaker 1: one I think one more episode left to watch. I will,
Speaker 1: and I want to be clear, I'm not enjoying it
Speaker 1: like I'm I don't watch it because I'm loving it,
Speaker 1: but there's a part of me that needs to see
Speaker 1: it through now, which is a strange feeling. But we're
Speaker 1: going to unpack that my much deeper level on Thursday.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the reason why we're going brogue on
Speaker 1: today's episode is because we have some very exciting news.
Speaker 1: I've been following along the podcast the last few weeks
Speaker 1: or even like the last couple of months, you would
Speaker 1: know that We Love Love, the book that Britta and
Speaker 1: I wrote, it is being released tomorrow. It's finally hitting bookshelves.
Speaker 2: Nervous, it's also a Fox saying saying, I feel so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: It's also for anyone who has placed a pre order
Speaker 2: book purchase, it'll be being sent out to you tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So there are thousands of copies of We Love Love
Speaker 2: which are going to.
Speaker 1: Be in the stratosphere. But what we thought we would
Speaker 1: do is and look, I'm going to say it already,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of tears in this episode.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of discoveries we wanted, you know,
Speaker 2: for anyone who has bought the book or who was
Speaker 2: thinking about it. This episode a little bit of a
Speaker 2: taste test. That's a weird way of putting it, but
Speaker 2: it's a little bit of an insight into what we
Speaker 2: talk about and what is different about the book to
Speaker 2: the podcast, because we do talk about a lot of
Speaker 2: things that are very similar to the topics that we've covered,
Speaker 2: but ultimately, we love Love. The book that we wrote
Speaker 2: together is a book about self love. It's also a
Speaker 2: book about self improvement, self discovery, but also about strengthening
Speaker 2: your own relationships that you have. And there are some
Speaker 2: things that we haven't yet spoken about openly on the
Speaker 2: podcast for various reasons, and this episode gives us an
Speaker 2: opportunity to talk about some of the stories that prior
Speaker 2: to now we didn't feel comfortable sharing.
Speaker 1: I think that is right. I think what you said
Speaker 1: is right. It's a taste tester.
Speaker 3: It's just noble.
Speaker 1: Someone jumps a bit of a breadcrumb from their place.
Speaker 2: So if you've been thinking about buying yourself a copy
Speaker 2: of We Love Love, you can jump onto www dot Life,
Speaker 2: uncutpodcast dot com dot au and there is all the
Speaker 2: links to the book there, so you can get yourself
Speaker 2: a pre order copy before it comes out tomorrow. Now,
Speaker 2: considering we spend so much time talking, it's usually we're
Speaker 2: talking to other people, I think that we've shared a
Speaker 2: lot of our stories on this podcast. Actually we've shared
Speaker 2: ninety nine point nine percent of them. We are known
Speaker 2: to be overshares, yes, but surprisingly there are a lot
Speaker 2: of things in this book that we haven't yet shared
Speaker 2: on the podcast, and we'll kind of get into why
Speaker 2: that's the case. But we thought to kick off this
Speaker 2: part of the episode, we would kind of tell you
Speaker 2: how the whole process of the book came about, when
Speaker 2: it came about, and what that's looked.
Speaker 1: Like, how it happened, why it happened, where it happened,
Speaker 1: Why did it happen? Brittany, God who knows. Now it's
Speaker 1: a I guess a bit over a year, eighteen months
Speaker 1: I think from when we signed the deal. I think
Speaker 1: it's been about twenty months.
Speaker 2: So at the time just to kind of give you
Speaker 2: guys a bit of the timeline about how the process
Speaker 2: will happen, so Penguin, that is through the book is
Speaker 2: published through Penguin Publishers. We have an incredible publisher. Her
Speaker 2: name is Izzy, and I remember we were trying to
Speaker 2: organize a time to have a meeting.
Speaker 3: This meeting that happened.
Speaker 2: We went down to the local cafe and Bondai and
Speaker 2: it was six weeks after Lola was born.
Speaker 1: And a tiny little potato she was. This was a
Speaker 1: tiny little melon. She was like one of those twenty
Speaker 1: five percent less carbs potatoes.
Speaker 2: She was you know, the lit bud life. So you
Speaker 2: might be a sponsor, Okay, So she was a strap
Speaker 2: to the front of me. We sat there and had
Speaker 2: breakfast and we talked through why we wanted to do
Speaker 2: the book and how it would be. This a to
Speaker 2: z of relationships but also self love and I think
Speaker 2: ultimately one of the biggest things that we've spoken about
Speaker 2: on this podcast the running theme, as much as this
Speaker 2: has been largely relationships focus, I think the biggest relationship
Speaker 2: that we have covered over the past couple of years
Speaker 2: is very much the relationship that we have with ourselves
Speaker 2: and that's very much.
Speaker 3: What the ethos of the book comes back to.
Speaker 2: But just going back to this meeting, So here we
Speaker 2: are in the cafe in BONDI six week old Loless
Speaker 2: strapped to me, and I think at the time I
Speaker 2: personally got caught up in the excitement of the possibility
Speaker 2: of writing a book without really understanding how fucking hard
Speaker 2: it was going to be having two kids under the
Speaker 2: age of sixteen months. Because at the time Mary was
Speaker 2: only sixteen months old and I had a newborn, and
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, I can do this book thing.
Speaker 2: Sure turns out I couldn't. We just needed some extensions.
Speaker 2: So that was both of us well. Originally our deadline
Speaker 2: was six months, which looking back now is hilarious, ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Originally there was this grand idea that the book could
Speaker 2: be written in six months, and that kind of came
Speaker 2: from Penguin. I think that was like they were like, look,
Speaker 2: this is kind of how long it normally takes to
Speaker 2: write a book for us.
Speaker 1: It didn't.
Speaker 2: For us. It took eighteen months. And the reason for
Speaker 2: that is not just because there were two kids in
Speaker 2: the mix. There was also the second lockdowns of the
Speaker 2: pandemic brit You spent time overseas, Britt, you went through
Speaker 2: your own huge heartbreak. There were some really big life
Speaker 2: things that happened throughout the process of writing this book.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like it's been a long time coming,
Speaker 1: because we're in discussions for this book, or for a
Speaker 1: book a long time before we press Go with Penguin.
Speaker 1: So I feel like from when we first started discussing it,
Speaker 1: which was a year before we signed, I feel like
Speaker 1: this has been like a three year journey. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's been the longest We've spent as long making
Speaker 1: this book as I've made making children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was harder. Yeah, well in some ways absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I guess one of the things I want to know
Speaker 2: from you, Brett, like what was the why for you?
Speaker 1: Like? Why did you want to write a book? We
Speaker 1: have had like between three hundred and three hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty episodes, A lot of content over the last three
Speaker 1: and a half years. A lot of content we're very
Speaker 1: proud of, a lot of amazing people, amazing topics, a
Speaker 1: lot of education, a lot of laughs, so much. But
Speaker 1: it's gotten to the point where it's so broad and
Speaker 1: it's so big, and there's so many episodes and topics
Speaker 1: floating around that. I thought, imagine if we could just
Speaker 1: culminate it all into one little bible handbook, one little
Speaker 1: go to place where there's a bit of everything, a
Speaker 1: bit of our favorite and most important or hard hitting
Speaker 1: topics in one place. And the reason we decided to
Speaker 1: do it, as the ad to Z, is we didn't
Speaker 1: want well, I mean, like for me looking at it,
Speaker 1: I wanted someone to be able to go and pick
Speaker 1: up this book anytime of the day, not at work,
Speaker 1: on your break whenever, if you're going through something specific
Speaker 1: like a breakup, and just go to the letter or
Speaker 1: to the topic that you're interested in in that moment
Speaker 1: of your life. You don't have to read it from
Speaker 1: front to back. You don't have to sit down with
Speaker 1: a few weeks and just like go hard, remember where
Speaker 1: you are. You just pick it up for whatever you're
Speaker 1: going through at that point in your life. So I
Speaker 1: think that that for us was absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2: I think for me, one of the things is that
Speaker 2: there are some stories that I have never felt comfortable
Speaker 2: sharing on the podcast, and there's multiple reasons for that.
Speaker 2: Some of it is because I struggle to get through
Speaker 2: them without getting emotional, and the other part of it
Speaker 2: is because there's this real fear around being misquoted. And
Speaker 2: I think a lot of us know that something that's
Speaker 2: said verbally, when written down, it can look very different
Speaker 2: or sound very different. We all know this from text messaging,
Speaker 2: that you can misinterpret someone's tone via a text message.
Speaker 2: And I guess for me, I've had this fear around
Speaker 2: some of the stories and how they would be misinterpreted
Speaker 2: by the media and how they could be used as
Speaker 2: a weapon. So we have shared so much of our
Speaker 2: lives over the past couple of years, but there are
Speaker 2: a few stories in the book from myself and from
Speaker 2: my own personal journey that I hadn't been ready to
Speaker 2: share yet.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's something that I've probably feel.
Speaker 3: Most proud of.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we go through things in life and it could
Speaker 1: have been twenty years ago, thirty years ago, I mean.
Speaker 1: And that's something that you talk about, Laura a lot
Speaker 1: in this book, something you haven't spoken about before, and
Speaker 1: that's your childhood. Nothing against your age, but we know
Speaker 1: your childhood was a long time like do the math,
Speaker 1: your childhood was a long time ago, but you haven't
Speaker 1: been ready to talk about that until this point. And
Speaker 1: we're going to get into that, and we're going to
Speaker 1: get into the why. We're going to get into what
Speaker 1: that was like, how that has set off a chain
Speaker 1: reaction for where you are in your life and to adulthood.
Speaker 2: How it's shaped me as a person exactly. So we'll
Speaker 2: get into that.
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, like, I loved reading that. I
Speaker 1: know your story from what you tell me, but it's
Speaker 1: different when you read it from a different perspective. So
Speaker 1: I loved reading that chapter about you, and it was
Speaker 1: very emotional, and I'm an emotional person. I've like a
Speaker 1: crime right now. I don't know, I'm always like deering up.
Speaker 3: But we will get into that.
Speaker 1: But before, I guess, let's go through the process. How
Speaker 1: was this for you, because you who had a.
Speaker 2: Very busy life, Well, I think for me, the process
Speaker 2: was hard. I enjoyed writing parts of it. I enjoyed
Speaker 2: writing different chapters. Some chapters were ultimately harder to write
Speaker 2: than others. And you know, we'll get into what those
Speaker 2: chapters look like. Some of them are light and fluffy
Speaker 2: and silly, and they like reading them back. I had
Speaker 2: a good laugh, and then others. When we had to
Speaker 2: record the audiobook for it, reading the back, I was
Speaker 2: in full blubbering tears, but the actual process itself. So,
Speaker 2: like I mentioned, Lola was only six weeks old when
Speaker 2: we signed the book deal, and I truly underestimated how
Speaker 2: challenging having two kids was going to be. I think
Speaker 2: because I genuinely found the transition to one child rather easy.
Speaker 2: And I hate saying that because I know that everybody
Speaker 2: is different, and I know that a lot of people
Speaker 2: find having one child really challenging. But what I came
Speaker 2: to realize in the last two years is that Maley
Speaker 2: was a really easy baby. I got so lucky with
Speaker 2: Maley in her temperament, in her sleeping, like she really
Speaker 2: was just such a cruisy kid, and I feel like
Speaker 2: I can do this kid thing one hundred percent. That
Speaker 2: makes me realize how fucking arrogant I was without even
Speaker 2: realizing it, Like I guess I was kind of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we've nailed this parenting thing.
Speaker 3: We can have too. And we had.
Speaker 2: Two babies within the space of sixteen months of each other,
Speaker 2: and a miscarriage in that time too. So I was
Speaker 2: pregnant with a second baby when Marley was only five
Speaker 2: months old, and then I got pregnant with Lola like
Speaker 2: the following month.
Speaker 1: So we have had a.
Speaker 2: Lot of like in the last two years, pregnancy has
Speaker 2: just been like it's just there's been so much of it,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's been such a big part of
Speaker 2: my life. But then so has this whole motherhood journey.
Speaker 2: And I think going from one kid to two kids,
Speaker 2: it really rocked me. And part of that was because
Speaker 2: Lola was such a challenging baby.
Speaker 3: She had two defaults.
Speaker 1: She had a.
Speaker 2: Sleep or screaming, and that was it, and that was
Speaker 2: the first sort of three or four months of her life.
Speaker 2: And this was also during a time of COVID. So
Speaker 2: I really think that when I started writing this book,
Speaker 2: I was in a bit of an emotional low because
Speaker 2: I didn't have the support systems around me to help
Speaker 2: with raising children. Matt and I were very much on
Speaker 2: our own during that period, especially during the four months
Speaker 2: of lockdown at the second Lockdown of Sydney, and I
Speaker 2: had this baby who was not easily consoled, like couldn't
Speaker 2: figure out what she wanted. And so I guess for me,
Speaker 2: I had these grand ideas that we would I would
Speaker 2: get the book written while she slept, and I would
Speaker 2: have this like maternity break and write the book, and
Speaker 2: it would be so easy, and you know, I was
Speaker 2: going to nail this motherhood thing. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the things I talk about in the book is that,
Speaker 2: you know, for me, the motherhood journey felt like a
Speaker 2: real failure. In that first year of Lola's life. I
Speaker 2: did not feel like I was kicking goals. Even though
Speaker 2: I'm sure people will look on Instagram and think, like, oh,
Speaker 2: how does Laura juggle all these things? I was truly
Speaker 2: feeling like I was failing at a lot of stuff,
Speaker 2: which is a crazy feeling.
Speaker 1: Not crazy, because I think a lot of people feel that,
Speaker 1: but I think that's very internalized because you were doing
Speaker 1: so much. You were kicking a lot of goals, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of this pressure comes from you yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess I was still kicking goals, but
Speaker 2: I was really really burnt out. So originally our publication
Speaker 2: date was mid of last year, and then it kind
Speaker 2: of got pushed out to the end of last year,
Speaker 2: and then we kind of had to throw all like
Speaker 2: we had to throw it all out of the wagon
Speaker 2: and start again. And then we pushed out to October
Speaker 2: this year, and a lot of that rescheduling came down
Speaker 2: to me and me not being able to manage all
Speaker 2: of the things that I'd put on my plate. And
Speaker 2: I guess that was a huge learning curve for me
Speaker 2: that it's okay to sometimes have to reassess, reset, and
Speaker 2: put yourself first, because otherwise you might make it to
Speaker 2: the finish line, but you will be so burnt out
Speaker 2: by the time you get there that it's just not
Speaker 2: worth it.
Speaker 1: And it's about being realistic with yourself too. Like you
Speaker 1: can have big dreams and you can say, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to kick these goals, I want to work hard,
Speaker 1: I want to tick the boxes, but sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to be realistic that it's physically not going to get done.
Speaker 1: There is no way that you can do it. And
Speaker 1: that's what we went through over that time. And I
Speaker 1: had points where I cannot even tell you why, but
Speaker 1: I had such low points that I would open my
Speaker 1: computer and I had the page open to start writing.
Speaker 3: It'd be like a.
Speaker 1: Movie, you know how when you've got your cursor and
Speaker 1: it's like dotting along waiting for you to type your
Speaker 1: first word. And I was in a pretty good place
Speaker 1: when we started then. I mean, we spoken about this
Speaker 1: I started the book in love like so happy, and
Speaker 1: I finish the book going through like the worst breakup
Speaker 1: of my life and like the lowest point of my
Speaker 1: entire life. I still can't talk bad without crying, which
Speaker 1: I'm going to do right now. That it was really like,
Speaker 1: it was really hard to write because you have to
Speaker 1: go back. By the time I got to the point
Speaker 1: where we had broken up, I had to go back
Speaker 1: and change things, and a lot of it when I
Speaker 1: was rereading it was like talking about how happy I was.
Speaker 1: I'm like talking about my penguin and like, so it
Speaker 1: was really hard to go back and like relive that
Speaker 1: and rewrite it. So that was, yeah, big process for me. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't talk right now. Did you.
Speaker 2: Mean guys like we, I mean, we are so grateful
Speaker 2: for all of you who have kind of followed along
Speaker 2: the journey of the past three years, and this is
Speaker 2: so much like this book is so much a culmination
Speaker 2: of that. It's the process. It's lessons that we've learned.
Speaker 2: And I guess for you, Brit, BRIT's like sitting here
Speaker 2: with tearsl hell, But for like, a big part of
Speaker 2: that was going through this breakup. And I think, like
Speaker 2: you know this for you, And I don't want to
Speaker 2: speak on your behalf because you're very very capable for
Speaker 2: speaking for yourself.
Speaker 3: But when I can't because I'm crying.
Speaker 2: But like, it's that feeling of starting again when you
Speaker 2: thought that you had you had your life planned out,
Speaker 2: you had this idea of what you wanted and where
Speaker 2: things were heading, and then not only did you have
Speaker 2: an idea, but you had to go back and reread
Speaker 2: those chapters and it makes you almost think like, am
Speaker 2: I silly for thinking that that's where my life was heading?
Speaker 2: Am I silly for having those feelings when I didn't
Speaker 2: result in anything?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's because I wrote it over a year,
Speaker 1: you almost forgot what you wrote. So when you go
Speaker 1: back to those happiness chapters, it just like hits. It
Speaker 1: was a real reminder of like, oh, you're not happy anymore,
Speaker 1: Like you remember how you felt that once in the
Speaker 1: last decade, Like you don't have that anymore. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just like a reliving chapter, I guess, which
Speaker 1: you know we both did that a few times. That
Speaker 1: was obviously a big one for me, but I know
Speaker 1: you had to relive a lot too. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you felt the same, and I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a therapy Session's quite cathartic to
Speaker 1: get a lot of this stuff out, Like, sure, you
Speaker 1: have to relive it, but I guess as a part
Speaker 1: of reliving.
Speaker 2: It that helps you move forward, like putting a conclusion
Speaker 2: to the full stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, look how much I've moved on. I'm fine.
Speaker 3: Ever, reading's fine, the flory lover.
Speaker 1: Okay, well let's get into some stuff that's not gonna
Speaker 1: make us cry. We'll do that later.
Speaker 2: So we have both I have written some questions for
Speaker 2: Britt about some of the parts and the chapters that
Speaker 2: she wrote in the book that I found the most
Speaker 2: interesting or the things that I think you guys may
Speaker 2: not have heard before. And BRIT's done the exact same.
Speaker 2: So we don't know each other's questions or what we're
Speaker 2: gonna ask, but this is an insight into some of
Speaker 2: the stories, maybe some of the untold stories that are
Speaker 2: inside the book.
Speaker 1: I will kick it off. So in the book, Laura,
Speaker 1: you share a really great story about quitting and why
Speaker 1: we see quitting as a failure. This was all around
Speaker 1: your postgraduate degree because you did go to UNI. If
Speaker 1: anyone doesn't know Laura didn't go to UNI university degree,
Speaker 1: God damn it. Yeah, but can you share why failure
Speaker 1: in quitting is so formity for you?
Speaker 3: So okay, I love that you started with this. Let's
Speaker 3: start with the education. Okay.
Speaker 2: I love that you started with this and didn't throw
Speaker 2: me in the deep end. So the story around quitting, okay.
Speaker 2: So for me, I think I learned a huge lesson
Speaker 2: when I was in my early well probably my mid
Speaker 2: twenties around why quitting doesn't have to be just seen
Speaker 2: as a failure. I've always been someone who doesn't want
Speaker 2: to disappoint people, Like if I'm not winning, then I'm failing.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of how I used to look at life.
Speaker 2: You're not first your last. Yeah, if you're not first,
Speaker 2: your last. And I think that there was definitely pressures
Speaker 2: on me as a kid to kind of and not
Speaker 2: in a way that you would expect.
Speaker 3: Like my mum wasn't like you need to be a winner.
Speaker 2: But like we were all super competitive at sport when
Speaker 2: we were kids. My sister was almost an Olympian for
Speaker 2: gymnastics before she had a terrible car accident. And me myself,
Speaker 2: like I was up at five point thirty am every
Speaker 2: day for swimming, and then I went to swimming training
Speaker 2: every afternoon. It was swimming carnivals every weekend. So this
Speaker 2: like real militant style of success was kind of drilled
Speaker 2: into us from a young age. And I did finance
Speaker 2: at university in Woollongong, and you know, like people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: fine art, such a cushy degree. But like I was
Speaker 2: in the Golden Key Society within the first year of UNI.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know any of the words you're saying.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what finance is. I don't know
Speaker 1: the Golden Keys. It's like a Willy wontgard Do I
Speaker 1: get something at the end.
Speaker 2: The Golden Key Society is a university society where only
Speaker 2: the top five percentile of any like so you have
Speaker 2: to have gotten basically a HD average, want to get it,
Speaker 2: heard of it, you know, And I'm not that is
Speaker 2: not me, Like I am not this acutely academic person.
Speaker 2: But if I wasn't the top of my class, I
Speaker 2: thought that I was failing. Like if I was very
Speaker 2: much like peas do not equal degrees. It was like
Speaker 2: you had to be the top. You need the Golden Key,
Speaker 2: you needed the golden key. I don't have it any more,
Speaker 2: trust me. I didn't have it in second year UNI,
Speaker 2: but first UNI I did. So I graduated from UNI,
Speaker 2: and then I went and I studied my postgraduate degree.
Speaker 2: But I moved up to Lismore because I was desperately
Speaker 2: in love with a guy, and I've spoken about him
Speaker 2: loads on the podcast. I moved up to more the
Speaker 2: only thing that I had to do there was I
Speaker 2: had no job, I had no nothing. So I was like, well,
Speaker 2: look I'll extend my education and I'll go and do
Speaker 2: a postgraduate degree. And I fucking hated it. I hated
Speaker 2: everything about being there. I mean, I had no friends,
Speaker 2: My relationship was like total in the pits. And then
Speaker 2: I was doing this degree that I did not like,
Speaker 2: and I felt like I was failing at it. But
Speaker 2: the idea of quitting a postgraduate degree when I was
Speaker 2: already so close to the finish line seemed like that
Speaker 2: wasn't an option either. You know, I was already paying
Speaker 2: for it. Yeah, I'd already invested so much time in it.
Speaker 2: And I remember how sad I was at that point
Speaker 2: in my life. And I went and I had a
Speaker 2: conversation with one of the career advisors at the university,
Speaker 2: and I went in and I was like, look, I
Speaker 2: really hate the degree, but I've got eight weeks left
Speaker 2: until until I handed my thesis, which I hadn't even
Speaker 2: really written. I was like, I don't really know what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do with this degree, but I feel
Speaker 2: like I have to finish it. And I remember this
Speaker 2: career planner. She was like a woman in her i'd
Speaker 2: say mid sixties. She was sitting there with this like
Speaker 2: right floral single it on. She was like, look, if
Speaker 2: you hate this degree so much, if you hate what
Speaker 2: you're doing so much, the likelihood is is that you're
Speaker 2: going to hate a career in what it is that
Speaker 2: you're studying. And she was like, so why would you
Speaker 2: invest any more time in something that makes you so unhappy?
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, because I've only got eight
Speaker 2: weeks left and it's a postgraduate degree, and she was like,
Speaker 2: it means nothing. And so the idea of just quitting
Speaker 2: university and being a postgraduate dropout seemed like such a
Speaker 2: monumental failure. And I went home that night and I
Speaker 2: was like, fuck, is that what I'm going to do?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Am I going to be am? I? Going to be
Speaker 2: a postgraduate dropout, Like, what does that then mean for
Speaker 2: my career? What does that mean then for who I
Speaker 2: am as a person? And I did the next day
Speaker 2: I unenrolled from university. I didn't break up with my
Speaker 2: boyfriend at the time, but I said, I'm packing up
Speaker 2: my stuff and I'm going to move back down to
Speaker 2: Wollongong and try and figure out what I want for myself.
Speaker 2: And the thing the reason why that that is such
Speaker 2: a huge story for me, and it probably doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like a big deal, but I had always been on
Speaker 2: this very clear path in terms of I wanted to
Speaker 2: work in an academic sense around fine arts, like I
Speaker 2: wanted to work as a curator in art galleries, and
Speaker 2: that's what I thought my future was going to be.
Speaker 2: And then I quit this degree which would have led
Speaker 2: me onto that career path. And then that is how
Speaker 2: I ended up starting Tony May because I had so
Speaker 2: much time to put into this hobby that I had,
Speaker 2: which was like my side project, and I realized how
Speaker 2: much I loved it. And then after I quit, I
Speaker 2: was surrounded by people who were doing similar things to me,
Speaker 2: and it was only through that process that I kind
Speaker 2: of realized or maybe maybe this is something I could
Speaker 2: do and I could be And so it was this
Speaker 2: quitting that actually set me on the right path of
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do with my life.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I used to be exactly the same
Speaker 1: when you're even saying that story. I was like, if
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just finish the two months like you've done,
Speaker 1: You've done the study.
Speaker 2: That's that's what everyone That's what my family, that's what
Speaker 2: everyone said. Everyone was like, why wouldn't you just finish it?
Speaker 1: It's eight weeks. Well, I was exactly the same. So
Speaker 1: the old me would have said that I was about
Speaker 1: seven months in or eight months into a master's degree
Speaker 1: in ultra scenography. That's what I was doing. I was
Speaker 1: the same thing. And that's because the next step right,
Speaker 1: I was like, I got a position. I got into
Speaker 1: a great university. So I was like, cool, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do my master's in ultrastnography. I hated every single second,
Speaker 1: like I did not want to go to work anymore
Speaker 1: at all, and I loved working in emergency, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't for me. But I was like, it's better money,
Speaker 1: it's the natural career progression. I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I ended up quitting as well, and I don't quit
Speaker 1: anything either, but it was the best thing that I
Speaker 1: did because I was like, I am never I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I was like, if I have to go to work
Speaker 1: and do this every day in my life, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be big problems personally. So and the best thing I
Speaker 1: did in that situation too was was pull walk away
Speaker 1: for the pen.
Speaker 2: The reason why I think this was such a formative
Speaker 2: part of my life, like, not only did it put
Speaker 2: me on the trajectory of being a small business owner,
Speaker 2: but I look at this in terms of relationships, and
Speaker 2: I know that this is something that you and I
Speaker 2: have spoken about, Britt, But it's like, sometimes you think
Speaker 2: that you've invested so much time in something, so much
Speaker 2: time into a job, or so much time into a relationship,
Speaker 2: that you're so far deep that the idea of starting again,
Speaker 2: like you're not going to start again because you the
Speaker 2: investment of time is more important. And I think ultimately
Speaker 2: it doesn't really matter how much time you have spent
Speaker 2: on something if you are unhappy, starting again gives you
Speaker 2: the opportunity for happiness, and that for me, you know,
Speaker 2: I was twenty five, and I was thinking that that
Speaker 2: was the end of the road. I was like, that's
Speaker 2: I got to do this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I was five years of invested time in
Speaker 2: my education. But now I'm thirteen years into being a
Speaker 2: small business owner.
Speaker 1: It's the best fucking decision I ever made with my life.
Speaker 1: And it's like what we're going on a tangent here,
Speaker 1: but it's just like the We've said it before. You're
Speaker 1: never too old to do anything, to start again, you know,
Speaker 1: like this, Oh my god, you said I'm twenty five.
Speaker 1: How could I you know, you think it's the end
Speaker 1: of the road, like you're your oldest person. I remember
Speaker 1: when I wanted to go to acting school. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty five, and I was like, no one's ever
Speaker 1: going to hire me for a job. I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: like I'm over the heel because you look at Hollywood
Speaker 1: you think that they're like seventeen. Until I met someone
Speaker 1: that was like are you kidding, Like, like, don't go
Speaker 1: for any other reason that you have a passion and
Speaker 1: you want to have some fun. And the best thing
Speaker 1: I did. You're never ever too old to ever do anything.
Speaker 2: But I think like in that, I think the big
Speaker 2: thing is you don't have to just do something because
Speaker 2: you think you're going to be a winner at it.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't have to just do acting because
Speaker 2: you think you're going to be a Hollywood superstar. You
Speaker 2: do something because you love it. Well, I never did
Speaker 2: anything with it.
Speaker 1: I've not had so much fun.
Speaker 2: And that's what I mean, you know, Like I think
Speaker 2: often we limit ourselves because we think, well, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do that. I'm not going to try that
Speaker 2: thing because I'm not going to be any good at it,
Speaker 2: or it's not going to eventuate into anything. And maybe
Speaker 2: it won't eventuate into something, but maybe you'll meet new
Speaker 2: friends or you'll have new opportunities that come off the.
Speaker 3: Back of it.
Speaker 2: And like for me, starting my business has it has
Speaker 2: changed everything about my life. It has changed the people
Speaker 2: that I'm friends with, the things that I do. It's
Speaker 2: literally the reason why I went on The Bachelor, because
Speaker 2: I had a work life that was flexible. It truly
Speaker 2: just has changed my life in so many ways.
Speaker 1: In the second chapter, you do take a more personal,
Speaker 1: very serious turn in the book and you talk about
Speaker 1: attachment styles and it's a very personal look back at
Speaker 1: your childhood and I guess how attachment styles affected you.
Speaker 1: Do you want to touch on why you found that
Speaker 1: so important to talk about.
Speaker 2: Well, we did it an episode on attachment styles Lidia
Speaker 2: year or the year before, who even knows who's counting,
Speaker 2: but it was do you know when I came across
Speaker 2: attachment stars as a theory, it was almost for me
Speaker 2: like someone had turned the lights on, like the penny dropped.
Speaker 3: And I feel like when we did.
Speaker 2: That episode, I was very reserved in actually explaining why
Speaker 2: that was so profound for me. And a big part
Speaker 2: of that is because you know, I have so many
Speaker 2: amazing memories from my childhood and I have so much
Speaker 2: love for my parents, but I also had a very
Speaker 2: complicated childhood in a lot of ways. So something that
Speaker 2: I haven't spoken about, but I go into more detail
Speaker 2: in the book is that my mum.
Speaker 1: So I have my sister, who.
Speaker 2: A lot of you would be aware of, But I
Speaker 2: also have a brother, and he's nine years younger than me,
Speaker 2: and he has a different dad to me, but we
Speaker 2: grew up all in the same household and we're all
Speaker 2: really close. My brother moved to Boston five years ago
Speaker 2: and that's kind of why he never features on my
Speaker 2: Instagram because he's not in the country. So when I
Speaker 2: was three, my parents it's got divorced, and then a
Speaker 2: couple of years later, my mum met my stepdad who
Speaker 2: she married, and Alex was a really violent person. It
Speaker 2: was a really really hard time in our life. He
Speaker 2: was a heroin addict and he was super abusive to
Speaker 2: my mom and also to ask kids, and I have
Speaker 2: memories of big fights and him ripping the phone out
Speaker 2: of the walls and breaking the phone line so that
Speaker 2: you know, thinking like no one's coming to help us, which.
Speaker 1: Is so so horrible and such a control and a
Speaker 1: it's supposed to induce fear, and I'm sure it did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess that that's like for us, Like
Speaker 2: it's one of the big reasons why we've we've really
Speaker 2: advocated for domestic files on this podcast. That's kind of
Speaker 2: been not just because of my own personal experience, but
Speaker 2: you know, there's some lived experience of that, and I
Speaker 2: think I've always been a bit worried about talking about
Speaker 2: it because I hate the way that it paints my
Speaker 2: mum as well. Like I always kind of thought, like, oh,
Speaker 2: people will maybe judge her because she chose to be
Speaker 2: in a reallylationship with someone who had so many issues
Speaker 2: and was such like a crappy.
Speaker 1: Person to be around.
Speaker 2: Truly, But I guess over the years and that's been
Speaker 2: a huge learning curve for me, is like, I have
Speaker 2: no animosity towards my mum at all, you know, But
Speaker 2: I guess growing up personally in my relationships, and you
Speaker 2: guys know, I've been super honest about my relationships.
Speaker 1: I had some.
Speaker 2: Really flawed, problematic lots of cheating. I monkey branch from
Speaker 2: one relationship to a next. I always I was super codependent.
Speaker 2: I always wanted to be loved and thought that I
Speaker 2: needed to be in a relationship to be validated. But
Speaker 2: the funny thing is for me is like I never
Speaker 2: because I'm so stubborn, I never ever looked at my
Speaker 2: childhood as having an impact on me as an adult.
Speaker 2: I actually wore it as like a real badge of
Speaker 2: honor that I was like, yes, I had, we went
Speaker 2: through some bad stuff, but it has not impacted who
Speaker 2: I am. And I loved that I felt so self
Speaker 2: assured as an adult that I was like, I'm better
Speaker 2: than that. I'm not going to be impacted by that,
Speaker 2: and I guess when I came across attachment style it
Speaker 2: made me have a bit of a different understanding around
Speaker 2: that period of my life. And it's as much as
Speaker 2: I do feel like I have a really great perspective
Speaker 2: around that period, I don't feel defined by it.
Speaker 1: I don't sit in my room and.
Speaker 2: Think about that at all anymore, you know, But I
Speaker 2: do think in a lot of ways, it impacted the
Speaker 2: way that I dated, and it impacted the way and
Speaker 2: the types of people and the types of relationships that
Speaker 2: I chose, and not just the types of relationships that
Speaker 2: I chose, but it also impacted my want to stay.
Speaker 2: So I would get into quite crappy relationships, but I
Speaker 2: would fucking hang on for tooth and nail for as
Speaker 2: long as possible. I would ride that relationship into the ground.
Speaker 2: Looking at attachment styles made me realize that, you know,
Speaker 2: my parents modeled some really unhealthy behavior around relationships when
Speaker 2: I was a child, and that was my blueprint. That
Speaker 2: was my blueprint for what relationships looked like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember you had a really big aha moment
Speaker 1: when we did attachment styles. Maybe you came in ready
Speaker 1: with all your prep and you're like, oh, I have
Speaker 1: just figured so much. I have explained everyone.
Speaker 2: I was like, I've got some fucking junk, and like,
Speaker 2: let me make this very very clear, and I say
Speaker 2: this in the book as well, like, I hold no
Speaker 2: blame for my parents at all. You know, they did
Speaker 2: the best that they could with the tools that they
Speaker 2: had at the time. And I don't think that my
Speaker 2: parents are responsible for any of the choices that I
Speaker 2: made in relationships whatsoever. But to say that my childhood
Speaker 2: has had no impact on the way that I have
Speaker 2: had my relationships throughout my life, I would think that
Speaker 2: that would be dismissive of the childhood that we had.
Speaker 1: And we know now as adults ourselves, with the amount
Speaker 1: of research we've done, people we've spoken to in the
Speaker 1: space of domestic violence, we know it's not as easy
Speaker 1: now as saying, you know, why did you know? If
Speaker 1: someone's not going to look at you and say why
Speaker 1: did you mum? Stay? We know now it's not easy
Speaker 1: to stay for those situations, and she was probably doing
Speaker 1: what she thought was the right thing at the time.
Speaker 1: She might not have been able to leave. We know,
Speaker 1: we know that there are so many situations like that now.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a very mature response for you
Speaker 1: to be able to say that you understand the situation
Speaker 1: a lot more now, and you don't hold any animosity
Speaker 1: towards your parents.
Speaker 2: No, And I don't think I ever really held animosity
Speaker 2: towards my parents, Like I mean I did against my
Speaker 2: stepdad absolutely, but not towards my like, not towards my
Speaker 2: mum at all, or not to no one. And I
Speaker 2: had the most incredible grandparents growing up, Like they were
Speaker 2: the absolute pillar and backbone of our family. They modeled
Speaker 2: what great and healthy relationships should look like. It wasn't
Speaker 2: like I was completely devoid of that, Like I had
Speaker 2: so much love in my life as a child. We
Speaker 2: just went through this really complicated period of life that
Speaker 2: we kind of all packaged up, put in the box
Speaker 2: and shoved in the cupboard, and no one really ever
Speaker 2: talks about it because.
Speaker 1: You never do. You don't open it till you have
Speaker 1: to move, like twenty years later, and you're like, ah, shit.
Speaker 2: But we had to open that box for the book.
Speaker 2: My mom and I. She came over for dinner this
Speaker 2: one night and we sat down and we shared a
Speaker 2: few bottles of wine and I let her read it beforehand,
Speaker 2: because I wanted her to be sure that she was okay,
Speaker 2: because it's not just my story to share, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's my sisters, it's my brothers, and it's my
Speaker 2: mom's and she read through everything.
Speaker 1: And so why do you think? Why did now I
Speaker 1: feel like the right time? Because we are three God,
Speaker 1: I've got to be nearly four years, three and a
Speaker 1: half years deep into this podcast and a lot of episodes.
Speaker 1: What within yourself for the podcast or life made you
Speaker 1: feel like now's the time you could talk about it.
Speaker 2: It wasn't so much the readiness of now that it
Speaker 2: was the format. I think having a book meant that
Speaker 2: I could be meticulous with the way that I said something,
Speaker 2: and because it was already written, even if someone was
Speaker 2: to take a part of that and repurpose it, I
Speaker 2: couldn't be misquoted.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: They could definitely truncate and take a little bit of
Speaker 2: what I'd said. But I was like, at least it's there,
Speaker 2: and I can prove that it's there, and I don't
Speaker 2: have to go back through podcast audio and be like,
Speaker 2: but this is what I said and this is how
Speaker 2: I said it.
Speaker 1: And I think as.
Speaker 2: Well, like over the past couple of years, we have
Speaker 2: grown such thick skin in terms of like how things
Speaker 2: are interpreted and how things are written about. And I
Speaker 2: just know that we have an incredible community around us
Speaker 2: now and know how much attachment styles really really changed
Speaker 2: the way I look at relationships. And I hope that
Speaker 2: for somebody else who maybe has also had a complicated
Speaker 2: upbringing where they didn't have those foundations for like what
Speaker 2: a beautiful blue print of a relationship is, and they've
Speaker 2: kind of been blaming themselves along the way, I hope
Speaker 2: that somebody else has the same revelation that I did.
Speaker 1: I want to move on to another really hard chapter
Speaker 1: of you, so like we may as well as a
Speaker 1: package them together, because then we can move on to
Speaker 1: some nice stuff. But you've spoken on the podcast before
Speaker 1: about your miscarriages and your child loss. I guess you've
Speaker 1: spoken about it quite a few times really openly, and
Speaker 1: you've helped a lot of people in that sense. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of people right to ours or stops
Speaker 1: on the street and say that that was a chapter
Speaker 1: that you know, they that happened to me. Actually I
Speaker 1: didn't tell it yet. It happened to me a couple
Speaker 1: of days ago someone said that they had just gone
Speaker 1: through I was actually at lunch with her and then
Speaker 1: she said she's just experienced a miscarriage and that she
Speaker 1: went back and listened to the episode where you spoke
Speaker 1: about it and that it really helped her. So that's
Speaker 1: been like huge, huge, And I just want to say
Speaker 1: as well, like those we've done two episodes and pregnancy
Speaker 1: loss now, both of them came after my own pregnancy losses.
Speaker 2: They are truly the episodes I am most proud of.
Speaker 2: And it's because I know that for so many other
Speaker 2: women who have been and felt the same way that
Speaker 2: I felt. And it's not because there's anything that's special
Speaker 2: about my pregnancy loss stories like their early pregnancy loss.
Speaker 2: They're not this huge traumatic suffering. They're just very everyday losses,
Speaker 2: and I think it happens so frequently, and then for
Speaker 2: other people who have experienced it, having someone put it
Speaker 2: into words the way that they felt makes people feel
Speaker 2: a little bit less alone. And every single person who's
Speaker 2: ever written to me, and there's too many to write
Speaker 2: back to, every single one, but every single person who
Speaker 2: stopped me and said that they're grateful for it, Like
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful that it's given something back to them
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Well. One thing that you have only just briefly mentioned,
Speaker 1: and that was recently we spoke about the Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade and the abortion laws that happening in America right now,
Speaker 1: and you, for the first time did mention that in
Speaker 1: your early twenties you had an abortion. That is something
Speaker 1: that you haven't ever spoken about on the podcast. You
Speaker 1: do speak about it in the book. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much you want to talk about now, but why
Speaker 1: did you decide to discuss that now? Did you just
Speaker 1: feel like everything it was very timely with everything happening
Speaker 1: in the world right now.
Speaker 2: That was also a really big chapter to write, and
Speaker 2: mostly because I had not really told anyone in my
Speaker 2: personal life, like Matt nw obviously the guy who I knew,
Speaker 2: But you know, they don't always because and I say
Speaker 2: that as though that that's an assumption, it's actually not.
Speaker 2: You know that often women will choose to have an
Speaker 2: abortion and not tell the guy. And that's that's completely fine.
Speaker 2: That ONNUS is on you and your Body. I spoke
Speaker 2: about abortion in the chapter that we wrote on Timelines,
Speaker 2: and I think it's interesting because I think often we
Speaker 2: talk about timelines from a different perspective. And we have
Speaker 2: on this podcast before we talk about it in terms
Speaker 2: of society's timelines and the pressure on women to settle
Speaker 2: down and have babies and get married. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about timelines from a different perspective, and that
Speaker 2: was that when I was in my early twenties, I
Speaker 2: felt pregnant, and the timeline of having a baby in
Speaker 2: my early twenties, when I wasn't ready, when I wasn't emotionally, mentally,
Speaker 2: financially ready to have a child, it just wasn't what
Speaker 2: I could possibly do, and I chose to have an abortion.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think that we talk about abortion
Speaker 2: a lot in terms of like, if you have one,
Speaker 2: you'll regret it, that you will come to have feelings
Speaker 2: of regret. And for me, I didn't have feelings of regret.
Speaker 2: I had feelings of relief. And I wanted to talk
Speaker 2: about that in the book. But I also wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about how when I did get pregnant before Marley,
Speaker 2: when I did have my first miscarriage, that miscarriage was
Speaker 2: absolutely loaded with guilt because I felt like I was
Speaker 2: being punished for having an abortion in my early twenties.
Speaker 2: I thought it was like karm Well, yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: that that was my payback. And I think that that
Speaker 2: magnified the pain of that miscarriage because I thought, this
Speaker 2: is the reason, and you will never ever have kids.
Speaker 2: And I guess I wanted to include that in the
Speaker 2: book Fanny women who maybe in the same situation, because
Speaker 2: it's not payback, it's not klma. Sometimes shit just happens
Speaker 2: in life. There isn't a reason for it, and you
Speaker 2: don't have to always try and find reason, you know. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: I do have two children, and they are beautiful, wonderful.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful for the life that I have, but
Speaker 2: I know that I would not be the mother I
Speaker 2: am today had I had a child in my early twenties,
Speaker 2: and there will be people who judge me for that decision.
Speaker 2: And I'm okay with that now in my late thirties.
Speaker 2: But it was a hard decision that I made at
Speaker 2: the time, which has allowed me to have the life
Speaker 2: that I have now.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I asked you about those two because
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that they were the two most difficult chapters
Speaker 1: for you, all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that probably the abortion chapter was the
Speaker 2: most difficult, and it was purely because I knew that
Speaker 2: I would have to have conversations with my family about it,
Speaker 2: and like especially my mom, who that goes against her
Speaker 2: beliefs and what she would have wanted. So that was
Speaker 2: a bit of a revelation for her when we did
Speaker 2: have our wind up night, and I think she also
Speaker 2: was sad that I couldn't talk to her about it
Speaker 2: when I was in my twenties. I think that there
Speaker 2: was this feeling of like a missed opportunity to connect
Speaker 2: with me as her daughter, and that she was only
Speaker 2: finding that out when you know, I am now a
Speaker 2: mother of two kids in my thirties. I think she
Speaker 2: really felt like that that was something that I should
Speaker 2: have spoken.
Speaker 3: To her about.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad that, you know, I'm glad to at
Speaker 2: some point our lives we've got to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure there's a level as a parent where
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, my child didn't feel like they could
Speaker 1: tell me that at that time. And I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: an aspect of that for her where she's not going
Speaker 1: to hold against you or judged you, but in herself
Speaker 1: there's probably a little tiny part of her that's like, wow,
Speaker 1: I failed a little bit because my daughter didn't think
Speaker 1: that she could come to me. Let's talk about something
Speaker 1: a little bit more upbeat.
Speaker 3: What was what was your favorite that's like the hardest. Okay,
Speaker 3: we've got like the hardest stuff in the book out
Speaker 3: of the way.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I don't want to ask anything else
Speaker 1: hard because it was like that was I mean a
Speaker 1: lot for you and there is there is way more.
Speaker 2: The reason why we're doing this and talking about these
Speaker 2: things is because you're like, you know, this isn't the
Speaker 2: whole book. If you want to go and read the
Speaker 2: book and find out more about it, you can go
Speaker 2: and pre order blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: It's out tomorrow.
Speaker 2: But that's the whole reason why we wanted to kind
Speaker 2: of give you a bit of an insight into what
Speaker 2: we speak about.
Speaker 1: But tell us what your favorite chapter was to write.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was thinking about this last night, and I
Speaker 2: think my favorit chapter which is so dumb because it's
Speaker 2: such a light and.
Speaker 3: Fluffy, and I guess what kinks nudes?
Speaker 1: Ude? I knew it was gonna be something sexy.
Speaker 3: It's just funny.
Speaker 2: It's funny, it's light, it's fluffy, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I talked about the first time I ever got Senter
Speaker 2: Dick pic and I still have such funny, fond memories
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: I can still I can see it in my mind.
Speaker 2: I can remember everything, and I just think, like, that
Speaker 2: was such a fucking funny day.
Speaker 3: And I really loved writing that chapter.
Speaker 1: When I had to get my nudes approved by Laura before,
Speaker 1: I said then and I was like, is this hot enough?
Speaker 2: Just like I love that there's like the fluffiness, you know,
Speaker 2: as much as there's so many deep and like quite
Speaker 2: like you know, there was some things that were really
Speaker 2: hard to write, and I think that they're peppered with
Speaker 2: some really fucking funny parts and coming off the back
Speaker 2: of like something that feels heavy and weighted to read
Speaker 2: something that's funny and like harder like nudes.
Speaker 3: I was like, I love this chapter.
Speaker 1: What was your biggest lesson? What are you taking away?
Speaker 1: So I think now this could be a big biggest
Speaker 1: life lesson or bees from writing the book. You do
Speaker 1: with that question what you will?
Speaker 2: Okay, biggest lesson from writing the book would have been
Speaker 2: I'm going to give.
Speaker 3: You two you're allowed to say no. My biggest lesson.
Speaker 2: From writing the book is that things don't always go
Speaker 2: to plan, and that just because you have an idea
Speaker 2: for where your life is supposed to be and what
Speaker 2: you're supposed to be doing, having to pivot and do
Speaker 2: something else is not a failure. And I think that
Speaker 2: that was that really kind of like rang true for
Speaker 2: me halfway through when I felt like I was failing
Speaker 2: because we weren't meeting deadlines and I felt that immense
Speaker 2: pressure and then I had to just throw my hands
Speaker 2: up and say, I'm not coping and I need more time.
Speaker 2: And the thing is is like when you admit that
Speaker 2: you're not coping and when you ask for help, normally
Speaker 2: people will rush in and help you. And that was
Speaker 2: definitely like that definitely was the case for me. And
Speaker 2: I think sometimes as women, we can be so fearful
Speaker 2: of being seen as weak or being seen as needy
Speaker 2: when we ask for help, and we just take on
Speaker 2: the huge load, the mental load, the physical load of
Speaker 2: doing everything ourselves. But the biggest life lesson I took
Speaker 2: from it, and it's something that I think kind of
Speaker 2: it runs through a lot of my chapters is this
Speaker 2: conversation around vulnerability throughout a lot of my life. And
Speaker 2: it definitely comes back to even my whole childhood and
Speaker 2: not wanting to see my childhood in my relationships and
Speaker 2: thinking I'm so fine, it didn't define me. I think
Speaker 2: that there is a real power in vulnerability, and I
Speaker 2: think sometimes we can look at it as a weakness,
Speaker 2: and we don't want to be seen as weak. We
Speaker 2: don't want to be seen as crying, we don't want
Speaker 2: to be seen as pathetic. But vulnerability opens up your relationships.
Speaker 2: It allows you to get closer to the people that
Speaker 2: you love, it allows them to understand you better. And
Speaker 2: linking back to what I just said, it also allows
Speaker 2: you to ask for help. Vulnerability is an absolute superpower.
Speaker 2: And the older I get, the more fine I am
Speaker 2: with not being fine and we're telling people that I'm
Speaker 2: not fine. Yeah, that's been a huge lesson for me.
Speaker 2: And I think as well, like this came off the
Speaker 2: back of The Bachelor, So when we were on the show, well,
Speaker 2: I say like we were on the same season. When
Speaker 2: I was on the show, I never I was like
Speaker 2: I'm not going to cry. I'm so fine. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna let any man think that I'm you know that
Speaker 2: I need him and when you were a woman, and
Speaker 2: you put up this barrier of being fine, fine, fine, fine, fine,
Speaker 2: people see you as being hard and cold, which underneath,
Speaker 2: especially if you're a strong, independent female, that's how you
Speaker 2: can be perceived, which absolutely may not be who you
Speaker 2: are at your core. And so I think there is
Speaker 2: a real strength in actually telling people how you feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I learned that the hard way for sure.
Speaker 1: I was exactly the same with The Bachelor. I didn't
Speaker 1: even cry at the end, and I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: still fine. One TI year rolled down, but you're not fine,
Speaker 1: Oh no, But I was like, don't you let anyone
Speaker 1: see you're upset, which is so stupid and we know
Speaker 1: that now.
Speaker 2: And you only get help if you you know, if
Speaker 2: you're the person who says I'm fine, I'm fine and
Speaker 2: fine all the time, you will find that people are
Speaker 2: not ready to help you because they think of you
Speaker 2: as being fine. You know, you say it, therefore people
Speaker 2: believe it. Whereas like, if you are able to really
Speaker 2: tap into who you are authentically and show who you are,
Speaker 2: people will be way more willing and ready to be
Speaker 2: there to support you.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of support, you are about to marry Maddie
Speaker 1: Jay in just a few weeks.
Speaker 2: Here's my support He's my emotional water bottle, my support animal.
Speaker 1: What's it like? Because we speak about so many relationships
Speaker 1: on this podcast, our past relationships, the worst, some good ones,
Speaker 1: some funny ones, the dick pigs. What's it been like
Speaker 1: revisiting over the years in the book, these past relationships
Speaker 1: and then knowing you're about to marry the love of
Speaker 1: your life in a few weeks. Has it had any
Speaker 1: like weird effect on your relationship at home? Great?
Speaker 2: It makes me so grateful because you're like, yes.
Speaker 3: I say, God, I keep writing about the ship men,
Speaker 3: so I actually know.
Speaker 2: I shared every anything that I thought Matt could read,
Speaker 2: and then either it was too revealing or it would
Speaker 2: make him upset. I let him read everything, if anything.
Speaker 2: There were definitely some days where he was like, He's like,
Speaker 2: come on, I cannot believe. He's like, I cannot believe
Speaker 2: you dated this. He's like the bar was so long.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm actually personally offended that it was so
Speaker 2: low previously, Like we got married in like six weeks.
Speaker 2: It just made me so grateful. I'm so so grateful
Speaker 2: for who he is as a person. And for who
Speaker 2: he is as a dad, and for how he contributes
Speaker 2: to our family. Had I not been through what I
Speaker 2: have been through in my relationships, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I would be as grateful for it. I could take
Speaker 2: it for granted, and I definitely don't. I don't take
Speaker 2: him for granted at all. I think that was the
Speaker 2: biggest lesson for me with him.
Speaker 3: Kykay.
Speaker 2: Now it's my turn to ask you some questions. Now
Speaker 2: you kick off the very first chapter. You are the
Speaker 2: very first voice of the book, and the very first
Speaker 2: chapter is adventure. And now I think it was only
Speaker 2: fitting for you that the start of this you speak
Speaker 2: a lot about traveling and about all of the crazy,
Speaker 2: wild travel adventures that you have had. And I know
Speaker 2: that you've touched on it very loosely in the past,
Speaker 2: but like you spent so much of your twenties not
Speaker 2: in Australia traveling and experiencing the world. Can you explain
Speaker 2: to me a little bit? And I know that we've
Speaker 2: been speaking about doing a I mean we have been.
Speaker 2: We've been talking about doing an episode on travel for
Speaker 2: so long. Ever ever you forgot around me. We were
Speaker 2: also then a pandemic happened and it seemed like a
Speaker 2: pretty poor taste to do an episode on.
Speaker 1: Yes in the pandemic last for two years.
Speaker 2: Yes, So can you talk to me a little bit
Speaker 2: about how formative those years of your life were.
Speaker 1: It started for me when I was eighteen and we
Speaker 1: finished school. All my friends went to schoolies everyone and
Speaker 1: I went online and I was like, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know what I was doing, but I was like, how
Speaker 1: to get a job in Italy, which is what I googled,
Speaker 1: And I found a website that I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you can nanny. You can be a nanny overseas. No
Speaker 1: experience with.
Speaker 2: Children, none, I can't speak the language. Also, I can't
Speaker 2: nanny to children who I can't communicate with.
Speaker 3: You can't do anything.
Speaker 1: But the great thing about it, everyone that wants nannie's internationally,
Speaker 1: they want them so that their kids speak and learn English.
Speaker 1: So I didn't really need to speak the language for
Speaker 1: that part. There was always other ways to communicate, but
Speaker 1: that was my purpose was to go and speak them English.
Speaker 1: So I just went online found a family that seemed fine.
Speaker 1: I was very trusting. When I look back now, I
Speaker 1: was like, I could have ended up anywhere, but I
Speaker 1: just went for it. Don't even know if I was
Speaker 1: a reliable webs looking back. But if I went, everyone
Speaker 1: went to schoolies and I saved every dollar I'd worked
Speaker 1: all through school. If anyone of asks, that's a question,
Speaker 1: I get a lot. How did you afford to travel?
Speaker 1: How did you do this? I never had any money
Speaker 1: from my parents. I just worked for a long time.
Speaker 1: I saved everything I always could because I knew I
Speaker 1: wanted to go see the world, and I got a
Speaker 1: job so I didn't need I didn't go with a
Speaker 1: lot of savings, to be honest, I just took a
Speaker 1: really big risk that it did work itself out and
Speaker 1: the job would be great.
Speaker 3: And I think that.
Speaker 2: That's one of the big things, right Like people often
Speaker 2: we don't like to take that step towards something. We
Speaker 2: don't like to take the step towards the unknown because
Speaker 2: it's unknown a lot of people, and it depends on
Speaker 2: your personality type, but a lot of people want to
Speaker 2: have everything figured out before they make those big decisions.
Speaker 2: Whereas for you, you kind of.
Speaker 1: Never figured out. I'm still don't I still can't figure
Speaker 1: anything out.
Speaker 2: But you kind of like booked your flights, you left,
Speaker 2: and then you didn't really have this grand plan to
Speaker 2: continue to travel, but like, how many countries did you
Speaker 2: end up traveling throughout your twenties.
Speaker 1: Well, that year for me, I just spent a year
Speaker 1: in Italy and I loved it. But I lived to
Speaker 1: the dollar, like I you know, I did a lot
Speaker 1: of travel with the family, so I felt I felt
Speaker 1: like it was a really a good introduction to traveling
Speaker 1: because I was on my own. I didn't know anyone,
Speaker 1: but it was safe because the family that I worked
Speaker 1: for would take me to Greece. They'd take me on
Speaker 1: cruisers that'd take me around Italy.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a bloody who's this family and they
Speaker 2: adopt me?
Speaker 1: Probably, Yes, it was a really good introduction to travel
Speaker 1: because I didn't feel like I had to do a
Speaker 1: lot on my own. There were obviously moments I was alone.
Speaker 1: They were like, okay, you've got two weeks off go
Speaker 1: and I was like, but you were eighteen.
Speaker 3: At the time, it's eighteen.
Speaker 1: I was a baby. I was a baby, and this
Speaker 1: is before internet, no phones. I would walk around the
Speaker 1: streets with a map, like a humongous map that I
Speaker 1: was holding out. I had a phone card to call home,
Speaker 1: where you had to dial in like twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: digits on a payphone, and if you got one digit
Speaker 1: wrong you had to start again. Like it was a
Speaker 1: very different time. Yeah, we had.
Speaker 2: Mobile phones, but they were you could play snake on them.
Speaker 2: They were not they were nockears. And every time you
Speaker 2: wanted to put a letter in you had to press
Speaker 2: the eight. If you wanted to do B you had
Speaker 2: to press the one button twice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you had to wait for it to
Speaker 1: I mean like a lot of people listening in the
Speaker 1: won't nose, a lot of people that know exactly what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Yeah, it was the time to be alive,
Speaker 1: and it was like this time to call home to
Speaker 1: my whole family. You would set a time for next week,
Speaker 1: next Monday, at four o'clock, and everyone that wanted to
Speaker 1: speak to you had to be there. Sheridan had to
Speaker 1: run home from school because Brittany was calling at four,
Speaker 1: and you stuck to it because then when I didn't
Speaker 1: be outing mobile phone to pick up there was a
Speaker 1: completely different time. But that started off my twenties for
Speaker 1: like this addiction to travel, So I went. I ended
Speaker 1: up traveling to probably between fifty and sixty countries in
Speaker 1: my twenties over many, many years. So I did do
Speaker 1: one huge round the world trip that was for three years.
Speaker 1: But in between that, sporadically I did as much as
Speaker 1: I could and I was just addicted. And I came home.
Speaker 1: I remember I came home with about four hundred dollars
Speaker 1: like everything that I'd put it on, and then I'd
Speaker 1: start again, and then I'd work my way back up.
Speaker 2: Now, britt you are also a radiographer and have been
Speaker 2: for thirteen years, but recently.
Speaker 1: It makes me sound old.
Speaker 2: You are very young, but recently you have left your
Speaker 2: career as being a radiographer and you are full time
Speaker 2: working in media, a full time podcaster.
Speaker 1: What was that like like leaving?
Speaker 2: And I think you know, we touched it in me
Speaker 2: talking about it, you know, quitting something that's been so
Speaker 2: caugh to your identity. What was it like for you
Speaker 2: going from being a radiographer and having this huge career pivot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's probably a lot of people. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're new to the podcast in the last year or so,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't know, but yeah, forever, since I was
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, I've worked as a diagnostic radiographers. That's
Speaker 1: how I traveled a lot as well. I would work
Speaker 1: overseas in hospitals, so I would go and locum and
Speaker 1: I'd contract for a couple of months at a time
Speaker 1: in a random hospital, get some money, and I'd go again.
Speaker 1: And we've done this podcast for three and a half years,
Speaker 1: probably more just on two years of that podcast. The
Speaker 1: first two years I still worked full time in an
Speaker 1: emergency department. But the end of the pandemic for me
Speaker 1: was when I stopped working. And when I say the
Speaker 1: end of the pandemic, I mean the really, really big lockdown.
Speaker 1: So I stopped working. Probably but every year it was
Speaker 1: my last ever shift at the hospital, and I could
Speaker 1: have finished earlier because this podcast was full time for us.
Speaker 1: It was taking a lot of time and energy and effort.
Speaker 1: But the pandemic happened, and if you were a healthcare worker,
Speaker 1: like everyone around the world, people were coming out of reach,
Speaker 1: like we were so in need of healthcare workers that
Speaker 1: you just worked. So I did that, and then it
Speaker 1: was at the end of that I went overseas with
Speaker 1: my partner, Jordan. When I met Jordan was pretty much
Speaker 1: when I stopped working in the hospital, because we met,
Speaker 1: we went overseas I got stuck overseas, came back, the
Speaker 1: podcast was bonkers, and we just got back into it.
Speaker 1: So I haven't worked in a little while now, and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure when or if I'll go back. I
Speaker 1: love this new transition, but I think it's like anything.
Speaker 1: I did it for thirteen years and I still love it,
Speaker 1: but I was ready for a change.
Speaker 2: I mean, you did touch on this already, and I
Speaker 2: think that it's something that I want to dig a
Speaker 2: little bit deeper on. But for you, I think one
Speaker 2: of the really interesting and profound parts of writing the
Speaker 2: book was that when you started writing it, you wrote
Speaker 2: it when you were in love with Jordan, and then
Speaker 2: it kind of transitioned through your breakup. And I know
Speaker 2: that we have touched on that, but what was it
Speaker 2: like going back and having to rewrite some of those
Speaker 2: chapters so that the.
Speaker 1: Tense made sense? You know?
Speaker 2: And I think like being able to go from speaking
Speaker 2: about your relationship in real time in terms of like
Speaker 2: how you felt, to having to go back and rewrite
Speaker 2: chapters retrospectively. It's almost like a cruel trauma to have
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 1: It was horrific, it was, and and you know, I'll
Speaker 1: try it to cry again because we've already cried once
Speaker 1: in this episode. You're allowed to cry.
Speaker 3: It's okay, no, But.
Speaker 1: It was, well, I haven't even I haven't thought about
Speaker 1: it for a little while because I really buried it again,
Speaker 1: like once I press go and sent it to the publishers,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm just not going to think about
Speaker 1: that until I have to.
Speaker 3: But until I read it and then Laura makes me
Speaker 3: talk about it on a podcast.
Speaker 1: It was horrific. It was. It was the things like
Speaker 1: because it was probably a year between when I wrote about,
Speaker 1: you know, the love chapters and the Penguin chapters of
Speaker 1: finding your person and all those really beautiful things that
Speaker 1: we've done, going back and rewriting it, so I had
Speaker 1: to go and change things like there were sentences was like,
Speaker 1: and you know, this is how I knew he was
Speaker 1: the one, and I feel so lucky I found the
Speaker 1: person in my life that to changing that too. I
Speaker 1: thought I had found the person in my life. I
Speaker 1: all passed tense. I had to go and rewrite the
Speaker 1: whole book, and there are some parts that I left
Speaker 1: as is. There were some parts I took out because
Speaker 1: I'm like, that can't be in there. Anymore because it's
Speaker 1: too beautiful. It's like it's too like it just didn't
Speaker 1: fit the narrative anymore. So there were some parts I
Speaker 1: had to remove. It was definitely reliving what was my
Speaker 1: happiest time of my life, and it was a really
Speaker 1: like cruel reminder that you don't have that anymore, and
Speaker 1: you're back to, you know, writing chapters about solitude and
Speaker 1: being on your own and writing. When I was talking
Speaker 1: about fertility and freezing my eggs and things like that,
Speaker 1: I froze those and I did that with Jordan, like
Speaker 1: we did that. You know, he was there holding my
Speaker 1: hand the whole time, and we had talked about that
Speaker 1: life together. So going back and revisiting that and realizing that, well,
Speaker 1: that might not end up like that anymore. So I
Speaker 1: might not ever have a child anymore because I am
Speaker 1: getting older, i am single, I'm alone again. So it
Speaker 1: was a bit of a sick joke in a sense.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about that side of things,
Speaker 2: because I know that when you wrote fertility, and not
Speaker 2: even when you wrote it, when we did the whole
Speaker 2: episode around fertility, you were in a very different phase,
Speaker 2: like you had a plan for what you wanted to do.
Speaker 2: You were like, you know, at least even if you
Speaker 2: didn't have a plan, you had a backup, which is
Speaker 2: the whole point of freezing your eggs.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that now? I said this
Speaker 1: to you just a couple of days ago. Actually, this
Speaker 1: like off the record, Laura and I were actually just
Speaker 1: having a real conversation.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it happened, sometimes it happens.
Speaker 1: And it was about I've had this real moment in
Speaker 1: my life in the last couple of weeks or the
Speaker 1: last like maybe a couple of months, where it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a change. So I've always said things over
Speaker 1: the past few years since I've known Laura. I always
Speaker 1: said things like, maybe it's not for me, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe love's not for me, Maybe kids an't for me,
Speaker 1: Maybe that's not what's meant for me. I realized now,
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever actually believed that. I think
Speaker 1: I said those comments in the depths of despair. I
Speaker 1: was feeling really down. It was easier just to voice
Speaker 1: this negativity and have a moment where I was like,
Speaker 1: WHOA is me? But I don't think I actually ever
Speaker 1: believed it. I think I was saying these as throwaway
Speaker 1: comments like oh well, Britain, get it's not for you.
Speaker 1: But deep down I still thought it would happen. And
Speaker 1: now I've transitioned to I genuinely am thinking that. Now
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, maybe this actually really isn't for you,
Speaker 1: And it's made me realize that I don't think I
Speaker 1: believed it earlier. So it's I feel like I've gone
Speaker 1: into this a new phase I haven't been in yet
Speaker 1: where I am thirty five. I'm already thirty five, very single.
Speaker 1: I am ninety nine percent sure I don't want kids alone,
Speaker 1: Like I know that there's nothing wrong with it. I
Speaker 1: know there are people that go down that track. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll change my mind in a few years if I
Speaker 1: hit forty and I'm still alone, maybe I will. But
Speaker 1: now I don't think that's a journey I want to
Speaker 1: go down alone. So then you have this shock realization
Speaker 1: where you're like, fuck, it actually might not happen for you.
Speaker 2: I think with that, the only thing I want to
Speaker 2: say is when you say maybe, because you kind of
Speaker 2: bundled them together, and I want you to be aware
Speaker 2: of this. You said, maybe love's not for me, maybe kids.
Speaker 1: Aren't for me.
Speaker 3: Definitely bundled them together. They're two different things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's really important because like love is for
Speaker 2: you and that's you projecting like how you feel about yourself.
Speaker 3: But they don't live together.
Speaker 1: You can tears the.
Speaker 3: Comfy talking to me, but they don't.
Speaker 2: Like if you decide that you don't want to have kids,
Speaker 2: that's okay, but that's decisions on you. You can and you
Speaker 2: will find someone that you love and want to be
Speaker 2: in love with.
Speaker 3: Those things do not sit together.
Speaker 2: And they just want you to be really conscious when
Speaker 2: you're talking about it, because like you are so worthy
Speaker 2: of being loved, and then you get to decide whether
Speaker 2: you want to have kids.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I love it, I love you.
Speaker 1: I guess that's why it was such a hard chapter,
Speaker 1: because I know there are a lot of women out
Speaker 1: there that are in my position where you get to
Speaker 1: a point where you're like.
Speaker 3: I just want to give up.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do it anymore. Something's wrong with me,
Speaker 1: something's inherently wrong with me. Because I can't find it.
Speaker 1: Everyone else can find it. And I know that that's
Speaker 1: a really relatable thing, and I guess that's why I
Speaker 1: talk about it, because people feel these things and they
Speaker 1: feel like they're the only one that feels them, but
Speaker 1: they're not. Everyone goes through these these times of their
Speaker 1: life and you are right, I no, I know for
Speaker 1: me it'll happen one day. But you get to a
Speaker 1: point where you're like, when is that day? What do
Speaker 1: I have to do? Differently, what do I you know?
Speaker 1: And it's exhausting for this to have space in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind totally, and a lot of women
Speaker 1: it holds a lot of space, especially as the years
Speaker 1: get older. You don't want to think about it. Everyone says,
Speaker 1: don't think about it, don't think about kids, don't think
Speaker 1: I'm dating, don't think about finding the one. Just let
Speaker 1: it happen. You can't. You can't just let it happen
Speaker 1: when you're a woman that is aging with a biological clock.
Speaker 1: And that is the thing I want to drive home.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that we there are limitations and it sucks,
Speaker 1: fucking sucks, but there are things you can do about it,
Speaker 1: like freezing your eggs. But there are limitations and it
Speaker 1: does take space in your mind, whether you want to
Speaker 1: accept that or not.
Speaker 2: I think that that's such an important thing to say
Speaker 2: because like so many of us, and it's almost like
Speaker 2: when someone has anxiety doing the whole like just don't
Speaker 2: be anxious, or go for a walk or try mindfulness.
Speaker 2: It's when you're angry and so it goes calm down.
Speaker 2: You're like, what, Yeah, like, don't be so stressed. Telling
Speaker 2: someone who's stressed not to be stressed is really fucking
Speaker 2: unhelpful when you all know that.
Speaker 1: But it's exactly this.
Speaker 2: You know, when you want something, when that is something
Speaker 2: that is part of your identity for the future of
Speaker 2: how you see your.
Speaker 1: Life planning out.
Speaker 2: Having someone say just don't think about it, don't focus
Speaker 2: on it, only diminishes your feelings about it, Like it
Speaker 2: doesn't allow you to kind of sit in that space
Speaker 2: and wear it towards it.
Speaker 3: But I would just would hate.
Speaker 2: For someone to listen to this who's in a similar
Speaker 2: situation to you, who potentially wants to have children, who
Speaker 2: makes the decision in their mind convinces themselves that they
Speaker 2: don't want to purely because of the limitations of a relationship.
Speaker 2: I think that there are so many factors and we
Speaker 2: don't have the tools. I think, go and speak to
Speaker 2: a therapist, go and speak to a counselor, and not
Speaker 2: just you writ but like anybody who's in a phase
Speaker 2: of life where they think maybe they want children, but
Speaker 2: the relationship hasn't presented itself yet, because there are solutions
Speaker 2: to this, and it isn't just willing yourself that that is.
Speaker 3: Not for you.
Speaker 1: No, And there's this is very very I mean very individual.
Speaker 1: This is this is very specific to your situation, what
Speaker 1: you want out of life, who you are. I'm speaking
Speaker 1: only on behalf of myself that right now at this point,
Speaker 1: and it's crossed my mind more so in the last
Speaker 1: couple of months. I think about it more. I used
Speaker 1: to say, there's no way I'm doing it on my own.
Speaker 1: I definitely think about it more now. I think about adopting.
Speaker 1: I think about what it would look like. Could I
Speaker 1: do it, Could I physically do it. I've got no
Speaker 1: family here to help me, Like I think about a lot.
Speaker 1: But having said that, I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: that have gone down that track on their own because
Speaker 1: for them, that is a priority. All they want to
Speaker 1: do is have that child on their own. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it doesn't matter how you
Speaker 1: do it. If that's something that you want, you can
Speaker 1: do that. You can go down. There's so many avenues.
Speaker 2: And there's so many people who are empowered who don't
Speaker 2: want to have kids, and they don't want to have
Speaker 2: kids because they are childless by choice. It is a
Speaker 2: conscious decision that they've made. But I think it's a
Speaker 2: very different conversation if it's a limitation that's put on
Speaker 2: you because you're at a point in life where you
Speaker 2: don't feel lovable. I think that that's the real thing
Speaker 2: that like, that's something that you need to unpack, that's
Speaker 2: something you need to get to the bottom of. The
Speaker 2: Other thing here, which I think is so relatable about
Speaker 2: what you just said, Britt is like I think there's
Speaker 2: so many women who and I say this because this
Speaker 2: is exactly how I felt. I was like, unless I
Speaker 2: find the right relationship, then I don't want to have
Speaker 2: kids because in my mind, having a family unit was
Speaker 2: really important to me. But then on the flip side
Speaker 2: of that, I think about my childhood and the lack
Speaker 2: of family unit, and I'm like, well, I wouldn't exist,
Speaker 2: Like if that was my mum's prerogative, Like if she
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, I only want kids if
Speaker 2: I'm going to be in a long term, happy marriage,
Speaker 2: well then she would still be in a marriage where, like,
Speaker 2: you know, things were completely completely toxic and like abusive
Speaker 2: and awful. And I'm like, I think sometimes we can't
Speaker 2: plan out exactly how life is going to be. You
Speaker 2: can't foresee exactly how a relationship's going to plan out.
Speaker 2: There are people who get married and six months later
Speaker 2: they get divorced because there's cheating. You just don't know
Speaker 2: what's going to happen in your life. And I think
Speaker 2: that ultimately, the choice around having children is such a
Speaker 2: huge and loaded choice that has so many other factors
Speaker 2: to think about, and that's amplify when you're you know,
Speaker 2: in your late thirties and you're also single.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reason I think it's important to have
Speaker 1: these really open discussions, yeah, raw discussions about it is
Speaker 1: because I don't know how to explain it. I would
Speaker 1: look at a lot of women right online and think
Speaker 1: that they have it all, that they're really happy, that
Speaker 1: their life is so great. And I know there are
Speaker 1: people that look at my life like that, because that'll
Speaker 1: tell me. There'll be people that will message me all
Speaker 1: the time. There is no one that is exempt from
Speaker 1: these feelings at some point or another. So I think
Speaker 1: it's important to have the conversations that like, yes, I
Speaker 1: have a great job, I have great friends, I'm happy
Speaker 1: my dog, I'm obsessed with in case you don't know,
Speaker 1: But I still feel like shit a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: and I still feel like have those fleeting moments where
Speaker 1: I'm like, Fox, what's wrong with me? What is fucking
Speaker 1: wrong with me?
Speaker 2: But also I think that it comes back down to
Speaker 2: this big and there's this overarching theme and this conversation
Speaker 2: that we have in the book around comparison. It's something
Speaker 2: that we all do. It's something that we can't not
Speaker 2: do because it's ingrained in us socially, culturally, it's part
Speaker 2: of how we interact. We're always going to compare ourselves.
Speaker 2: But it's about having enough sense of self to understanding
Speaker 2: how you're making those comparisons and are you making those
Speaker 2: comparisons and then it's making you feel terrible about your
Speaker 2: life or are you making comparisons and you're still able
Speaker 2: to go, Okay, I can't see the full picture of
Speaker 2: that person's life because I'm only looking through a window
Speaker 2: of social media. Something that this kind of ties into
Speaker 2: and it's something that we've spoke about in the book.
Speaker 2: We wrote a chapter on overwhelm. It was a joint chapter,
Speaker 2: and it was an overwhelming chapter. It was an overwhelming chapter,
Speaker 2: but like we spoke about our own feelings about the overwhelm.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously it's something that it's been a very
Speaker 2: hot topic of conversation over the past couple of years,
Speaker 2: from everything from the pandemic to like people taking on
Speaker 2: more work to the mental load.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, there is.
Speaker 2: A lot of overwhelm happening, and you know, we've done
Speaker 2: a podcast episode on it. But one of the things
Speaker 2: I thought was really interesting about this chapter and something
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk to you about, was I spoke
Speaker 2: about from my side of things about how I have
Speaker 2: never felt as overwhelmed at certain times as what I
Speaker 2: have since becoming a mum because of the relentlessness of parenting,
Speaker 2: especially being a full time working mum where.
Speaker 1: Four seven, yeah, where I juggle all the.
Speaker 2: Things that a mom has to juggle on top of
Speaker 2: my workload, and the fact that I feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: everyone always says like your life's going to change when
Speaker 2: you become a mom.
Speaker 1: You know, you like your priority shift.
Speaker 2: Everyone talks about your priority shifting, right, but no one
Speaker 2: ever tells you that like, what they actually mean by
Speaker 2: that is that you go down to the bottom of
Speaker 2: the fucking priority list. Yeah, you're the algae, the priority hower. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the priorities have shifted. And let me tell you, I
Speaker 2: because you don't exist anymore. And that's what especially when
Speaker 2: you have kids at the early early years, you know.
Speaker 2: But you wrote something and that's what I wanted to
Speaker 2: speak to you about because I think it'll be relatable
Speaker 2: to so many women. You wrote It's funny, Laura, you
Speaker 2: talk about how having kids has affected your feelings of
Speaker 2: overwhelmed because for me, you know, what made it even
Speaker 2: worse the fact that they don't have children.
Speaker 1: Can you talk me through that? Yeah? And I thought
Speaker 1: about that a lot, and I think there'll be a
Speaker 1: lot of people that I hope there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people that resonate with that sentence. You do feel like,
Speaker 1: as somebody that doesn't have kids, you don't know until
Speaker 1: you know, And that is something that a lot of
Speaker 1: parents will say. And I do believe that I can
Speaker 1: sit back and understand that there's no sleep, that it's
Speaker 1: screaming and vomiting, and you're so tired and you're so stressed.
Speaker 1: It's not always no, but you know, like, I know that, right,
Speaker 1: someone can tell me that, but until you actually living
Speaker 1: in it and breathing every day, you don't quite know.
Speaker 1: And every parent says that as well. Every single parent says,
Speaker 1: like I thought I knew, I didn't know. So it's
Speaker 1: really hard as someone that doesn't have kids. When you do,
Speaker 1: you can only go off your experiences and what is
Speaker 1: happening to you in life. And we know that heartbreak, grief, trauma, stress, anxiety,
Speaker 1: everything's relative to you as a person, and it's not
Speaker 1: a comparison.
Speaker 3: It's also got a competition.
Speaker 1: It's not a competition. But because someone else has it
Speaker 1: worse than you doesn't mean that you can't feel that.
Speaker 1: But I often feel that. I often feel like when
Speaker 1: i feel like I'm having a really hard time, or
Speaker 1: I'm overwhelmed, or I'm stressed and depressed and sad, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get at bad when whenever I've had
Speaker 1: those moments, I feel like I'm not allowed to have
Speaker 1: them because well, I could sleep tonight for a full
Speaker 1: night if I want to, you know, I'm not up
Speaker 1: with a crying baby. I don't have those things. And
Speaker 1: then you get this level of guilt within yourself because
Speaker 1: you're like, well, snap out of it. Don't feel like
Speaker 1: what you're feeling because you and you also feel like
Speaker 1: you can't talk to your friends about it that have
Speaker 1: kids because you're like, well, they're gonna feel like shit,
Speaker 1: because there's a level of resentment, whether not for you,
Speaker 1: but for anyone in that situation. There's always gonna be
Speaker 1: a level of resentment of like, I can't believe this
Speaker 1: person's complaining about that. Well, I don't know how good
Speaker 1: they've got.
Speaker 2: It, No, but you say not for me? Absolutely, I
Speaker 2: think we can all be guilty of this. There's absolutely
Speaker 2: times where people will tell me things that you know,
Speaker 2: and like when I say people, I mean like you
Speaker 2: or other friends who might complain about something that's going
Speaker 2: on in their lives, and like, we can have empathy
Speaker 2: for another person's situation, but when you're also in the
Speaker 2: thick of it, and then someone else is talking about
Speaker 2: them being in the thick of it, but comparatively, you're like,
Speaker 2: what are you complaining about? But also, I think that's
Speaker 2: the big part of this. It's that just because one
Speaker 2: person has it worse, it doesn't negate somebody else's feelings.
Speaker 2: You have like an internal eye roll, right, yeah, but like,
Speaker 2: but things don't have to be a competition. We don't
Speaker 2: have to all be competing to be the most overwhelmed.
Speaker 2: What a fucking boring conversation that is. We don't have
Speaker 2: to all be competing to.
Speaker 1: Be the busiest or the most stressed.
Speaker 2: And because everyone's fucking busy, and everyone's fucking stressed, and
Speaker 2: everyone's overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and everyone is feeling that in some capacity.
Speaker 2: You wrote about something that you touched on. Just earlier,
Speaker 2: you wrote about solitude and loneliness. Why was this chapter
Speaker 2: important to you?
Speaker 1: I quite liked this chapter Solitude and loneliness because a
Speaker 1: lot of people put them together, right, that solitude and
Speaker 1: loneliness go hand in hand. But I don't think that
Speaker 1: they do. I'm a big believer that these are two
Speaker 1: very separate things. And this chapter, for me, I did
Speaker 1: a lot of due diligence, Like there is a lot
Speaker 1: of research that's gone into it, but there's also just
Speaker 1: my opinion and my experiences over life, because I've been
Speaker 1: alone longer than I've been with someone now in my
Speaker 1: adult life, you know, like I've lived alone for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and I'm quite happy with it. So
Speaker 1: when I get upset about not having a relationship and children,
Speaker 1: that's very different for me feeling lonely, Like I could
Speaker 1: have had that if I wanted to settle with something,
Speaker 1: if I just really wanted someone to feel a space,
Speaker 1: of course I could.
Speaker 3: Have found it totally and this totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is why I want to push the fact
Speaker 1: that they're two different things. So the idea of solitude
Speaker 1: is just regrouping on your own, literally being in a space,
Speaker 1: existing with not a lot of people around. Might be
Speaker 1: gone on a trip, might be just you might be
Speaker 1: an introvert that recharges without other people. There's a difference
Speaker 1: with them feeling lonely. So lonely has this negative connotation
Speaker 1: that you have the solitude but you don't enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Solitude is you're on your own, but you're quite happy
Speaker 1: to do that. And so for me, I've been on
Speaker 1: my own a long time, but ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: the time I'm pretty happy with it because I'm the
Speaker 1: person that recharges with myself.
Speaker 2: But I also think that socially we impart loneliness on
Speaker 2: people who don't necessarily feel lonely, like how often or
Speaker 2: like how many times have you ever. I'm sure there's
Speaker 2: some people who were like I love it. There's some
Speaker 2: people like I would never do it. The old conversation
Speaker 2: of like, would you go to the movies by yourself?
Speaker 2: I guarantee you it's a fifty to fifty split. Fifty
Speaker 2: percent of people will be like, yeah, I love going
Speaker 2: to the movies by myself, and the other fifty percent
Speaker 2: would be like, I would never go to the movies
Speaker 2: by myself. In the same way that some people love
Speaker 2: going to dinner by themselves and other people couldn't think
Speaker 2: of anything worse than having to sit there on their
Speaker 2: own by themselves at dinner.
Speaker 1: Well, I often I use this as an example because
Speaker 1: I have done that for a long time. I'm so
Speaker 1: happy to go. You will see me at the movies
Speaker 1: by myself, you will see me at dinner by myself.
Speaker 1: You'll see me do it. Whatever I went. This was
Speaker 1: only not that long ago. It was probably like two
Speaker 1: years ago. I went down to Melbourne on my own
Speaker 1: and there was a really nice Italian restaurant that I
Speaker 1: wanted to eat at because I had been recommended like
Speaker 1: the Italian's my weakness. So I went to this restaurant
Speaker 1: I didn't book. I just walked in and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: can I have a table and they're like, yes, just
Speaker 1: for two. I was like just one, but like you know,
Speaker 1: there's no table for one. There's two seats anyway. But
Speaker 1: I was like just me. They're like, oh, just alone,
Speaker 1: and I was like yeah, just me. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: there is no one else coming, and I was like
Speaker 1: that's what one means. Let's drive at home. I was
Speaker 1: like yeah no, and they're like, no worries, ma'am, no worries.
Speaker 1: Took me to like their best window seat, like so jazzy,
Speaker 1: so nice, and then they just gave me so much
Speaker 1: for free, like it was insane. The attention to detail
Speaker 1: was amazing. And then at the end they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we just took the beyond. Trees are on ask, the
Speaker 1: dessert's on us, the wines on us. And I was like,
Speaker 1: and I know, I know it was because they felt
Speaker 1: sorry for me. I could feel I'm looking at me.
Speaker 1: It was like they it was like their daughter got
Speaker 1: stood up or there was a level of I could
Speaker 1: watch them and I felt like they had a level
Speaker 1: of empathy for me, like I wonder what happened and
Speaker 1: that's just well, I even think that, right. So if
Speaker 1: I see someone out on their own, my first thought
Speaker 1: is I wonder what happened? Do they choose to go
Speaker 1: out on their own? Has someone suit them up? Like?
Speaker 1: What is it that?
Speaker 2: This is literally what I mean by often we socially
Speaker 2: in part loneliness onto someone else. We can often look
Speaker 2: at somebody else's situation and think I would be sad
Speaker 2: if that was me. That's you internalizing how you feel.
Speaker 2: But that person might be really fucking happy just living
Speaker 2: their life being autonomous.
Speaker 1: They might be sad, but they could be just happy.
Speaker 2: But they could be or maybe they're not happy, maybe
Speaker 2: they're content. You know, we don't have to just be
Speaker 2: fluctuating between sad and happy. There's a whole other range
Speaker 2: of emotions in there as well. I mean, we've touched
Speaker 2: on some of the heavier parts of the things that
Speaker 2: you spoke about in the book and the things that
Speaker 2: for you were really emotional.
Speaker 3: What was the like, what was the best.
Speaker 2: Bit, what was the thing that you the chapter you
Speaker 2: fucking loved writing or when you read it back you're like,
Speaker 2: that makes me feel good. Whatever it is, what's like
Speaker 2: your happiest part of the book.
Speaker 1: Oh the happiest part. I think for me it's probably
Speaker 1: the same as you. I really enjoyed the lighthearted parts
Speaker 1: that were like the nudes and the Kinks, and like
Speaker 1: Kinks is a great chat because a lot of it
Speaker 1: was heavy, right, A lot of stuff we wrote was
Speaker 1: like revisiting stuff. Then a lot of stuff was not
Speaker 1: heavy but important educational love languages, things that are a
Speaker 1: relative to everyone. But the ones that really got me
Speaker 1: with the giggles, like the accidentally unfiltered, the Kinks, the nudes,
Speaker 1: revisiting those funny moment that we all conversations that you
Speaker 1: and I had had together in the past. For me,
Speaker 1: that was like what got me.
Speaker 2: And when we say like kinks, okay, I just want
Speaker 2: to also preface this, like when we say it's funny
Speaker 2: and lighthearted, like we don't mean funny and lighthearted as
Speaker 2: in like, haha, we're making fun of Kinks.
Speaker 3: We would never do that.
Speaker 2: What we are talking about is just like sex should
Speaker 2: be lighthearted and fun. That's the whole point of it, right,
Speaker 2: But also just this the destigmatizing of Kinks, the conversations,
Speaker 2: some of the things that you guys wrote in about
Speaker 2: the stuff that you have tried or people have asked
Speaker 2: you to do. Also, just the conversations around how much
Speaker 2: it's changed over the last sort of ten years, five years,
Speaker 2: two years within the social media landscape.
Speaker 1: Well, it's because I also have a really I had
Speaker 1: a really big interest in the research. So that's why
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the chapter because I loved learning about it.
Speaker 1: I love learning all aspects what other people do, what
Speaker 1: gets other people off, how common it is, where people
Speaker 1: find it like that stuff to me is really really
Speaker 1: interesting because I'm pretty like.
Speaker 3: Non kinking, I'm pretty fucking vanilla.
Speaker 1: So I try to try some stuff. But for me,
Speaker 1: it was like it.
Speaker 2: Was the worldly what brit is into his voyeurism looking
Speaker 2: into other people's relationships. Okay, and one thing that we
Speaker 2: did discover in our research, which is so fucking interesting
Speaker 2: is that Cleopatra used to have a hollowed out dildo
Speaker 2: that she put bees inside, and then when the bees
Speaker 2: got all angry, it would bounce around, and then she
Speaker 2: would use that to masturbate with she knew were boom.
Speaker 2: Clear Patrack was ahead of her, dime king semen around
Speaker 2: for a long time like this a gentle, incredible woman.
Speaker 1: There is so.
Speaker 2: Much more within the pages of We Love, Love and Like.
Speaker 2: Thank you to every single one of you who have
Speaker 2: already gotten a pre order book. It's out in good
Speaker 2: bookstores and bad bookstores tomorrow, any books tall bookstores, so
Speaker 2: you be able to get your hands on it tomorrow.
Speaker 2: But if you wanted to jump on and get yourself
Speaker 2: a copy that's sent, you can jump onto w dow,
Speaker 2: dot Life, uncut, dot com.
Speaker 1: Dot au.
Speaker 3: They're all links to the book there.
Speaker 1: Do you believe we're an author? No?
Speaker 3: No, let's no, we're podcasters who tried to write.
Speaker 1: That's what we are.
Speaker 3: On a technicality, Okay, let's.
Speaker 2: Not get ahead of ourselves here, but Britt, I don't
Speaker 2: want to say genuinely like thank you for sharing so
Speaker 2: much of yourself and being I know how much you
Speaker 2: hate crying, and.
Speaker 3: I just want to say, do you do it a lot?
Speaker 1: But fake?
Speaker 2: Thank you for being so honest and so open and
Speaker 2: so vulnerable, because that's the literally the reason why we
Speaker 2: started this podcast was because we wanted to have the
Speaker 2: conversations and share the stories that we do amongst our girlfriends.
Speaker 2: You know that have be that virtual community for the
Speaker 2: people who listen. For you, guys, we are so unbelievably
Speaker 2: fucking grateful, Like it has been three years of creating
Speaker 2: this podcast, and some of you have been with us
Speaker 2: since the very beginning.
Speaker 3: The og life is and we just.
Speaker 2: Feel we feel so grateful that every single week you
Speaker 2: tune in that you get something out of what we
Speaker 2: listen to, the conversations, the incredible like pearls of wisdoms
Speaker 2: that some of the guests have, and yeah, for every
Speaker 2: person who's bought the book, like thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the same goes for you Laura and Laurie.
Speaker 1: For you guys playing at home. Laura has opened some
Speaker 1: pretty big cans of worms in this book, and you've
Speaker 1: dug pretty deep and had some very very raw conversations
Speaker 1: that you've never had. So that is in the book.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of people will appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, I appreciate you, and I appreciate all
Speaker 1: the life.
Speaker 3: And now we'll go hug each other and then go
Speaker 3: and call our therapists.
Speaker 1: All right, that's it, guys. We are going to see
Speaker 1: you back on Thursday for Ask Gun Gods, So keep
Speaker 1: those questions coming in. I feel like we've gone kind
Speaker 1: of rogue on this episode, so we're not even I
Speaker 1: mean like we're not going to do stuck in sweets,
Speaker 1: Read the book okay, we love love available and a
Speaker 1: good book stills tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Then you go, you guys, go at the drill.
Speaker 1: Hey Mum, tell you Dad, tell you dounte your friends
Speaker 1: and share the love because we love love. Literally, that's
Speaker 1: why we wrote the book.