S22 Ep4: Donna Ashworth, Poet & Author: The Women's Wordsmith, celebrating Midlife, Messiness & Mindset

0:00If you feel good about yourself and you feel empowered and you feel like you're your own safe space, you'll go and do whatever you want. You'll learn any subject you want. You'll take any exam you want. You'll do it late without feeling ashamed of that because you're intact. There are some conversations that stay with you long after they've ended. The ones that I suppose make you reflect, that shift something deep inside of you. And that was today. My incredible conversation with Donna Ashworth, author and the UK's best-selling poet, it was tonic because Donna, she has this rare ability to put into words the things we feel but don't always know how to say.

0:44I found it so comforting and I can imagine for those maybe in their darker moments or who are lost or need to navigate life, that her words are, as she said in the podcast, a GPS. They remind us of the sheer joy of being alive. And in this conversation, I got to meet the woman behind these words and she's everything that you think she is. She is the most beautiful soul. And we talked about the incredible privilege, but also the joy of aging and the power of embracing the vulnerabilities and the ugly and the odd and the imperfect parts of ourselves and the deep sensitivities that we feel and the burden that we take on.

1:35And it was just one of those moments where I just will never forget. And of course, we talked about the wonder of women and the unshakable bonds that we have and the way we lift each other up. and believing in the power of amplifying ourselves, our sisterhood as we stand together. And this conversation, I've got to say, is a love letter to life, to words, to the quiet, I suppose, strength that comes from owning who you are. That's what I'm going to take away. And I hope you love it as much as I did. Enjoy. Bow your head and let your eyelids close on down Where we're going, you won't need to bring your frown.

2:21Hi, I'm Holly Tucker and welcome to my podcast, Conversations of Inspiration. I've reached out to founders and those who simply inspire me to share their hard-earned wisdom with you. My hope is that collectively, these remarkable realizations will help you on your own journey. I like to think of it as inspiration for life. So let's begin this week's Conversation of Inspiration. Hi Donna, I can't believe that we're sitting down together. I'm so excited for our chat today. Welcome to Conversations of Inspiration. It's a joy to be here. I've been so excited and looking forward to this, Holly. Oh, thank you so much.

3:05Now, we've just been chinwagging about a certain birthday you've had. the 50th has happened and it was a few days ago so tell me what you did and what was your mindset about turning 50 and was it a good day I've been dying to turn 50 for about three years my last sort of birthdays I had to remind myself be here now be present you're 48 I know you're dying to be 50 but you know enjoy these years because 40 was such a line in the sand for me in such a positive way. The 40th decade for me has been amazing. And I can totally see the formula for living now, the blueprint. I feel like I've seen the plans and I know that if I'm willing to do the right work, that's only going to get better and better.

3:58So my mindset has been bring it on. I cannot wait. Let's dive in. And I've had a couple of weekends away, I've been in a log cabin with all my cousins and my friends in the Scottish countryside and I went away with my husband and I've had the family stuff but in 10 days my mum and my sister and I are off to a meditation mindset retreat in Mexico with Dr Joe Dispenza for 10 days which is a transformative experience they call it a week long we've done the two day one so I am incredibly excited about that can't wait I love this because I think there is so much isn't there there's so much about aging I watched something recently with can't remember who it was but she was just basically saying listen I don't want to look 20 when I'm 50 I'm 50 and 50 is amazing and we we then see celebrities all turning back the clock with all the Oscars and all those amazing women winning all those awards.

5:04And there's just so much conversation now around, you know, thank goodness, I'm very pleased actually, you know, once, you know, back 30, 40 years ago, we would be, you know, written off at this point in time. So I'm so happy to hear that you couldn't wait to be 50 and I think I agree with you the 40s have been you couldn't pay me to be 20 or 30 again I don't think no me neither I found those very very difficult decades 100 % I mean I struggled through the first half of my life you know in a cloud of poor self-worth and anxiety and you know pretty low mental health I think in fits and bursts and I'm determined that this what I call the next half which I think started in my 40s is going to be everything that I decide it's going to be because that's how it works which I now realize that you decide what it's going to be how it's going to feel you practice that ahead you're going to enjoy whatever comes your way and you're going to accept the things that are not so fun and you know enjoyable they're part of it all and look for the light and the joy and every little thing and become so easily pleased that it's not possible for you to go through a day without being completely impressed by something or you know filled whole with joy even if it's for two minutes yes and I think that once you sort of see the formula and know that you can you don't have to be achieving huge things to feel worthy yeah you can just feel worthy as a baseline yeah and then everything that comes as a bonus yeah so I for me getting older is the freedom it's it's the it's the reward for everything that we've been through funny enough you're pretty good with words I'm realizing here but um oh thank you it's the reward you're right you're right yeah it's women like you that make us all so hopeful because you've got that mindset we can follow you we can watch your achievements but we know that when you're achieving you're taking it all in this isn't just about the success this is about the success of your life that you're yes you're feeling but it wasn't always you mentioned it wasn't like that always for you so if I go back to the little Donna who grew up in Scotland and you grew up in a small village near Stirling with your big sister Nanette and I read that you were a very melancholy child Yeah.

7:41I'm wondering why that was and what worried you and how did you manage it at the time? Because obviously we get coping mechanisms, we learn things, don't we now? We're so blessed, I think, to learn so much about the way we think nowadays. But talk to me about the little Donna and what she was feeling. So I'm neurodivergent. So I'm a mix of ADHD and autism and a few other things, you know, just for fun in good measure. My son is exactly the same, my eldest. So looking back now, I can see exactly why I was melancholy. I was an overthinker, an overstresser, a worrier, a perfectionist. perfectionist you know I would be age seven wondering how long infinity was and giving myself an absolute hernia trying to imagine how far space stretched out and what about all the people who are suffering here and there people call it an empath you know I call it highly sensitive so I would feel the joys really highly and then I would swiftly feel the lows you know really deeply as well.

8:46And that's a hard way to live. If you're buffering, jumping off every wall, hitting every surface. And I was only ever as happy as the least happy person in any room because I was able to feel their energy. So my friends could be around me and everything could be great. And I'm looking at this one person thinking what's up with them? And that would bring me to their level. So eventually that sort of resulted in the need to be completely a straight A student, try and be popular, try and be in every school show, try and win every award. And that came to burnout quite quickly, age 17. And I fell very badly into anorexia, into eating disorders that would plague me for about a decade or so, which is a very typical tale.

9:37Really? So neurodivergent girls tend to fall into eating disorder territory. Right, I didn't know that. And there is a real hyperlink there. And that was when I first sort of found mindset thinking and affirmations. And Louise Hay saved my life. So age 17, when I went to the doctors, the doctor said, oh, you need to put weight on. And, you know, that was it. And so my mum realised that we had two choices here. we could save ourselves or I was just going to waste away in front of her eyes so she took me to do a Reiki course where I was initiated and learned how to do Reiki age 17 and we went down the affirmation route we went down the you know you can heal your life route and that's why I'm doing what I do now which is try to provide words that are useful for everybody on a daily basis for your actual life that you are living, you know, everyday stuff.

10:37Because that's what I needed at the time. I needed to know how you get out of bed. Don't just say get up and show up and never give up. I need you to tell me how I'm getting my feet out of this bed and how I'm getting in the shower. Because when I break down and when I hit a wall, I hit a wall. You know, when I fall, there is no floor. I just keep falling. That's how it feels. So when we fly, we store. When we fall, there is no floor. You know, that's the sort of highly sensitive life cycle. So, yeah, that's it in a nutshell. And so tell me, how did that affect your schooling? So you had that perfectionism in you, that straight A student.

11:21You were only as happy as the least happy kid in the class. We'll talk about your wording in terms of the word empath. But my niece actually, I think, is very, very much so a highly sensitive girl. And it's interesting watching her. But what did you find that that meant? Who were you at school then? Were you whoever anyone wanted you to be? Were you a chameleon to please everybody, a people pleaser? I very much tried to please the people in charge at school. I wanted to be a good student above everything else. But I was embarrassed about that in front of my peers. So I would try and hide that.

12:01and mostly I tried to be ignored by the cool people fly under the radar. But the music department was where I came to life, you know, where we would all hang out and just be our weird selves. And I quickly got into the school shows and I got the lead in the very first school show that our school had ever done because they didn't have the funding. But they had this unused theatre and they put on Calamity Jane and I wasn't brave enough to audition, but my music teacher came and got me out of class and said can you come with me and she made me audition and I got the part and that was the sort of start of me really thinking there is there is a way to sort of be seen and get a bit of this joy and this connectivity with people and get them to feel something without it being you yeah I love yes that was your tool yeah so I enjoyed that aspect but what happened was I went full steam ahead like I do with everything and then I hit a wall and I was no longer able to attend school I was so ill so I got all my exams I got all my A's and I got my university acceptances I went back to school because in Scotland you can do an extra year and get more hires I didn't make it halfway through because I was so ill I just and I didn't leave properly I just didn't ever come back and were your parents okay with this they were fine because I had my university lined up yeah but what happened is I went to university and it was I was not healed and I left in the middle of the night after a few months and I never went back and this became a pattern that if I look through my life I can see I would go full steam ahead hit a wall and then leave terribly I wouldn't be you know be able to be honest with people and say I'm struggling here I probably need a break and had I been able to do that yeah I might have been able to continue but what I did was hide it mask it everybody would be like you're amazing look what you're doing wow you're so good and then I would just boom be gone so yeah I kind of cottoned on to that in my 30s this pattern because it was a long a long time friendships a long time but nobody pointed it out to me I didn't fully become aware of it you know and until I suddenly sat up Wendy and thought wow I keep doing this why do I keep doing this if I was just honest with myself and everybody else you know I can't run at that speed for all that time I need to take breaks and it felt like the weakest admission of all to say that to people I'm not strong enough to keep going at pace I need a break and now we know that that's perfectly acceptable but back then yeah you would be booted out and somebody stronger than you would be given the job or the place or the park I read recently that you found your old diaries from that time yeah and that you were surprised that they were full of poetry to start with poetry and I would imagine reading them is a little like a window into your soul at the time what was your overarching feeling when you read them I mean obviously it's all teenage angst and heartache and I actually was a songwriter for a few years and my album is very much uh female empowerment you know don't come near me I'll break your heart yeah type thing you know but but the poems that I found in my diary were the prerequisite to that getting my heart broken you know a hundred times by people by the world by friendships by never feeling like enough so if I if I could pull one theme out it would be I am not fitting in I am not enough this world is not for me you know why is everybody else doing it so easily and why is everything so difficult for me and of course I know now why that is it's because my brain receives everything in technicolour and technosound.

16:07And, you know, processing those levels of sensory input every day is hard. And so you have to learn to manage that. And once you know how to manage it, it's easy. Yeah, yeah. But we struggled at the time. Anybody like me, you know, we just thought we were weird and weak and somehow faulty. And I also just think that there was, we're similar age, you know, as we were growing up, you know, it was the whole Diet Coke era and the sort of strong women or women or it was fast paced. It was, you know, power suits, wasn't it? I mean, the whole thing was, I mean, power suits. We weren't in the, we weren't in old fashioned movies, but there was no let up.

16:54Yeah. There was no gentleness. There was no understanding of neurodiversity at all. None. And I think back at that time, there wasn't a moment's pause to take the breath in any way, actually. And so I can imagine that that's why you ducked out. That was the easiest thing to do. And potentially even then, you know, there wasn't such thing as going to a therapist, talking it through. There was none of it. there was no grace for anyone. There was no grace for, or even language, no language at the time as well. Or our parents weren't educated enough about it either. They would have even thought it was potentially weak.

17:37I'm not talking about your parents necessarily, but weakness, you know. And actually, if you think about what their parents went through, you understand, you know, the travelling of these thoughts through generations that then hit ourselves. And actually, now, thank goodness, thank goodness when we look our next generation yeah they have a completely different mindset to things and to have an understanding I was just talking to my son and I just took a picture of course I took a picture embarrassed him but one of his friends came back who was a school friend and now they're six foot two but I remember Thomas when he was in his onesie uh you know age nine Yeah.

18:19And, you know, we were just talking about, I think nearly 80 % of his friendship group is neurodivergent in some way. Yeah. Yeah. So he finds it completely normal to talk about his friend last night. He's now off his ADHD medication. And actually, that was why he was like that at sixth form. And actually, he's finding it really easy now because he's got used to himself. And I just I just couldn't believe this conversation that we're having over breakfast. So good. It's so good. It's so progressive. It's so good because we can get, as human beings, we're so resilient. If we know what we're dealing with, we can get through anything.

18:59We can adapt to anything. But if you're being labelled as difficult or wrong or faulty or weird, you know, you go into a spiral of shame and your self-worth is chewed up and spat out. And if you have no self-worth, you can't do the resilience. You can't do the adapting. you can't manage so that's when depression comes in and so many other mental health issues and you know my son's not going to have any of that because when we when he was diagnosed and he was diagnosed first before me we changed everything and we decided right self-worth preservation is what's happening here too much damage has already been done and whatever is lost in this time period school-wise or social-wise, we will make that up when the self-worth is worth in again.

19:48Because if you've got that there, time is not an issue. You catch up. If you feel good about yourself and you feel empowered and you feel like you're your own safe space, you'll go and do whatever you want. You'll learn any subject you want. You'll take any exam you want. You'll do it late without feeling ashamed of that because you're intact. But you cannot rebuild that back up but you can you can sit your exams anytime but you know mental health will take you out at the knees you don't necessarily like the word empath and you prefer to call it highly sensitive correct yeah how do you even know that you've been you're very well researched i'd like to do my job properly i have i have a sunday times bestseller of of every every week known to mankind on my podcast I'm going to research the hell out of you.

20:38So flattered. Because I was wondering why, just because I do have a niece who I do think is on this course. And it's hard when you're trying to describe it to a teacher, to someone to say, you know, when you're playing the music in history, the music is triggering her. She needs to leave the room because she just cannot cope because she knows what's about to happen. Or, as you said, the thought of the unhappiness that someone else is having will send her into floods of tears. So you've got to bear with her. But then you feel like potentially empath is such this grand word. I don't know. Tell me about your thoughts there.

21:21I think back when people started sort of saying, oh, you're an empath, I think I felt that word was being overused. Right, yes. Or it was being used to describe somebody who gave me the itch, Holly. I can't put it any more clear than that. Yeah. You know, it gives me a little bit. It slightly makes me feel like if you, not a child, right? She's an empath. I think, oh, wow, she's like literally God again, you know, here. Yeah. If you're an adult and you say, I think I'm an empath, I feel like going, are you the Dalai Lama or something? Yeah. So it's my prejudice, that's all. I felt I didn't want to go well you know I'm an empath and I'll have you know but that's something I need to work on you know because I am an empath yeah and there are empaths out there and we really struggle it might feel like it could be a Hollywood movie like you're you know there's the avatars and the empaths and the thingies do you know but the reality is okay I'm going to try and put it into a little visualization here but your niece and people like me we've got if you can imagine like a music mixing desk you know with all the sliders yeah so all the sliders that are up high are the ones that are not meant to be up high so certain sounds certain emotions certain tastes smells you know levels of noise and your mixing levels are completely at different heights so we're hearing everything like when we started this podcasting you were hyper loud and we had to bring your volume down so our brains are like that and you can test that that's science you can see that the receptors are taken in far too much of these certain pieces of information or sensory inputs so we've got all our mixing desk it's not wrong it's just a completely different level so somebody said to me once a professional said if you put an autistic adhd child into a classroom with 30 other people, you might as well put their desk on the highway, on the motorway.

23:25Gosh. Because that's what it feels like. It feels like the speed, the sound, all of the inputs are on overload. So then you've got the whole thing where people with ADHD and autism, their brains are far more able to perceive what isn't there and isn't said. but it is because it's all in energy and again you can measure this scientifically that's up too high so I would be reading I've always been able to hear what people are not saying yeah I've always been able to hear and they would be looking at me and smiling and I would think well you just thought something completely different to what you said to me and so I would be so confused all the time these smiling assassins yeah I would it's like I could hear what they were actually saying to me in their mind.

24:15Wow. So there's an awful lot of sensory crosswire going on and it feels like chaos, like insects all going at different directions around your brain at speed. So, but once you know that, you can manipulate the sliding desk, the mixing desk, you can pull down the levels. You can imagine it so well that you're kind of saying, I need to say to my teacher, when I'm in this environment, this is what I'm hearing. I hear background noises louder than I hear foreground noise so whatever the teacher is saying is not coming to me in the same capacity as the lawnmower outside in the in the grounds yes I can hear that above you and that's the way my brain is set up and it's quite practical Holly you know I think people get afraid that they're going to be oh my god here comes another parent saying my child my child but this is quite practical stuff you know that's too too many sounds that's too much light yeah it's too many people.

25:11Is there a time out here that we can take access? Is there a quiet room we can access? That's all. You only need five minutes to reset.

25:23On Conversations of Inspiration, I only ever invite guests with fascinating stories to tell who aren't afraid to go there. People brave enough to be vulnerable and share that life isn't always as shiny as it appears. Those who show that to become successful, we have to experience some tremendous downs as well as the ups. Because isn't that ultimately what gets us where we need to go? It's why I've also built my marketplace in this way. Yes, you'll find thoughtful gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions like Christmas, for example. But I also wanted to create a place where you could shop not just by department, but through emotion.

26:05The moments in life we don't always share with the world. A place that helps you celebrate the huge milestones, but also helps you find the words or the right gift when darkness creeps in and you don't know what to say. It's why we celebrate people's niches too. Those funny things about us that makes us us. Whether you know someone who's really into wild swimming, passionate about birds, or just happens to love Munster Munch like I do. If this sounds like an interesting way to shop, I'd love you to head over to holly.co and explore. Now, back to our conversation of inspiration.

26:52It's so empowering, actually. I have friends at the moment who are also dealing with a lot and most amazing, amazing child dealing with a lot going on. and sort of at 13 and it just came to me like she needs a little book on her. Yeah. Sort of manual on me. Yeah. And this is how it is for me. As you said, you know, this is fact for me. I hear the lawnmower more than I hear you. That's not disrespectful for you, but just so you're aware. And just imagine if we were empowered to understand each other like that. Yeah. Then I can now tap into the most amazing young girl. Exactly. And you wrote a lovely poem about this.

27:34You said, do not work on dismantling your empathy, my friends. I know it hurts. I know it hinders. I know it's hard. But as long as there are enough empaths in the world, it will not turn to darkness. As long as our hearts break for strangers a thousand miles away, good will overcome bad. If everyone is taught to harden up, a hard world is what we will have. Stay soft. and it's so hard to do I mean it really is I've got a kid's book coming out in June and one of the poems in it is exactly what you just said it's called phones and brains and it's about how a neurodivergent brain and a normal brain it's like an iPhone and an Android they're doing the same thing they have different software and all you have to do is understand how an Android works in basicness you don't need to know the fine details but you can still text each other on an iphone and an android you can still play the same games play the same music but you're each downloading it with different software yeah and it is so simple when you put it in a i love the word simple everything i do is simple yes it's got to be simple if you put big tricky things into simple words, we suddenly go, oh, it's not woo-woo.

28:51It's not, you know, over the top. This is actually really sensible. It's not, yeah, I can manage this. And I think actually a lot of our prejudice or whatever we resist is the fear, right? It's the fear. Let's get back into your next part of your journey because you were a creative wonder woman. I mean, your story takes you to singing on cruise ships, to writing for magazines and then ultimately starting a family business with your husband when you opened a play centre for children in Manchester. And you also started writing a blog in 2017. And this in many ways was the sort of start of your writing career that we now know and that we adore.

29:36But 2020 came along, pandemic hit, the plans you had to sell your play centre fell through um you had to close it your husband Robert and your sons Felix and Brodie moved to Scotland what a moment in time that must have been yeah I can't imagine tell me about closing the business how scary that was and the pain of it to be honest Holly it was a relief for me it was terribly scary for my husband because I could see it was holding us in a very oh high pressure pattern we thought we'll buy a children's play centre because we'll be able to bring our kids to work it will be so lovely and familial and it was in a way but what I didn't figure out was there's seven days a week these places yeah and you'll only get Christmas day off on you and oh my goodness and your customer for you're right there aren't you and the sensory overload oh my Goodness.

30:34This was before I knew. What is the one thing that you shouldn't do? Do not buy a soft play. But my husband's a proper workaholic. So his, you know, he will throw himself in head first. So he became enslaved by this business, you know, and I halfway through decided that I cannot be in this room every day. I need to do something else. So I started the blog, but I was really also desperately seeking female connection. I had a few friends because we'd moved around so much. We lived in Azerbaijan. We lived in Spain, my husband and I. Moved back to Manchester. I didn't know anybody there because when I lived in Manchester before, I lived in the city and suddenly we were in the suburbs and we had kids and whole new ballgame.

31:24So I was desperately seeking connection and that little feeling of I need more than this. I need to know that there are deeper conversations and I also was dying to tell everybody I'm actually weirder than I pretend I was dying to unravel myself I just didn't know it yet I was playing the part of this perfect housewife perfect mum perfect business owner you know but at night at night I was like how do we do it I can't do it you can see the perfect storm was brewing yeah and then pandemic came my son had been diagnosed six months before now that was the biggest thing that ever happened to us in our lives because we did not know we did not know we were shocked we we described it as though someone threw a hand grenade into our living room and then ran out there was no help there was no chat there was no what do we do now and so he when the pandemic hit and he got his diagnosis he spiraled out of all control we could not get back into school which happened to a lot of kids and I suddenly looked around and I thought you're you're the government are now telling me I can't go home to my family in Scotland which I did four times a year my son is out of control you know he's so he's suffering and I don't know what to do I think it might be me as well that was all going on in my head so I thought right I'm going home to my mum I need my mum yeah I'm going home yeah so we upped and left and what we didn't realize is that when we went to visit because we sort of bought this house over FaceTime you know as we did in the lockdown it had lifted enough for us to go and visit but then it locked down while we were there so Manchester locked down while I was in Scotland so I couldn't go back right I could go back but then I wouldn't be able to come back and I knew that the boys needed to do sit their exam to get into the school and again it was just the craziest of times so we lived with my mum and dad for three months with our dogs and our kids and one bag that we brought for one week's visit we didn't have any clothes we had nothing and while we were gone our house was burgled because people had cottoned on that we were away and the business had had to be shut down prior to that and we had no work suddenly my husband didn't have a career I didn't have a career and you know we our house was sort of four months away from being able to to be lived in so we were living with our parents and that was when I wrote to the women and I remember printing it out in my dad's or my dad's printer my dad's a wonderful human but like a lot of dads he was like what are you printing what are you printing there's 800 pages coming out he said I'm on a special plan that only allows for you nothing every month for the same amount of ink and now you've changed that plan they'll think I need it to upgrade to all of this and he was like ah and I said chill out dad I'm just printing out this book and he was like made a big fuss about this whole printer and now we laugh because that book has sold hundreds of thousands over time and I never let my dad forget that you know he gave me such a hard time about printing it out and he's he's dining room it was a crazy crazy time as it was for so many people well we carry on talking about cove lockdown for the rest of our lives because in a way i mean of course it's like no war or anything like that but for us that period of time marked this change in our world yeah that we hope never to do again that can never be the first again in a way so we lived through that and it is extraordinary when you just reminded me I get reminded all the time about things that we did and it was sort of normal and and I got left Manchester and it got locked down yeah and then you're like gosh this is just but in some ways now when we look at Covid and that first lockdown and and it's five years ago we've obviously just had that five-year moment that moment when you also wrote the poem called history will remember when the world stopped yeah and the virality of it um and i recently read it again and the goosebumps and yeah you spoke of children staying at home and people singing on their balconies and celebrities read it and it was picked up by the nhs and amnesty international published it and it spoke to everybody.

35:56First hand, what do you think it was in there that brought us together in that poem? I mean, the incredulity of what we were experiencing was like nothing else, wasn't it? And we had nothing left. So all we had was online. We would come together online. So I was sitting in a position of, I thought, right, I could spiral out of control here. My son's just been diagnosed. Our life is changing. I need to keep myself sane. I'm going to write every day and I'm going to write and I'm going to document this and I'm going to put it out there without judgment or criticism in case anybody else needs it so everything that I was writing was very it came with the confidence of someone who's never who had decided not to judge themselves because this is a serious situation and there will be people out there struggling and we might lose people to suicide as well as to covid and it was those people that I I was thinking about, you know, I want to be there just in case anybody needs help and I can help myself.

36:55So I was thrown out these poems every single day. And I think that one hit in the way that viral things do and that it's just the right moment at the right time, the right tone. And off it goes into this whirlwind vortex, you know, like the Wizard of Oz and magic is made. That's what viral is. You can't create a viral moment. yeah um and it was sort of one of my first fight it wasn't my first viral moment actually but because it was in the lockdown and it was so um collective yeah every single one of us yeah it hit harder people needed it so it went viral in america first funnily enough and it went into all the yearbooks and all of you know it's still in all these yearbooks thousands and thousands of schools donna how amazing is that i know it's funny to think back and Amnesty sent it out to every single person on their mailing list on a beautiful yellow card, you know, like a lovely piece.

37:54And that kind of empowered me to keep going. Yeah. I thought, okay. If you wanted a sign. That was my sign. I thought, I'm going to document this and I'm going to make a little book at the end of it and people can buy it if they want it. And that was my first book and it was self-published and it was a tiny little book. But I threw it out in the June of 2020 because I thought, it was finished. We all thought it was finished around that time. I can't remember the exact dates, but do you remember when the first glyph, we thought that's it done. Little did we know. So I threw this book out quickly because I thought we'll forget about this next year.

38:30I didn't realise then the enormity of what we were experiencing. So it's very of its time in that time. So when you look back at it now, honestly, I was just thinking about my son. He was 11 at the time and he's he's got such a way with words you know the adhd autism brings such eloquence and i we were doing the rainbow in the window remember the rainbows oh gosh yes and he lots of them he looked at me and we were painting it on the glass and he said to me ah next they'll be asking us all to put our credit card details in the window and guess who'll be first in line mum because he could see a level of control yeah i wasn't even thinking about at the time you were just happily putting the rainbow out there i was all about the hope you know we painted our double we had these big wooden double gates on onto a busy street and that's why we put the gates there because it was so busy and we painted the whole gates with a big wonky rainbow and and the women at the hospice that used to drive past every night put a note under my door one day and said, you'll never know how much this makes us smile at the end of these horrific days when we're driving past and we see your big wonky rainbow.

39:45So I was all about the hope and he was looking at me thinking oh you're really sucking this up aren't you? As we all were. Do you remember the rainbows and the standing out on the doorstep every Thursday night? Just, and the banging of the utensils on our pans and pots. And it's just, it spoke to so many people. It uplifted just like those ladies driving past. It was amazing. Imposter syndrome, I've stopped using it as a term sort of, I mean, I'm not, you know, religiously not using it, but I don't like it. I think I don't like it as much as, you know, I was sort of buying into it maybe before.

40:23Maybe it's a, I was talking to someone yesterday about it. Maybe it's a duvet that we can wrap ourselves up in and feel protected and warm by it but actually ultimately I don't know if it does us good to believe continuously that we have it did you feel though that you had it at the time or were you just like I don't care I'm going to get this out there oh no of course I cared about everything all of it all of it I nobody could criticize me more than I could criticize myself yeah I've been like that since the day that I was born my inner voice my inner critics are vile yeah vile I've started to see imposter syndrome as a wonderful wonderful thing yeah because if your imposter syndrome is raging at you from within yeah you are in the right lane no you're you're doing something brilliant ah you're pushing yourself into that place and that imposter syndrome is so that's a signal that's your alarm bell not your alarm bell it's like the good bell that's going It's the litmus test to your courage.

41:27So if you're being really brave, she is raging. And this imposter syndrome is only our inner voices that we made ourselves when the world first breaks your heart. The very first time somebody tells you you are ugly or stupid or nothing, that all goes in and forms these voices that speak to us lifelong and we'll let them. so now when my imposter syndrome is raging at me I think okay well done Donna you're clearly doing something good today you're being authentic so I've started to flip the narrative on imposter syndrome and see it as a you know well done yeah and then you can lower the slider to her yes yes yes let's actually hear what she's saying the volume down on that she's a bitch she doesn't like me um and then I feel sorry for her because you know I made her that inner critic and I let the world let me make her and you know I think the more you look into why you feel these things why we're all so hard on ourselves we are hard on ourselves because the world was hard on us at the time when we were formulating our neurons and our personalities the world was tough and it's not our fault and it's not and we've hung on to it when you were forming that small your first small book to today.

42:50I'd love to know more about the process. And I read that you try not to overthink what you write or to edit it too much for basically fear of diluting the message. You want to keep that authenticity. The writing should be pure and straight from your heart. Is that still now with that many books under your belt, the same way that you look at things? My poems, if you want to call them poems, some of them are poems, some of them are quotes, some of them are just passages, are messages from me to the person who's reading it. These are things that I think we need reminding of or that we need to share more or that maybe you just needed to hear today.