Spring clean your life: how to make a fresh start

0:01Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place. Today, is your lifestyle in need of a little bit of a spring clean? Maybe now's the moment to pivot your career, pick up healthier habits, or embrace a new life you wouldn't have chosen but now need to make the best of. I was angry. I was that kind of drunk person at the party that other people are trying to get away from. They were big warning signs. They gave us a week to pack 20 years of life into boxes and leave. Everything that we'd built over the previous 20 years, gone. There is a fine line between making people happy and then being like a people pleaser at the expense of yourself.

0:41I didn't intend to do it. It was so organic that I don't even know how it happened. I can get caught sometimes in a dark place, but somewhere along the way, I climb out of it. You know what? Even more so than New Year, I think spring can feel like a beautiful time for a bit of a fresh start. It's all grey and miserable at the start of the year. So motivation can be pretty low, but I certainly find that I get a real surge of excitable and vibrant energy when the sun comes out and everything in nature is doing its lovely blooming thing. So today, this episode is for you if you're in need of a bit of a push or a bit of inspiration to get you making that fresh start you've been thinking about for ages.

1:26You're going to hear from Donna Ashworth about making a slow, organic career change later in life. Then Millie McIntosh about the big moment she realised she had to stop drinking. And Raina Wynn on coping with a huge change you wouldn't have chosen for yourself. That is a lovely one. Shania Twain chats about coming back stronger from illness. Kesha talks about embracing a different side of her personality. And Charlotte Church, who's also done a massive career pivot actually, talks through the ceremonies that help her basically rebirth herself into a new life.

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2:56Check out zen.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. There's a part of me that everyone sees. I'm Howie Mandel, the comedian. Apparently, I know what funny is. Funny bought me a house, but I also know what isn't funny. OCD. I've lived with OCD my entire life, and people throw the term around like it's no big deal. But OCD is severe, often debilitating. It's a mental health condition that involves unrelented, unwanted thoughts that can make you question your character, your beliefs, even your safety. General therapy can help with some things, but for OCD, it can actually make things worse.

3:39That's why I want to tell you about NoCD. No CD is the world's largest treatment provider for OCD and is covered by insurance for over 155 million Americans. Their licensed therapists specialize in ERP, the most effective treatment for OCD. If you think you might be struggling with OCD, go to NOCD.com to book a free 15-minute call. They are here to help. With Plan B Emergency Contraception, we're in control of our future. It's backup birth control you take after unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation, and it won't impact your future fertility.

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5:00I love stories about people's trajectory when it's come a little bit later in life. I think we all know the stories of people that have had this vision from a very young age and they've worked and worked and worked and they've got to this point in their 20s or teens where it's all started to kick off. You seemingly had this big pivot in your 40s where I'm imagining it comes from mindset. It's not like you've got some sort of magic spell that you cast and all of a sudden you've got this huge following. Or have you? Or you can let us know, Donna. But it seems like something shifted in you in your 40s that catalyzed all of this.

5:39Yeah. Is that true? And if so, what was it? I had had enough. Yeah. I just kept thinking every day, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep running this fast. I felt like the sort of lifestyle that we were living, my kids were a bit younger. They were at really good schools, but those schools went really fast and hard. like you have to do better you have to do more you have to do sports you have to do this weekends are homework and weekends are more sports and everybody was sort of moving at such a pace and stressed and stressed yeah and I just thought I've got a feeling nobody likes this and maybe if I stop and say anybody else think that this is all just a bit of a joke and we can all just chill out and and be a bit you know flawed and have a laugh about it and be really happy and we could maybe we help one another that if I did that maybe people would go me me me and so I mean it was anonymous at first I had a page I sort of hid behind the name of the page which was ladies pass it on dot com and I thought we would kind of pass things on that helped one another and it wasn't until sort of the first poem or two maybe went viral that I I went okay this is me this is my name and this is my face that's another really scary bit what you're all going to say about my face you're going to say horrible things um and I just had enough and I just thought there's more than this and I think we could have better conversations about everything about depression I realized I'd been depressed many times in my life and I'd never admitted it I'd always gone oh I'm highly sensitive I maybe get a bit down I'm quite difficult but no I had been depressed you know I struggled for a long time with eating disorders and I got myself out of those eating disorders using affirmations and Reiki and going down the whole reprogramming your thoughts so I lived on Louise Hay for decades obsessed with Louise Hay I still her book How to Heal Your Body I have healed my body I have it I've got two copies of it yeah one by my bed one in my little office I go to it constantly yeah I carried that everywhere with me age 18 I mean who was doing that and I did a Reiki course for my uh I think it was my 17th birthday because I was trying to eradicate myself off the face of the earth because I was such a perfectionist such uh you know had to have all the grades had to have everything perfect that you know the minute I realized that you could control your eating and that would make you feel really powerful and that that was my downfall so Louise Hay helped me unpick all of that and and find a much healthier calmer way and so somewhere within me that was all dying to come back out it had kind of been squashed down again by life and being a new mum and you know everything just coming at you my husband and I ran a business a children's play centre which was seven days a week so there was never a day where it was shut except for Christmas day and New Year's day and we thought this will be fun we can bring our kids to work because I used to work in magazines and he was in tv and we thought this will be a really chill nice way of life I mean why would you think that a ball pool would be chill No, they're the worst place ever, quite frankly.

9:04I mean, I have noise. I have sensory issues. So the noise in itself was fun. Too much. But I was definitely just looking for deeper conversations with people. And I thought, you know what, maybe I'll start it in a really dramatic way. But why poetry as well? Because, you know, you could have expressed yourself in a plethora of ways, whether it was just expressive writing. Expressive dance. Or create dance, or just, you know, creating a website where you're chatting to people, there's forums. But poetry is so specific. Why that? Is it something you'd always lent on personally just for fun? I think there's always somebody in a friendship group that writes poems even for fun.

9:44You know, like, oh, can you, is that you? I'm obsessed with poetry. So, yeah, so there you go then. And I was that person. So as a teenager, I wrote poems in my diary. About the boys everyone fancied. Yeah, fun. heartache you know the desperation of teenage angst and heartache um and then i became a songwriter so i was a singer at the time and i started to write songs so the the lyrics the beauty of a few words they i mean i listen to other people's music and it's the lyrics for me if they're with the right music and they're done in that way that magic is made it's the best but the lyrics are so important and I've always been obsessed with the power of words the right words in the right order at the right time just when you need it if someone passes it to you or you hear it um it's healing it's you like affirmations you know it's like all of that they can do so much so I didn't intend to do it I didn't at any point go I write poems now that's what I do it I would write little paragraphs and then I would write quotes and then I would maybe just you know write about my day and then the poetry came and so much so it was so organic that I don't even know how it happened it just unfurled I think there's so much stigma attached to just any kind of drinking problem but I yeah I didn't have the kind of dependency where I was drinking every day to get through the day I would get withdrawal from alcohol I would get very severe anxiety and I would then I would self-medicate by drinking more, drinking again, or with prescription pills to cope with how awful my hangovers were, which was also just a very unhealthy, toxic kind of cycle that I got into.

11:28But admitting I actually had a problem was really hard for me for a long time because I felt that there was so much shame around it. And also people kept saying to me, oh, you know, you had too much to drink but you know you don't have a problem so people kept kind of saying to me oh come on you don't have a problem and then I started to think well if I did have a problem I would be judged so I felt like I just kept telling myself oh it's not that bad and over the years things would happen and I just I was like this isn't like that's not really that's not okay and I was kind of scaring myself and having but I'd have periods where I wouldn't drink at all maybe a month or six weeks and I'd feel really good so I kind of convinced myself I don't have a problem because I can stop but then when I went back the same things would always happen I'd always try and limit the amount I had and once I'd had you know two or three all my resolve would crumble and I never knew when the kind of responsible amount was like I just would have a couple and and just keep chasing the feeling it was giving me and be the person that just wanted the night to go on and on.

12:40You didn't have an off button? Didn't have an off button. If I had one, I wanted 100. I've got friends that have exactly the same thing. There's no off button. You're out, you're having a great time. And I guess when you look at whether other people are saying you've got a problem or not or what the definition is of a problem, I think with anything, whether it's alcohol or it could be anything that you know is detrimental, it's a problem if you say so. If you know that your life could be better, it could be anything. But I don't think we should have these parameters that say, if you're drinking X amount, it's a problem.

13:14If you feel that it's derailing you in life in some ways or you could be living in a better way, then you decide whether it's a problem or not. And you had a specific moment you talk about in the book that was a bit of a wake up call where you thought, right, I have pushed it too far. Enough's enough. So just tell us about how that happened. And in that moment, what really got you rethinking about your drinking habits? In the last year before I decided to stop, I had a couple of nights out, a couple of situations where there were big warning signs. One was actually two of them were weddings. One was a hen.

13:50Often these occasions where the kind of drinking is kind of part of a big social gathering. the last the last one was at a wedding um I was at with Hugo and I had planned to not drink very much really kind of been like okay this is a really important wedding it was one of like Hugo's best friends and I don't remember much after the champagne reception like just it's all a blur but it all just went a bit pitong I was crying I was angry I was just that kind of drunk person at the party that other people are trying to like get away from because I was just such a mess and it's it's really uncomfortable to think about myself at that wedding but it's also such a good reminder why I don't go back to drinking and a couple of days after that I had a big argument with Hugo at the wedding and the next day he said to me it had happened you know so many times where he said like I'm really like done if this if this you know keeps happening it's going to end our marriage and he didn't give me an ultimatum of like if you ever drink again from today it's over he just said I can't keep going through this with you and I also knew that it was really damaging our relationship but it took me then about another five days and then I had my like last drink that basically happened after drinking with friends on holiday going to bed not super late not I wasn't particularly drunk that night but we would be now drinking a few nights in a row on holiday and I I went to bed and I woke up the next morning.

15:19We were staying on a boat and I woke up and felt very intense anxiety straight away. But I wasn't able to tell if it was real or not. Like I felt I went straight to a panic attack and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I felt like I couldn't get air in my throat. It felt like it was closing and I started to black out. I woke Hugo up and I started to black out. I was on the floor and I could see my children's faces. and I really thought I wasn't aware I'm having a panic attack I'm hungover this is anxiety it was like I was in the panic attack and thought I was about to die and when I calmed down and like later that morning I was really shaken up and I went for a hike with Hugo just to like talk and I said I need to stop drinking and it was the scariest thing to say because I knew once I'd said it out loud I was going to have to stick to it and it felt so scary like I felt like my life I didn't know what my life was going to look like I didn't know how I was going to socialize how I was going to have fun I thought that was the only way I could have fun and it was yeah it was I was terrified at that point but I knew that was my rock bottom I'd been living in this place in Wales that I bought with my husband, Moth.

16:38It was our dream home, a place we thought about for probably a decade before we actually bought it. It became not just our home, our family home, but our business, where it was the main source of income, but where all of our life was tied up. But then sadly, in the background of those 20 years, we'd had this financial dispute with a lifetime friend that ended in a court case that saw us being served with an eviction notice from that place, that place that we put our heart and soul into, that had been so central to our lives. And they gave us a week to pack 20 years of life into boxes and leave, which was hard enough in itself and seemed like the worst thing that was ever going to happen.

17:21But then in that week, Musma Moth had a hospital appointment that we thought was going to be routine, turned out to be anything but and he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease that had no treatment and no cure and the best advice they could give us was don't get too tired and be careful on the stairs so we were about to leave it was it was the last moments the bailiffs were knocking on the door and we were we were hiding under the stairs actually because we not that we thought a miracle would happen but because we just weren't ready to take that last step how could you be but that moment that was the moment when I spotted a book in the packing case and it was a book about a young man who'd walked the south west coast path with his dog and just then in that awful moment seemed like the most obvious thing to do fill a rucksack, go for a walk why wouldn't you?

18:20I was so taken aback by that reading the salt path that you had the strength, I guess, and the energy with all of that going on, which is emotionally depleting, physically horrific to go through because you're having to just move your whole life out of, as you say, your home, your heart, your soul, like everything that you'd built. And rather than go, right, how do we start again? What is possible? You kind of pushed it to one side for a bit to have this time and space to go on this epic walk and you didn't have an end date or you had like a loose idea of where you'd like the walk to finish. But really it was like, let's just get a backpack and walk.

19:01And I find that just remarkable that you had that inner strength and that I guess there must have been something deep within you that was intuitively pulling you towards that walk. I think I think at the moment that moment that moment when we said yes let's walk I think it was just the idea of following a line on the map because at that point it was as I said all of our lives were wrapped up in that property so it's like the whole framework that we'd built everything that we'd built over the previous 20 years gone and it just left a void so the idea of following that map almost gave us a sense of purpose, a sense of reason to the days, a reason to go on because at that point I think I felt like there was no reason.

19:51The first sort of initiation into that walk was tricky and you had very small amounts of rations of food and at times you didn't know where your next meal was going to come from but like you say there was so many incredible and I'm sure at the time felt quite sort of surprising positives that came out of this really treacherous time for you. One of them being that Moth's health seemed to really improve. On this first walk on the salt path where you started in, was it North Devon? And then you moved right down to South Devon, South Cornwall. A huge walk. And as you say, at the start of us talking, you were given this loose advice, don't let him get too tired, don't tackle stairs, chill as much as you can.

20:31And you did the absolute opposite. Like you could not walk anymore if you possibly tried, day in, day out, sleeping on the floor, in tents. But you both started to notice these improvements. So first of all, can you just tell us the nature of CBD? What does that mean for a human body? What are the symptoms? And how did you see those symptoms dissipate over time? Yeah, well, corticobasal degeneration, it's a neurodegenerative disease, it sort of manifests as coordination issues and people have problems with walking with fine motor issues but then it develops into something far more aggressive that eventually can affect the way you think the way you you process and eventually leads to swallowing difficulties which inevitably don't end well.

21:25I mean, that is, it's unbelievably just catastrophic to hear that diagnosis. You've been with Moth since you were a teenager. He's the love of your life. And all of a sudden, not only are you losing your home, but you're being given that news in the same week. I still kind of can't get over that you just didn't go, fuck this, I give up. I can't, I can't take anymore. Yes, but you've said it there, Fern. He was everything. We'd met when I was 18 in a college canteen. I'd looked up and seen this young man across the other side of the canteen, dipping a Mars bar in a cup of tea. and just in that moment it was like it was just I just knew without question that he was going on and then we we had spent the rest of our well the whole of my adult life with him and uh just the idea the idea of letting go of that seemed utterly impossible so so to not do something positive as the walk turned out to be, would have needed us to do something that accepted all that negativity and accepted that we were in a really bad place and that Moth's time with me was going to be short.

22:42I couldn't accept that. So the only other thing to do was something positive. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Post a job for free and get started today. If you're a smoker or vapor ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason.

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24:06But OCD is severe, often debilitating. It's a mental health condition that involves unrelented, unwanted thoughts that can make you question your character, your beliefs, even your safety. General therapy can help with some things, but for OCD, it can actually make things worse. That's why I want to tell you about NoCD. NoCD is the world's largest treatment provider for OCD and is covered by insurance for over 155 million Americans. Their licensed therapists specialize in ERP, the most effective treatment for OCD. If you think you might be struggling with OCD, go to NOCD.com to book a free 15-minute call.

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25:24I think like most other massive Shania fans, to have you back with a new album is monumental for so many reasons. One of them being, if anyone watched your amazing documentary, where you were talking about your health issues that you'd had that had affected your throat hugely and your ability to sing to have you back producing music is incredible so how how's your throat at the moment it's good I'm very happy with it you know I've had quite a bit of time now to become acquainted with the way it works and how to use it it's a learning it's an ongoing learning and discovery so I've been through one visit residency Vegas residency um that makes sense of Vegas whatever anyway Vegas residency you know which is a lot of singing on stage and then um the recording of this album so I've now about to head on a tour that'll be the first tour with the new throat with my new like throat structure is really the way it is or my new laryngeal structure and i'm feeling good about it i have the volume that i and the projection that i missed for so many years and control that i missed for so many years i still have a lot of work to do in maintaining it and and you know i'm and that's like i can't wait to get back in the studio and and make more albums while i still have it so i'm feeling very celebratory about the fact that i still have it i want to use it as this important music expression that i you know would would be very sad to live without but I may not have this forever so um yeah I want to hurry up and make more albums and uh make all the albums make all my albums before I'm not able to sing my songs anymore I mean I'll be very happy for other people to sing my songs I really think that that would be a huge pleasure for me anyway as a songwriter a whole other kind of pleasure but I do not take for granted the fact that I I can sing them right now and even though I do sound a bit different and everything like that.

27:33I'll take it. I don't think you do. I think you sound just exactly the same as you've always sounded. And that's why I was so glad to hear this, this album. I mean, and also because it was so unfortunate and this tiny moment where you get a tick bite, you get Lyme's disease, and then it affects your throat in such a way that is absolutely devastating. And of course, not only do you, well, you obviously you had surgery in the end, but you had to retrain your, your voice and retrain yourself to sing. But also there's that whole confidence piece that all of a sudden you've got to build the confidence to get back out there to get back on a stage how did you do that well before I had surgery is when I really really really had to test my courage and my commitment to being able to control my voice again because before I had the operation the surgeon said I really think you need to go through a year of trying everything else before we do surgery.

28:30So all the physiotherapy, the speech therapy, the voice gym, the everything that was non-invasive. So I did that. And I did manage to do one residency that way and one tour that way and one album that way. But it was not sustainable. I was exhausted because it took me an hour and a half to warm up and then another hour and a half of a show. It wasn't physically possible and on top of that the condition was deteriorating anyway I mean just uh the tension was just getting more and more slack with my voice I either didn't sing again on any level that was going to be satisfying or I got this operation so now I have two crutches on either side of my larynx in the voice box it's incredible and it's so brilliant that it worked and that the the voice training got you back to singing again, thank God.

29:26I mean, it seems like throughout your life, from what I know of it and from watching your documentary and having followed you for a long time, that you are incredibly resilient. Like any problem, like this throat situation that comes your way, you are able to pick yourself back up again. And that goes right back to when you were a teenager why do you think that is how are you able to um to keep getting back on your feet after these huge life knocks that you experienced I think resilient is a good one word at least that describes me very well I agree that I am resilient I am not however you know someone that just bounces back every time she hits the ground you know I don't just bounce back I'm depending on the situation, depending on where I'm at in my life.

30:18I sometimes, you know, I can get caught sometimes longer than I want to in a dark place or in a discouraged place. But somewhere along the way, I, I climb out of it and or snap out of it, or however you want to put it. I mean, I think that that term like just snap out of it. I don't think it's necessarily an insensitive thing to say, especially to yourself. It's like, okay, allow yourself to feel you're down, you know, recognize that you are or whatever your negative state of mind is. But at some point, you got to snap out of it. You got to just fucking get on with it. You know, you got to find the strength to carry on and carry on with a good attitude.

31:06So I can be hard on myself sometimes when it comes to that. But maybe that's part of my resilience. I don't know. I'm just not somebody to give up and quit. I'm not somebody to allow myself to linger to the point of self-destruction. I was so young when TikTok came out and people seemed to really like that song. So that indicated to me that that's what I was useful in, is that arena, making people happy, making people dance. And I do love that. So that's where the confusion kind of came in. is that I like seeing people happy. I like making people happy. But then there is a fine line between making people happy and then being like a people pleaser at the expense of yourself and becoming a caricature of who you are.

31:59And I just kind of had to take a step back and like reevaluate the kind of album I was going to make. and there were all these voices in my head that were like screaming inside of my head and they were unavoidable during lockdown. You know, usually I'm so busy that I can just be like, oh, I'll get to you later. But in the silence, I really felt like it was time to address and give voice to, especially rage. I grew up thinking women like we can be all of the things but the one thing I really cannot be there's nothing more unattractive than an angry woman and that was just this feeling I've had since I was very young I don't know who said it or if I just like internalize that from culture or if it's purely just in my head but I always kind of thought you can be anything any kind of woman but not angry and I have addressed my anger on this album so I'm like wildly curious what people are going to think about that.

33:11Anger's really brilliant because actually you can turn it into this fire yeah and this passion and I've probably come to a similar realization I don't know in the last sort of few years and have been wanting to release it I don't want it in me and I think that's what ends up happening when we have those and they're very widely spread cultural beliefs that you know women should act a certain way and and not show any anger it ends up living in our bodies which is so so unhealthy for a star I've been doing these workouts where you make like wild animalistic noises and my neighbors think I'm being like murdered but I am wildly letting it out.

33:53And at first I found it really excruciating to hear my own roar. I was like, oh, it's horrible, like mortifying. And now I'm like goosebumped hearing it and making those sounds. But we're taught to keep it in. Yeah, I feel like, don't you find that freeing? It's the best. It's the best. Because I think when you keep it in your body, it manifests. Absolutely. I mean, I probably had all the cliche things of just like tension. Did you have any physical manifestations of keeping stuff in? Oh, my God. You're kidding. A few. So many.

34:31There's the masculine and feminine side of the body. And my whole feminine from the bottom of my foot to the jaw, like all the way, is just so tight. because I felt like just so protective from like, and then the masculine side would step in, which, you know, for me correlates with work. And that side's fine, but it was more like the masculine in me was protecting the feminine in me versus allowing both to show and be balanced, which is something I work on. I do like acupuncture. And that was actually where the anger thing came from was I was getting acupuncture and the doctor was like, you have so much anger, you need to go on a mountain and yell.

35:20And so then when I was recording with Rick Rubin, I looked around and I was like, huh, I'm on a mountain. And so then I was like, get the microphone out, let me yell. Yes. Oh, it's so good. Even just to make sound freely and not feel bad about it, like knowing it's safe to make any sound you want and not care about that. I know that was a huge part of the process for you working with Rick was that he allowed you to be you and use your voice as it comes out naturally. And that's something that you were previously worried about, getting used to using auto-tune and him encouraging hearing the scratches, the imperfections and the real rawness to your voice.

36:00How was that? That must have been quite an exposing process initially. Very uncomfortable. It's kind of similar to like I used to wear so much makeup. And again, it was really fun. But now just like I'm not wearing wigs. I'm not wearing a ton of makeup, like just really showing who I am, presenting who I really, really am. It's so much scarier, but it's also very liberating. And I'm finding real power in it. A lot of what we do here is what is really missing in the world. So the world is really direct and penetrative and fast and, you know, deep and hard and, you know, and actually I just want this to be like a real softening and opening a gentleness, a slowness.

36:48And a lot of it be about rest, because I just think people's nervous systems are fried and we just need to rest and come to a place where we're sort of just held in this Welsh bosom of this valley. Oh, heaven. And just to, you know, be allowed, feel safe enough to just rest and enjoy and play. Are all of these practices and methods things that have helped you over the years personally? Yeah, to be honest, nature saved me in so many ways. It's been, it's been a real bomb at the times when I've been going through, you know, some of the most painful, griefy, whether it's, you know, losing people.

37:32I went through, I lost a baby, which was really traumatic. And I gave birth to her at 17 weeks. And that was really hard. And I was just never inside. Like I spent the whole summer just outside recovering, connecting. And nature just soothed me, like just really soothed me back to some sort of balance and health. and you know singing and sound there's so much science now about how we heal and and of course as I've said there are a myriad of ways to do it and there are and people people do it in different ways much like learning different therapies work for different people but I think sound music singing connecting with voice vibrations and the vibrations of music and sound is something that can it's it's very universal it's very easy to access but it's it's really it can be really transformative so I think that yeah these are all all things that I myself have found really useful in the past 10 years but also that I'm training to do now as well so I'm training to be a practitioner myself in sound healing and learning from elders and wise people how to how to hold people how to hold people to you know dig deeper or have a have a deep delve but also just how to hold them and bring out the joy and the play that's so gorgeous it's really exciting to hear you talk about that and the fact that you're you know you're up for this not only a new challenge in in terms of creating this this whole place this retreat but also taking yourself on a whole new path career-wise to become a practitioner I think like you've just said you know when you go through something traumatic or very deep you often are then spurred on to walk down a completely different path and I'm so sorry to to hear about the loss of your baby I didn't know about that and um having had you know a lot of friends who have experienced the same that grief um is also of course teamed with your body having been through so much and like you say nature is so important And I think we underestimate it in those times where we're emotionally, mentally and physically going through stuff.

39:52It is on a cellular level. It's doing something. You know, how how did that impact your healing from from such a tricky time? I feel like I I just I really allowed myself to be intuitive. I felt very wild and very feral. And there was things that I just had to do. and I think in grief you you allow yourself all sorts do you know what I mean like you really you get a bit feral and I think just to help help us move move into those spaces and move through those spaces to be able to create ceremony was a huge part of it for me so again I'd never I'd never done anything ceremonial before I'd never I didn't know about any indigenous practices I didn't know about any Celtic or witchy practices or again there's loads of things to choose from um but I was just going completely off of this just sort of intuitive drive but you know we created this this funeral for her in in our garden outside in nature we had our friends and family there we wrote all of the words ourselves we sang we and you know I made the space for the couple of days before I had sort of you know decorated all the space which ended up being this circle and and honestly I had I was I was so far away from any of that sort of stuff of ritual or ceremony or understanding it or even it being you know for me at all I was just like oh gosh no I mean I used to be a Catholic but I've got no idea about that sort of stuff and I think from that experience it was just like oh oh my gosh that what we what we did there that that was magic it was almost like we imbued the ground the earth with such intention and power that now when we go to that place which is Billy's garden it's like it's it feel it's got an energy like it really feels different to how it did before when it was just a bit of field yeah it's been such a powerful thing for me in my own healing journey and I suppose you know you you must feel the same Fern to be doing what you're doing as well you've got the happy place you know which is a huge help for people really starting to educate and help people a lot of the time who maybe don't think that well-being stuff or anything esoteric is for them just making it much more accessible oh thanks Charlotte bloody lovely human I love what Charlotte's doing I think she's remarkable I love following her beautiful place the dreaming on Instagram and looking at all the beautiful pictures I must go one day Charlotte was entirely right with that I really do hope that by hearing stories like the one you've just been listening to you feel more confident to trust your gut and make the change that you know will make you happier essentially I bet you've got more resilience in you than you realise too.

42:58Are you enjoying hearing these hopefully helpful little collection of stories from the show? There are loads of other episodes like this that you can listen back to depending on what you're needing a bit of support with. There's one on sticking two fingers up to beauty standards, one on why laughter is a great tool in hard times, and one on how to set boundaries and say no too. There'll be links to those in the show notes but there are loads more you can discover in the back catalogue if you have a little scroll. Right, until next time, big thanks to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Play Studios.

43:30And of course you, go on. Maybe now's the time to rip up the rulebook and make that fresh start.

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