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Podcast Notes: Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women - Episode 189: Juliet Nicolson
Episode Overview In this episode, Rachel Johnson speaks with author and historian Juliet Nicolson about her life, family legacy, and battle with alcoholism. The conversation delves into deeply personal matters, revealing how family secrets and personal struggles shape one's identity and the narratives of women through history.
Key Themes and Discussions
Introduction to Juliet Nicolson
- Famous Ancestry: Juliet is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, which brings both privilege and the burden of public expectations.
- Family Secrets: The episode opens with the acknowledgment that every family has secrets, and Juliet's family is no exception.
Childhood and Family Dynamics
- Distant Relationship with Mother: Juliet shares how her relationship with her mother was marked by emotional distance, leading her to spy on her mother as a child.
- Spying Incidents: Includes anecdotes about cutting holes in bathroom floors to eavesdrop, reflecting a lack of intimacy.
- Impact of Family Background: Discusses how her mother’s upbringing in a “silent generation” affected her parenting style and emotional availability.
Struggles with Alcoholism
- Journey with Alcoholism: Juliet details her battle with alcohol, admitting to using various containers to hide her drinking.
- Experience at AA: She emphasizes the important role Alcoholics Anonymous played in her recovery.
- Impact on Family: Shares the pain of being a drunk mother and the damage it caused her relationship with her daughters.
- Graphic Anecdotes: Juliet recounts humiliating moments related to her drinking, demonstrating the depth of her struggle and the impact of addiction.
Gender and Societal Expectations
- Women's Secrets: Juliet explores why women are often seen as keepers of secrets and how societal norms shape this dynamic.
- Patriarchy: Discusses the historical silencing of women's voices, using the metaphor of the scold's bridal – a device used to silence women in the past.
Resilience and Reinvention
- Second Chances: Juliet describes her life after achieving sobriety, highlighting the new opportunities and relationships that have formed.
- Importance of Speaking Out: She stresses the need for women to speak up about their experiences, citing her own journey as a testament to the power of narrative.
- Legacy of Sobriety: Juliet credits her sobriety with giving her the chance to rebuild trust and relationships with her children.
Reflections on Difficult Women
- Being ‘Difficult’: The episode concludes with Juliet embracing the idea of being labeled as 'difficult' if it means advocating for women's voices and experiences.
- Future Outlook: She expresses hope for future generations of women, reinforcing the idea that speaking out is critical to progress.
Key Takeaways
- Family Secrets: Secrets can shape personal identities and relationships, often revealing deeper struggles.
- Alcoholism: The journey toward recovery is deeply personal and often tied to family dynamics and societal pressures.
- Women's Voices: There remains a crucial need to amplify women's experiences and narratives in a world that has historically silenced them.
- Resilience: Personal reinvention is possible; challenges can lead to growth and a more profound understanding of self.
Conclusion This episode of *Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women* is a candid exploration of Juliet Nicolson's life, focusing on the complexities of family, addiction, and the power of women's stories. Juliet's journey emphasizes that embracing difficulties can lead to resilience and the courage to confront one's truths.
Next Episode Teaser The next episode will feature Cindy Gallop, a sex-positive campaigner, promising another insightful discussion on the themes of women's empowerment and societal change.
For more episodes, listen and subscribe on [Global Player](https://globalplayer.com) or your preferred podcast platform. Follow Rachel on Twitter: [@RachelSJohnson](https://twitter.com/RachelSJohnson).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Rachel Johnson:This is a Global Player original podcast.
0:11Juliet Nicolson:Well behaved women rarely make history. Bloody difficult women do.
0:23Juliet Nicolson:Juliet Nicolson has a famous family. She's written half a dozen bestselling books and Tina Brown. said she'd invented a new kind of social history. But in the end, dear listeners, we ended up talking about alcoholism. And I think it makes for a painful but fascinating listen. Welcome to Difficult Women.
1:04Juliet Nicolson:Every family has a secret or secrets, but not every family is famous. Juliet Nicholson's family is famous and has secrets. The boring bit now, Juliet, because we both hate it when our famous relations are mentioned and when it actually should be about us, but we have to go there. You're the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson. You're the daughter of their son, Nigel Nicholson. You're the brother. Sorry, you're the sister of Adam Nicholson. You're the sister-in-law of Sarah Raven, the garden maven. As you yourself have said, I'm proud of them, but I'm also me. And I think that's perfect.
1:45Juliet Nicolson:There is so much to talk about. I want to start with your new book before we get into your past. A life rich in incident, anecdote, feeling. and you've written about it all so beautifully. But we will get to your other books and all of that. But first, your new book is very close to home. And I was listening to another interview you'd given in which Michael Barkley said that you became fascinated and a kind of wire, if this is true, and used to spy on an eavesdrop. And you even cut a hole in the bathroom floor to spy on your own mother.
2:24Rachel Johnson:Oh, my goodness. I'd completely forgotten, but you're absolutely right. I did. And the thing was, my mother's life was so secretive. There was also a hole in the beam that separated her bedroom from the stairs. So I used to lean at the risk of lots of splinters into the beam to hear who she was talking to in that muffled way. turned out to be the lover obviously not my father um but the bathroom incident was um incredibly frustrating because we did cut but adam and i my brother and i did cut that hole in the lino of our floor in in our bathroom which was directly above my mother's bathroom to see what she looked like undressed that is weird you know we were about eight and he was five I was eight and he was five and the awful thing was that all we could see was the bath hat because we were above that she was wearing a large frilly bath hat so we could just perhaps see her toes it is weird now I say that I feel rather embarrassed about it actually even
3:40Juliet Nicolson:though it was a long time ago I understand it it what it tells me is that you weren't at all intimate with her?
3:48Rachel Johnson:I think that's the thing. I mean, I used to count how many times she called me darling a week and how many times my friends at school got darling. And it was much more than I got darling. And darling for me became it. You know, I'd kind of, I'd sort of done something right when I got darling. Whereas my father called me darling when I was in disgrace. Oh darling, you haven't. And so darling, actually darling is still a kind of, I can't bring myself to call my husband darling. I don't really know how to do it because I got such mixed messages with darling. And my children sometimes call me darling by accident and that feels odd.
4:35Rachel Johnson:But luckily they're so well balanced that they know how to talk to their own children. So there's a sort of free, free flow darling in their houses. I've never talked about this, Rachel. How can you be so brilliant? It's to skewer me on darling, which actually is, yes, a sort of probably rather a huge unexplored issue in my psychological past. Yeah, spot on.
5:05Juliet Nicolson:You've, of course, your grandparents wrote about, I mean, Harold wrote a portrait of a marriage and your parents' marriage was unhappy in a very different way. It seemed to me that it was almost like an arranged marriage and the sex life of your parents was pretty non-existent. Your mother had a lover and you would hear her talking on the telephone in a special glutinous voice to her mother. so it sounds a kind of typically unhappy upper class childhood, remote childhood. I mean how would you characterize it now as a grandparent yourself?
5:44Rachel Johnson:Yes, I mean that is why I was writing this book about secrets. It started with thinking about my mother who died a long time ago now, 40 years ago. but I she remained all my life and since her death a mystery and the sort of great sort of advantage of writing books even if you never publish them is that you can explore people that you don't know I mean it might be Napoleon Bonaparte but in my case this book started with my mother who was born between the two world wars the silent generation the silent generation the so-called what time magazine called the silent generation sandwiched between an older and a younger brother boys mattered so many had been killed so many were off again to war to be killed or another whole generation to be killed and so boys were so valued and girls were so sort of neglected, so ignored, it seemed.
6:56Rachel Johnson:And the other thing was that they never talked. There was so much buttoned upness in this sort of posh, rarefied world. My mother grew up in the countryside. She had horses. She left school when she was 14 because her school was requisitioned by the army. And so she grew up feeling sort of unloved and uneducated and inadequate. And what happened was she married my father, who was an MP, and people in his constituency, which was very right wing, Bournemouth, in the 1950s, were beginning to talk about my father's sexuality.
7:46Juliet Nicolson:Is that because of the grandparents, his parents?
7:49Rachel Johnson:I think a bit.
7:50Juliet Nicolson:Because, of course, Vita Sackville-West was a lesbian who had an affair with Violet Trefusis, wrote about that affair. And I'm not sure about the sexuality of your grandfather, but... He was also gay. He was completely gay, but they managed to produce Nigel.
8:05Rachel Johnson:They managed to produce Nigel and his elder brother. They completely accepted each other's gaynesses. They had amazing affairs. My grandmother, Vita, particularly passionate ones. Yes, with Violet Trophusis, with whom she ran away to France, dressed as a man to live out her life. Those were the days, Juliet. Those were the days. Very great outfits. You know, she dressed as a wounded French soldier from the Second World War. As you do. As you do. And my grandfather, his relationships were less intense, more fleeting. And they really loved one another. They were both writers. They made a garden together at Sissinghurst.
8:58Rachel Johnson:And he was bereft when she died. He had a little phrase that he used to say to my brother and me, which was after Vita's death. He would say he for a little tried to live without her, liked it not and died. He was very heartbroken. So but anyway, a complicated relationship out of which came my father, who goodness knows they never talked about what went on in his parents' sex lives when he was a young boy. And so my poor mom, there was my dad, a conservative MP for very, very right wing Bournemouth. and people were talking about, you know, homosexuality was still illegal, you know, until 1967.
9:45Rachel Johnson:So in the 50s to have a gay MP was not good news for the MP or for Bournemouth. So he was on the hunt for a wife and there was my mum, who was 12 years younger than him, who he met at one of these sort of constituency drinks and they were engaged and married. I don't think they'd even kissed. The wedding night, my mother made an excuse. My father wrote in his diary, thank goodness. I mean, they were so ill-matched. My father's sexuality, I don't really know. That's interesting, but you must have an instinct. I don't really. I think he was sort of nothing. I think he was repressed. I think it was all so alarming that it was sort of nothing, really.
10:35Rachel Johnson:I mean, he did have me and my brother and my sister. Yes, he managed to produce three children,
10:40Juliet Nicolson:but I think you've written or he has said at some point that it was like sneezing or going to the loo having sex. There was no romance or passion in it.
10:49Rachel Johnson:Not in the physicality of it, although he was really romantic. he was always in love with people, sort of inaccessible people, women, young women, but there was no funny business as he might have said.
11:27Juliet Nicolson:In the book, I think it's exclusively women's secrets that you explore and reveal, isn't it? And why is it, do you think, that this sex, our sex, are the keepers and the sharers of secrets in a way that the male sex isn't?
11:45Rachel Johnson:I think we are very good women at sharing things, actually. It's our instinctive. You and I are sitting together doing exactly that now, really. But there is a sort of, there has been a, if I can use the big word, the sort of patriarchal domination league for centuries. I mean, I start the book with something called a scold's Bible, which was the... Bridal. Bridal, sorry. I was going to ask you about the scolds bridal.
12:19Juliet Nicolson:I'm sure that lots of people want to have me in a scolds bridal. Never. Never, Rachel. No, it was a contraption. But it's partly because, sorry, I've just got to say this. I host a radio show. I do a podcast. You're a writer. I talk for a living. But that's quite rare. There are not that many women who even talk for a living. People don't like the sound of women's voices in the same way. Men don't like noisy, pushy, domineering, brassy women. And they still don't. I mean, however, even if it's 2025, not 1950.
13:00Rachel Johnson:Yes, but I don't think you need to be domineering, brassy, pushy as your sort of... But that's what you're thought of as being if you're a voice. Yes, but then just listen to the voices that are now doing the podcast such as yourself. I could name another one or two perhaps. Please don't. Probably not. Not here. And on radio, you know, I mean, I remember when Jenny Murray did Woman's Hour on the BBC, people talking about her voice as being listening to Liquid Velvet. It was so, I mean, I think men as well. By the way, another alumna.
13:38Juliet Nicolson:Oh, well, I'm naming them all.
13:39Rachel Johnson:I'm naming them all. Well, they're all heroes, you know. And the thing is that from this scolds Bible, this bridal, not Bible.
13:49Juliet Nicolson:There should be a scolds Bible too.
13:51Rachel Johnson:Scolds Bible, scolds bridal, which was a metal contraption put over the faces of women in the medieval age, which lasted up until the middle of the 19th century for women who had done something shameful. Or not just said something. Or said something shameful. So this contraption went over their mouth and into their tongue to shut them up.
14:17Juliet Nicolson:So it was a companion piece to a chastity belt. Exactly that. So you couldn't have sex and you couldn't talk. Exactly that. But you see that, I'm sorry, but I return to this. I mean, there is still a prejudice against women who have sex and women who talk.
14:33Rachel Johnson:There so is. So when I started to write this book, I thought I was on this wonderful up trajectory as I was moving from my mother's time in the 1950s and through the 1960s when suddenly campaign for nuclear disarmament, the contraceptive pill was being invented and made increasingly available. Abortion laws were being changed in order that women could have choice over their bodies. Spare Rib magazine was being founded. Gloria Steinem in America was founding Ms. magazine. The women's voices were being increasingly amplified and welcomed, it seemed. At least that's what I thought the story was going to be.
15:22Rachel Johnson:And maybe without going all the way through all the decades coming up to the Me Too movement, so recent. Yeah, there's a whole chapter on the Me Too movement. But then, of course, there's always the backlash. And then, of course, the backlash. And it wasn't as straightforward as that because this is an evolving story. And we are still, we women, battling against being silenced. I mean, I can't go into what's going on in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq. Exactly.
15:55Juliet Nicolson:But I mean, across the bits of the Muslim world that interpret Sharia law to the detriment and suppression of women, which is quite a lot of the 58 countries that are Muslim majority, I'm afraid. And I don't know what is to be done about it. I mean, we speak here today from a position of such privilege, Juliet. We're safe. We can speak our minds. We have freedom of speech. We've been able to earn our own livings. We've been able to publish books.
16:28Rachel Johnson:I am so conscious of that. I'm so conscious of that. And, you know, in one way, if I could get my mum back and show her how far we have come in this country. But, you know, you say that. I don't know. I don't want to get too sort of political about it. But she could have had a completely different life. She could have had a different life. And, you know, in America, various things are going on that are, you know. I would say we are really fortunate. I wholly agree with you. I would also say we haven't got there yet.
17:12Juliet Nicolson:We haven't arrived. We haven't. We haven't, but we are a long way. You've spoken about your relationship with your mother, which is sad. But what has been the saddest time of your life?
17:27Rachel Johnson:I probably drank alcoholically for around 10 years or so, possibly longer.
17:35Juliet Nicolson:There's a description of your drinking in the book and it's pretty graphic. You would fill empty bleach bottles and things with alcohol. Yeah, I did.
17:45Rachel Johnson:I'd go with a bottle of window cleaner. to say I'm going to clean the windows upstairs but I'd emptied it and filled it up with vodka my hot water bottle was filled with vodka my Wellington boots stuffed with bottles everywhere under my pillows under my bed you know hiding hiding hiding the shame of it the mortification of being found and of course I people did know people know when you're drinking to excess and I did some terrible things I didn't there was a horrendous incident in um at a the Jane Austen Kent branch annual dinner which my father was the chairman of the Kent branch of the Jane Austen society he was the guest of honor along with a Mr.
18:38Rachel Johnson:Austen who was a kind of great great great great great something of Jane Austen and they'd stopped pouring wine at the dinner and Mr. Austin was giving the main speech and I was looking around for a waiter, no wine, no wine, my glass empty. So I ding-dinged on my empty glass with my spoon, stood up and said, could you stop speaking now? We all need a drink. And sat down expecting everybody to sort of thank me really, because they'd be desperate for a drink too. I was hauled out by my dad. It was absolutely mortifying. We went straight home. We didn't speak in the car on the way. I fell out of the car when we got back.
19:21Rachel Johnson:But it didn't stop me because addiction becomes priority over everything, over absolutely everything. And so writing about that in this book was... Was it exorcistic? it I mean I you know I go to AA meetings I talk about it AA got me well and my friends in AA so I have talked about it a lot before in meeting rooms all over the place writing it down is a different thing because it's then in a book and it's printed and it's out there and you can't take it back but I do know that talking about it might just help somebody and I was doing a book talk just last week and a woman came up to me and she said I've got a friend who drinks and she doesn't know how to stop I was completely aware that the friend was indeed herself and so I said oh I'm so sorry for your friend and we conducted this conversation as if I didn't know and she didn't want me to guess but I just gave her my my advice take it a day at a time find someone to talk to go to AA go to meetings talk talk talk do you think we're
Read the full transcript
20:57Juliet Nicolson:in the age of addiction and what I mean do you think there is more I know you've come from a family of distinguished alcoholics but do you think there is more addiction and if so why is it the current addiction is social media social media and screens in in the younger in a young yes no i see that so a bit of healthy drinking in the pub
21:21Rachel Johnson:i mean we have wine at home my husband drinks you know i'm not like you could you touch a glass of wine now not a sink not a glass of wine Rachel I'm not a drop I can't have a chocolate at Christmas with a liqueur in it I don't understand why not something about just a drop that triggers some mad mad thinking in my head which is oh that was okay that didn't do anything to me perhaps I'll just have another. In fact, it wasn't only okay, I felt rather lovely with it. It's so insidious addiction, at least in my experience. I could not trust myself with a sip.
22:30Juliet Nicolson:Had you become sober before you had your children, or were you a sort of drunk mother?
22:38Rachel Johnson:I was a drunk mother. It is the... I mean, if I could bring my own mother back to life, that would be one wish. And if you could grant me the second one, that is to go back to my life before I had children and not be drunk for them ever. God, that's painful. However, however, there is a chance to make the amend. And the amend is not to say sorry, but to make sure that you are there for them.
23:19Juliet Nicolson:you show for them you show up because did you feel i'm sorry to ask this but there are various other ways that aren't to do with alcohol that you cannot show up for your children you can be absent emotionally you can be having a affair with someone else you can you can decide that work is more important you can do any number of things your your relief was alcohol your escape was alcohol how do they what have you I mean what
23:50Rachel Johnson:is their view of it now my two girls both now parents themselves married and parents and wonderful human beings. It does, I mean, they're so loyal to me now. I mean, I could not have written, I would not have written this book without their support. How old were they when you became sober? They were about sort of 12 and 15. So they knew they had a sober mother as well as a drunk mother. They have a sober mother and their children have a sober grandmother. And, you know, I am a favorite taxi driver. I am a favorite secret keeper because that's a great thing. I am. They I think I mean, they're not here.
24:48Rachel Johnson:So I'm talking for them. But I. You have a good relationship.
24:52Juliet Nicolson:And have you. Did you I mean, you mentioned Julia Samuel and the acknowledgements, which is fascinating because her book is called Every Family Has a Secret.
25:03Juliet Nicolson:Have you done any family therapy to kind of explore the issues that being alcoholic during their formative years might have brought it or might have caused them?
25:18Rachel Johnson:Yes, but I haven't done it with them. It's quite a good suggestion. I mean, they don't really want to talk about it. Fine. About that. They don't want to talk about the specifics of having a mother who was drunk because it was awful. I remember, too, how awful it was having a drunk mother.
25:40Juliet Nicolson:Did they try and stage interventions? I know that Adam and Sarah, your brother and sister-in-law, in the end said, we can't look after you. You've got to take charge now to you. But did your children ever? I remember throwing my mother's jumbo packets of consulate cigarettes that she would buy in a duty free into the fire because she had a different sort of condition. She had OCD. But it was her escape, I think, OCD. It's how she managed her own issues. But she was a compulsive smoker as well. And I remember throwing them into the fire. Did your children find the bottles and empty the vodka?
26:18Rachel Johnson:Regularly, regularly pour them, pour it down the sink. But, you know, an alcoholic will just go and buy another one and hide it in somewhere better.
26:27Juliet Nicolson:we haven't talked about your marriages and we will very quickly because we've got to get to other things before we have to finish your marriage broke down you're very happily married to wonderful Charles and you say and I'm just putting words into your mouth that you've been given a second go at life you're sober you've got a very happy new marriage and you're amazingly productive you must think you've now won the lottery well there is this thing about
27:00Rachel Johnson:loss a lot the lost years and so I had those lost years and while I was drinking and so I sort of did start again with a kind of like clean slate of a sort of a new a completely new life I mean I do owe everything to my sobriety. I owe the trust and love of my children to my sobriety. I owe a marriage to Charlie to my sobriety. And I owe my work. I owe the fact that I'm sitting with you here now talking about my sixth book, all written during sobriety. I owe it all to that. And, you You know, I am quite amazed that it happened to me. It didn't happen for my mum. It might not be happening for people who are listening to this now, but I can't recommend it enough.
27:56Rachel Johnson:It's an act of courage to talk to someone about it. As soon as you've talked, the fear dissipates. Someone will say, I know how to help you to do that. And that's what happened to me. Somebody said, I'm a bit like that, except I'm sober. I get what you're saying. Come to a meeting, come and talk, have a cup of tea, drink some Coca-Cola, and let's discuss why you're so unhappy. Because it's not obviously the drink, it's why you drink. It's what's underneath that. which very often or in my case anyway was to do with being I suppose a woman who felt possibly a bit sidelined and not good enough and my teeth were too big and my nose was enormous
28:59Juliet Nicolson:and neither of those things are true by the way I mean have you seen how big my hooter is but I mean But that's interesting. So do you discount a genetic component to your alcoholism, even though you've said you are the third generation on your mother's side to have had this drink problem?
29:17Rachel Johnson:I think it's a combination. I mean, I think it is hard to define why you do it. I mean, you know, noses apart. I definitely have something of my mother in me, which is not feeling good enough. I do have that. I still do. You know, reviews of a book. sort of handing it over it's a nerve-wracking experience not exposing yourself but risking stuff you're a wonderful writer
29:54Juliet Nicolson:a wonderful mother and a wonderful grandmother and you've been a wonderful guest and your future alumna of Difficult Women I've got to ask as I've got my eye on the clock now you may feel that we've covered this ground but I do like to ask people who sit in the chair, what's been your most difficult time or when have you had to be most difficult?
30:18Rachel Johnson:I think my most difficult time was when I had announced that I had stopped drinking. I was in a treatment centre and I went to it every day. It was a daily, it wasn't a boarding place, it was a daily thing in London and I couldn't stop. And it was then that I carried on. I was drinking cough mixture. I was drinking everything I could lay my hands on at home and pretending when I went back the next morning that I was sober. And that was... When you went home or when you went to the treatment centre? When I went back in the morning to the treatment centre, probably reeking of alcohol because it stinks.
31:02Rachel Johnson:Even vodka comes through your skin. And eventually I was challenged. But for three weeks, I lied. I said I was sober and I wasn't. And it was the most difficult three weeks of my life because I had 10 % left of a liver functioning at that stage.
31:23Juliet Nicolson:Is it true, by the way, that you have to hit rock bottom and this was your rock bottom in order to rise again.
31:32Rachel Johnson:It was my rock bottom. Yeah. And during that time, the fear of not being alive for my two girls was so crippling and agonising. And I honestly, Rachel, I can feel the fear as I describe that to you now. and so it was another person in the treatment centre another alcoholic who said they'll throw you out if you don't stop and you will lose your children and that was a bigger fear than not drinking anymore that was what did it and as for being difficult that's what I am now I will not be defeated I am pale, female and stale on paper. But I am so keen to talk about how important it is to let women have their voice.
32:44Rachel Johnson:And it took a struggle to persuade a publisher to, not really a struggle because a publisher is amazing, But just sort of, can Juliet connect enough with a readership at her age with a sort of posh voice, a posh accent, all of these things that kind of aren't really sort of what we're looking for nowadays. but I have got something to say I have something I really care about and I feel myself becoming increasingly not difficult I'm not sure that's the word but sort of passionate perhaps is another way of being difficult I need to get this message across for my sake of me of you of women of my daughters, of my granddaughters, of my grandsons, of women in Afghanistan, of women in Iran, we must be allowed to speak.
33:48Rachel Johnson:That's my message. And I feel very passionate about it. And if that makes me difficult, bring it on.
34:19Juliet Nicolson:I think you'll agree that was a painful but a very important conversation. Next week, my guest is Cindy Gallop, the sex positive campaigner. Don't ask me what that means. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure the latest episode of Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women is ready to go every Friday afternoon. Bye.
35:02We'll be right back.
From the publisher
In this episode of Difficult Women, Rachel sits down with acclaimed author and historian Juliet Nicolson for an intimate and in-depth conversation about resilience, reinvention, and family legacy. Every family has secrets, but Juliet Nicolson’s antecedents had some pretty famous, if sometimes badly kept ones. In this episode, Rachel goes beyond Juliet’s distinguished ancestry to explore a problem that transcends class, fame, and fortune. Together, they discuss Juliet’s battle with alcoholism, a struggle that shadowed her daughters’ youth and one she continues to face with honesty and grace through Alcoholics Anonymous. Juliet’s story reminds us that the heaviest secrets are often the ones we keep from ourselves.