When You’re Here and Not Quite Here with Cathy Rentzenbrink

There are days when you’re here, fully in your life, in your conversations, in the small, ordinary moments, and days when part of you feels somewhere else entirely. That's what I get into with Cathy Rentzenbrink this week. We explore what it means to live a life that feels both grounded and slightly unreal at the same time. We explore the tension between being present and being pulled elsewhere and how easy it is to lose sight of what’s right in front of us.

We talk about anxiety and emotional overwhelm, about the loud pressures of modern life, and the small things that can tip us over the edge. We explore creativity as a way back to ourselves, reading as a kind of refuge, and the idea of “selfing” — trying to be who you are without turning that into another thing to get right. At the heart of the conversation is the thought Cathy has kept since childhood: that moment of realising how easily our attention can be pulled away from the people and lives we love, and how, in hindsight, we wish we had stayed closer to what mattered.

Cathy Rentzenbrink is an amiable bookworm, a writer of fiction and non-fiction who chairs literary events and speaks on life, death, love, and literature. She is best known for her memoir The Last Act of Love, as well as Dear Reader and Write It All Down. Unusually extravert for a writer, she likes talking to strangers, is a lover not a fighter, and is determined to cling onto her faith in humanity. Twice divorced, she lives in Cornwall with her son and cat. She has been extremely keen on Agatha Christie since she was nine years old and her next book The Agatha Christie Cure will be out in September. 

Instagram | Website | Cathy's Sunday Sessions: A monthly work-out for your writing self | Books by Cathy | Also mentioned: Dr Gavin Francis: The Unfragile Mind

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hi and welcome to A Thought I Kept, a weekly podcast about the one idea that stayed. These Monday morning conversations are for anyone trying to make sense of well-being and everyday life in a world that offers more advice than we could ever possibly follow. I'm Claire Fitzsimmons, a well-being writer, coach, and the co-founder of If Lost Art Here. This show exists because I've always been interested in ideas, particularly the ones that do last a lifetime. Yes, there are the ones that we screenshot or we save or we plan to come back to one day. And then there are the ones that stay, the ones that shape how we live a life. That's what this show is about. Today's guest is Kathy Rensenbrink, an acclaimed British memoirist, novelist, and creative writing teacher. She's someone who's written so beautifully about reading, writing, and what it means to live a life that feels bearable, and sometimes maybe even a little joyful in the midst of it all. Her books have found me at very particular moments. I read how to feel better when I was trying to understand my own grief and despair. The last act of love when I was trying to make sense of the guilt and anger and the living grief as I gradually lost my mom to the madness that was to consume her. Dear reader, when I wanted to find my way back to books after too much time apart. And write it all down when I thought, enough now. Time to begin capturing that story that I can't quite shake. She's one of those writers whose words I like to have in my head. Little moments of keep going. Stay sane. You're okay. It's okay. There's a line from Dear Rita that has stayed with me. Kathy writes about how books allow us to mainline straight into discussing love and death. And don't have to do the dance of everyday life where we pretend to be normal so we don't frighten the horses. And that feels, in many ways, like these conversations. And in particular, this conversation. As always, we go straight to the heart of what matters in someone's life. And maybe what matters in yours too. So let's see where this conversation takes us. And takes you. And discover this week's thoughts that you might want to carry with you too. Here's my conversation with Kathy Renzenbrink. Kathy Rensenbrink. I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm so thrilled to have you on the podcast. Welcome. It's very nice to be here with you. So tell me, how are you arriving at the podcast tonight?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Well, I'm sitting on my sofa. It's getting dark outside the window. And yeah, I'm feeling happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

And uh fe I've got a cup of peppermint tea. Yeah, always feeling good. That's quite a nice spot to be in, isn't it? When it's going into the early evening, it's a little bit cozy, you've got your cup of tea. It just feels like a good place to be.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

It does. And um I mean, it's probably my mood feels quite good, which is probably why I'm enjoying it. Sometimes I can find it a little bit sinister. There's a Hilary Mantel quote I really love, which is that the day is for the living and the night is for the dead. And yeah, which in general I think, you know, why not?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

I think that's why I might go to bed at eight o'clock or nine o'clock at night right now.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, so but looking out the window now, it just feels, I don't know, sort of exciting, a bit liminal. But yes, sometimes, sometimes it can feel a bit like and the day's gone. Like, where is the day gone? But I'm not feeling like that today. I'm just feeling balanced and okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Well, welcome in your balanced okayness.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I know. I'll have to always be listening back to this podcast and remember like it's really good that one day I felt balanced and okay. I happened to be doing a podcast. Let me listen to that and remember what that sounds like.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

It's funny, isn't it? Because in a certain way, I think we aspire to this state of being like really happy and really joyful when actually we're really grateful just to be okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah, that's what I think all the time. And it's funny because oh, I don't know. I often feel like we're I've defin I've had this thing definitely with like a couple of therapy types when they've said, like, but what do you want? And I'm like, I just want to not feel like shit. That's it. Like, that's all I want. And for nobody to die like now. Like, like I I don't I often feel that I don't really have it, doesn't feel like I have active wants. I just don't want catastrophe to happen whilst we're recording this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Well, I'm hoping to keep you in a very safe space as of in my therapy world for the next 40 minutes. Um every week on the past podcast, I ask my guests the same question, which is what is the thought that they've kept? But for you, I want to share one of my thoughts that I've kept. I probably have about five. And one of them is something that you said. I think I went to a writing workshop at the American Museum, which you were hosting. It was delightful. I was one of the people in the audience that has those beamy eyes and gets all excited about being around you. It's so nice. And I think you said something like, and you might have also written this in in Write It All Down. So I might also be quoting you from that. You said, Because when I write, something happens. Mmm. Yeah. And for me, I heard that. And before then, I had thought, oh, when I write, I must write to X, Y, and Z. I must write to publish. I must write to craft beautiful sentences, I must write knowing an ending of my writing moment that day. And it just had this lovely low threat quality to it. Like something could come of it, something doesn't have to come of it, something magical might come of it. And it was just such a soothing invitation. And I wonder what that meant or means to you, that quote that I have taken from you.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Well, I'm always genuinely delighted and a bit surprised that anybody reads me or remembers anything that I've said. And I know that sounds silly because I know people like objectively, I do know that people do that. But I was saying to someone recently, I think it's because I just think I'd go a bit mad if I walked around the world knowing that I'd written books and shared them. Like, so I kind of almost as some self-protective measure, living my ordinary life. I try to sort of forget that I write books. I don't know if that makes any sense at all. But I'm just always so amazed and honoured and humbled and think, what a fine thing that this wondrous, beautiful woman has remembered something. I said that it was important to her. I just really like the fact that I feel that way about it. Like, but it's never not a surprise. Even though I know, even though it sort of shouldn't probably come as a surprise, because I do know that a lot of people do. But somehow I never somehow it doesn't really fully sink in in some way. So it just feels very brilliant. And the other really brilliant thing about it is that I often find that like it just feels that it's exactly the thing that I need to hear at the moment as a writer. And obviously, I've said it lots of times, I've written it down. But in my own writing practice, I always forget what I need to know. And I'm not I do know that I'm a really good teacher of writing. Teacher never feels quite the right word, but whatever. I do know that. And I know that when I'm in front of other people, especially if they are a bit shiny-eyed and looking receptive, they will bring out like the best in me. And I'm I'm not very good at doing that for myself when I'm on my own. Everything feels bleaker and greyer. And so often I find that someone that I've told something to delivers it back to me at this miraculous, precise moment where it's the thing that I need to hear. Once this even happened to me, and somebody told me something, and I said, Oh, that's great, who said that? And they said, You did, and I was like, Did I? That's very good. Brilliant, obviously. And um, yeah, so it just feels very and that's it, I write, because something happens. Because I'm at this stage of having finished a book, and it's so like books are so all, well, I for me, so like all all demanding, you know, all absorbing. And then and I do tend to, especially with well, maybe with all of them, I don't know, I can't remember now. But I lost all my because it I because I just had to put everything into it. I wasn't, I sort of wasn't writing my ordinary diary. I wasn't keeping up with any of my usual good writing habits. And I've sort of feel like I've lost the plot. I'm reeling a bit with uh the book's now gone to the copy editor. I don't know what to do with myself. I've I kind of almost don't exist outside of that manuscript, I don't know what to do. And I keep thinking, like, I don't want to jump into something new, but and then it's like, yeah, I just want to write because something happens in low threat. That's what I want to be doing. Just come back to my own page, to my own practice, to my own knowledge that if I just write first thing, preferably, just write a little bit without any pressure, then life is better.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Is that a typical experience for you that you hand in a book and there is a sense of sort of something unsettled, or do you think that's particular to the book that you've just handed in?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I think it's probably all books, because I think that the life of the book is much longer than the life of writing the manuscript. I think it's and the more I write, the more I feel this. This is my seventh book. But with all of my books, really, they exist long before I ever put, you know, I ever start writing the manuscript, usually. And then they have this life afterwards, which to a certain extent depends on how people receive them and how much people like them and how much other people want to talk about them. So I never feel that and certainly for me, I think I think I'm much more like this than most other writers are. I never really feel that the book, I definitely don't feel the book is an end. It's not like my final it's not the final statement or something, it's the opening of a conversation. And the book itself feels like the hard graphed bit managing the bit on its own. And then I do feel excited about what happens when the book meets the world. Um, but in a way that it sounds ridiculous that I didn't anticipate this, but I sort of did start writing it accidentally, like it was just a private hobby project of my own, and I wasn't expecting it to become a book. So and in a way that I've only just really started realizing, I sort of didn't think it through. I didn't think through the fact that actually, because I was writing a book about Agatha Christie, that I sort of almost didn't really think through that she was well, I knew she was I knew she'd think of her as a real person, but there'd be all these other people involved and with thoughts and opinions and Yeah, so I kind of like fairly suddenly have sort of gone like, oh gosh. Yeah. So that can feel a bit like Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

There's something kind of exposing about it in the sense, isn't it? Like you've claimed something, but it's not yours to claim, but it kind of is yours to claim. It's a kind of funny, like that's it, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

That's exactly. It feels very exposing, and I'm really not a claimer. That's the thing. I'm just not I'm not remotely confident in that way. I don't, I don't, I don't have any opinions other than everybody should love each other and try to be nice to each other. Like I'm really, I'm not a kind of a, you know, I'm gonna stake my flag on this and I think this and I know what I think. So not me at all. So some somehow now having to come to terms with the fact that I appear to have accidentally had lots of opinions about one of the most famous and disgust women in the world. And I don't feel uh I don't feel bad, I don't feel difficult about sharing the book with what I think of as my readers. And that doesn't necessarily mean people who are already readers of mine. It just means I I have this sense in my head of my in my head of like a dream reader for me. And though those readers that they're again, they would be similar to some of the readers I have that I know, and they're intelligent, thoughtful, perceptive, good sense of humour, willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Like, I don't have any qualms about sharing the book with those readers. But I've only kind of like just twigged that because of the subject matter, I'll encounter lots of other readers.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

And who and how are those readers different than the ones that you have, you know, you have this ideal reader in your mind. What is particular about this book other than this ownership of this person stroke character?

SPEAKER_01 13:23

I think, I mean, and probably that. I mean, I don't maybe they won't be different, maybe they'll all be delightful. But um I suppose I'm a bit nervous that people will um I suppose I'm a bit nervous probably that people will be cross with me about what I think or that they were you know, that uh that people just I don't know, sort of weighed into me in some sort of way, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Has that happened before? I'm thinking about Dearita, and my sense of you is that you try not to say bad things about people, and you're very kind about and generous about what you do offer about books. Books are so extraordinarily personal, they're so intimate, and there is a vulnerability in sharing the ones that you love. Did you find in that experience that you were meeting people that would say, like, you know, people can be so mean about our choices, can't they? Like, oh, Rebecca or Adrian Mole or Jillie Cooper. Like, did you ever come across that that people that you had brought out these beautiful memories attached to books, and there was a judgment of those memories, all those books, all those choices, all your relationship to it, or did you feel like it was as warmly held as you would hope?

SPEAKER_01 14:35

I think it was warmly held, actually. I suppose I wasn't writing at length about anyone in that book. It was sort of a because I wrote about lots of things, so it probably feels that I think probably what I feel about Agatha is it is a whole it's a book about her and fairly uniquely about her, except it isn't, because actually it ended up being loads about me, and also loads about quite a lot of about my son, and I sort of I didn't really expect that, probably still feel a bit conflicted about it. The the so I try to keep this dream reader in my head, but I'm gonna confess to you now that I often have another other voices in my head that would be the non-dream readers, and and the voice that I'm nervous about is the voice that something like, Well, I don't know why this boring woman thought we wanted to read about her and her son driving around. I just wanted to read about Agatha Christie, and I'm not interested in her at all. And it's that sort of voice. And again, as I say it, I can think, like, why am I torturing myself about this? Doesn't sort of, you know. And I do know the whole thing as well is that this all operates emotion at a really different plane emotionally than it does intellectually, if you like. So I know that in this modern world, in the world that we live in, it would be impossible to not aggravate someone. Like it'd be, and as you say, as you've noticed, I do like to be kind. And also I'm not I'm never looking for conflict. I'm very conflict-diverse. I don't want to start fights. I'd much rather, I always think it's very funny that people want to go viral. I absolutely don't want to go viral because I don't want to, you know, I don't want atten I I only like quite specific types of attention. Again, dream reader attention from really nice people who are, you know, I don't want the downside of mass appeal. Like, so I'm never trying to not try to start fights, I'm not trying to create a controversy. I don't want, I'm not trying to elevate, I'm not trying to oh, what's that awful thing people say? Like when they I'm not trying to build my own profile in any way. I'm not, you know, I'm never trying to do any of those things because I'm actually a bit sort of scared of it, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

So But I suppose that's not the imitation that we had. I think we're at a similar age. And I was thinking about like the way that I thought about authors and books and writing. And in a sense, my hope is that it can still exist in a way that is still about in my naive way, it's still about like the words and the writing and and and books and loving that, being in that that landscape. And I think I have this fear that it's about something else now. It's about building a brand, it's about going viral, it's about attention, it's about likes. And there is something that I find so and not to judge anybody else, and I think people do extremely well, but in my world, when I think about it that way, something inside me breaks a little bit, and something just feels really sad. I think there's something in in my mind anyway that just feels so sort of I think you said earlier about protective. And I think there's something about being protective of the thing and how it's received, and even maybe even your audience of the thing too. Like there's like a community around a book, isn't there as well, and a reception around it. But but I wonder whether we live in a different moment. Like you said somewhere. I think you said something about you had so much compassion for people because there's always a reason for something, but it was modern life that is the antagonist.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yes, that's de I mean, that's definitely what I feel. And that's the whole idea that to write a novel you need got to have an antagonist. And I realised writing my first novel, one of the reasons why it was difficult to make the novel work was because there wasn't really an antagonist. You know, there wasn't a baddie. I don't write about baddies, and I'm not interested in straight-up baddies myself at all. And I don't really, and I know this theory falls down when we get to people that do terrible things, but again, they there's not that many of them. Like uh I don't really believe in baddies because certainly certainly in real life, by which I mean contact with real people, the more you know some someone, the more you understand why they're difficult. And certainly that's always my that's my experience. And I'm I'm also, I mean, I'm really interested in how hard life is even when you're not a bad person. You're not trying to be bad. That's what I think is fascinating, that you can't help help, you know, you can't help make a massive mess of things, even when you're essentially well-meaning. Like, and I and I certainly that occupies me, and I find that interesting enough that I don't need to kind of I don't I don't need to make anybody do anything dreadful.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Because already the dreadful thing is happening around them thinking about ordinary time. There is something about what happens when you're fetching a glass of water for a partner that has no interest in your daily life and you might as well not be the person fetching the water, but it's you and you're the wife, and you know, whatever that would be. So there are these moments that happen around us all the time that play out as these tragedies anyway.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Yeah, and I I mean that's what I'm interested in, like the micro movements of things, like the tiny I'm sort of interested in the in the in that yeah, that sort of almost like below the surface conflict. There's a quote, isn't there? And I th I thought about using it as an epigraph and then didn't, but that thing about people living lives of quiet desperation, and that's my bag, like that's why I'm interested in quiet desperation, just sort of just under the surface. People who are trying and you know, just trying really hard. I do think there's I do I see I just feel that is most people, and they might not present like that, you know. Often people present like they're kind of I don't know, confident or boisterous or whatever, but I always feel that if they are annoying me at some point I will see that there's just basically a lake of insecurity that's powering that aggravation, I find.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

I haven't asked you about your thought, which I will do, but I have one last question about this. Do you think that that comes from because there's the other sense I get of you is that there have always been people around you. There are people around you in the pub, there are people around you when you're selling books, there are people around you at festivals and workshops, on the train. I feel like you're constantly on the train talking to strangers. Do you think that that sense that the sort of the quiet desperation, but also there's always something behind what we do has come from so many interactions and so much kind of natural interest in people because you have been a around people so much. That's just been baked in.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah, and I mean I I really like people, and I actually like that, oh, just that feeling of I always feel as a bit spoilt by the pub, really, because I just I still really would like to I'd like to have some kind of setup like that where if I wanted company and conversation, I could just go downstairs and get it without having to make arrangements. You know, I find arrangements really tedious, and I struggle a bit with oh, I get I get I mean, I think this is like anxiety, hopefully temporarily menopause, although it seems to be going on and on and on. I just get very like obligation, very anxious about I'm gonna meet that person, but where am I? Am I going to meet them and will they want me to do you know, I get very wound up. I find getting human interaction quite hard somehow. Um, I'm not sure if you're getting downstairs at the pub. I think so, and I'm worried then about what my obligations are in it. And I know it sort of sounds peculiar. And that's what I mean about. I think this is just like there's a lot of anxiety sloshing around in me. And I like before, I was explaining it to my son the other day. Like it's it's sort of like it's not, it doesn't feel like it's in character. Like, I wasn't like this when I was younger. I didn't, I didn't find every single decision unbelievably difficult because it felt like it had all these ramifications and I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing and what people expected of me and wouldn't become very anxious and worried. Whereas now I do a bit. But I feel so, yeah, I just feel so nostalgic, I guess, for the pub. And I do like, again, I like teaching writing workshops. I'm often I often think, and people laugh like it's a joke, but I mean it's just true. I feel my life would be really good if I could just always be teaching a writing workshop. It's like that's how I I know I know how to function in that if I could always be on a residential writing workshop where again someone else, so like an Avon, so someone else has organized it, so I'm not responsible for food or any of that sort of thing, which again I find very tricky for some reason. So I've got a really clear schedule of what I'm supposed to do, and it involves a lot of social contact, but I don't have to sort of seek it out, and I'm sort of doing what I'm told, so I'm delivering the workshop at this time, and then I'm chatting to the people at dinner at this time. I'm very, very happy in that situation, and I struggle a lot more with just ordinary life where I don't know what how I'm supposed to almost like uh almost like just don't know how I'm gonna get through the day remembering like what that I need to eat food and my son needs to eat food and maybe we need to go and get food. And I find that that sort of level of functioning I still find really hard.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

But you said that was new. That isn't your experience of yourself.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Well, I've always been sort of I think the anxiety around it's been new. So I wouldn't say I've ever been particularly well organized. I mean, again, I'm very professionally well organized, so I'm really capable of like again, if I was running the writing workshop, or indeed, you know, I ran a charity very successfully. So I'm really I'm capable of doing all the big things, almost like if it's work. Yeah, but if I'm managing myself, I feel I'm very poor at it. Like I'm really poor at the it's like I feel I need a Nanny or something. Like just for yourself, yeah. And I'm always like like and again, like I'm always dropping food down myself. Like I kind of don't, you know, I feel I would still like to be as I'd like to have a, you know, I'd like to have someone making sure that I've you know like wiped my face before I before I like go out into the street or whatever. I find getting dressed really hard, uh as in like choice of clothes for different things, and then the fact that that you need different clothes for different times, and then that the weather changes. And I just got used to what I would wear to events, but then the weather changes, and I need to change my mind. And it you change, it's changed before, but I can't remember what I did then. Like, so all this sort of stuff feels and I think I just didn't used to care as much. Like, I don't mean that it's ever been particularly easy, but I don't think it I I don't think it used to worry me as much as it seems to do. No.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yeah, things are certainly heightened in this moment. Kathy, what is the one thought that you've kept? So this is a new record asking someone at 24 minutes into the podcast recording.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Um so a thought I kept. Um so when I was, I think, nine, my granddad died, my mum's father. And he died suddenly, he was 52, he had a heart attack. And I remember it so vividly, the I remember my mum I remember her being in the bath. I remember her, she was in the bath and I was sitting on the loo chatting to her, which we often did. And I remember that she said she said, I can't believe that yesterday I was so worried about the Falklands War when I could have been spending all day just feeling glad that Dad was alive. And I just still find that so interesting. And I remember her again, she was sort of crying in the bath. Um but also I remember the feeling of I I don't know I and I'm not even sure I would have articulated it at the time. But also at the time I didn't know how sort of unusual it was. I remember the feeling of like complete and utter safety, like I felt always felt so safe with both my parents, always felt so safe. And also that feeling of like something terrible and unexpected has happened. But also that feeling of we will somehow cope with this. And that feeling of life being I guess sort of examined and lived as it's being lived. Like that awareness. Yeah. Okay. And I think me thinking me kind of clocking then, and I still think about it and I think it's actually only become more I think it's like quite a big thing of modern times. That thing of the extent to which you become part of a collective experience, worrying about the Falcons War, and how you're also in your own life, worrying about or appreciating your own people in your own house. I've always remembered it. And it's also something, isn't it, about one of the things I really think I know about grief from my own experience and from talking to other people about grief. So often what people say, something on the lines of, I didn't know how happy I was. If only I'd known that was going to happen, then the day before that terrible thing happened I would have behaved very differently. Like and it's so often that's that isn't that's the response when something terrible happens. The person really wishes that they had somehow been spending the preceding time, I guess in a sort of a more meaningful and connected way, and not worried about either sort of further out things or sort of petty things, which is hard. And again, I think that's another modern life thing, both that bad things are happening and we're really we feel closer to it than we've ever done before because of the way that news, etc., works, but also it does definitely feel to me that life is more petty in the sense I just think everything's somehow harder. The promise of technology, it feels to me, hasn't fulfilled itself yet. I'm utterly convinced that life would be a lot easier for me if there was no technology. Of course, I wouldn't be doing this nice thing of talking to you now. Um, but like everything I think with I don't know, the doctors, everything's so much harder because of the way that there's this sort of technology overlay onto old-fashioned things, but that's none of it really works yet. So all of that I think is really difficult. And so I feel I'm continually in some sort of thing where um I did write this in my, I feel I'm now quoting myself in the book that I've just written, um, where like it could be that the thing that pushes me over the edge, like the thing that finishes me off, it's quite a small thing. It could be like I just get locked out of my banking app again and can't face the utter horror of trying to fix that. Or again, just like the you know, something with the doctors, like I've been on hold for so long, and then I got cut off when I was still 18 in the queue. Like that kind of that kind of thing. It feels like there's a lot that it just feels like there's an awful lot of that in in life. And I do I find I can also then find it a bit funny, but I find it really draining, all the all that sort of technology stuff. I'm still utterly outraged. I because I don't do anything about it. I really want to check I get texts from my car insurance company on Sunday mornings. I just think that's obscene. But somehow, I'm sure there's probably a way of, I don't know, turning off texts, set setting some kind of preference for not Sundays could change the insurance company. I don't do any of that. I just every Sunday morning have this moment of utter despair that this insurance company have decided that Sunday morning at eight o'clock is a good time to catch people, and I'm not somehow organised or technologically astute enough to stop them ruining my life on a weekly basis. Which And then you just sort of like multiply that by all the other people that are always trying to contact me and then again, anybody that's got older relatives in their life, the whole thing of like uh being on the receiving end of their calls because they're worried that it's some kind of scam and they don't quite know. Like sort of all of that's quite tricky, isn't it? So I often think that possibly now my own sort of I wish I hadn't spent yesterday thinking about the Falklands War when I could have been glad that you know X was alive. It might be something like, I wish I hadn't spent yesterday being so angry with the banking out.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Because what you're noticing there, it's all the little aggravations that are building up to where your attention goes, right? Your attention is look, you're looking over this way, while over here there are people. Is this what we're not noticing, do you think? So when you think about that quote, I can't believe that yesterday, I was thinking about the Falklands when I could have been. The end of that sentence is I could have been. Is it always about people for you?

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Yeah, probably. But it's always I could have been in my own life with the actual people in my own life. Though, of course, I suppose the way my mum was doing it, she was thinking she could have been just feeling glad that her dad was alive. So not like under her own roof in a way. And yeah, I just find it endlessly fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

It's so much tied for me, like I hear the grief in it, and and I had a similar thing around. I didn't know the last time I saw my mum. You know, she died unexpectedly, and that day we'd had a particularly fractious day together. My mum had a mental health disorder. And I spent the day trying to like manage her, like moving her around, trying to figure that out, wondering what that would be. And I wonder if I'd known. I wonder what would change. Like, I wonder, like, I think maybe there's a hope in it that we would be different, or there's a hope that they would be different, or there's a hope that the situation would have changed. Like, there's so much hope in that, isn't there? That if we were to know that that was a last moment, what would we be saying? How would they be hearing us? And you get to set a different scene, you get to do that in a different way. And there is something, I suppose, about like you being a writer that do you ever feel like you get to set the scene differently in your work? I could have been with you in my life, and in your books, you do get to be showing up in your life in a certain way, so that you are noticing that and not the drudgery of the app coming in that in that moment that you're writing the book. Like there's a beautiful sense that I got from ordinary time of Stephen coming in. And this lovely warm sibling relationship. And there's been a sense in some of the other books that I've read of yours that there is a sense of the comfort and the joy that you are welcoming in, that you are bringing in, that is that your attention is exactly where it needs to be.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Yeah, it's very nice to think that that could be true. I mean, I'm not sure I'm not sure that writing books isn't isn't in I don't know, is it is it having your attention on life or is it somehow removing your attention from life as it's lived because you're trying to Sometimes I do feel a bit like you know, like a hungry caterpillar munching my words into, you know, books somehow. Um But of course I don't really also I don't think that is true, I suppose. Like Um I think it's probably I think there's something about oh so like when when I know that I want to get back to my own writing practice I know that the important thing is for me to get back to something that I'm writing again, just for myself, with no other reason than to move my pen across the page and to notice again, to notice my life and what I want to notice about my life, my actual life, as it's lived, like under my own nose. And I do know that that's what I want to do without and I think it'd be really di it's a different thing then to then start to think about how I'm gonna make something for other people and then making something for the other people bit. I think that's the thing sometimes where then it can be like a literal thing of quite often writing this book, I would be in a thing where I wanted to keep my eyes on the page, but I also wanted to give my attention to someone in my actual life that found that really hard.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

The movement between and actually part of the book is about that, like the movement between that, you know, that sort of absorption. Did you hear that? I did. Do you know what that is? Is that Sam? That's the teenager coming home.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

And actually what I love about this moment is this idea about like trying to do this when this is happening as well. You know, there's sort of the absorption. Like, you know, I want to be doing this, but there is all this, this around here that I also want to be doing.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Like that there must be funny tension there between Yeah, there is, and again, why do we uh get almost like professionally you're supposed to somehow get them out, aren't you, of the space? Like it's something also about working in our own houses, isn't it, in our own domestic space. And so the idea is that like none of this none of this noise of the domestic is allowed to penetrate into the professional sphere somehow. Which is exactly what's happening right now. It feels that this is this is so encapsulating of my themes at the moment for me. This is what I'm trying to grasp and grapple, I think, with about life and art, and how the one becomes the other. And then it has the one become the other enough.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

There was something I remember, I think it was in Dear Reader, and you were talking about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. And I think you were talking about them living a literary life and what that meant. And there was another moment that there was a recognition that sometimes reading crosses over to your own lived experience. So you wouldn't reach for the finger ball and drink it like a cocktail because you know that Sylvia Plath did that in the bell job. You know, and there's that sort of interesting crossover between how we live our lives and how we experience words in in novels. What I'm hearing from you, that there's a sort of where the two are kind of weaving in and out of each other, and that how that's helpful, but then how sometimes that's really not helpful.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Yeah, and I often feel I I feel I'm very like that. Often fictional characters are much more real to me than actual people. I do often quite often like them quite a lot more, which again I think probably makes sense, and definitely in a way that I didn't anticipate with my Agasha book. Again, I just felt that the boundary, the line between the actual me and the me on the page became really like that just was all very porous, insubstantial, like and again I just sort of decided to go with it and sort of surrender to it, I think, in a way. But I've always felt like that. I'll I feel like so. I've got this wardrobe in my bedroom. And the cat sits in the door of the wardrobe looking at me as if to say, like I can show you how to get through the back of it to Narnia. Like, I don't know why you haven't worked it out for yourself. Like And I still feel that that feeling that or again that I could You know there's books about there's lots of books, aren't there, about c people who sort of end up in books. And I've always liked those books, but I also really and again I was a bit alarmed by I mean I'm bit just alarmed by it, but in the act of thing. I often did think like, am I just going mad? Like what what am I just actually becoming insane?

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Because you have ended up in the book.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Yeah, but also that I feel I just could. I could just split into it. Yeah, I don't quite know how yet, but I almost can, like I almost can time travel, and I just roll into the pages of a book and it would just happen. And obviously it's and I would think I wrote about it as well, I think. Like I'd think, like, well, this is sort of imagination, isn't it? But at what point does imagination at what point does this become a dangerous thing? And then actually, it was very nice recently because I interviewed Gavin Francis, who's written a great book called The Unfragile Mind.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Oh, I saw him last week. I saw him at the Curious Minds Festival. Ah yeah. He's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

He's incredible, and it's a great book. And we were talking about this a bit on stage, actually, but also off stage. And it was very funny because he sort of reminded me very gently that actually it's often it's often about like whether or not you're a danger to other people.

unknown 39:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

And it was so reassuring because I'm I'm never a danger. I mean, I'm never a danger to other people, and probably not a danger to myself either, but certainly never a danger to other people. And then I just thought, oh actually, yeah, I can relax. It's not like somebody is gonna come round and take me to an asylum just because I'm a bit over-imagined.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Well, do you know what? Okay, so you know I said at the beginning there were these five words that I really was interested in. One of my words is maddery. And I don't think it's your word, I think it is it Marion Keynes.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

Keys, yeah, she'd said it on, I think she'd said it on Twitter or something. I remember the bits in The Last Act of Love, and I say that I've been I've told the truth as much as I can, as much as I see it, and that I've been light on the details, especially around my own maddery.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

I I'm curious about your own maddery and madery generally. I wonder how you have come to see that idea of and it's interesting you're talking about it in this novel and like how close it can feel like it's you know it's on the periphery, it's within potentially within reach, whatever that thing would be. Have you come to understand this idea of Maddery?

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Um, I still don't feel I've in a funny kind of way got much of a handle on it. I think it is helpful for me to remind myself that thing of like I'm not a danger to other people. And that actually it's and I and Gavin said that a lot of people do it. A lot of people come to the doctors and they're very worried that if they say anything about the fact that they feel a bit mad, that then people will come and institutionalise them. And the real fear around it. Yeah, real fear about it. And I thought about it later on, and I thought it is interesting, but uh, but there's quite a lot of maddery in my family, um, and quite a lot of really bad outcomes for people who did oh again, like who did well I mean it's sort of my dad's dark email, really. It's sort of the idea that, like, oh, you don't want to get in the hands of the doctors because that's gonna, you know, everything's gonna go downhill from there on. And you know, it sort of did go downhill for quite a lot of um my relatives. And so I thought it's really helpful for me to to actually position front and centre this idea of like, am I danger to others? Like, categorically I'm not. And nor am I doing any no nor is anyone else harmed by the fact that I wonder if the cat's trying to chat to me about Narnia. And whether or not I I never quite know whether I mean I sort of know that the cat's not trying to talk to me about Narnia, but sometimes I don't really know it. When I'm writing a book, my ability to distinguish between what is objectively real and what isn't becomes, I guess, compromised. I was talking to Gavin about that as well, because he's got a good bit in the book about creativity. Because I was saying, like, it's almost it almost feels like the way you write a novel, or certainly the only way I know to do it, it feels like you're inducing a psychotic break because you have to really believe in these people to want to spend loads of time putting them on the page. And then when people read about them, they want to believe in them as well. So we're all, as a writer, you're colluding with other people in kind of an act of psychosis, in that you're all agreeing, you're all signing up to believe that this thing between these covers wasn't typed by this woman who was, I don't know, chatting to the cat or whatever she was doing, like doing her lawyer, you know, you're all signing up to believe that it's true. So maybe that, so maybe that's so maybe it's fine. Um I often think as well that one of the things I often think is that if like if I when I'm finishing a book, I feel that if if people if people were coming round in a van to take a woman to an asylum and they'd been given the wrong address and they came to my house, I think I'd find it very difficult to persuade them that they'd got the wrong address. I think I would absolutely present like someone who uh should be being picked up. And I've got obviously again, all Of this is happening in some odd, weird, imaginary imaginative landscape of mine. I'm not really relating this to any reality. You know, I'm not I'm not saying that this is what happens or that this will happen to me. Does that make sense? It's not, it's like it's that it's all happening in some other place. And I become a bit. I was saying a friend of mine came recently, came around recently, we were chatting about stuff, and for some reason I just started talking about how I thought it'd be really cool to be able to fire a gun. And then I realized quite shortly into this conversation, she was looking a bit alarmed. And I realized, oh, of course, she's probably in the now. Like she's reading news about people who shoot each other, and it's a terrible thing. And I thought, because I'm not in that space, I'm in some odd imaginative, oh, I wish I could have been in special operations executive during the war. I'm in like a Second World War anxiousity frame of mind. And there's a context where I think it would be really like, I mean, obviously, I don't want to, you know, Matt and I, my son and I had a long conversation about the fact that why is it that I think this would be appealing? So you'd be rubbish, Mom, you wouldn't be able to pull the trigger on all those Nazis, you know. Like, but we we'd been kind of having this long conversation about it. And then I was trying to carry on this conversation, but with someone who didn't have that sort of odd imaginative context to it. So luckily it was a friend, and I sort of realised and I could correct myself a bit. Because I and do you see what I mean? Like I sort of thought like, oh, and again, that's that's always a bit slightly my worry that if I'm writing in some other context and I like go out into the world, I'll just say like weird shit, right? Which which if someone was with me all the time, they wouldn't they're certainly not going to come away from it thinking I in any way won't think that done ownership is a good idea, or but but but because I've sort of slightly living in a book world. Um so it's that sort of thing I think that happens. And then later on I just think, like, oh, people probably thought I was very peculiar.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Do you know that actually goes on to my next word, which is wonderment? Because you've got like sort of the madry and this porous, you know, you're kind of living in these different contexts while living in like almost a drudgery of where we are now. And then there's wonderment, and I wonder whether wonderment is the hope, like the the the opposite side of that. I don't can't actually remember where I saw you say the word wonderment, but it just really was like, oh, that just sounds like a wonderful place to be. Like a place of wonderment.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

And again, I think that it's you just sort of need it, don't you? Or I need it. And I've got to keep I think of it a lot as gutter and stars, like, which is that Oscar Wilde quote that I love. I always misquote it. I think his quote sounds a bit uh, you know, a little elitist. He says, We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars, and it always makes me feel a little bit nervous that you know, some of us, the clever ones, are looking at the stars. Whereas I like to go for we're all in the gutter. But the trick is to remember to look at the stars, like to look up at the stars. So I do think that and I even call it guttering sometimes, like I've just got to do a bit of guttering today. Again, duties I don't really want to do, or whatever. And guttering, God, it's non-stop gutter this last couple of years, like whatever it is, but also just the utter importance of looking up to the stars, which can be literal, like it could, I think it literally is really good for you just to get outside and look up at the sky and just look at what's in the sky, and that can actually be a mood shifter enough to get on. So I do that a lot. I spend an awful lot of time looking up at the sky. Um, not just in the dark, during the day as well. Um, so I spend a lot of time looking up at the sky, reminding myself to look up at the sky. And just anything, and whatever, whatever anyone's own personal stars are, it sort of doesn't really matter, but it is it's wonderment. It's what what makes you think, like, oh, what be another way I've been thinking about it, and again, this might be a bit alarming. Well, I sort of imagine that if the human if humanity was on trial, and then you can just imagine that if you were for the defence, what what would you put in, what would you bring to say that the human experiment should continue?

SPEAKER_00 48:20

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

I know. That's a hard one. I know. I'm sort of this is a sort of a book that I'm kind of not writing like officially, but I'm just messing about with. But it's those things where you just think, like, actually, yes, I would definitely nominate this to say. And I and I think books and readings are really big part. You know, like if if somebody was saying, you know, if but again, I've so I've strayed into this odd imaginative territory of this book, I'm sort of writing and not sort of writing, and then the language is crumbling because I'm talking about it like it's a real dilemma. Do you see what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Is it a real dilemma? Because it is Yes, yes, you obviously it is. But I guess in the sense that, like, you know, when you think about the looking at the stars, like your stars, in a sense, could be like the cat in the wardrobe, but it's also a question that you hold.

unknown 49:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Like it is as real to you as looking at the stars because it does, it offers you I don't know, whether it's wonderment or I think you said something somewhere about cosmic insignificance. Like it offers you something that is that is like tantalising and kind of intoxicating and I I don't know, I still get that sense of it.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

And I'd like to know what other people's things are as well. I just always find that very sustaining. I'd also like to know what other people's gutters are. There's something about that, again, just honest communication with other people where they they tell me what their version of the banking app thing is, but also what their stars are, like what what sort of uplifts them?

SPEAKER_00 49:52

Does that help you maintain your faith in humanity? Like when you're thinking about that trial or that sense of like why should this experiment continue? Is that fundamentally about maintaining your belief in humanity?

SPEAKER_01 50:06

Yeah, I think it is. And certainly in terms of the maddery, where I do become worried about myself, though never a danger to others, is if I lose my faith of humanity. If that dips really low, then that feels like that's an existential threat for me.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

To you. Yeah, to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Like I don't think I could if I start believing that everyone is awful, then that feels like that's a really difficult place from which to continue continue to sort of believe in life and the goodness of life. So but I think and I think what's again sort of terrifying. I think I've sort of almost got the secret to it, but I also think it's quite terrifying. It's all about how we consume people. So I if dealing with real dealing with real people is like just always okay somehow. There's a way through when it's real people, and then I think there's something about seeing humanity only on screens and only in news and only filtered through the opinions of others that can really quickly make me feel like really existentially bad. So I don't can really consume it. And then this was quite funny because a friend of mine recently was sort of, you know, but how do you a bit judgmental about me not um watching news because I wasn't informed about things and they obviously thought that I was a terrible person, and this was sort of like a bit of one-upmanship. I said, Well, okay, then I'll I'll allow you to think you're a better person than me. But like, when did you last go and teach a writing workshop to people in sheltered housing? When have you last spent time with any actual human beings that aren't in your own demographic? And I did that make you feel better. Well, it didn't, and even telling, even talking about it actually is making me feel a bit itchy because I've broken that rule of it's a really interesting, it's actually an AA thing that about doing things supposed to do good deeds but not tell anyone about them. Um and in general, I think that's quite I tend to try to proceed like that, and I now feel I've just like really screwed that up by boasting about justifying my non-engagement with actual well again, I think it's not necessarily reality, is it justifying my non-engagement with the global by boasting about my personal good actions, that doesn't feel like a good thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

But I suppose what you're doing though, I mean, it is is it is the thought that you brought though. It is that reminder about people, and this is one iteration of it. But there was something I read the other day that was about how we're unpeopling our worlds, how we're getting to the point that and and there was this trend around, I think it's called friction maxing. I might have got that horribly wrong. And the idea that actually when we are in relationship, we are we are cultivating friction, and that is healthy for us. We order our deliveries on our apps, we do our grocery shopping online, all these different things. And so we've got rid of people and it's very, very easy, but also we're losing a really cool part of our humanity. And so that's what I'm s hearing around this is that this idea of like where are the people?

SPEAKER_01 53:23

I find it very hopeful that people are to realising that they can that friction maxing is a good idea, and certainly I think there's a whole thing where people interpret fix friction as failure. Yes, and that's again sort of terrifying, really. And then also, and another thing that definitely makes my life much better is when I don't, when I've got less supermarket in it, and when I sort of like make the effort to go for the shops. And actually, even if I make the even if I like walk to the supermarket and buy stuff, actually that's a bit dreary, but to to go to like local shops, it's vastly it is vastly uplifting of the spirits. Probably depends again, for people are gonna try it, probably depends a bit about where you are and what the shops are. And when I say it's vastly uplifting on the of the spirits, it's not I mean it isn't necessarily always, but I think that's just there's something about the way we're just very disconnected from so many things. And one of the things I do a lot actually is there's a a person called Robin Dunbar who has this theory of Dunbar's number, which is that really we're designed to function in communities of 150 people. And I'm always thinking, what would be the what's the hundred what's the Dunbar application of this situation? So anything I find stressful or difficult, I try and look at it through the lens of how it would, what would I if I was just sitting around a campfire with 150 people, how would this work now? And that kind of often I mean it's very common, but also it makes loads of sense because if if you were with 150 people in a little tribe, you'd all need to be really different from each other, and that would be fine. So I think there's this horrible drive to sort of standardization in a funny kind of way, or then that you need to define yourself by the way in which you're different to what you perceive as being some kind of mainstream norm. But really, I don't think we should I think everyone should be able to be precisely as different as they want to be unknown. You know, if you were just new 150 people without any technology, it would just make really it would just make sense to me.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

I mean that's a festival, no?

SPEAKER_01 55:38

A big writing workshop.

SPEAKER_00 55:41

Okay, my last word for you, because I'm conscious of the time, it was actually self-ing. And it's interesting that we're coming to this place. So I think I saw you somewhere say selfing. And I think I received that in a way that instead of saying personal development, personal growth, self-care, there was something about self-think, and I was like, oh, that's a wonderful word. I love that word. Do you have any recollection of saying this? And what does it mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Yeah, I do. I don't remember where. And I'm thinking like, yes, that was good. I must remember to do that. Just to be again, just to try and be yourself as you are. I had a therapist years ago who said that my whole thing was that I needed to try to be myself. What no, what how was it exactly? It was a be who you are without self-attack. That's what she said, which I thought was very interesting. And I think actually a lot of readers and a lot of writers uh probably a little bit that way on, whatever it means. So just to be who you are, to be selfing, to be just trying to be yourself, but without self-attack. So not oh, there's just uh there's something so interesting for me in how it's not necessarily a bad thing to want to improve yourself, but so often it people, including me, they just it just sort of goes a bit wrong, doesn't it? Usually because of excessive, demanding, um, or sort of self-punishing uh routines, or just trying to do it in a way that doesn't suit you. I just I've been thinking lately, I think almost all generic advice is just nonsense, isn't it? Because it's it all completely depends on what you're like, on what your neurosetup is, on what your situation is. Um and so and I and I always say that teaching writing, I'm always so keen to underline to people I'm gonna give you some things, but it's your job to run that through the filter of you. Like and if another writer was here, they'd tell you different things. And the worst thing for me would be is if because uh because the way I do it doesn't align with you, if you decided to give up, like I'd rather you'd think, well, this is a whole load of nonsense than give up. Because the best thing to do is think, oh well, that's one way of doing it, let me search for my guru elsewhere.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

But I think that's what you don't want to happen is that they take your words and that becomes the attack.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

That the thing that like if you think about well-being, the they use what I do to furnish a stick to hit themselves with because it doesn't work. And that can be really simply, it can be like, I don't know, writers because again, lots of writers don't do that. A lot of writers and people are inclined to think that the way they do things is an objectively good way. That's the thing. I never think I never think really that I don't think I've got any objective like I'm only ever looking for my own truth, really. I don't expect it to be I don't think that I've got the way of things. You know, like I don't where sometimes you do meet people that something works for them, so they're very keen on saying this is the way you need to do it and making pronouncements.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

Does it surprise you sometimes that you are then I think you've said like you're not a doctor, you're not an expert in anything, you're not a therapist. But does it surprise you that you are a wise woman to people, that you are somebody that people do turn to advice, that we do look to and read your books and think this does help me feel better, this does help me navigate everyday life. The things that you do right are of service. And I think I saw something of that stuff. You like to be of service, you like to be useful, and you want everybody to be okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:24

Yeah, that's really true. I do like being useful, and I do so much want everybody to be okay. Which again in itself is that's potentially disabling of me. Like, because I well coping with people not being okay is hard. So the non-watching of news is because well, how is it gonna serve the world if I can't get up off the sofa after I've watched that?

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Because you take that on.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

Yeah. Um I find other people suffering difficult to witness, but I find even more than that, I think, though it's a tough call, again, it's just evidence that humans are awful. I find evidence that humans are awful very difficult to get by, like to get over. Um and I don't mean that therefore it shouldn't exist. I don't mean that everyone's this is what I mean about being the b selfing. Like other it might be okay for other people to really engage with whatever it is that they're engaging with. But I know for me, I can't make any kind of contribution if I'm trying to be informed across the board about everything currently, because it's probably just going to involve too much exposure to human suffering and humans behaving really badly. And humans behaving badly is that that would be the thing that would tip me over the edge, I think. Well, and the banking app.

unknown 1:00:57

The banking app.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

Yeah, she's the but if I get locked out of the banking app on a day in which I've consumed a lot of information that seems to be presenting a case that human beings are awful, that's when things become existentially threatening.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

Okay, what do you need in that moment? Tell me. So in that moment, the banking app is like sending you to the edge. You have by accident consumed the news, which is very, very bleak right now. What would you need in that moment to kind of bring you back, to bring you back into humanity and bring you back to yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

I mean, in real people, by which I mean flesh and probably like I mean ideally flesh and blood in my actual kitchen. But if not that, then it can be like a voice note from a friend. Um and maybe laugh. Like I think laughter is really important. And of course that's one of my dad's things, like he's just able to he's able to get a joke from the darkest, bleakest time. And it's not oh, you know, I often think that was me and my dad. We don't laugh because we're having a good time, we laugh because if we didn't find a way to laugh, we'd just die. So it's that it's like from that from that point. So to find some way to laugh at things uh or appreciate things, or actually have a glass of water, like again, in extremists, just like it's never a bad piece of advice to have a glass of water. Again, like a conflict for people as well. Just get one of you just needs to say, let's both have a glass of water, and you both have to agree to just get the glass of water and hydrate yourselves together somehow. That's magical. Well laughing, ideally. Yeah, thinking kind of like because obviously it does feel really ridiculous when you're in a thing with someone to then say, like, I think I think we should have a glass of water, and then yes, let's have a glass of water.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Next time I'm battling with my teenager, I will bring that one in. Or my husband.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:57

Okay, so your thought, Kat Kathy, was I can't believe that I was that yesterday I was so worried about the Falcons when I could have been glad that Dad was alive with the world. How do you remember that? Just that notion, I think, I suppose, to appreciate what we have on any day. Yeah, to appreciate what we have. But always to something about holding ourselves and our individuality and our individual circumstances, even when other things are happening that can feel they feel now like they've become personal somehow. But they're also sort of not, like, so again, to be to have a to have a look for what's under your own nose.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing that. It's been really good to see you. Thanks. Thank you, Claire. That was my conversation with Kathy Ransombrink. She talked somewhere about the idea about social glow, about that wonderful feeling you can have after a moment of human interaction. And that's definitely something that I'm taking away from today's conversation. The moment when she said, consume people. And the magic that happens, yes, because we write, but also because we talk to one another. So I'll leave you with a question that I always ask my listeners on the show, which is Is this thought, the one that Kathy brought today, one that you will keep, forget, or share? I can't believe that yesterday I was so worried about the Falklands War. When I could have been spending all day just feeling glad that dad was alive. Maybe you'll keep it like a dogged page of a beloved book that you've come back to more than once. Maybe you'll share it with someone you didn't expect to open up to. Someone on a train or across a table. Or maybe you'll forget it until it comes back to you one night as you're folding school uniforms, or you're opening the post, and you're wondering, how did I get here? And who is out there for me? If you'd like to keep exploring ideas like this, you can also join my community on Substack at Morgood Days, where we're trying to navigate all the well-being advice out there and what actually works in real life together. And I know that often something might come up in these conversations. Something that you recognize, something that you're equally as grappling with or confounded by. And if that's the case, and you'd like to keep exploring in a more personal way, then do find out more about working together through one to one coaching at iflost. If you enjoyed this episode, I think there's another one that you will get so much out of, and that's the one with Dr. Mary Catherine MacDonald, where we talk about how joy and pain sit so closely together, and how all that we feel is okay. And if you found your way here recently, or maybe you've been listening since the start, I would genuinely love it if you could leave a review or simply share this episode with someone who you think might need it too. For now, thank you for listening. And I'll be back next Monday with another conversation and another thought to keep. Bye for now.