How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S11, Ep5 How to Fail: Christie Watson

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Christie Watson is a nurse turned bestselling author who went back to frontline nursing during the Covid-19 pandemic. But if you were to call her a 'hero' she would refuse the label - and during the course of this interview, she tells me why.Watson left school at 16 and volunteered at a charity before training to become a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She spent the next 20 years in hospitals in various disciplines and mainly in paediatric intensive care.Alongside that, she built up a successful writing career. Her debut, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award and in 2018, she published a memoir - The Language of Kindness: A Nurse’s Story, which has been translated into 23 languages. Her most recent book, The Courage To Care, is just out in paperback. She joins me to talk about failures in nursing, motherhood and, in an especially enlightening conversation, she tells me what happened when she thought she was having a breakdown only to be diagnosed as peri-menopausal. Every woman (and man) should listen. [WARNING: contains mention of clambering into fishfinger freezers].*The Courage To Care is out now and available to buy here.*My new novel, Magpie, is out on 2nd September. I'd love it if you felt like pre-ordering as it really helps authors! You can do that here.*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]*Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Christie Watson @christiewatsonwriter    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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can experience the feel-good difference for yourselves. Use the code HOWTOFAIL, all one word, and visit www.cbii-cbd.com. That's www.cbii-cbd.com. Thank you so much to CB2. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger, because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Christy Watson was once asked what she would write on her form as her occupation. She replied that it

was tricky, but that eventually she would always come down on the side of nurse. Nursing has certainly formed both her identity and her outlook. Watson left school at 16 and volunteered at a charity before training to become a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She spent the next 20 years in hospitals in various disciplines and mainly in paediatric intensive care. But she is also a best-selling author. Her debut book, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award in 2011, and her follow-up was heaped with critical praise. Then in 2018, she retired from nursing and turned her hand to non-fiction, publishing a memoir, The Language of Kindness, A Nurse's Story, which has now been translated into 23 languages. Her most recent book,

The Courage to Care, subtitled Nurses, Families and Hope, is just out in paperback. Her writing has been called visceral, entertaining, poetic and funny. And it is indeed true that for all that Watson's subject matter can be distressing, her overarching tone is always one of profound optimism. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Watson returned to frontline nursing, working in the Nightingale Hospital in London as part of the compassionate care team. As a single mother of two children, this time was, she recalled later, the most difficult I've ever had in more than 20 years as a nurse. People talk about bravery during these times, but I did not feel brave. Christy Watson, I beg to differ, you're a very brave and incredible woman and welcome to How to Fail. Oh, thank you so much. It's good to be here.

If you didn't feel brave during that time, how did you feel? Well, I felt absolutely terrified. I think like all of us really, whatever job we were doing last year and whatever situation we were in, there was a period at the very beginning of the pandemic that felt apocalyptic and really surreal. And I think like everybody, I was primarily concerned with my loved ones, with my friends and family, and what this thing would mean for all of us and whether or not anyone would get sick or even worse live their life. So I think it's hard to remember exactly how I felt but I can remember feeling very very afraid on a personal level not just about the world events but thinking

very much about my family members and also thinking about the kids as well and what this time would do for them. I think you're so right that it's very difficult to remember how we felt. It seems an eternity ago and also just like yesterday. And I feel like pandemic time has done something to our concept of minutes passing. It's a very sort of strange thing, isn't it? And we're talking at a moment when we're easing out of lockdown, and a lot of people are feeling anxious about that. How do you feel about coming out of lockdown, given all of your experiences? I'm an extrovert. And so I was imagining that I would be

the first person out and about and the last person to come home. But actually, I've been creeping cautiously towards some sort of sense of normality. And it does feel very strange. And lots of people asked me if I was going to write specifically about the pandemic and my experiences. And I didn't want to at the time. And I don't want to to now and I think it's one of those things that's going to take maybe decades of reflection to try and find meaning and make sense of it all but I certainly think that period of reflection has started now and so while it's enormously hopeful and joyous to be able to come into some sort of normality I think that the reality of the sadness of the last year is also starting to sink in with many of us. You've said some very interesting things recently about

nurses and carers being called heroes. And that slightly odd time that we reflect on now where people were coming to their doorsteps to clap every Thursday at 8pm. How do you feel about being called a hero as a nurse? I think it's very understandable that people felt the need to have that sense of community. And the kindness and compassion between neighbours and families and communities was incredible. And I think that all the people that I work with, you know, they really appreciated it. But that time very quickly moved on into a time that was more fearful.

And the danger with the language of war, which is what it became, is that nurses are not soldiers. And the hero narrative becomes problematic when it could be politically convenient and what I mean by that is when we were living through a time when nurses and healthcare professionals and other frontline workers were going out to work with inadequate PPE for example that's the time when you don't want to be called a hero, you just want to have the correct safety equipment in order to be able to do your job properly. So I think the nature of language

has changed in the last year, which is quite fascinating. But heroes and angels and all the other stereotypes that we know associated with nurses haven't really changed. But I think in the last year, people's understanding of what the job is has changed. And now we need to translate that change into pay. That's what we need to do next, isn't it? Yes. I'm super interested to talk to you on a broader term about what failure means to you. Because I'm very aware that as someone who has spent so much of her life nursing that failure in a medical and in a care context carries an enormous profound weight that it might not do for the rest of us so when I asked you to come on this podcast how did you

feel about failure? I think I'm probably an expert in failure. I'm very good at it. I had enormous problems trying to whittle down and narrow down my numerous and many different failures. And like you, I think I embrace it most of the time and try and learn from things that have gone wrong. And certainly that happens in the NHS increasingly, I think, whereas there used to be a bit of a blame culture, there's still a bit of a blame culture. But people are moving towards the idea that the way that we improve and the way that we learn is through a really good reflection on things that have gone wrong. And I guess that's the same in life as it is in nursing. And do you in the NHS share the responsibility so that it doesn't feel like one person has to carry the weight of something having

gone wrong? It's getting better. It's still got a long way to go, but it's certainly getting better. And from the time when I started, it's massively improved because nurses and doctors and all other allied health professionals are humans and human beings make mistakes and sometimes sadly that can be catastrophic in healthcare when somebody makes a mistake but it's really important to understand that people who work in those jobs are also human and they have good days and they have bad days and sometimes there's structural and political things going on that make mistakes almost inevitable. So I think things are definitely improving. But certainly learning from failures is something that the NHS really has to get right. So don't carry on going wrong. with that so we'll collectively get there I loved your book The Courage to Care and I was in tears within the first three chapters but as I say in the introduction it's an immensely hopeful book it's immensely compassionate alongside being incredibly moving and one of the things that

makes it so moving is that you write about the families of the patients that you talk about and you also interweave stories of your own family why was that important to you? I'm always trying to get to the meaning of things and understand the philosophy behind things and and I think that particularly the last year we've all learned and really understood the value of family, however that looks. But I think in my nursing career as well, it was never a case of just looking after a patient. It was always looking after a family. And sometimes looking after the patient was actually the most simple thing. simple thing. It was supporting the family of that patient that was often really complex,

really tricky, and needed, like you said, the most compassion. Tell us a little bit about one of my favourite characters from The Courage to Care, Sylvia, the district nurse from Poland. So I, when I was a student nurse, did many different placements in lots of different areas. And one of the placements I did was with Sylvia I've called her Sylvia in the book a district nurse and I was quite precocious I was a teenager I was pretty arrogant and at times unkind and I remember thinking that I wanted to work in A&E at the time and wasn't really interested in much else and the thought of district nursing just made my stomach turn. I just couldn't imagine anything that I considered more revolting,

more boring. I had this perception of what district nursing was that was totally wrong. I went out with this district nurse and she really taught me the importance of caring for people as if they were your own relatives and the tiniest things that she did made such a huge impact in people's lives and I remember her ironing a shirt of this man that we went in to care for and thinking why on earth is she ironing his shirt it just didn't make any sense to me at all at the time but over the years I came to understand that nursing is all the technical skills that we know about but it's also going the extra mile and it's also treating people as you'd want your own relative to be treated as well and district nursing is

one of those professions that I suppose we don't really see on television too much we don't really see it too much in the media when people talk about frontline nursing they really have a picture in their head as I did of a nurse in uniform in hospital but of course there are nurses everywhere there are people and all kinds of nurses cobweb around the country caring for people and it's a bit invisible and yet it is so so so important and these are the people that are caring for the most vulnerable people in our society and they're very much frontline and so I really wanted to highlight those areas of nursing that we don't perhaps hear about so much prison nurses and district nurses, military nurses. And I learned a lot actually researching that book as well. Nursing is a language with many different

accents and there were many accents that were new to me too. So it was a joy to research it. I love the idea of language and many different accents. Oh, so good. Is there one thing do you think that connects all nurses or not? I think that there is room in nursing for lots of different types of personalities. I've got this great party trick actually that I always imagine where somebody would work if they were a nurse. So non-nursing friends, if I'm having dinner with people or a party or something, I'll always put the Harry Potter sorting hat of where I would imagine them working on their head metaphorically and you can I think with experience

tell the type of nursing that would suit somebody's character or personality but they're not all the same so a research nurse for example might have a different set of skills than someone working in A&E, than someone working at end of life care. I think that maybe there isn't a specific character trait or a type of person that would be a nurse, but I think all nurses do need grit. I think that is a key factor that nurses do have grit in a way that perhaps I don't see in other professions as much. Well, you know what my next question is going to be, which is like, where would I fit into nursing? Oh, you might be a district nurse. Oh, that's such a compliment after what you just said. Yeah.

Oh, I feel really moved. What would Boris Johnson be? He's the one person who you can't find a nursing role for well all this chat about nursing does actually lead me on to your failures because you've chosen nursing as one of your three failures and I'm so intrigued to find out why why you've chosen it yeah I've chosen nursing because I think I'm an idealist and I'm an optimist and when I realized that the language of kindness was going to be a big book I knew that I would have a big platform and I really thought very carefully about exactly what I wanted to do with that and my aim was really to raise the voice of nurses and nursing and obviously my

story is only one of a gazillion and it's only my story but I was really hoping that I would raise the voice of nurses and give an understanding of the importance of the job to so many people that actually things would change for nurses and I I was really hoping, for example, that we talked a little bit about the pay, but that nurses would get a 12.5% pay rise, which is what the Royal College of Nursing is campaigning for at the moment. And even after this year of years, the government has recently been speaking about a 1% pay rise for nurses and nurses earn less now in real time than they did 10 years ago and I just find that astonishing and the other thing that I was really keen to get on the political agenda

was the bursary and the bursary was a training bursary so that nurses didn't have to pay student fees that was scrapped in 2017 and there was a lot of noise in the media about it being reinstated two years later. It wasn't reinstated. Nurses were given a grant, but they still paid tuition fees. They still pay today tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year and are coming out of university with around £30,000 debt. I can't get my head around the fact that after a pandemic, during which student nurses were on the front line and called to the front line, that they are paying fees to do that. I just can't get my head around it. And it does feel like a failure. It feels like maybe I didn't shout loud enough, or maybe I didn't shout in the right way. And the other thing that really I found astonishing is that there is no nurse on

the SAGE advisory committee. And we have scientists and experts from various different disciplines, and of course, modelers. But in order to understand the practical applications of those models, then you need an expert. And there's no greater expert, surely, in care homes than a care home nurse. There's no greater expert in infection control, or PPE indeed, than an infection control nurse who spent her whole career working on PPE. So I do feel like it has been a failure of the chance I was given to change things. I feel like I've made a lot of noise and nothing has changed. Okay, wow, that's a lot to take on for you. So it's a failure, you perceive it as a failure to give voice and effect practical change for nurses rather than

a failure of being a nurse yourself? Yeah, I mean, I think being a nurse, I did a good enough job. I loved it. But I think in terms of my role now as a writer, I think I had a really great opportunity. And I feel like I haven't affected the change that I really wanted to see happening. And of course, that failure is on the government. But I do reflect and look back and think, is there something I could have done differently? Was there another avenue? I'm at the stage where I'm still sort of battling with that a little bit. I'm astonished that things haven't changed, even though that we're hearing so much. We talked about the collapse of carers, and so much has changed in the perception of what nurses do that they are rigorously trained safety critical professionals and yet nothing has

actually changed on the ground for them they're still undervalued and they're still underpaid and under-resourced and understaffed and after this year they are traumatized as well so I'll never say never but so far I feel like I haven't failed on the mission that I set out to achieve. Yeah. I mean, I think you're being extremely hard on yourself because I'm the daughter of a surgeon. Now, I've never fully understood what it is to be a nurse, even though I've been around them for a lot of my life, even though I've been lucky enough to be treated by some of the most incredibly compassionate individuals when I found myself in hospital but I'd never understood until I'd read your books and that cannot be overstated like what

an act of generosity that is and it's ongoing your work is not over the books continue having lives of their own you're adapting the first one for television I know that there's been a stage adaptation and you're basically engaged in the business of turning around a trawler in the Suez Canal and you're you're sort of one person and I think you'll get there I think you will yeah I mean talk about grit Christy you've got it in bucket loads and your work is not done. But I wonder whether as a nurse, potentially your psychology is, well, can I ever do enough? Because you must have had that experience on the ground treating patients where it has felt like you can't do enough. I think that's more about my character. And I'm a massive perfectionist

and a huge overthinker. I guess I'm always quite hard on myself. I do feel like that was such an opportunity that I'm wondering what I've missed and like you said my work isn't over hopefully. One of the things I just raced back from actually was the theatre rehearsals, which are live theatre is starting next week. And it's about nursing in a very different way. And one of the things that we tried to focus on is not being too political and not talking about those things, because sometimes I wonder whether there is another way to raise the voice and the profile. I wonder whether there is another way to raise the voice and the profile and so we've really gone down a sort of celebratory joyful hopeful performance of nursing in a new space so I'm still thinking about it and hopefully eventually the government will catch up and realize that we

can't have an NHS without our nurses. And the nursing profession, not just here, actually, and not just in the NHS, but the nursing profession around the world is really in trouble. Can I ask you how you got into nursing? Because it's my understanding that you were a bit of a wild teenager. Am I right? One of the things I'm not a failure at was being a teenager. I mean, I was a huge success at being an awful teenager. I was very flighty, precocious, always wanted to do something else, something else, something else. Again, it's back to perfectionism. I didn't want to just go to an office and do a job. I was always thinking, right, what can I do? What can I do? Even as a young child, I was always forcing my brother to do projects. And so I went

through a career idea every single week. I wanted to be a jazz trumpeter for a while. That was nearly one of my failures. Did you play the trumpet? Yeah, for years. So did I. Did you? Yes. Get out. We are a rare breed. I love it. I knew I liked you. I want to hear about this. But I loved the trumpet and I was dead set. My granddad died. He was in the Salvation Army and he died when I was around 10 and left me his trumpet. It wasn't something I would have sort of naturally gone towards. But again, with my perfectionism, I thought, well, unless I'm playing for the National Philharmonic by the time I'm 16, there's just no point, really. So I went to music school all the way through my secondary school. And actually, it was one of the things, even being a wild teenager, I still managed to carry on playing the trumpet

the whole time. And then I wanted to be a swimmer. So I swam for the county and I think I came second place once and that was disastrous but I tried everything I wanted to be a marine biologist I went through all these career ideas and finally ended up volunteering because I had no direction at all at the age of 16 and I was volunteering in a place that was a home in those days for people with quite severe disabilities and I was around nurses for the first time and something just clicked and I remember just watching them in total awe and the difference they were making in these people's lives and one of the nurses said well you could do this and it was the first time I thought actually

I could stop being wild or be a bit less wild and do something totally different. I'm very intrigued at the connection between your wildness on one hand and your perfectionism on the other. How do you think they do connect, if indeed they do? I'm not sure. I'm not sure at all. I mean, it's bizarre. I look back and think how wild I was. And it was quite extreme even for where I was growing up. I mean, if there was trouble, I was there for sure. I had an extreme reaction to hormone changes and puberty. And ultimately, it was only a period of between 13 and 16. And then I was kind of out of it, thankfully. But I still managed to keep going to school and carry on with the perfectionism and doing all those things. But on the other side of it, I was also a tearaway. I'm not sure. I haven't really thought about that much.

I think it has to come out somewhere. But I talk as someone who is also a recovering perfectionist, but I was a perfectly behaved teenager, really boring. But my rebellious phase came later after I got divorced and it happened in my mid to late 30s and I think there always needs to be some sort of release valve if you put that kind of pressure on yourself so in many respects you were perfectionist at being a rebel because you did it exactly the right time got it out of the way well I think that's interesting as well because I'm still quite wild and I have got that streaking me and it's so binary isn't it you're one thing or another thing and I think that is problematic in nursing as well actually is that

people tend to think well you're kind and compassionate therefore you might not be a wild person but I definitely have a lot of fun and have always had a lot of fun and I think I got it out of the way a little bit but there's certainly been periods in my life where I've had wild moments throughout my whole life really. Oh my god I can't wait to have a night out with you. Oh well bring your trumpet I mean I'll bring mine. I've lost my ombre show it's terrible. Can I ask why you left school at 16? Well I couldn couldn't wait to get away. I didn't think I was very academic. This is quite interesting, actually, because I am hugely academic, but I didn't have any interest whatsoever in A-levels. I didn't do A-levels. I didn't do a degree. I went straight into nursing

school and did a diploma. Ultimately, I ended up doing an MA in creative writing at UEA on a whim really and got there and realised that everybody else was sort of double first oxbridge and I didn't even have an A level I felt really out of place and look back and it's the first time I felt academic envy I remember thinking why didn't I stay in and study because I love studying and I think probably I just wanted to get out of dodge I just wanted to run away and just do something else I had a brilliant job when I was 16 before the nursing began I worked in a video shop back in the days of videos not even dvds and I was not allowed to put any inappropriate videos on in the shop and I was not allowed to have my friends in

there and I was not allowed to eat in there and do all those things so I had all my friends in the shop the whole time back to back 18 films and then Chinese food on the counter all day it was it was a blissful job I mean they went bust quite quickly probably partly down to my poor management of the shop but that was a great job. And so I really didn't have any aspirations other than what was going on that particular day. Oh my god, heaven. I read somewhere on Instagram recently that when we talk about the 90s, it's like our parents talking about the 60s when we were growing up. And it really shocked me. But one of the things that I think is so distressing for today's youth is that they will never understand the incomparable glamour and excitement of a video shop.

It was just the best. It was a great place to hang around. Yeah. And it felt like such a magical place, a video shop. And what did your parents think of your decision to become a nurse? My dad laughed. I mean, I told them I was thinking about going to nursing school. My dad literally burst out laughing, holding his belly type laughing.

My mum wasn't so surprised. She's a social worker. And I think she always saw the kindness in me underneath the wildness. But my dad just found it absolutely hilarious. And I think he was astonished that it was something that seemed to really suit me. And I stayed in for so long. You talk in your latest book about your dad's death in a really beautiful way. And I just want to say I'm so sorry for what you went through and the grief that you had to handle. And the reason that you talk about it as well as just being very generous to the reader is because you make the point that sometimes you'll be treating

patients who will remind you of what you experienced with your dad yeah it's interesting isn't it because I don't consider it a sad thing that sounds really odd consider it sad obviously because I miss him desperately and actually now now more than ever, weirdly, times and grief are quite strange. But it wasn't a tragedy. My dad smoked and drank all his life and got cancer. He got lung cancer at 63. He lived exactly the life that he wanted to live. He was so full of joie de vivre. He lived absolutely 100% as he wanted to. And he had the most beautiful death, if there is such a thing as that. I mean, he was at home, surrounded by his loved ones, not in pain. He was exactly his own personality until the very last moment. And so I look back at this last year and the terrible tragic and awful things that people have had to go through when they're not able to be with their loved ones and I also look back and think he would have hated his last six months to have been in last year so although I feel very sad and I miss

him desperately I think there are far far well I know there are far far far worse things that many people will go through and and I will go through and so I wanted to write about it to talk about being on the other side of the fence and the importance of nursing and what a gift his nurse gave to my dad and our whole family but not really as a kind of woe is me, you know, look how tragic my life has been, because I actually think his life and his death were exactly as he wanted them. That's so beautiful. Thank you. I'm sure you get asked this an awful lot. And it's probably one of those occupational hazard questions. I'm not going to ask about my ingrown toenails, but I wonder if there's one case or one patient that has stayed with you through all of these years. Yeah, I keep talking about the person I call Betty in the language of kindness.

And actually, to the extent where some of my friends have started saying, stop talking about Betty in every interview, we're sick of hearing about her. But I think she stayed with me. She was an elderly woman that came in and I was looking after her in the corridor because there were no beds. And we had something called a corridor nurse, if you can believe it, because there's just no room at the inn. That was pre-COVID. And she had come in with chest pain and a suspected heart attack, basically. We did an ECG and bloods and things and nothing of physical origin came back. So she just needed warming up. She was freezing cold and really hungry.

And she needed warming up with the bear hugger machine, which is like a sort of blanket in this white fabric that goes over you and heats people up. And I just sat with her and held her hand. And she told me about her husband, Stan, who had died a couple of weeks before in the hospital and she'd basically come in with what she described as heart pain and we obviously interpreted that as chest pain but that's not what she was saying at all she was saying that her heart ached and her heart was broken and and it was and she started telling me about Stan and how the fabric of this machine looked much like her wedding dress which was made from parachute silk and as she started talking she perked up a bit and sat up and she said thank you nurse you've really saved my life and of course I hadn't done anything of the sort. But I remember thinking very, very clearly

that nursing is an absolute privilege to be able to hold someone's hand at the most significant and profound moments of their life. And sometimes from the outside, it might look like a simple thing, but actually, it was a really life-saving thing for her to have somebody to talk to about her heart pain and to describe her suffering meant that she wasn't so alone in it. And I think that really taught me a lot about, about nursing. Bloody hell, Chrissie, that's so moving. And you make the point in your latest book that when a nurse holds someone by the hand not only is it an act of compassion but it's also you're finding out about their vital signs and I it never struck me before

I just thought that was a really clever way of putting it in the courage to care so thank you for that as well oh gosh feel quite emotional your second failure which I'm sure is going to be equally emotional but possibly also hilarious because you've described your second failure as being mother of the year so how have you failed to be mother of the year well it's funny because when I was talking to the kids about this podcast I was so excited yours is obviously favorite podcast love you thanks um I said I've got to think of three failures and my daughter immediately just said parenting that's teenagers for you yeah great thanks a lot but the mother of the year thing is I set myself up for this because one of the tabloids had asked me to be one of three mums they were running a campaign to try and find the UK mother

of the year and they said could we photograph you and interview you and put you as the sort of opening thing for this campaign so I didn't think much of it I said yeah fine absolutely delighted to do and I made the mistake of showing my children this newspaper with a picture of me saying mother of the year and it was a schoolboy error because for the next well up until now really it was a while ago and all they do all day is give me my failures as a mother and then say hashtag mother of the year in a kind of condescending voice so for example and there are so many I won't list them all I left my daughter in a shop when she was six months no she was six weeks even worse she was six weeks old first time out shopping left her in a shop came out with the boots that I'd just bought remembered the boots

which is significant yes love it but forgot that I'd had the baby because I wasn't used to that and so she reminds me of that hashtag mother of the year and so they keep reminding me of all kinds of failures and I think the biggest privilege of my life is to parent them. An absolute privilege. My favourite thing in the world is those two. But I had such expectations of what motherhood would be. And of course, it's not like that at all. And it's a million times harder. And as they grew, my expectations fell. And so I went from thinking I would be mother of the year

to thinking I'll be okay mother, to thinking I'll be just about good enough perhaps and my expectations keep dropping and dropping but I do think that you know I for example I never open school emails ever I have about probably 300 emails a day and a good chunk of those are from the school so I just don't open them and sometimes if it looks important I'll just forward them to the kids they quite rightly point out that perhaps they're important and I should read them and then hashtag mother of the year comes out again so I've got many many many examples of that I can't cook I can't bake pancakes how can I bake pancakes. How can I make pancakes raw in the middle and burnt on the outside? Hashtag mother of the year. And it's just become

one of those jokes that I think is never going to leave me now. It's a really great way of them pointing out any parental failures for the rest of my life. It sounds like you've got such a healthy attitude towards it all but do you ever feel guilty? Oh god yeah I mean all the time the biggest hardest thing for me when I split up with their dad was just the overwhelming guilt about them not having a mum and dad in the same place and I remember talking to my daughter at the time, she was seven at the time, and trying to explain to her and saying, it has to be better for you both if mum and dad are happy, but not living in the same house. And she turned around and said, no, it's better for us both if you're unhappy and living in the same house. Oh my gosh, she actually said that?

She said it. She said it. And she meant it as well. It's not, she actually said that? She said it. She said it. And she meant it as well. It's not even that she said it, she meant it. So I just remember this enormous guilt about the idea that they were going to be growing up in a single parent family. And the other guilt that I have is what goes with perfectionism which is workaholism and I am a complete workaholic I'm probably a recovering workaholic after this year but to be a single parent and a writer and although I joke about hashtag mother of the year and we have lots of laughs about it actually I am away with the fairies a good percentage of the time. So there have been challenges for them, not only being in a single parent family, but also having a mum who is a full time writer

and a workaholic. You know, I do worry that I haven't invested the time in them that they deserve. And I'm really trying hard now to focus on their remaining childhood years and be around a bit more than I was before but it is really hard and I think all writers I imagine struggle with this and part of the reason that I struggle with it I think is because I often get asked how do you juggle family life with your work as a professor but also as a writer and I always get quite angry and say well would you ask a man that question and the answer is probably no but it still doesn't help them they still have a mum who's quite often absent even if she's physically present if that makes sense. I'm interested in your child care then and I think I would ask that specific question of a single male parent do you have supportive family who can step in or I mean I'm

just my mind is boggling at how you do manage on a practical level and how you were managing through homeschooling when you were working at the Nightingale and all of that no because of Covid there hasn't been anything the first peak is when I went back I only went back for a matter of weeks but my daughter's 16 now so it was a case of me leaving her in charge and my son went to key worker school and then she would cook him dinner or make pasta or whatever she was going to do but sometimes I'd leave at six in the morning and get home at 10 at night and I would scrub myself down alcohol gel everything to within an inch of its life shower wash my hair which was a real pain in the ass every day and then shout for them to come out of their bedrooms and they would run out and hug me and

that's the first time that they'd seen me I wasn't brave at all but they were incredibly brave and they really held it together very well until I came home and as soon as I was home after the first peak and working from home and homeschooling and doing all the rest of it well my son particularly had a meltdown in terms of behavior and mental health and everything else and he's fine now but I think he was always holding it together and really must have been such an anxious time for them they can still see the news they're still worried about everything and knowing that mum the sole carer is going off to the hospital where the thing is I think must have been a really terrifying time for them it has been a lot of juggling back to that awful word

juggling has been a lot of juggling but also a lot of them taking responsibility for each other and then being really really brave but how lucky they are to have such an emotionally articulate wise open-hearted mother because the way you communicate is so exceptional and I think that's one of the things that children value most of all clear communication understanding and I can imagine you're utterly phenomenal at that but can I ask you about your son because you write so beautifully about him in The Courage to Care and my favourite chapter well probably one of my favourite chapters is the one titled Fuck Off Janet please tell us the Fuck Off Janet story oh yeah It was shortly after he came home because I adopted him and it was shortly after he

came home and I was still going through that trying to be mother of the year phase where I thought, it's fine. I'll carry on my life as before. I've now got two children, not one, and he's adopted, but I'll just take him everywhere for my daughter. She was four. She was going to swimming lessons. I didn't really give myself a break or take much time off or do anything. He was clearly traumatized and he was clinging to me, really clinging to me, which is obviously

completely understandable. And he was brilliant from day one, but I took him to the swimming pool to basically watch his sister swim. Well well she can't even swim 10 years of lessons and she can't swim anyway so he was just on my lap in the viewing area and I you've got three stepchildren now so I don't know what ages they are but if you have to go and take them to swimming lessons try and palm it on somebody else wherever humanly possible because it's about 300 degrees in the viewing area and you sit there just sweating and watching your child from afar who can't see you anyway but we went there and there was a woman that I recognized who worked in a local cafe and she must have heard on the grapevine that we were adopting and she shouted out and at

first I really didn't understand what she was saying but she shouted out is that the adopted one really loudly echoey swimming pool and I could feel him digging his nails into me I mean he was absolutely terrified and so I picked him up and we walked out and sort of walked past the stairs and she said it again she. Is that the adopted one? And reached out and tried to touch him. And I remember so clearly rage, just pure rage and some sort of massive protective thing. But I was trying to keep calm and I just thought, just go. Don't say anything. Don't do anything. But I just turned around and said, fuck off, Janet, really loudly. Everyone looked. And then he sort of relaxed. It was so strange because, I mean, obviously,

hopefully he didn't learn those words. Maybe he did. But he sort of relaxed into me. And I don't know if it was some sort of profound body language thing that he felt my protectiveness towards him. But from that moment on, there was a shift in his attachment to me for sure and he trusted me and somehow I think kids are incredible at picking up on things and understanding adult behavior even without language even without words and he just leant

into me and lent his head on my arm and it was honestly the most incredible feeling I've ever experienced and so thank you Janet if you're listening appreciate it and thank you for sharing that with us I get chills every time I I sort of think of it and it's so special hearing you say it but now you're writing a book with your daughter aren't you how's that going yeah well she's mid-gcse at the moment so we haven't started and I'm currently writing the book before which I'll talk to you about in a minute in my third failure wait yes yes she is very diligent very hard working really focused she is a great communicator when I grow, I'd like to be like her. One day it will happen. It's a little bit like role reversal in our house, but she's really, really excited. I just think there is a space and it came about from our

lockdown conversations, really. We were talking all the time. And in this year of years in this most awful pandemic time of all this horrible situation she ended up with urosepsis a kind of sepsis in hospital last year it was the most terrifying time of my life it must have been it was just horrendous but the upshot of that was that she couldn't really do a lot or go anywhere for quite a long time. So we started talking and we talked and talked and talked perhaps in a way that we haven't done before about absolutely everything from race and class and gender and sexuality to TikTok, why can't I make pancakes? I mean everything from these conversations came the idea that we might listen to each other properly and learn from each other even though we have wildly opposing views about things. And that's where the idea for the book came about. So

it's going to be conversations in our living room, provisionally titled, and really just us both writing an essay in response to each other on particular issues. So it's really exciting. I can't wait. And also because I just cannot think of a book like that that exists. And what a fascinating time to be writing it. You mentioned that you quite often have opposite points of view. Do you have an example on a topic that you have opposing views on? We are coming from polar opposites in various different places, not just generationally, but even things like I grew up pretty working class. She's fairly middle class now. And obviously, we've got different racial backgrounds, different experiences

of that. I've got privilege that she doesn't have. She's experienced racism on a level that I can't even comprehend. So we just had all these incredible conversations. And I do think that perhaps the book doesn't seem to exist anywhere. It's always one viewpoint or another viewpoint. And I just think, particularly in families like mine, where we are a biracial family, it's a single parent, and we're from different class backgrounds. I think there is something interesting in exploring the different challenges that we both face in our lives. Yeah, I just can't wait, Christy.

But I also can't wait for the next book you've got. So you've got to get that one done and dusted and then get on to the one with your daughter. Because your next book is called Quilt on Fire, which is the best title ever. And my understanding is it deals with what you've chosen as your third failure, which is perimenopause. Tell us why you've chosen perimenopause. A couple of ago in my very early 40s i'm 44 now so maybe when i was 42 i thought i was having a spectacular breakdown and i think probably my mental health has always been a bit sketchy and partly that's about being a novelist i think partly you tread a fine line if you are living in the abstract and in your

imaginative space the whole time. For example, I went to a panel with a psychiatrist friend and everything she was talking about in terms of psychosis. Do you hear voices? Do you talk to people that aren't there? Do you have delusions of stepping into someone else's shoes, whether it's an astronaut or someone that died. I was thinking, yes, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, because that's my job. So I think partly my mental health's been sketchy for that, but I've never really had what I would describe as a catastrophic unravelling of my mind. And I thought I was ill enough to be hospitalised at one stage. I literally couldn't function. My hair was falling out. I had

all these physical symptoms as well, but didn't, I thought it was all stress related. And I started losing everything, absolutely everything. And just one minute being full of rage, the next minute, a zombie. I remember watching TV for an entire weekend, but the TV wasn't on. I mean, this is how bad it was. Oh my gosh. Yeah, just staring in space. And it all came to a head in Sainsbury's. I basically just felt totally invisible. And I felt out of body distortion of who I was. I just felt totally and utterly ill. And I semi-climbed into a fish finger freezer. It's not a very dramatic story. But I remember standing half in and half out of this freezer with people just milling around, nobody even looking at me. And I thought, gosh, I'm properly

losing it now. And of course, as a single mother with two children I couldn't afford to be hospitalized and so I was privileged and lucky enough to be able to scrape the money together to find a therapist and in the first therapy session my therapist said I think that you need to get your hormones checked and I said well I'm having regular, nothing else is going on like that. And she said, no, it sounds very much like perimenopause. And I hadn't come across this word, can you believe, as a medical professional. I'd sort of vaguely heard it, but I always imagined the menopause happening somewhere in my 50s. I'd just stop having periods, get a few hot flushes, and that would be that. But for me, it was so profound and debilitating. I went to the GP, had a very, very good GP, who told me all the good, the bad and the ugly that we just don't hear about. And actually,

the perimenopause is having such a moment right now, which is absolutely incredible and amazing. Because it is a human rights issue it's a women's right issue this is about women's bodies just being seen as less important and minds as well but the peak suicide rate for women the peak divorce rate it's all tied in and the same and it's like nobody's collected the dots and you know my GP said she didn't have any training at all in perimenopause or menopause even. I just found the whole thing absolutely astonishing. And I started getting many, many, many of the 300 or so symptoms that you can get with perimenopause and started talking

to my friends about it. And it turned out that many, if not most of my friends were going through absolutely similar things where they just lost their joy, lost their sense of self, their identity. They were suffering with all the usual stuff, vaginal dryness, lack of libido, all of that stuff as well. But really bizarre things too that sort of felt philosophical about midlife and midpoint. And so the book has been a really interesting time to think about it and look at it because I almost think that there is obviously a physical origin of paramedicals. And I started on HRT patches and within a week felt like myself again. I mean, they literally said, wow, within a week, that's maybe even quicker than that. They'd said it

would take maybe three weeks to work if you see any change at all. And for the first time in six months, I slept a night and got up and actually felt like I crawled back into my own skin. It really was that life changing for me. And of course, everyone has their own journey to go on. But I really wanted to start talking to other women about it. And certainly within my friendship group, everyone at my age is really suffering and struggling. And it's almost not talked about, although obviously very happy to see that it is starting to have a movement and a moment and get talked about a lot more.

And I really hope that my daughter doesn't ever have to go through this. I think so many things are so interesting about that the fact that you as a medical professional had never heard the term perimenopause like I can understand why I might not have done and that in itself is shocking but that's just an extra level of shock and I think we are currently as you say living through this moment, where not only are we starting to talk about perimenopause, but we're also talking openly about things like miscarriage and endometriosis. And I feel very grateful to live during this time, when we are challenging this historical patriarchal notion that what happens to women's bodies is of no great import to society. And it's a very sort of exciting time, but there's so much more work to be done.

Do you think the open conversations, that this whole movement has been helped by social media? Because I've been trying to work out why it's been happening. Social media has helped. It's probably a place where women can talk without being censored so much. And certainly things like podcasts is a space where women can get on it and get their voices heard. But I also feel like there has been a shift in our culture perhaps that's come from the younger people as well so thinking about my daughter and her friends and the things that they talk about and the openness with which they discuss things and the equality between them all I think that older generations like mine are actually learning from younger people and thinking what hang on

they're not putting up with stuff that we put up with. And perhaps we shouldn't be putting up with this stuff anymore, either. So I think there's been a bit of a sea change in both directions. And of course, it's got far, far, far to go. But it does feel, I agree with you, feels really positive. And it feels like a time that things are rapidly changing for women finally and I hope that continues. I totally agree with you about the younger generation because I felt that about the Me Too movement that for years I just thought well I'm lucky I haven't been a victim of sexism or serious harassment and actually when the Me Too movement started, powered in great part by

younger generations, I realized that I had experienced a lot of the things that people were putting into social media platforms. It's just that I hadn't ever categorized it in that way, because I was so used to just putting up and shutting up. And I think so many women of our generation have had to deal with that. And yeah, it's just mind blowing, isn't it? When suddenly your entire worldview shifts and someone gives you some HRT and you're not in the fish fingers cabinet in Sainsbury's anymore. And there you have it. Yeah.

And I really wanted to talk about the messy magic of being in your 40s, because although it is a time of challenge and profound change and you are kind of sandwiched between sometimes aging parents teenage children lots of responsibilities worries etc I think that there is a great joy if you can get over that bump of perimenopause or understand what it is it's some kind of freedom it's that vantage point the tipping point where you can see where you've been and you can see where you're going and you've got the opportunity to reset and writing the book at this time has made me see real parallels with the pandemic and what the pandemic has done or will do for culture in that everyone is a bit at the midpoint now everyone's at that time where they

can they're on top of a mountain they've climbed a mountain on top of a mountain they can look around and say that's what I thought life was and I thought I wanted and actually this is where I'm going and so it does feel like the pandemic has spoken to midlife and we're all at a tipping point and a very important change all of us that's such a deep point that's so. We're going through this collective midlife reassessment. But can I ask you, because I know that this is going to be written about in the book, about dating through the perimenopause. How's that been? Absolutely horrific. Well, you know, I'm talking about it in terms of me and all my friends. And one of the things that I haven't really seen much of is memoir written about being single when you're older.

I've seen lots of brilliant writing about what it's like to be in your 20s or 30s and be single and out there and dating and online dating. And obviously, I've got questions for you about that as well, because we met your hubby online. I have so many friends, so many friends, who have been doing dating as single parents, dating while they're going through the perimenopause. I just think there's something really beautiful about that messiness where you have got two things

going on at once and I haven't really seen that described but I've got a friend's whatsapp group called worst dates not first dates there are so many dating stories I think that we all have but I think that hearing from women at midlife or describing dating at midlife and the messy beauty of that or the messy magic of that I think is quite fun. It is destined to be a must read this book it really is yeah and you're right I did meet my now husband on Hinge but I had to get through a lot of terrible dates to get to that point and I was dating in my late 30s yeah my last year of my 30s really so some of that interplay was definitely my experience I can't wait to once we stop recording just swap war stories but Christy Watson you have been as I knew you would be the most phenomenal compassionate

intelligent guest and you've really left us all with food for thought but I think my overriding love for this interview is your phrase messy magic that idea that there's magic in the messiness of life in the stickiness in the difficult moments and that's really what how to fail is all about so I cannot thank you enough Christy Watson for coming on how to fail thank you thanks for having me today's episode of how to fail is sponsored by cb2 purveyors of feel good cbd we all know that life's speeding up again and it's really important not to let your wellness take a back seat. Research conducted by leading UK CBD brand CB2 found that half of UK adults have had their sleep affected by the pandemic.

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