How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S18, Ep2 Sara Pascoe on fertility, fear and what success really means

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

TW: fertility and miscarriage Sara Pascoe is a critically acclaimed comedian, writer and actor. Her latest stand-up tour is called - aptly enough for this podcast - Success and her debut novel, Weirdo, is published tomorrow. It's a dark, funny, stream-of-consciousness narrative ride through the internal machinations of Sophie, an anxious, sometimes obsessive, often unhappy woman trying to feel less lost. I gobbled it up. Sara joins me to talk about failing at acting, why every year she promises herself she'll never do the Edinburgh Fringe again (and every year breaks that promise) and, in a heartbreaking third failure, she talks candidly about failing to get pregnant for over a decade, suffering a miscarriage, doing IVF and eventually having a baby but remaining in a state of high anxiety throughout her pregnancy. It's a beautiful conversation, and I am so grateful to Sara for talking about something that is very difficult to put into words. I know her courageous vulnerability will help so many people. -- Weirdo by Sara Pascoe is out tomorrow. -- I'm going on tour! To AUSTRALIA, mate! You can now purchase tickets to see me live at Sydney Opera House on 26th February 2024 or the Arts Centre Melbourne on 28th February 2024. -- How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [e-mail] -- Social Media: Elizabeth Day @elizabday How To Fail @howtofailpod Sara Pascoe @sara.pascoe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. 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. Sarah Pascoe is a critically acclaimed comedian, writer and actor. She's the star of the BBC stand-up special Lads, Lads, Lads, the writer and lead of sitcom Out of Her Mind, the presenter of the great British sewing bee and the Sunday Times best-selling author of two works of non-fiction, Animal and Sex Power Money. She's currently midway through her latest tour called, aptly enough for this podcast, Success. She grew up in Essex and East London, one of three sisters raised by a single mother. Initially, she had aspirations to be an actor before realising stand-up was more her thing. But she's never been one to limit herself to a single talent.

Her debut novel, Weirdo, is out tomorrow and is a dark, funny, stream of consciousness, narrative ride through the internal machinations of Sophie, an anxious, sometimes obsessive, often unhappy woman trying to feel less lost. I gobbled it up. Pascoe was once asked the best piece of advice anyone ever gave her and replied with something her dad had said when she was toying with the idea of a teacher training course as a backup plan. Make it work or starve to death. He essentially said, if you have a backup plan, it's far less likely that you'll get to do what you want to do, Pascoe recalled. My mum hated it. Sarah Pascoe recalled my mum hated it Sarah Pascoe welcome to how to fail thank you so much for having me thank you so much for having me my mum hated that advice because my dad's a jazz musician who lives in Australia who doesn't have any money which is fine so I wouldn't be the he wouldn't be the one but like lending me money for rent when instead of me starving to death

it was such it was such jazz musician advice like what's the point of being alive yeah unless you're doing what you love but the best piece of advice that anyone ever gave you still so do you think that well because there was a sense of it wasn't building me up it wasn't you are special or the world needs you it was nothing like that it's like what do you want well then get that then yeah and there was something very refreshing about that neither of my parents are very I want to say interested but what I mean is involved and there's a real freedom to that I think you can have much more supportive parents where you feel responsible for their disappointment in your career or feel too viewed or their opinions ways there was something really

lovely about my mum go my mum's saying I just don't have to lend you any money and my dad's saying we'll do it then does it make it easier when you are a confessional comic to have a family that's less interventionist it became more difficult when I was on tv it was fine when no one knew what I was saying about them and then the minute it became actually radio first and then tv it then became oh of course I think that's why I'm obsessed with personal narratives because stand-up is your version of events and you think it's the truth and then other people hear it and they're so like what that's how you saw me in that role or that's how you felt that and so then there's then it's become a little bit more difficult to traverse both of my parents so you can say whatever you like and then I'm upset when I say things

and what about your sisters because so often with siblings they have a completely different experience of your family yes my sisters I only on stage ever talk about one sister so they both have deniability I'm planning to do the same with my children because why you're having a second child it's exactly why also so that I also think having siblings do you have siblings yes I've got one older sister yeah no one else will ever really believe how mad your parents are it does need to be someone else who was there yeah you describe it to someone else and they go this sounds nice okay I think there's that's not why everyone should have I know I'm not saying this to prescribe families but I felt it's really great to have someone who just has shorthand yeah it's into your family past but yeah deniability on stage my sisters both have

quite professional jobs one of them's a she teaches GCSE English and one of them is a dental nurse so they do not want me talking about what they did at school GCSE English wow I imagine her students think it's very cool that you're her sister? I think all of her students I think she's much much cooler than me and she's quite sort of like beautiful I think that they think she's the cool one also the thing with comedy is you know and this happens with most comedians you'd be like oh so and so in my family and then what you get is lots of people going I watched her YouTube not funny and then they and then they tell you that helpfully yeah let's talk about Weirdo because I loved it thank you and thank you for reading it oh my gosh it was a pleasure and it's always so refreshing and also a relief to discover that a person very talented in one area can also write they're not just like knocking out a book because they've got a book deal because they're famous yeah there's a thing with stand-ups myself and

mark watson sometimes bitch about comics who have books as merch because when you love books and you respect books it's books because of books you know that's the main thing it's not just oh and then i got something to sign after shows or something like that I had this very precocious career plan that involved 40s novelists and then I got to my 40s and then I had to actually work out if I could write a book and I knew I could write a length of a book because I'd written non-fiction but I had no idea I told myself it would just be like writing a story at school and you write a little bit and then you write a little bit and then the characters start doing things for themselves in that mad way. You know, when you go, oh, I didn't plan this. But apparently that's what this scene is doing. And I also, because I've written before, at least I knew that the editing process, you can write, as long as you get something finished, you can make it so much better later.

But it was a bit like, what am I going to do for this decade of them? later but it was a bit like what am I going to do for this decade of them if I discover oh absolutely because also novelists the only people I get starstruck about I mean spending time in someone's mind or the world that they've created it's really huge and I think if it had been rubbish if I'd got to the end then I'd have gone what a lovely experiment thank you Faber obviously we won't show anyone I mean you've nailed it and I think I've already said to you I can't wait to see what you write next having read this and I was interested by the publisher's blurb because they went big on the fact that it's funny and it is funny and obviously you're very funny but I think it's there's a darkness to it that I found so resonated and was so immersive because you really do plummet into Sophie's mind and it's

not always a comfortable place to be because she's actually struggling with past trauma a sense of alienation and what I think you do brilliantly is the structure I want to know how much you did actually plan it because it's fragmentary in nature so you're sort of headlong in her being in a pub and her long-term crush walks in and then suddenly you get a flash of something that's happened in the past and you weave it together so well it is like a mind work so I suppose that's what I'm getting at yeah so I started from a really pretentious place when I first started to write I used to do like playwriting courses after university and they always said you're trying so hard to be clever that you know your work is unreadable it was always that I remember I've got I mean awful awful plays still in my you

know computer which are sort of I guess motifs of the vagina the whole thing happens in a cupboard and it's so Freudian and that all of the characters are parts of one person's in super like that was the kind of thing i was working at with this i knew i'm obsessed with unreliable narrators yes so am i i'm obsessed with them i think they make you feel engaged and clever and like a detective and and that's how it feels actually meeting other people isn't it sort of you're telling me this but i'm also picking up this and that's why gossip is so fantastic because that's essentially what you're doing is unpicking so I knew I wanted to write an unreliable narrator I wanted her to think things about her life that the reader knew weren't true and I knew I wanted to put things in there where the reader goes well

did that happen or not because this other character is saying that it didn't and I knew from stand-up that there's nothing more and I mean from watching stand-up from stand-up that I love there's nothing more satisfying than a callback like just to the human mind to like you talked about this earlier and now I'm getting a bit more information about it so I did have to keep a few strands working but now I didn't have a proper plan I never write with a proper plan either and I love it when I meet other writers who refuse the post-it note I was reading someone and essentially they were saying you plan oh I'll tell you who it is Patricia Highsmith has written a book a very short book about plotting thrillers and she says she always knows the first third and by the middle section she probably knows the end I love that yes and also everyone would say

she's a perfect plotter yes you would say would say, but that ending, how did you not know? And she says, because it sort of becomes clear or you have different options. And yeah, it's very calming to go. You don't have to do a proper hundred pages. And then they go over there. And the consequences of that. And I feel like a realistic plot is informed by character. And you can only really get to know your characters by writing them there are a couple more things I want to ask you about

weirdo specifically one is the number of jobs that Sophie has had that are very funny in and of their own right so she is a London bus tour guide but she was a scarer oh yeah at what is effectively the London dungeons is that a job that job that exists and that you've had? It's worse than the one I had. It wasn't one of the scarers because I was too scared. I have auditioned to be a scarer. Oh my God, that audition scene is not taking long. I have auditioned to be a scarer at Madame Tussauds

and I didn't get it. I didn't get it and it was really disappointing and it was a time where I had spent all of my money on the travel card to get there. So I didn't know what I didn't get it and it was really disappointing and it was a time where I had spent all of my money on the travel card to get there so I didn't know what I was going to do having not and I knew in the room I hadn't got the job and the scarer just quickly is someone employed literally to scare the crowd zombie is what springs to mind but yeah a bit of face makeup you know and it's all actors or I guess actor adjacent is it an actor adjacent job I think it pays pretty well like I'm trying to think now it would have been maybe 11 pounds

an hour at the time maybe now it's 15 so in terms of an actor's part-time job you know it's double minimum wage and you get paid for your breaks rather than working in an office there are people who'd much prefer and some people love it but I found it scary so the job I worked at I worked a place called the London Bridge Experience so they discovered in the old London Bridge which is right underneath where the current London Bridge is that there were these pits and then they had skulls in them and stuff because you know these put skulls on the top of the bridges and so they were going to open a restaurant but they couldn't get planning permission because it was you know it's full of skulls yeah it's a graveyard yeah and so instead they opened an experience which is about the history of London

Bridge and there were scarers at the end because otherwise why would tourists want to go but I worked in the history bit where we told them about Boudicca yeah yeah but it meant I spent time around scarers and they're a fascinating fascinating breed of people I mean you have really used what you've learned there in the novel the other character who I'm obsessed with is the character of Ian in the novel who is Sophie's long-term boyfriend now he is someone he's a type that I believe I really recognize okay where on the surface he seems enlightened, soft, feminist, likes to read existential philosophy. But beneath the surface, quite close to the surface,

there's this cauldron of seething intellectual pretension and male rage. Well, I don't know if you're finding this with men in general, and I think it's happening as well with white people who are doing this to black people, especially since Black Lives Matter. Matter there's an insignia so we've learned the veneer yeah and it's almost like we're accidentally gaslighting people because I don't think it's necessarily intentionally malevolent but it's the same comedy I'm seeing some much more dangerous people passing because they have the language and you want your monsters to look like monsters yes and actually I think there are scarier monsters who have been given by us yeah

it's like this is what you say and this is what you do and this is what you don't do and they're when you first meet them they're getting away with it and I think for the opposite for women who are around men like that let's say all of our spidey senses go off but what is it that you're really picking up on or the insidiousness of it I find really fascinating because I think it's terrifying and they do slip up and when they do you go I knew it yeah I knew you didn't actually empathize with women yeah does that kind of man exist a lot in comedy I think what happened comedy is where I live so it it's not, I don't think comedy is worse than any other place where there are men. I think sometimes we'd like to

think that, you know, that they're attracted to certain jobs, but I think they're the same in Sainsbury's or other supermarkets. Sainsbury's is particularly bad for predators. But stand-ups are where I live. And what I've seen is that there was on stage and off stage, what we would all be very familiar with from the 80s and 90s, which is men who saw dating or sex or sexual acts as all a kind of gaming system. Women try and withhold it, men try and get it, and they would talk about that on stage,

and they would behave like that in their social life. When I started stand-up, people were still doing stand-up about getting women drunk to get them into bed and we now would be like like um but then what I saw is how that has those same people or similar kind of people there's been a mutation but how they feel about women the men who see them as gatekeepers for sex that you have to manipulate or press buttons to get what you want. That hasn't changed, but the language, the honesty about it has changed. How do you feel now that you're raising a son?

It's interesting. I actually feel really relieved because I don't feel scared about him for the world, which is really sexist because actually men are more likely to be assaulted on a night out. Men are more likely to crimes. on a night out men are more likely to crimes teenage boys risk taking there are lots and lots of reasons you should feel worried about the world and actually what you're supposed to feel is I want to make sure my son doesn't become one of the people that I feared as a teenager but I guess I haven't gone down that route yet my first thing was relief I'm never going to have a teenage girl screaming at me yeah because we were a family of all girls and my sisters both had had girls I just thought I was going to have a girl and replicate our childhood which was too many women too much of a noxious oestrogen cloud women just

can be such bitches yeah women can be so cruel I guess and I guess I just don't know about men that's how I feel about it and I'm having another boy and I know nothing about brothers and so it all feels like I'm not repeating any toxicity from my family it's all fresh I'll just find out about new toxicities yeah and Steve your husband has sisters as well so it'll be an exploratory adventure for both of us yeah but he has been a man so I feel like he's at least got some insight there maybe that's has been maybe that's what I why I don't worry so much as I feel like he's at least got some insight there. Maybe that's why I don't worry so much is I feel like that's his dad's job. You can make sure he's not a rapist.

You'll have more insight into, yeah. You have written and worked so much and so brilliantly in the area of gender. And I read this really fascinating quote that I think you must have given around the time that every single woman in comedy was being asked about being a woman in comedy and isn't it astonishing that women are funny do you remember that era when it was like bridesmaids and everyone discovered that women could be funny yeah and then they wanted you to sort of explain how and why yes how long would it last and also like well you're an anomaly you seem to be making

money from jokes but you said this thing that you didn't really identify as a woman that strongly until I started doing stand-up and people kept telling me I was a woman tell us more about that because I found it so interesting the moment that sticks in my mind was a charity gig which obviously you do for no money and the woman when I arrived and it was a woman who said it to me and she said she was thanking me she said thank you so much for being here it's so important to me that we have a woman and we didn't have any women on the bill and I thought it was such a nodding to say because she wanted me to be grateful that she booked me for an unpaid gig that I was doing as a favor to her so I really thought I was there as a favour.

But she saw she was doing quite a gracious thing because she had noticed there was no woman. And the woman as signifier was really alien until I started stand-up and it kept being, there's a woman on the bill, there's no woman on the bill. Oh, there's two women on the bill tonight. Every time you walked into a room, they noticed, the promoters, the the other comedians I started at a time

where it was just sort of becoming there should be a woman on every bill which meant that it was a they have all the woman's pulled out or so and so can't do the gig can you replace her and women when I started would never gig together we all knew each other we all had a network of sort of replacing each other at gigs or talking about things but we didn't get to gig together because we were so spread out because then that's how you would have one on every gig and if there was two of us a gig was missing its woman and I didn't feel like being a woman was a type of person until stand-up I hadn't realized it was so visible and I guess that's a sign of privilege actually that I had felt at school and at university I'd felt that opportunities were open to me probably because of the kind of things that

I wanted to do I hadn't felt that the world was restrictive because of my gender until stand-up when it did become such a thing and then especially then reviewers talk about it and these are educated people who are supposedly know the most about my industry when they would then say there's more women in Edinburgh this year, and then talk about that in your review, you would think, but we're talking about such different things. We are so different from each other.

But we were treated like a type, like a flavour of comedy. And then what was very frustrating is when you do a routine about being on the bus or in Sainsbury's, and they would talk about women's comedy. Because when I was in Sainsbury's, I was a woman. And when I was on the bus or in Sainsbury's and they would talk about women's comedy because when I was in Sainsbury's I was a woman yeah when I was on the bus I was a woman and I was called a feminist and actually I wasn't actually doing anything feminist apart from being on stage as a woman

we were all called feminists and worse we were called like tolerable feminists I remember there was once I won't name the reviewer because he's actually you know a supportive person and sometimes this is where you see people's blind spots. It was a charity gig. Me and Catherine Ryan were on. Everyone's doing five minutes. And he said, if this is the face of feminism now, like how lucky we are, basically meaning they're not shoving it down our throats anymore because we hadn't done any feminism. We had just been there talking about our own lives.

And it was non-threatening because we were being funny. talking about our own lives and it was non-threatening because we were being funny then you have people who are more actively agitatingly feminist like Bridget Christie or Deborah Francis White and it became much more exciting because they were actually being feminist rather than women in Sainsbury's. I mean there is this like overwhelming cultural conditioning to see the default as the dominant so that whole Simone de Beauvoir thing about the othering nature of being seen as the object of the sentence rather than ever the subject yeah and it's always a white man will always it feels like be the default and therefore simply by being different from that you represent something and actually you just want to be a

person I want to ask you about success your, but also what success means to you in three words or less. I thought about it so much going through IVF because they kept using the words success and success rates. And I had only thought about success in terms of work. And in the way I thought about success with work, work and in the way I thought about success with work I was that's why I became fascinated with sort of dopamine and neurotransmitters just how fleeting it is with acting when you get an acting job you get a phone call it would be a phone call if you've got the job and it is such a rush of because it's competitive it's not just like oh you've got a thing you've got it against other people against the gods quite often you definitely think you haven't you haven't heard from them for a while

and by the next day it's disappeared and it's almost the job is almost tarnished because you got it it's so odd the the peaks and troughs and my husband is an actor i'm watching someone else go through it it's a really cruel industry in how it treats people and how they can't enjoy their downtime because technically they feel unemployed and how they can't enjoy their downtime because technically they feel unemployed and like they'll never be employed and watching someone else go through that cycle now and so I'd really really been trying with stand-up to rather than having the peaks and troughs when I got my dog I bought a flat it's not a massive flat but I bought a flat I got a mortgage which I never ever thought I'd have and the first thing I did before I got any

furniture was get a dog and that for me was I never ever ever thought and I got this from jokes I got this from telling jokes I've got a mortgage and now because I've the first time I'm not renting I can have the pet that I've always wanted and I kept reminding myself so this is success this is it it's not whether have I got news for you want you on next year there are all these things around all of our work, actually, that can make you feel replaceable, like you failed, like you're just not good enough, like you're too old now, like you're not very edgy. There are all these ways that our changeable industry isn't very loyal. But there are things that I can do. I mean, it doesn't sound funny. That's not really what the show is about. But it's because they kept talking in IVF about success. And I thought, why do you get to decide?

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by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts. I feel such a kinship with you and have done for a really long time because I've had a parasocial relationship with your social media where I have witnessed you go through fertility challenge and we're going to go on and speak about it because you've been generous enough to use it as one of your failures and there's so much more to say and I suppose I just wanted to thank you for being willing to say it and also

to say now and to preface our whole conversation by saying how sorry I am for what you've been through there's no question attached to that, but we'll come on to it at the end. But thank you to you, because I'm coming here to someone who talks about it. Yeah. Don't, we're going to cry. I can tell already.

I'm really hormonal as well. I don't know. I don't even have the excuse of being. Honestly, I gave myself such a pep talk before I left the house of like, I can talk about this, but I'm so hormonal. Like I cry at everything. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't worry. I cry at everything anyway. So it's fine. We'll have a lovely cleansing session. I'm so hormonal like I cry at everything yeah yeah don't worry I cry at everything anyway so it's fine we'll have a lovely cleansing session let's get on to your first failure okay great yeah which is acting I keep nudging your plant oh the plant's liking it okay acting yes I really hope in my head this is inspiring for people to hear because firstly I was so sure about acting I was really really sure like what you know when you fall in love with a person and you can't believe when that relationship starts showing that it's not working because you're like but that is the person yes when I was 12 it was 12 me and my sister Cheryl used to when we're supposed to be in bed

make up plays and I really knew this was it and I really knew what it was because actually what I thought at the time was this is how you escape yourself this is how you escape your life you become other people and I knew it was a job and it was a lauded job that beautiful people did and then went to you know awards ceremonies and things so it was glamorous it had everything and I was so precocious about it I remember we had a theatre education come to our assembly and I was it would have been you know secondary school but early maybe 13 or 14 and they said who here wants to be an actor and I like put up my hand and I told them my plan which was Oxbridge rather rep to get good because my whole thing and I remember saying it then is I don't want to be famous to my 40s like because

you know your 20s and 30s is really competitive and I wanted to be like at the royal court when I was 70 I remember when I met Carrie at university so I was 21 saying Carrie Adloy thank you I remember meeting her at university and saying to her no I'm going to peak in my 70s like who wants a life because my dad was in a pop band when he was a teenager and I've seen like you don't want fame then you want to be working towards it steadily I love that yeah but can I just interrupt just briefly you mentioned your dad there I wonder how much of that was also related to your mum having you when she was 18 is that right so were you sort of on some level aware of not doing things too early I that actually made me think like I didn't want children because I'd seen, I mean,

I had personally ruined people's lives. Were you told that? It's not explicitly, explicitly, but every mum has a moment where she loses her shit and goes, do you know what I could have had if it wasn't for you? She had three children by herself and was working to support us. And we were horrible children. And I don't mean as in not worthy of love and we were loved but we were feral my mum could not tell us to do anything we were feral we were feral especially being Cheryl feral Cheryl they feral Cheryl yeah the English teacher now who will kill me um but I think much more implicitly than explicitly I could see how difficult my parents lives were because they had no money.

They had no qualifications. They weren't married when they had me or got married when they had Cheryl. My dad felt very trapped. My mum had no choices. And your parents fizzed up when you were a child. Yes, yeah. Which was good because they made each other unhappy. And that's another good thing about, and I know you've covered this before, but there is no failure in relationships. Leaving

relationships is a really brilliant thing to do when they make you unhappy. And showing your children you should be making choices to make yourself happy is a really good thing. But I think parents really struggle. They feel very guilty. And I know that children get upset, but it's much better. I know a horrible thing about a family where the parents got divorced, but didn't want anyone to know. So dad stayed in the house they were separated but the dad stayed in the house sleeping in the son's bedroom so that no one anything that no that's that's a really terrible message that you're giving to your children which is you suffer yes and you stay because that's what people expect of you. A nice dramatic divorce is much healthier, I think.

So how old were you when your parents divorced? Okay. Yeah. And your mother was left raising, your dad went to live in Australia. Eventually. First of all, he was, he's a jazz musician. So he lived in London for a bit and in America for a bit,

but he really has followed. He plays the saxophone. I mean, I really hate jazz at this, but I don't know if you think it's really nice. I used to play the trumpet. Did you? So I'm like a bit into it. Age 12, you know you want to be an actor. I want to be an jazz, Elizabeth. I don't know if you think it's really nice. I used to play the trumpet. Did you? So I'm a bit into it. Age 12, you know you want to be an actor.

I want to be an actor, yeah. And famous in your 70s. And then what happens? Yes, and it felt so definite and it felt so real. And the astonishing thing is I didn't doubt it. And I didn't doubt it. I left school at 18, decided I wasn't going to go to university. I did try to go to Cambridge.

I told them it was just for Footlights. And also, I mean, I applied to do philosophy it was a ridiculous interview and then I was really shocked not to get in that they didn't want me for footlights and then I started working and the work I was doing sort of theatre and education or old people's homes or street theatre and I was really really good at applying for jobs and writing letters and going up to people hustling I was really good at hustling and occasionally I would get jobs and placements and little things like holiday camp stuff or like and everything felt like it was a journey and in my head I'm writing world autobiography as I go yes then after two years I was singing with Robbie Williams's dad in Nottingham

and I was getting paid 100 pounds a week and I was so far over my overdraft because I used to be able to do that I'd had a job in Italy doing theatre and education the cash machines had been letting me take out cash that I didn't have so I'd gone so far over my overdraft that this hundred pounds a week wasn't actually I didn't have any money I was stuck at a hotel for three months and I read a book which I think was Kate Atkinson's behind the scenes at the museum a brilliant book I know Kate Atkinson is Behind the Scenes at the Museum, a brilliant book. I know Kate Atkinson is just so fantastic, isn't she? Oh my gosh, stop. Yeah, she's incredible. We'd a whole lot of the podcast just for Kate Atkinson. It was a seismic change in my life because she made university sound attractive for the first time. And I thought, oh, you get a student loan. So I applied from

Nottingham. I didn't even have the train fare to get there. Eventually my mum had to lend it to me because they wouldn't give me my student loan at Nottingham I had to go to Sussex to get it and I wasn't planning to go to university I was just planning to take the 800 pounds and run then when I got there and everyone had been dropped off by their parents and they had stuff like saucepans and duvets and I had nothing I had some books and some cigarettes and it just felt really romantic and I thought oh there's a drama society I'll do drama for three years and it'll improve my acting which is how I met Carrie I had my best friend then after a drama society, I'll do drama for three years and it'll improve my acting, which is how I met Carrie, my best friend. Then after the university,

I auditioned for drama school for five years and I never got a call back. And I think for anyone else, that would have been a sign of this job isn't for you, as in you're not good at it or you're not. Again, it was just all part of the autobiography. I thought all of this was the journey, the rejection was part of it.

I used to make collages out of my rejection letters and decoupage things. It's the opposite of a manifestation mood board in a way isn't it yeah because I thought it would be so funny to look yes when you're on how to fail yeah in my head I always had that when they find out they turn me down when they're kicking themselves when when I get to be one of those people who gives my BAFTA acceptance speech saying, don't give up, kids. Everyone said no to me. No one ever said yes.

No one believed in me. And I guess I was very comfortable with that narrative. And then stand-up was an accident. There's a sketch show in Little Venice called News Review. And I'd been doing a terrible play about air hostesses with the music of steps if the word changed and we had been going oh she sounds iconic it sounds iconic I don't want to be too mean okay it wasn't just trust me it wasn't and we performed at little theatres near airports for air stewards right and um oh, I'll tell you another time about the guy whose play it was.

And really, really luckily, the woman who directed the play, she directed News Review. She asked me to audition. She thought I was funny and I said, I'm not funny. I'm deadly serious. I wanted to make political theatre. That's what I'd learned about Sussex, is that you can use entertainment,

I've got to sound like David Brent, to change minds. Yeah, like the Trojan Wars. and Chantel had just been on Big Brother because you have to do impressions she just won Big Brother and I did Chantel which was very much my wheelhouse and then I got it and then from that I sort of fell in love with a stand-up for a bit and number one went to see stand-up comedy and I had thought stand-up was improvised I'd only seen probably Billy Connolly and Jack D on TV and Harry Hill I thought they were making it up I thought they were geniuses but I didn't realize that it was a craft that you put together and then I saw people in max holding pads and then I decided that because I was so creatively stifled when I was out of work that I would start doing open

mic nights some with my guitar and some with comedy. And essentially the comedy was acting. It was sort of speeches. It wasn't stand-up as you would recognise it now. And then accidentally, and it is all accidental, this is why it sort of failed upwards. I was working in New Forest doing reminiscence theatre with old people, which is a hard crowd. It's a really, really worthy job, but they are tired.

Or you're standing in front of the tennis. But Reminiscence Theatre, and then I was coming to London on coaches and doing stand-up at night, and I did the Funny Women competition, semi-final, Catherine Ryan had invited lots of agents. I would never have thought to invite agents. Catherine Ryan, everyone wanted to sign her. There was a really long queue. Of course there was, because, you know, she's been a star since she was born.

And one of the agents who she had invited is my agent. And then it was like a love story where I got a Facebook message the next day, like, did I want a meeting? And I thought it was Cariad pretending for my confidence. I know, it's so sweet. And essentially I went to meet this agent and she looks after Simon Pegg and Catherine Tate

and all of these incredible people. And she says, what do you want to do? And no one had ever asked me. And I said, I want to play Latitude. All of my friends do Latitude. And that was my ambition at that point. Wow. Yeah.

And she sort of said, have you met this person? Have you met this person? Have you been in this room? And really what I said to her is, I want to be an actor. And then we did do some acting. She still tries to put me up for stuff, but I had a real breakthrough in therapy about a year and a half ago, and it was such an obvious thing.

It was such an obvious thing. My therapist said, well, this is all you wanted to be seen, so of course you weren't a very good actor. Like, that's why it's stand-up. And it's like it all fits together. It comes from my childhood. It comes from wanting attention, and I was a bad actor. actor I never lost myself I knew that that was the whole point of acting I knew that the point was you become someone else but I never did it I was Sarah

Pascoe with a hat on you want to be seen yes so deep yes so deep and then that's why I stand up became accidentally without me wanting it I think if I'd wanted to do it it'd have been much much harder but it was always my hobby in the background it, it would have been much, much harder. But it was always my hobby in the background. It was always that have a glass of wine, go up there. I loved meeting comics. I loved the creativity of it. I loved the brand newness that you could write something on the bus and then just go and say it or respond to the news and stuff.

But I never, ever thought, I never valued it properly, which is probably how I was able to get through the first couple of years without putting any pressure on myself. Do you still want to be at the height of your fame in your 70s? Is that part of the plan? I would really like to produce work that's my best later. It must be hard if you create your best work and no one wants it. But I think that would be better than looking back, you know, like bands,

first albums and going, you would know, nothing's as good as, people still want us to play that song. Yeah, Mambo No. 5. Still after. Crazy frog, what else did he do, you know? Your second failure is linked to your first, in that when you are a quote-unquote successful stand-up, you go to Edinburgh. Yes.

And you've chosen the Edinburgh Festival not so much because it's career-related, but why? So I went up there first as an actor. Carrie Ed and I both did. And I would honestly describe us as the lowest of the low if there's an Edinburgh pecking order. But even before, when I was at Sussex, they never sent a play to Edinburgh.

Other universities did. Sussex didn't. The drama department didn't have a budget really and I think it's something you have to be quite rich to be able to do either university has to be rich and pay for you or you have to have money where you can go and pay for a flat because obviously Edinburgh is not a money-making place someone's making money money, but not the performers, you know. So I wanted to go when we were at Sussex. We couldn't go. Shortly after we left, maybe a couple of years, we did Shakespeare for Breakfast, which is 10 in the morning. So I say lowest of the low.

C venues, 10 in the morning. It's a devised play. We got £300 for six weeks. So in Edinburgh terms, in terms of making money, it was good. But we lived 15 of us to a three-bedroom house with one toilet. So it was really and we had to sort of traipse in there at nine so we did two shows in a row we did the Shakespeare devised one where everyone got coffee and croissants and then we did like a kid's play

which would be like Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood our show was so early in the morning and I'm I was sleeping with a guy he wasn't my boyfriend but I definitely liked him and he was coming to Edinburgh he'd rung and said he was coming to Edinburgh to see me. And the night he came, I had to go home to go to bed. About 12 or 1, it wasn't super early, but I had to go home. And what happened after I went home is that he slept with my director in this house where there were 15 of us in three bedrooms and then decided to come and see my show the next morning.

So I had this bombshell when I woke up that this boy that I liked that I thought was coming to see me just because I'd gone home early had just like got off of someone else but not even someone else my director and then sat next to her holding her hand watching me do my embarrassing 10 in the morning play and the mistake I made is I thought that was my rock bottom oh my god I thought I thought oh Edinburgh Edinburgh you're so cruel it feels like school you can't get away from people everyone knows yeah and that's the problem with being single up there as it is just a cesspit you know everyone's up till five in the morning everyone's really drunk oh it's a cesspit it's horrible and then you know you're with someone

one week and then they're with someone else the next week and it's it's fast forwarded yeah oh it's so gross it's horrendous it is horrendous but you went back and it wasn't your rock wasn't it because I went back as a because I kept thinking I could win at it so it's like the next thing we did so we did Shakespeare for Breakfast for a couple of years and then then I did a play I mean the play itself there was no problem with the play and it's when I did So You Think You're Funny which you can only do when you've been doing stand-up for one year so you have this one opportunity to get to the final of So You Think You're Funny but I was sharing a bed with a girl because the play hadn't I mean nothing sharing this was an

unpaid play so yeah and I was sharing a bed with a girl and it's not her fault but both of us would just try and cop off with people so we would have somewhere else to stay like so yeah because it was it's grim it's really grim they'd say you think you're funny and then I felt like okay next year I'll have a pass to go to a bar and then I did a solo show and then I think the trouble was every year I kept going back thinking I could win it so I did a solo show and what I wasn't prepared for was exposure no one's kind and I say that obviously the guardian they don't have meetings like should we be nice because people are just trying to be creative and put stuff out there but also members of the public can review you and I hadn't known at that point yet I actually was quite excited a reviewer had put me as the number one thing to

see in Edinburgh right and he'd said that I was a combination of Sarah Silverman and Stuart Lee you couldn't hope for a better byline amazing amazing so I'm doing my first ever show in this little hut for 40 people it's about confidence actually it was about ego and I lost all of my confidence probably second show in and then got these like horrible eviscerating two-star reviews like saying that I was worse than genocide you know because they have to you know they're just people who have to fill their copy yeah was this but I'm sold out now okay and also magazines and blog and I did stop looking online and it's good because I never ever looked again yeah I did learn right then and there is nothing there for you I've had a similar experience with book reviews yeah

and it's so much better not looking at anything and also those ones are still tattooed on my brain that's how I know you can't look yeah you were talking to Yomi about this we learn from negativity so unfortunately we cling to the people who say negative things yeah and that doesn't ever go away and that's why we can't have it because I think actually it stops you making stuff or when you are trying on a blank page to write something having being heckled by your old criticism yes it's not conducive it doesn't make you go I'll show you it's still there because part of you believes it or knows that some people believe that to be true about you it's the antithesis of creative liberation isn't it you're being berated rather than liberated yeah need that on a t-shirt your beat poetry maybe i should go to edinburgh have a horrible cesspit

am i selling it for you it sounds horrendous if you to Edinburgh have a horrible cesspit am I selling it for you it sounds horrendous if you wanted to have a breakdown yeah go to Edinburgh so that you don't sleep did you actually have a breakdown I didn't have a breakdown what kept happening was I kept going thinking this year will be fine so I thought that first year as a solo stand-up in some ways this is where the failure success where they cross- is interesting, because I did sell all my tickets. I didn't lose money because a promoter paid for me because they thought I would have a career. They sort of invest in you early on, which happens for very few people. And it's very fortunate. I did, I think, get industry in.

My agent is fantastic. So but I did some shows to silence like plays. There was one show where a man went out to get everyone a sambuca because everyone was having such a shocking time including myself and Elizabeth I'm writing this I've just remembered this there's no exit to the room it's an attic so I had to stand behind a curtain which meant people would be slagging me off as they left and I was literally two inches away from them with my fingers in my ears trying not to listen and going oh well it's worth a fiver because my ticket you know it's when they have two for one days and stuff or i like to shoes that's bad but then you know it's a journey you spend all year building yourself back up again it's good in a way to start

uh let's go say destroyed my routine is how unhealthy it was i stayed up all night all night every night and in the morning which wasn't it was 3 p.m i would have two norepine two red balls two cronenberg two fags and that was my routine before my show and then i wouldn't eat till afterwards and i'd have avocado on toast and then you go of course you were unhappy like anyway of course you were burnt out of course you're burnt out and that's it what i hadn't realized until i read your failure and how you wrote it to me is that in Edinburgh you are automatically entered to the prizes yeah so you lose yes so you or even though you haven't asked to take part in this contest you end up feeling like a loser the two things you can do to sort of eliminate yourself

is you can call your show a work in progress they are not so that's why often people go for a month and do a 45 minute work in progress before they go because the year that people feel like they're most likely to win is newcomer so your first year is the biggest loss really because it's the smallest pool but yeah it's horrible that last week people are broken i don't think again the audience don't really know it's not called the perrier anymore it's not worth perhaps what it once was but in terms of the next year you will be in absolutely every room if you get nominated as in like every meeting room everyone will say what's your ideas what do you want to write what do you

want to do and it feels like that's the biggest chance you've got and you think you're fine about it until the nominations come out and they're like what did I do are you going to stop doing Edinburgh now I have stopped doing good well the reason is so just I'll quickly just quickly go through the journey every year I kept building myself up. And actually, my work did get better. My work did get better. I got better. I drank a lot less in Edinburgh.

So there were some lessons learned. But the last time I went to Edinburgh, which is the last time, which is the time that I sold all of my tickets before I went up, it was my lads, lads, lads show. It meant I didn't have to pay for PR. I didn't have to do a single magazine shoot, a single interview. I didn't have to sell my PR. I didn't have to do a single magazine shoot, a single interview. I didn't have to sell my show. I sold it all.

And I could add a couple of extra shows in if I wanted. And I picked accommodation that was really far outside of Edinburgh. And it had a pizza oven. And I was going to have this healthy time. And this was going to be the one which didn't break me. But unfortunately, my ex-boyfriend wrote a show that was about our relationship. And mine was a little bit about a breakup, but being single. But his was much more.

And because I had a little bit of a profile, especially in Edinburgh, people knew who he was talking about. And his show then went on to not only be very critically successful, but to win that award. And it was, honestly, the most absurd thing. I was like, oh, I can't win here. And we luckily weren't horribly acrimonious. I had to walk past his queue every day to get to my queue. And sometimes, just especially that third week, I was crying one day. And I just, you know, in Edinburgh, you do cry. It's overwhelming.

Someone was trying to take photos with me while I was crying. And I was saying, can't you see I'm crying? It's genuinely like Freud has designed all of the things that would be most challenging for your psyche and put them in one place over the course of one month. Yes, but I think it's true for lots of comics and we punish ourselves thinking that we have to or there's something wrong with us

that we're not strong enough to take it. Whereas what I now have just admitted quite zenly is that is not a place I will flourish yeah oh Sarah thank you that was so enlightening really and actually I think will be so helpful for anyone in that world listening to this podcast and I know that there are a lot there are a lot of creatives who who feel like failures constantly because of these kind of setups. So thank you. It also, I know that part of what was going on for you during this time is your third failure. Yes.

Okay, so third failure is pregnancy. And it's a, in terms of, again, the cross section with success, the days that you get your period when you really thought it was, you were pregnant and that kind of thing. And when it happens at work, and sometimes with comedy, you can have really fun jobs or really big jobs, and your personal life cannot come into it. So I did have circumstances where things were going well at career, but was very undermined by my repeated failure to get pregnant. So three relationships, I started trying with a boyfriend when I was probably just starting stand-up,

about 27, 28. And I'm really glad now, looking back, that I didn't have children with him or with my next long-term relationship. But at the time, that wasn't what it felt like. And also, it felt like it was a big part of those relationships fizzling out or becoming know becoming a lot less fun I hear you I'm not having future those kind of things but the thing that I did which I again I don't know if this is a regret

I just I didn't go for investigations I didn't try and find out why I wasn't getting pregnant I thought if it was meant to happen, it would happen, which actually means I gave all of the power to something else, which meant it then became very intertwined with worth. Am I good enough to be a parent? Or is the universe saving me from being a parent or saving like these possible children from a bad parent? And so I kept reinforcing it wasn't supposed to happen. And then, and also I thought things like a trade-off. I thought, well, the universe has given you all of this with your work. How dare you say I want something else as well?

I really did think it was a trade-off. And every month, I always got my hopes up, especially with Steen. Steen, before we even kissed, told me he wanted a family. And I, knowing what I'd been through, said, you know, are you open to adoption? He's like, I really want to have biological children. He's Australian Greek. I think he's been asked since he was 18, where's the baby? It was really massive for him.

So right at the beginning of our relationship was this, and especially because of my age, where I must have met him in my late 30s. It wasn't like we've got five years to go travel, have fun together. It was, you know, we're going to try really soon, if not immediately. Halfway through every month, I always bang on, bang on just like it's now I can feel it and I would look in my diary to look at the stuff that would be impossible because I'd be having this baby that's not going to work and then when I wasn't pregnant I would look again at the same jobs like well at least I can do that now like these oh I will be doing that then I always sort of trade off and worse and then because of

COVID like lots of people I had all my work cancelled in two phone calls a year worth of work basically we were in Finland doing a documentary I got a phone call from my agent which was about you know the first stuff being pulled and then by the time we landed it was the rest so the really good thing was that I'd always had 40 as my cutoff point like Sheila Hetty in her book I loved 40 being the line because I needed a point where I just recovered and went okay didn't have children and also the other reason I think of it as a failure is what is so shit when you're going through it is not having a definite answer that you can just react to and just go i can cope with definiteness i can't cope with is not knowing i can't cope with maybe or unexplained unexpected miracle accidental and then again the narrative

getting to say to this like prospective child guess what i'd given up i was 41 and you get told so many things like relax get drunk on holiday stop trying so much and it's so much space in your brain so much space in there constantly where you are what could be happening should i have a glass of wine should i have a cheeky cigarette because you know second half of the cycle and then i think things like no no because if you don't have a cigarette i love a drunk cigarette if i don't have a cigarette then i definitely won't be pregnant but if i do have it then i will and then i'll be furious with myself and i these trade-offs constantly.

It's like a form of magical thinking. It is magical thinking. Because there is a lack of explanation. And similarly to you, I had unexplained fertility and no reason for it and nothing definite. And it's very difficult then not to fill that, especially if you are a storyteller, which you are, with your own stories. And if you are a storyteller which you are with your own stories

and if you are a woman then generally those stories are going to be extremely self-critical yeah and then on top of that if you're a woman who's been socially conditioned to believe that it's a biological imperative to have children and that people fall off a log and get pregnant there's all of that i got so obsessed with they've got a special name but people who didn't know they were pregnant so they gave birth so obsessed with them yeah and then you start thinking should i fall off logs more yes let me google falling off a log and whether that's spiritually aligned with getting pregnant yeah google is not your friend it's not it's really not it's a really sad place it's a really sad place and then and again a little bit like the bad reviews you can't

unlearn those things other people's sadnesses other people's traumas other people's emotional attachments to things or theories on things there's part of it that's great that it's a collective they're so common which is what I talk about in my show my second half is about having my son and I want to say it I'm always so aware of like there'll be people in my audience why I don't talk about my miscarriage actually is because I kept thinking there'll be someone who's having one there's someone who's having one who's coming out to cheer up and it just made me think i'm just not going to do it i'm so sorry that's okay sorry i've done not to get to this point without winding up i know you're saying yeah and the covid time so what was good was were you doing ivf sorry

that's when you started okay and my husband and i have to say I'm grateful to him because I told him I can't do anymore and he he said please he said can we give two more years and do this properly with doctors really try and two more years at 40 to 42 sorry to interrupt so your miscarriage predates the IVF my miscarriage unfortunately was why we were waiting to start IVF. Okay. And so you know you have that thing where it's, ring us as soon as you get your period, da-da-da-da. This is the cruelty of it in terms of the story

because it was a really early miscarriage and I'm not diminishing what I went through, but after such a long time, never getting pregnant. Oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry. Please don't be sorry. But also I wanted to say that just because you then have a child it doesn't go away I know

I think lots of people have miscarriages you just stop talking about it people stop asking you after two months our IVF was put off it was so shit because I was 38 when we started which in where I live I'm on the border of Haringey and Islington. You can have IVF.

We could get one round of the NHS. And then because it was moved because of COVID, I was then too old. But Islington, they let us have to 40, which again is a very unfair thing because it's just a richer thing. So we had to move doctors because it wasn't where you live, it's where your doctor is. So we moved doctors from there to there, you know, 100 metres. Now we're going to have IVF on the the NHS but then it got cancelled because of Covid so we went private and again unfortunate so we're getting the phone calls yeah ring us when you've got your period and I've had late periods very cruelly you know up to sort of 35 37 days that horrible horrible

week so 32 days still don't have my period they said you've done a pregnancy test and I said my period's always late I don't do a pregnancy test but 35 days I did a pregnancy test and it was pregnant and that's the only time that is the only time we ever celebrated I know yeah because after that it's never ever a celebration ever again it is such a thief of joy and then the stupid thing the reason it feels like a failure is because then I had a pregnancy again that word successful and I'm really lucky that I didn't have huge health complications with him he was massive like there wasn't like worries my pregnancy but it was horror because I kept thinking he was going to die I did hundreds of pregnancy tests and I haven't

been able to throw a single one away and I was thinking yesterday if there ever is when there is eventually a climate catastrophe and we're all underwater i'll be able to make a little raft for my children out of all of the thousands of pregnancy tests i did i was doing several a day it was the only way i could reassure myself i was pregnant because the progesterone makes you feel pregnant yeah but i'd had that before yeah and then the symptoms had gone and then i'd started bleeding so the progesterone you can't trust it you can't it's a horrible thing about ivf you feel pregnant so you should start doing those bloody pessaries hundreds of pregnancy tests and then i got obsessed with the ones

which can tell you like plus three weeks or how much you are but then you sort of age out of that i went for scans all the time private scans and as i walked from the room I would think well what if he's died now yeah you poor thing you poor thing I think it's so common I think it's so common I I totally thank you so much talking about it because you've articulated things that I have felt in such a brilliant way and I've never heard anyone else do it and part of the reason that I have given up my not given up but let my fight for a child go is because I can't bear the thought of another miscarriage I've had three yeah and I also I'm too scared to get pregnant because I know I like you I would feel terrified every single moment and like you I have a drawer full of pregnancy tests from those. And they fade over time.

They do, yeah. Which is actually a sadness because like, oh, it's sort of the final fading of something that did exist. But to all intents and purposes, the world doesn't think it does. And how is your pregnancy now with your second baby? So number one, I thought it would be easier. I actually felt more neglectful because I've not been able to focus as much anxiety on him. is your pregnancy now with your second baby so number one i thought it would be easier i actually felt more neglectful because i've not been able to focus as much anxiety on him and whenever i do i feel anxious i mean it is anxiety how do you cope with the anxiety like what's it how do you

get through it because nine months is just it's forever fuck of a long time the first thing i do in the morning you know like people check their phones i literally just check the fertility app and i see it plus one day and you're just plus oneing towards sort of viability even though you know that's no guarantee of anything yeah and then you're just plussing it and the app tells you oh this week they can do this and eventually at some point it says their lungs are ready to breathe oxygen and you i don't think anything helps you deal with the anxiety and i know that this is common for women who are in infertile like it doesn, I really hope there are women listening who are like, no, that didn't happen for me.

I loved it. I got so jealous of people who thought a line on a pregnancy test was a baby. Imagine having that much uncomplicated faith in the world. There's a horrible documentary on Netflix about a woman who was murdered by her husband. And it's horrible because she'd been murdered by her husband and she's got three children.

She's pregnant with her fourth and she's doing a video for her Facebook. And she says on the way to the first scan so excited because at this point you're always thinking is it one is it twins and i was like is it fuck what there's some people thinking is it twins not is its heart actually beating is it growing poor woman poor woman but there are some people who literally go oh shit i'm having a kid i totally hear you it forever changes the way you view the world and even that thing of baby announcements on Instagram sharing the scan having baby showers these are things that I would

never had I ever got a lasting pregnancy I would never have done I still don't like them and I've and I've had a child people show their bumps in ways that I consider I get a really odd reaction to it and for years and years when I just, I get a really odd reaction to it. And for years and years when I just couldn't get pregnant, I had blinkers on, actually. I just didn't see stuff. I was really spiky. I was especially spiky on stage.

I didn't want people to feel sorry for me. I thought all my audiences were coming to my shows going, but yeah, why is she not having kids? I was so projected out. But now I find there's this gratuitousness about bumps. And with the promo for the book, sometimes people want to take full photos of me. I will never stand there with my hand on my I will not do that pose I don't identify as that person that's not how I feel about this there's something I wanted to say

to you based on an article that you wrote when your friendship book was coming out because it was about people because I've got a leg in both camps right I'm cuspium I'm an infertile woman who then had a child and I still don't identify as I couldn't even do NCT classes I couldn't be around people who were just who were just pregnant who thought it was this wonderful beautiful thing people say things like our body's doing these amazing things and to me it just feels like terror it feels like an accidental terror that I'm not in control of it was about someone saying about the love right to you it's not true you've never known love like yeah it's not true there's two things I have my problem with it number one I think it's how parents feel

when their kids aren't there because when the kids are there you don't feel that way it's when you're feeling a glass a glass of wine at a wedding and a night off and you're thinking I do like them I think I think partly it's that it happened to me at a wedding yes I know it's a wedding that's what I was imagining so I've only been out once since I had my son, which was Emma Forrest's book launch. And it was lovely. I still wouldn't have said that to anyone. And it isn't how I feel about him, actually.

I think you have an emotional spectrum. And I had used up all my emotions before. I was 40 when I had him. I had had all the emotions. But I also think it's people trying to convince themselves because it's so fucking horrible. Yes. It's drudgery.

And I think they say it a lot. And they say it a lot to lot to other parents and it's like why do you need to add that on the end of every sentence my son put like sweet potato that i just steamed him into my hair and then they'll say oh but it's amazing isn't it it's like no we can just say the shit thing he did a shit it's a horrible boy you can say that i think they're trying to convince themselves when they say that out loud i think the language is too simplified it's too complex no sentence covers it love is not the word or I don't know it's not all of it so I thought why would you sit there with a never known love like it you're telling yourself that you're telling yourself you made the right life decision or it's okay or you can cope and you can go back it's drudgery i love you love is the appropriate

yes okay yes how i feel yeah about you i am so grateful for your existence in this world well thank you i feel the same about you oh sorry like i cannot thank you enough i just can't thank you enough like thank you for I really I'm denied about I really I'm denied about whether to put it on because I obviously from your work and I'm aware what you've been through as well and then I and I just thought maybe for people who come to you because you talk about it because of what they're also going through with my first son put up a post on Instagram to say that I felt really odd you know I get sent pictures of myself when I'm clearly pregnant I wasn't saying even I was pregnant on stage I felt so conflicted about it and I felt

so conflicted about sharing it with others and I got contacted by women who had had pregnancies but had remained in the place before that it doesn't go away it doesn't wipe them away and that there are resources and the people run podcasts that are just about parenting after loss or parenting after trying for years to conceive all those trying for years I think is the phrase that they use there's a whole other side of infertility which is it doesn't go away what you've been through for all those years doesn't go away and then you feel like a failure that you haven't gone now I'm an earth mummy yeah now I can sit at weddings and go never know love like it well no one will ever know love like the love I've experienced with Sarah Pascoe

during this last hour and a bit of chat I'm in elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist