How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S8, Ep5 How to Fail: Julia Samuel

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Today's guest is someone I fell in platonic love with by reading her work. Julia Samuel is one of the country's leading psychotherapists but she is also well-known as an author. Her first book, Grief Works, was a Sunday Times bestseller and is routinely cited as one of the most helpful and compassionate books on bereavement you will ever read. Her second book, This Too Shall Pass, Stories of Change, Crisis and Hopeful Beginnings, was published just before lockdown and could not have been a more insightful guide to the uncertain times we all found ourselves in. Adwoa Aboah called it 'one of the most valuable books I've ever read', while my hero Esther Perel, said it was 'a remarkable portrayal of how we need to understand ourselves to truly heal'.She joins me to talk about failing exams, failed jobs, her self-perceived failures as a mother and the impossibility of putting our emotions through a logical system. We also touch on imposter syndrome, quitting things you aren't good at, being a twin (she is one!), her close friendship with the late Princess Diana (plus what kind of godmother she is to Prince George) as well as the discomfort she feels talking about herself, rather than being the one to ask questions of a client. I am so honoured to have Julia on the podcast. Her integrity and intelligence, forged through 30 years as a working therapist, shine through absolutely everything she does. Her work has been crucially important to me personally and I'm sure it will be to you too.As Julia says: 'We are brought up thinking life is an upward journey, a stairway to a better place, each step higher than the last. but the reality is far less certain: there are ups and downs, and the only certainty that exists is that there will be change.' *Julia's latest book, This Too Shall Pass, is out now and available to order here.*I've written a new book! Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong is out in October. It's a practical, inspirational and reassuring guide to the seven principles of failure I've developed since doing this podcast. Packed full of contributions from loads of former guests, as well as listener stories, it is also beautifully illustrated by Paul Blow and I would love it if you wanted to pre-order a signed copy 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 @elizabdayJulia Samuel @juliasamuelmbeHow To Fail @howtofailpod       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 card, 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. I am extremely excited by today's guest. As regular listeners and readers of my books will know, I am a passionate advocate of the power of therapy, and today I'm lucky enough to welcome Julia Samuel, one of the UK's leading counsellors, a woman who in 2016 was awarded an MBE for her work and who started out almost 30 years ago as a volunteer for Westminster Bereavement Service, stepping into the homes of people whose children had died in car crashes or whose spouses had died suddenly of heart attacks. In her own words, although I felt daunted, inadequate and scared in the face of their anguish, I knew early on I had found the job for the rest of my life. practicing therapist, a vice president of the British Association of Counseling and Psychotherapy, the former paediatrics counsellor at St Mary's Hospital, and the founder patron of Child Bereavement UK. She is also the author of two highly acclaimed books, Grief Works,

A Deeply Compassionate Guide to the Misunderstood Processes of Grief and the Final Taboo of Death, and her latest, This Too Shall Pass, which examines the challenge and power that comes from dealing effectively with change. Therapy was, perhaps, an unlikely profession given the rather buttoned-up nature of her early childhood. Samuel was born into the banking side of the Guinness family, one of five children, and was largely raised by nannies, expected to curtsy when she met her parents' friends. She is now a mother of four and a grandmother of six. Her first grandchild was born when she was 47. Her newest is due in a week's time. Life is change, she writes in her latest book. We cannot avoid it. Crucially, we need the love

and connection of others to hold us together when we fear we might fall apart. Julia Samuel, welcome to How to Fail. Hello, Elizabeth. I am very honoured to be on your podcast. Lovely to meet you virtually. It's so lovely to meet you virtually. Yes, we're recording remotely because we're living through a time of coronavirus. And I am unbelievably honoured that you've chosen to come on my podcast. So thank you. But that last quote, which I read out about the idea that the love and connection of others is what gets us through.

And I wonder if you've been thinking of that specifically at this moment in time that we're living through, this age of self-distancing and social isolation and lockdown. How can we cope with this enormous change when actually the thing that is most important has been diminished, that idea of connecting with others? I mean, I think it is incredibly hard because I think particularly those that you can't hug and hold their hands and be with, because I think there is a physiological connection from that that really calms us. But I do think that digital connection is much, much better than nothing. And that is sort of limitless. So the fact that we can see each other's faces and we can talk to our whole families through Zoom, I think that is the next best thing. And kind of to be reassured that we do love each other and that it isn't the end, you know, that there will be an end to this and we will see them again.

You know, that we have hope that we'll get through this. and is there any such thing as control because I think that that's what many people are feeling so anxious about at the moment is that we have no effective control over a global pandemic but it's made me ask myself whether I ever have any control over my life really I mean I think the things that matter to us the most in the world, which is birth and death and what people think of us, we can influence, but we absolutely have no control. And it's a completely futile pursuit to believe that we do. And I think the age of technology and science, we assume that something will always kind of fix us or make things happen for us. And we look at our calendars and kind of fix us or make things happen for us. And we look at our calendars and zoom around thinking that that is control, but it is a false sense of control. But I do think we have a lot of control

and agency over our responses. So, I mean, I think self-control is a key thing, particularly now and in life that we slow down and don't jump into our first impulsive response, but actually take a breath and take time and think what is the best way of responding to this particular event or person that's speaking to me. We need to give ourselves much more power to have that control than external control. Your wonderful book, This Too Shall Pass, which is out now, is divided into five themes. There's family and relationships, love, work, health, and identity. And each one of those sections is packed full of moving and instructive case studies. But I wonder why you made the decision in the beginning to divide it that way.

but I wonder why you made the decision in the beginning to divide it that way. Because I think those are the kind of five slices of cake of our life. You know that family is the bedrock of who we are, whether it's a difficult bedrock or a really supportive one. I think love and connection to others, our relationships are what predict whether we have a good life and a strong life. I think love and work, work and love, that's what Freud said, that matters to us enormously. Health, of course, which we're discovering more now. I said in the book, I think, that health is invisible until you are ill. And I think in some ways, although the coronavirus is sort of invisible

unless we've got it, you know, we're much more aware of and grateful for the health that we've got it. You know, we're much more aware of and grateful for the health that we do have now. And then our identity that need to be loved and to belong is a key aspect, all our different identities of our confidence and sense of tribal connection through our world. And that really does impact how we are in the world. One of my favourite chapters in the book concerns your client, Jackson, who had a tricky childhood and was struggling to find himself in adulthood. And you write this beautiful sentence and you write, we all suffer, but maintaining victimhood is optional. Can you just explain a bit more about what you mean by that

phrase? I think that is our kind of attitude to ourselves. So if we have an attitude that I am really suffering and I'm in a lot of emotional pain, but I'm not going to make this the sound music and the landscape of my life. I'm going to let myself experience it and feel it and let it come through my system. I'm going to trust and hope that I move into a different place and a better place and that I don't have to stay here. And I think that's a lot of what my book is about, is that we do have very difficult experiences. We need to allow ourselves to experience the pain, but it is by experiencing the pain that we heal. And actually, when I was thinking about you,

you know, you've found a way of both owning and naming your pain, but being the absolute opposite of a victim. You know, you've got this kind of muscular articulation of what suffering is that one can connect to and be empathic with it rather than kind of slightly turn away from it because it's too much thank you so much that's such a beautiful thing for you to say I do completely agree that to make failure or shame or guilt or change meaningful that there is a period of having to sit with it and I often say that I can choose to be at peace with something that simultaneously still causes

me sadness it's not that it's all dealt with and that's ticked off and then that's in the past it's actually functioning in a way that makes me the person that I am? Completely. I mean, many of my clients who have had a child die, they've said clearly, you know, they feel heartbroken and everything that they believed and trusted in life was broken when their child died. But they don't want that to be their only identity of a bereaved parent, that they want to accommodate the loss, allow for it, feel it and feel the pain for the rest of their lives. But they also want to live, engage with life, rebuild their life and move forward. I mean, it's the most extraordinary thing for me to see how people have the capacity to do that, because I don't know how they do, but people do have this incredible

capacity to survive the most difficult things. And, you know, the research shows it, there's research around post-traumatic growth, which came from the Paddington disasters and the Marsh Nest disaster, that the growth never takes away or negates the level of the loss or the intensity of the pain and the trauma. loss or the intensity of the pain and the trauma. But it does also show that people are changed by it in a way that in the end, they experience it as growth, that their perception of themselves has changed, what matters in life is changed, and what is meaningful to them is changed. And also this kind of sense of robustness. Look, I survived something I thought I'd never survive. And now I really believe I can survive anything. But it doesn't stop the pain. So people often think one negates the other. It allows both. That's so interesting. And you

mentioned there that horrendous idea that in the grip of the tragedy of having lost your child, idea that in the grip of the tragedy of having lost your child, a parent often loses faith in everything that they thought about life. Going forwards, is it your experience that those parents regain faith in life or that they just have a very, very profoundly different way of viewing life? That's a really interesting question. I think it's maybe a bit of both. So when the child dies, it sort of tears up the rule book of life, doesn't it? You should never bury your child. They should bury you. And so I think in the process of learning to live with that terrible reality is a different engagement with life. So I think your rules about your beliefs and trust in life are changed and permanently changed. I think you know in a way that you can't not know that terrible things can happen for no reason, completely out of the blue. And that becomes part of your belief system. But you also find a way of living and engaging with the life that you now have.

So, I mean, I think in some ways the coronavirus has, everybody's innocence about bad things happen to other people has changed, right? So I think all of us now are much more aware of what we don't have control of, that is completely beyond our control. And that is very, very difficult. And I think a lot of people will suffer in a terrible way. But also it is a learning. It is. Yeah. And I can highly recommend your book actually as a companion through this confusing and overwhelming time. I wanted to start, we'll get onto your brilliant failures in a minute. And I say that they're brilliant because what you've done is you've combined thematic failures with personal failures, which is incredibly fascinating for me.

But I wanted to ask you a question about being a twin. And I'm sure you get this a lot because people are fascinated by twins, but your family, there are two sets of twins amongst the siblings. So you're one of five and you're a twin yourself, and then you've got twin sisters and you have a twin brother. And you wrote this this thing about twins because they're so close in utero they grow toes and noses pressed against each other so that close scrutiny is a comfortable place for me and I imagine does it also make you feel that you're never fully alone? That's really interesting no I think it means I never want to be alone I'm not very good alone so you think the most kind of, not sophisticated, the people who

are really kind of holistically strong are really, really good at being on their own. I'm good at being on my own for about half a day. And I physically need hugs a lot more than most people. So I'm constantly needing kind of physical connection. And maybe that's because I'm needy, but I think it's actually because I was in utero. I was always connected to my brother, noses and toes connected. Does it also make you competitive? Because I know that you're a very good kickboxer in your spare time. Do you know, I only discovered how competitive I am a few years ago. I always denied the fact that I was competitive. And actually, I've secretly

been unbelievably competitive my entire life, but very silently in a way that I didn't want people to notice so that they'd beat me. So yes, it's awful. I'm incredibly competitive. And I think I probably always will be. How can you be silently competitive? I think you have to accept. Well, because I didn't put my head up above the parapet very much, but I'm like a sort of workhorse. You know, I kind of work and work and work and work, digging away, hoping that I'm making progress. I put my head above the parapet a bit more by writing books.

And that does feel much scarier, I must say. Do you think that you were raised, as many women are, to be good? No, I wasn't raised to be good. I was raised where I decided being good would be the best thing for me. Because there were sort of five of us in four years. So my mum had five children under four when I was born, if you can imagine. So the rivalry was pretty rife, like little birds in a nest, you know, all pecking for attention. And I think unconsciously,

I made the decision, if I'm good, then I'll get the love and attention I want. Did it work? Well, I wasn't just good, and I'm not just good. So no, it doesn't really work, because no one's just good. I mean, I'm as bad as the next person. So you're just pretending to yourself, basically. One of my favourite facts about you is that when you went on Desert Island Discs, one of your selections was the Meredith Brooks song, Bitch, which is one of my favourite songs of all time.

Is it? Yes, it's amazing. And part of the reason it's amazing is not just because it's just this motivational anthem. Oh, I love it. It's so good. It always fires me up. But also because it pays tribute to the fact that women could be multifaceted. Yeah. And, you know, I am as much a bitch as the next person. I find a job that I really love doing, that I find that I can do that is building relationships and listening to people and kind of helping them support themselves to heal through really difficult things.

And I think all of us get put in boxes. So I've been put in the box that I'm doing good things, which I don't deny. I'm not doing bad things. That's not 360 degrees of me. I mean, all my friends and family that know me know me. I'm as horrible as the next person if you see what I mean we all are I think we all are yes yeah and when did you embrace the

horrible side of yourself oh I think you should be a therapist Elizabeth that's the highest compliment anyone could pay me but particularly you I think that would be your phase two I suppose a bit in the back the last 15 years yeah so I'm a slow developer yeah yeah no I think that's so interesting because I speak as someone who is a reformed people pleaser and similarly I felt that I had to be good and work hard and that way fulfillment and approbation would lie and it was only when my life imploded in my mid-30s and I got divorced and various things happened that I hadn't planned that I realized that wasn't a way for me to live and I do think it takes a while for women particularly to realize that and realize how liberating it is actually not to have to please everyone all the time.

It is really liberating to be unconditional with yourself. You know, I think women in particular, but I think men find a way to it. We're so self-critical. And we kind of think if I can hone and shape myself in the way that everybody would like, then I'll get all my needs met. But of course, it means you deny your full self

and your vitality and your fury. And we need to be furious. We need to kind of fight and be jealous and have all those things because they're there to protect us. So it's incredibly depressing if you squash down any part of your energy, even if it's one that is often framed as a negative one. You're sitting on a lot of energy, which can come out in fantastically vital, creative ways. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?

This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett

by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognised for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated. And correct. You're such a Leo. All the time.

So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions. If you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when.

You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother, a mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. I'm going to start with your failures because otherwise I will just talk to you for hours on end and we will forget the reason for this podcast but you've actually given me four failure themes and three personal failures and they're all connected so the first failure theme is the

idea that an external body fails you and you give the example of being still sore from failing your grade one ballet exam when you were five years old tell me about that I just I mean so I'm on this podcast not because I embrace failure in the way that a Buddhist monk I really don't like failure I mean mean, I know it teaches you stuff, but I hated failing that exam. I really, really hated it. It's meant all exams are very scary for me. And so, and I still got the shadow of that.

I mean, I've worked through it and I obviously I'm completely fine. That's the opposite, isn't it? Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. Also, one of the things I love about you is how much you swear. Having listened to many interviews with you I really stopped myself swearing I stopped myself a little bit earlier I don't know what more to say except that it

stays with me I remember being in that dance hall and doing my plies and my pointy toes and walking home feeling hot with shame age five that I failed. And what was it particularly about you aged five that couldn't take it? Was it because you were so busy trying to be good? It must be. I think you've answered it for me. I think it was to do with competing with my sisters and my twin brother that if I failed this, then maybe I'm not good enough. I think it must have been that. You know, you're five, you don't translate these things things consciously but I think in some way that's what I embodied that I'm not good enough I think that's the and the heat of of someone judging you as a failure I think is a tough one did you ever retake that grade one ballet exam no I stopped ballet I stopped doing

all these I stopped doing any of the grades that's interesting and is that something that has repeated itself through your life that if you fail at something you dislike it so much that you give up yeah no so I decided I wanted to be a therapist and I applied to relate that which was then called marriage guidance counselling MGC they turned me down And that just fired me up to determine to do it more. So I think there's some truth in it. Maybe I knew also in my body that I was never going to be a ballet dancer. So sometimes things push me to try harder. And that one I gave up. You said in your email to me that you didn't get the A-level grades that you wanted, and you didn't get into university.

So therefore, it sort of feels internally, these are your words, that all of these failures by external bodies cast a shadow in me of not being clever. True. And is that something that haunts you still? Completely. I mean, I know that I'm really emotionally clever. I mean, you'd have thought after all the therapy I've had and all the therapy I've given that I'd know that I was clever. But somehow, I don't know why I needed the sort of external affirmation of a university degree. But when I'm with other people who've been to university, I always think they're cleverer than me. And in that way, they probably are. You know, you can't put logic through an emotional system. So I know that I have lots of skills and attributes and knowledge, but it isn't academic.

I think what I confused and I conflated was academic success with being clever. And I sort of have unhooked it, but I think there's a shadow of it always there. Does that make sense? It does. It that make sense? It does. It makes total sense. And I also think that culturally, historically, we have paid more tribute to the academic sort of intelligence that is good at exams rather than the emotional intelligence, which is rather quieter, but probably far more profound. And that's changing. Yeah. Is it changing?

Well, I hope so. I feel like books like yours and podcasts like mine, hopefully are trying to change it. Yes, yes, I think that's true. That is true. That is true. I feel like I should be sort of much more at peace with myself than I'm sharing. I'm being honest, I guess. Yeah, well, that's so interesting because I think people go and see a counsellor or a therapist and they want their therapist to be this Zen-like figure who can parent them in many ways. So maybe you feel a responsibility to be at peace for your clients. But, you know, when I'm a therapist, that does kind of call and pull the best part of me. And so I feel completely confident as a therapist. You know, my memory is very good. I'm very attuned to them. I really get what they're saying.

I remember stuff. I make connections and I've done it for a long time. So it's like that part of my system is very honed. And so that I feel completely confident and I know I'm a good therapist. But I don't think that always being good at one thing doesn't mean you don't feel bad at other things. And I think that's true of all people. In the same ways, if you're bad at something, it doesn't make you bad at everything. I don't think it's quite good to be able to hive off one's more vulnerabilities and things that you're not so good at and also allow the things that you're good at. I think that's true of everybody. One of the things that comes up repeatedly in your book that I found super interesting was that as well as talking to your clients, you look at their

physical responses to things that you say. And I'd never encountered that before. And I just wonder how difficult or easy or otherwise you're finding this conversation, which we're doing without seeing each other. Oh, I'd much rather be in a room with you. Me too. Because I pick up a lot from your voice because your voice is very warm and empathic.

But I don't have the big bandwidth of connection if I was sitting opposite you live physically. And I think I'd feel much more confident. I feel like I'm slightly sitting on myself, sitting in my own room, talking into a mic. I come more alive and feel more a bit like being, I mean, it's partly from being a twin, I guess. I feel my best self when I'm with other people. And I am with you virtually, but it isn't the same. And what kind of physical cues do you pick up on?

So I watch your eyes. I watch what you do with your hands, with your body, with your legs, crossing legs. People often have habits of rubbing their ear or pushing their nose up. When people are very sad, they often look away. They look at the floor or they look at the ceiling. And that's in a way them going inside because you can't kind of go inside and look into somebody's face. So when you're kind of moving your attention internally, I think you have to look away so that you can kind of find words to describe what's going on inside you. And when you find the words and you voice them, something happens, a shift happens. Rather than going on a wheel round and round in your head, they come out of you and there's a clarity in that.

And then when I hear them and receive them and reflect them back or kind of show that they've been heard and understood, there's a calming I think happens when people feel really heard. It's very powerful. And I think one of the things with the 21st century is that everybody's on transmit. And actually, I think the secret key to communication is listening.

I think we could do well to listen much more than we do. One of the things that I find almost excruciating in my therapy sessions is silence. Because I feel that I have to fill it or I feel it's somehow judging me and interestingly because you're a performer well I don't know if I am a performer am I Julia tell me I don't know I don't know I think I'm an introvert who successfully learned how to be extrovert when I need to be. But that's really clever. It's good. Yeah, isn't that great? That's my own definition of myself.

So maybe I'm giving myself too much credit. But that's adapting to who you are in a way that works for you, right? Yeah, but I do find silence very, I find it judgmental almost and really uncomfortable. And one of the things that has been so interesting about this time of lockdown is that my therapy sessions are now on the phone, which I thought I would hate, but I find easier because there are fewer silences.

Do you use silence in your therapy sessions and why? I mean, silence, I think what you're assuming is that the person opposite you is very judgy and kind of criticising you. And there's a kind of shitty committee going on in their head, which they're not actually voicing. You're just making that assumption. And silence in therapy is space because we're so busy. You know, one of the biggest anesthetics in life that stops us feeling and stops us processing difficult things is busyness. We use it as much as we use alcohol or any of the other anesthetics.

So having space and silence that allows you to go inside, to reflect, to try something out in your head before you voice it, to decide not to voice it, and also to be given the permission not to have to speak, I think is paradoxically incredibly liberating. But I mean, in my book, Jackson, as you talked about, he didn't speak to me for weeks and weeks. And as a therapist, I find that very difficult. You know, and I talk about how I did kind of cartwheels trying to get him to speak. And it wasn't until I fully accepted who he was and allowed him not to speak that then he trusted me enough to find words for what was going on in him.

And I think the thing about change is it is paradoxical. The more we can accept the aspects of change that we find unacceptable, the more likely it is that change will occur. So if you translate that with what we're going through now, the less we wrestle with the not knowing, with the fury that we feel if things have been not done right, or the fear that we feel that someone we love is going to get ill, the more we allow ourselves to feel those feelings of anxiety and not knowing and fear, the more likely it is that we'll feel calm. When we try and kind of will ourselves and Marie Kondo our feelings into some kind of action that will shift our anxiety into a sort of end product, which we can never get. It literally drives us mad.

Your second failure theme is a failed event. And you give the example in your own life of being fired from your first job from Revlon Cosmetics in Paris, which sounds like a very glamorous story. So tell us what happened then. I was sent to Paris by my parents. They were of their generation. They never expected me to do anything professionally, really. But I'm sorry, just to stop you there, you make yourself sound like you're 95 years old. And actually, you're not. And I feel like your childhood was... You're 60. But it feels like your childhood was sort of centuries ago, almost, in the way that it was acted out. Is that unfair?

I really think that those of us in our 50s and 60s and 70s are the last generation of women who very much brought up in the mirror of their mothers. You know, if you look at the change in the last 50 years, the biggest change in every aspect of life is women going to work, women having the freedom to work, being in the work environment equal to men, having equal pay to men, not always equal pay, but opportunities and freedom, which has meant enormous changes in families, in divorce, in expectations, in sex, in so many different things. And I was just the generation before that. So sorry, I interrupted. You were sent to Paris. Why were you... So I left school at 16. I did two A-levels and two O-levels. They were GCSEs when I was 16. And then I went to Paris to learn French

to kind of finish me off that's what you know I was educated to do and I was in a little garret and I went on my own so my mum or dad didn't come with me I went to my own I found my own duvet and sheets and things I was just 17 then actually and I went to the Alliance Francais to learn French and there were lots of creepy men there who kept on smacking my bottom, and so I thought, I'm not doing this. I really hated that. So I found a job from the Herald Tribune, which was as an undersecretary to the secretary of the director

of something at Revlon Cosmetics in Neuilly, and I went blissful ignorance, right? I mean, I would never dare do this now age 60 but at 17 I went along I lied I said I could really type I said I could speak French I couldn't do either and I was there for about six months and all the secretaries really looked after me and you had to wear makeup you had to wear nail varnish which I'd never worn and they typed for me they translated for me I got muddled my French is really bad and I got muddled between sol and sel so one is sugar and one is salt and when all the big wigs came over from America I was giving them coffee and I gave them all salt in their coffee instead of sugar and I think that that was the beginning of the end and finally they said really I wasn't I wasn't

fulfilling my post and my role and they asked me to leave which was completely fair enough it's amazing I stuck there so long. It didn't feel as much of a rejection as the grade one ballet exam then? No the day I was asked to leave I was really upset and things. But I suppose the learning from that was to kind of manage my expectations. Was I really, realistically, the right person to do that job? Was I qualified to do that job? And the answer was no on every single level. And so I did kind of come to terms with that pretty early. One of the things that I'm interested in your take on is that we started off this conversation with you talking about bereavement in families, parents who have lost children who have to come to terms with the fact that awful things happen for no reason.

And at the same time, as I can totally understand that, I also think that in my own life when I fail at something I choose to try and find a kind of meaning in it and sometimes that's predicated on there being a reason for it that I haven't learnt yet and I wonder where you stand on that spectrum and can we believe both things? I think you're right. I mean, I think what makes life really in a way happy for people is finding meaning. I think meaning and finding a purpose is what gives you happiness fundamentally and good relationships. So I think often in society people are very black and white. So I think often in society people are very black and white, but I think in this case you absolutely can hold both,

that you can know that there is no reason that will ever make sense of a child dying, whatever happened, and it is possible to make meaning out of it. And that meaning may be that you do something meaningful, so you do something that helps support other people, or you find meaning in it within yourself and with your family that kind of supports you to give you a depth of self-compassion to be able to go forward. Thank you. So after you were fired from Revlon Cosmetics, did you find meaning in that? What happened next? So then I came back and I got a job as a secretary, as a temporary secretary in lots of very dodgy offices with lots of dodgy organisations. And then I finally got a job in publishing.

And my first proper job was with someone called Christopher Macley-Hose at Chateau Mindus. And I was his secretary and he called me child. I took his clothes to the laundry and organized his book launch parties. I used to get my mum to come and help me because I wasn't very good at it. And he taught me a lot. He gave me stacks of books to read. He gave me scripts to read and asked me to do reports on them. So in a way, Chateau was my university. He really educated me. And actually, him and my husband and my mother-in-law were the first people that kind of showed me that I did have a brain, that I needed to learn how to use it. And they believed in me.

And that was a huge, huge shift in my relationship with myself, that they asked me to do things, believing that I would come out with something. That was one of the things that you said in your interview on Desert Island Discs, which I found very moving, about the fact that there was only ever half a dozen people who believed in you, one of whom was your dear friend, Princess Diana. But it really struck me as somewhat sad that you hadn't had more people than that believing in you. I mean, maybe they had and I hadn't picked it up. I think it's both that you have to be open to it and ready to take it in. You know, I was young and yeah, I mean, it is sad, but I have lots of people who believe in me now. So it's changed. And do you believe in yourself?

people who believe in me now. So it's changed. And do you believe in yourself? I do, actually. That has really changed. So kind of working and finding something that I love doing, the connection to other people and ways of living that. But more importantly, through my family, through my husband and my children and my grandchildren and their partners, that's what really gives me confidence is the love that we have as a as a family and as a tribe and the connection that's what matters to me most and that's what gives my life meaning and and gives me confidence yeah and also it's where you hurt most too obviously I hope you don't mind my asking you about Princess Diana, who, although I never met her, was such a formative influence, I feel, on my life. And because I felt, I know this sounds absurd,

but I felt somehow connected to her. And I think it was because of that thing that you identified when you were once talking about her, that she was wholly authentic. She was her authentic self. that she was wholly authentic. She was her authentic self. And authenticity is a word that is so overused now, and yet it's also so rare. And it's what I strive for on a daily basis, that if I'm doing something truly authentic to myself, I feel much more contented. And that for me now is the definition of quote unquote success. So I think there was that aspect. That's a very good one. of quote unquote success. So I think there was that aspect. That's a very good one. Well, there was that aspect. And then also, you know, I was 18 and I just left school in 1997 when she died. And I was one of the people who went to Kensington Palace and left flowers. And

I felt that the external grief shown by people who never knew her but had been touched by her, I felt that that was an accurate reflection of what she had meant, even though it came in for a lot of criticism afterwards. And I'm just rambling on now, but I have a lot of questions about that. But one is how you, as one of her dear friends, felt when you were grieving your personal loss and there was a whole country grieving someone they never really knew? I mean, what I felt at the time and what I feel about that in retrospect are very, very different. In fact, they're the opposite ends of the spectrum. So at the time, I sort of felt outraged that people were crying and wailing when they never met her. It just didn't make sense.

And it didn't take me long. It took me a few weeks to realize that she was known by people, that they felt that they knew her. She represented an aspect of themselves and her vulnerability they connected to, and that it was an amazing tribute. You kind of never think one person can change the world and then you see someone like her by being as open and honest and vulnerable and authentic as she was. It changed the world and it certainly changed Great Britain and that she had an absolutely lasting effect on us. So now I feel immensely proud that everybody responded in the way they did. But in the moment, those first days,

it was a much more visceral, reactive response, which was like, shut up. Yeah, I totally understand that. What's your favourite memory of her? Her laugh. She had an absolutely fantastic laugh. It was a sort of giggle and it was cheeky and it kind of lit up the room and also the way she was a fantastic hugger yeah makes me sad I mean I feel a bit sad I'm sorry I know that's okay it's I will I was lucky to know her so I feel grateful and your godmother's Prince George, who I'm obsessed with.

He seems like quite a character. He is amazing. He's funny and feisty and cheeky. And God, she'd have loved him so much. I mean, that is heartbreaking for all of them. Yeah, no, he's amazing. Are you a good godmother? Do you remember all birthdays?

I am pretty good. She good godmother do you remember all birthdays i am pretty good she was godmother to my son so i do to george what she did to us which is give impossible toys that are really noisy take a lot of making so i i come in kind of slightly tipped by the size of the present that william then has to spend days putting together and then put all the machinery together and then it makes awful tooting noises and lights flashing and all of that and that makes me laugh and it makes George laugh that was absolutely brilliant your third failure is the idea of when we fail to do what is right when we fail a friend or when we fail to be the person that we want to be. So how has that been relevant in your own life?

I mean, I think it's been relevant more often than I would choose. I mean, I think the one that is most profound that matters to me most is in every aspect, I wasn't always the mother I'd like to have been. You know, I have regrets about that and a sense of failure about the things I didn't do. I was always so busy and I didn't notice things. And that feels very painful. And my children, you know, they're amazing and they're strong now and accepting and they're kind of thriving but I think the thing it taught me was that in recognizing the mistakes I made and acknowledging them to them gave me a kind of humility which I think has deepened our relationship that you you know when you that you have to say sorry and you have to acknowledge it but it is incredibly painful

because it's the thing I wouldn't want to be is make the mistakes as a mother it's the one thing I'd rather kind of get right and and yeah I really did it's a funny paradox anyway what kind of mistakes do you think that you made I was too busy they're all kind of linked so the thing of not passing exams meant that I was very driven. I was determined to do well and I always worked hard. But also I was slightly ambivalent about ambition. Like I felt slightly ashamed that I was ambitious. So that's what I meant by being rivalry. I sort of hid it, but I always kind of worked very hard.

And I was working with this charity, Child Bereavement UK, and slightly obsessed by it. There I was trying to work in a charity, which was doing good for other people, but then not paying attention to my own children. So there was a gap there, which is messy. I wrote a letter to my daughter when she was 30. And I said, you know, I was apologizing for the mistakes I'd made. And then I also said, but I don't know if I go back and I did it again, whether I'd be any different. I don't know whether I can be different in the way that I'd like to be. I mean, maybe in this particular aspect, you know, it is a fault line in me.

I don't know, to be honest. I mean, I'm a much better grandmother now. And I think I'm a very good adult. We have a very good relationship with my adult children. I think I'm a good adult mother. my adult children. I think I'm a good adult mother. I often wonder about motherhood because I have tried and failed to be a mother thus far. And it's quite difficult, that situation, because my only experience of children is other people's children. And from a distance, I can say that I don't seem to love babies that much, but I love toddlers because you can have conversations

and they sort of develop their own characters. And you mentioned there that you're a good adult mother. Do you think you got better as your children got older? Yes, I think I was much better as they got older. I was much less impatient. I wasn't that good at sort of sitting on the floor and playing lots of games. I got very bored quite quickly.

And other things seemed more interesting, which I regret. I was thinking about what you're saying. It's a grief for a future that you wanted, isn't it? And that is a living loss. It's a proper loss. And you find ways of living with it and making your life meaningful and good. And yet it's still a loss. I mean, one doesn't negate the other, does it?

No. meaningful and good and yet it's still a loss I mean one doesn't negate the other doesn't. No and you sent me such a kind message after I wrote a piece about my most recent miscarriage and it really made me evaluate how I was feeling in a different way because you through the message made it so clear that you saw it as loss and as grief and I think very often with women who have miscarriages they're encouraged to do it behind closed doors and then not to treat it as quote-unquote proper grief because the person never existed but it was incredibly meaningful to me that you treated it like that so thank you I mean I think it's acknowledgement in every aspect of life is key to ourselves you know when you're most vulnerable and something like that happens you look to other people to acknowledge

and allow you to feel what you're feeling that that is normal and valid because otherwise it twists against you and what you're already suffering is made worse that somehow you're making a fuss and the minute you see a blue line in the pregnancy test you imagine a baby so you imagine your life going forward with a baby of what your life will look like and even if you've had miscarriages before, you hope this time this will be the one. So you grieve for the dream, you grieve for the previous miscarriages, and it's a real, real loss.

I mean, it's definitely grief. I think I also grieve for my incapacity because as we've mentioned through the course of this conversation, we live in an era where we feel that we can do things and that if we work hard enough and if we're good enough we'll be rewarded and this was one area of my life where however much effort I put in I couldn't get out the results. I think that powerlessness is crazy making isn't it I mean it's particularly if you've

never been challenged in that way before that before when you've put your intelligence and your work and your will into a project you've had the outcomes that you expected and then most people expect with good reason to be able to have a child or find love and when you don't you feel like there's something wrong with me what about you know there's yeah I done wrong And often people sort of think, they try and go back and they try and find a reason. Like, did I do something wrong? Am I being punished for something I didn't realise I'd done?

Because you try to make sense of it. And I think both. I think you find meaning from it in the way that you have. And in some ways, there's no sense to be made of it. I don't think you can ever really make sense of a loss like that thank you I would love to talk about Michael your husband who you met very young and you married very young I married at 20 yeah so I met him when I was 17 I started going out with him just before my 19th birthday. And we got married when I was 20.

We've just had our 40th wedding anniversary. And we've just renewed our vows with our children and our grandchildren. It was so lovely. Oh, how wonderful. It was. It was really, really lovely. You say in the book that you've had five marriages, but all with the same man. So can you describe what you mean by that?

He was 27 and I was 20 we were both so young and when in our vows we both acknowledged how unbelievably ignorant we were we knew that we were friends we knew that we were committed but we had no idea what marriage meant or what we really wanted in life. I think we both had the same values. And I said to him in the vows, you know, I have often wanted to run you over. I've been so cross with you, but I've never not wanted to wake up with you or to come home to you in the evening. So it's the sort of the intensity has remained. And I think indifference is the opposite of love. And the five marriages, I think the different phases of our life, you know, the first early phase when you're having children, when you're sleep deprived and fighting over all of that,

and him striving to run his business, me working in publishing, and then I had a decorating business. And then with the children older. So I think it was the different phases to do with having a family and to do with our careers. And that we changed and adapted. You know, when I became a therapist, I started training when I was 30. I would bring home all these exercises that I'd make him do and ask him all these questions. It's like he was married to a madwoman. So I'd say, if you are faced with with a difficulty are you the sort of person that would go to the deep end and jump off the diving board would you go on the side of the pool or would you

walk down the steps and you know he's just come back from running a factory and so I mean it shook up the marriage it was good it was it was good I'm laughing partly because my best friend Emma is a psychotherapist and she retrained she used to work for charities and she retrained good I'm laughing partly because my best friend Emma is a psychotherapist and she retrained she used to work for charities and she retrained I'm sure she went by my saying that when she started training she did exactly the same thing with her husband yeah I mean those trainings that have to come with a sort of health warning that it shakes up you and it shakes up your marriage but in a way it's a good thing. You should be asking those questions. I think relationships that are good, strong relationships require questioning and pushing and changing and evolving together and separately. The research shows we don't find the one,

we don't find our soulmate. A marriage that works is one that you commit to that marriage to make it work and that you grow together. It's the effort and work and commitment that does that and love obviously. What about the other side of therapy away from the kind of exercises that you're taught in training which is when you're practicing the amount of emotional processing you as an individual have to do of other people's stories. Where does that go? And when you come home, does Michael know what to do? And does he leave you space? And just how do you handle that aspect of it? I mean, I think on the one hand, it changes me because, you know, for 25 years, I only had really quite tragic, terrible stories, things that are very, very rare.

And so my perception of danger was much higher. So when my children were very little, if they had a headache, I'd chuck them on the sofa and tell them to watch Disney. Once I started working at St. Mary's from when I was about 32, I think it was, 31, I thought they had a brain tumor. You know, my perception of danger and risk changed. And Michael was really good at kind of balancing me and being optimistic and in not a dismissive way telling me to kind of wake up. I'd also ring consultants at three in the morning and they'd talk me down, which was nice. So in some ways it's changed me.

And in other ways, it's changed me for the good in that it's really shown me what matters and what to really care about and my perception of that and then the work of processing it sometimes yes yeah I have bad dreams or stuff bothers me or it's really when I've made a mistake well I think I've done something wrong or I've missed something and it hits me and I'm not going to see the client for four or five days and I worry. But I have supervision, which I go to. I exercise a lot. So I kickbox and I run and I cycle. And that takes a lot of the fear out of my system. And I do meditation and that balances me. But at the end, I absolutely know it is not my story, that it's their story. So it affects me and I have to find

ways of keeping myself regulated and balanced and do fun stuff. People always want me to see terrible films of disaster and I want to see Mamma Mia, happy stories. You know, I never read unhappy books because I need to kind of rebalance with the positive and jolly things with happy outcomes. The fourth failure theme, if you like, is the failure to have courage to try for your hopes and dreams. So what do you mean by that? I mean, in some ways, I think, is this the most important one? Is that you know that within you, you have the potential to be this kind of person, to be this individual.

And in a way, what you were talking about, the needing to please or the conditions you put on yourself, your fear of failure blocks you. So you keep yourself small. You know, I think sometimes people don't do stuff, they call themselves lazy or they can't be bothered. actually, it's fear that if I really let myself know what I really want, and I really go for it, and then I don't get it, who will I be? What will that mean for me? So in some ways, it's better not to go for it, because then I don't face the difficulty

of that, the pain of that. But it's a false protection because it doesn't protect you. So you kid yourself that you're kind of doing fine, but actually you're not living your authentic self. You're not daring. You know, Brené Brown's much better at this than me. You know, the power of vulnerability, that you need to have the courage to dare to be your true self. And that does mean testing and failing and getting up again. And that is really difficult. But actually living a sort of conditioned false self is the route to despair, really, and misery, I think. I totally agree. And I think as well as that failure to try for your hopes and dreams, there's a sense that

so many of us feel trapped by our own expectations and societal expectations. And it keeps us confined in unhappy relationships or unhappy marriages or unhappy structures, because you feel that that's what you should be doing to get a good pension or that's what you know your friends expect of you and this is how your life should be mapped out and I always like to say that it is never too late to change your life and that was my personal experience was that I was driven to a kind of life implosion and it was an instinctive small voice inside me that I'd been ignoring for so long and then actually choosing to listen to it was an incredibly liberating thing and you're so right made me much more myself than ever before what allowed you to listen to yourself do you think what was the thing that stopped it being

blocked out by fear that's such a good question a couple couple of things. I mean, I'm referring to the end of my marriage. And during the course of one year, I had two unsuccessful rounds of IVF. And then I got pregnant naturally. And then I had a miscarriage at three months. And that was all in one year. Oh my God. That's a lot. It was a lot. And without being too specific, because I can't talk about someone else's story, but when two individuals are married and they respond in very different ways to those things, that can often lead to a shattering realization that there's something fundamentally what happened to me. And so I think it became about something that was bigger than me. My desire to be a mother was bigger than me and I had to pay attention to it. And then the other thing on a very practical level was my best friend, Emma, who I mentioned, she was brave enough and perceptive enough to ask me about it and to give me permission to be honest. and she said to me what a relief it was to hear me being honest at last, because she felt that I had been stuck behind a Perspex screen, and she had been knocking on it trying to get hold of me, and she couldn't find me for ages, whereas actually it's a bit like the Meredith Brooks song, Bitch, when I chose to come off this like self-appointed pedestal that wasn't convincing

anyone, and I chose to be honest about how messy I felt and how much shame I felt I felt most loved by my best friend so it was those two things I think isn't that an amazing thing and what an amazing friend but it's so the opposite of what often we see isn't it that we look up to the pedestal absolutely but you say actually that that failure to have courage in your hopes and dreams is not really relevant to you and you say thank goodness and it's mainly due to finding a therapist reasonably young do you think that's true it's genuinely I think it's my husband and my therapist yeah I think that I mean I could so easily have gone on a different route that would have been a much less good route. I think that, I mean, I could so easily have gone on a different route that would have been a much less good route. And I think him believing in me, him loving me,

gave me the confidence to be lovable and then believe in myself more and then choose things that fitted for me. But I'm also don't want to be saying that we need men to be ourselves. I think it's different for everybody, but that's's what worked for me I've got to say Julia Samuel what's a beautiful note to end on the I don't know it's a bit no no no no the idea that you are lovable yes you are you are lovable but and you're loved by many many people like me who you've never even met and I just can't thank you enough for the extraordinary work that you do well it's been a real honor to be on your podcast and to meet you and to be honest it feels quite scary to be dishonest but it's a real pleasure and lovely and you've got an amazing voice it's lovely to hear

your voice yeah well now we're going to hang up and facetime so that we can see each other and feel much more comfortable with that but thank you thank you thank you so much for being so brave my pleasure if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently, it helps other people know that we exist.