Life Uncut - Grief is love with no where to go - UNCUT WITH ELLIDY PULLIN

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Uncut with Ellidy Pullin - Grief is love that has nowhere to goWelcome to your Tuesday Lifers!Joining us today is the incredible El Pullin!El's story is not like anything you would have heard before.With us, she shared what her partner Alex 'Chumpy' Pullin was to her, their plans for the future, and the day that her life got flipped upside down.Ellidy shares what her journey of grief in widowhood has been like.She is raw, honest and immeasurably strong.Something quite unique to El's story is that along with Chumpy's family, they decided to undergo a process called sperm retrieval which enabled her to create the family that her and Chumpy had dreamt of. We were lucky enough to get to meet the little miracle that is Minnie Alex Pullin and El shared what her experiences of being a new mum have been like.Ellidy is just the best. She's hilarious, she's compassionate, she's grounded, she's bold. You can find all of her socials, documentary, book and podcast here:https://linktr.ee/ellidyWe kick this episode off by talking about Laura's vibrating mishap with a furniture removalist, and which member of our team took part in celibacy to help their head!If you loved the episode, or you think it's something that someone you love would love to hear, share it with them!xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm Brittany and we are recording in a new place today. We've got a new environment, a new background, it's feeling pretty bougie what do you think brit we're in laura's new crib i felt like when i arrived today i felt like it was like mtv cribs you know how you open the door we buzzed it there was this big beautiful door that like hides the house and i felt like when you opened it it was like welcome to my crib and then britney gave me a great big bunch of flowers and accidentally pushed my head into a brick wall welcome home hang on we need to explain that or it sounds like abuse I yes I brought Laura over a big beautiful bunch of flowers and then you forced me into

smelling them as she went down to smell them I thought that she should be more engaged with the smell so I thrust the bunch of flowers into her face not knowing that it would then ricochet her head into a cement wall so I apologize for that the intentions were good so guys if I start speaking slowly on this episode you know why someone should call me an ambulance but anyway we are we moved we're here it was a very tiring weekend but also a very interesting weekend packing and just moving house is always such a ball like but once you're in you feel good I know I'm doing it this week I'm moving at the end of the week as well I like that we time this so perfectly together so we can complain about moving at the same time moving sucks it sucks so bad but I'm not going to complain yet

because I'm not haven't done it yet see I think it's the opposite okay yes it's like obviously very time intensive actually the physical move but it's such a good time to do like a massive clean out so you get rid of all the stuff that you should have gotten rid of years ago in your old house sure haven't done that yet yes you do a big like cleanse a big throw out and then it also gives you that opportunity to like re-lay out a house and get it all feng shui nice for your children to destroy in a couple weeks time but like at least for a week this place is going to look great that's your goal one week yeah oh look if we can make it to a month of it looking like it's belongs in a some sort of catalog i'll feel great but my new ambition in life this is when

you know you've hit your 30s my new ambition is that I'm really trying to grow a lawn yeah you're old how do you know you're old you put sprinklers on in the morning in the afternoon you froth the lawn you're like how do I get myself a luscious lawn yeah it's pretty gray at the moment and brown but anyway guys in the new house I did have something very interesting happen to me whilst I was packing and it wasn't accidentally unfiltered of my own which if you follow on social media if you follow lady in a cat you would have seen a little bit of it but there was more to the story Britt and I'm gonna tell you so we had a company come and like physically pack up all the stuff right they would take out the things from the drawers and they would put

all into boxes and this one guy had come and he had packed up all my bedroom drawers because we were recording the morning of the removalist coming and I was expecting that I would do my bedroom drawers myself uh however 100% you always you know Laura you don't let you barricade him out of the bedroom you do not let the burly removalist man into your bedside drawer well like I didn't expect that he was going to do it before I got home like I was only gone for an hour and a half and by the time I came it only takes two minutes apparently all it takes so I got home from recording and he'd already packed up everything in the bedroom anyway I'm standing in the bedroom putting some of the clothes from the wardrobe into a box and he picks up this box

and walks out into the hallway and the whole box just starts going like vibrating and I was like Your rabbit was on the loose. No, I was like, what the fuck? Well, I know it wasn't a vibrator. Like, I know it couldn't have possibly been a vibrator. Because that's collecting dust in the wardrobe. Is that what you're saying? I don't think I have one that works anymore.

The batteries are long and truly died in that thing. Didn't I get you one? Hang on. You got me a cock ring. You didn't get me a vibrator. Yes, I did. I got you a clitoris stimulator thing. But that doesn't vibrate, does it?

It sucks. So it's going well? You've used it? anyway it certainly wasn't the clitoris sucking thing that was going on the whole box the whole box was vibrating and the guy who was like this burly armenian guy he looked and he looked startled and then he just put the box down and walked away from it and i was like oh i'm sorry i'll unpack it he's like yep yeah you you do that so he gave me some privacy and i unpacked it and it was matt's theragun which is like the massage gun going bang bang

if you use that to try and get yourself off you'd surely do some damage so I took it out and turned it off then I put it back in the box and I resealed the box and then I went to try and tell the guy like I was like hey hey sorry about that don't worry it wasn't what you think it was it was just my and I'm trying to explain myself and every time I open my mouth to explain myself he keeps going I don't want to know I don't want to know and I was like no I want to tell you and he was like i don't want to know he's like it's okay i don't want to know and so now he still thinks that i had my vibrator in my box he thinks bless his soul that you've got a great active sex life if only he knew the truth okay so i actually have a theragun and you have just given me anxiety i'm

going to make sure when i pack that it is the battery is out it is taken off i'm going to pack all my personal stuff before because i cannot have that happen make sure you pack your theragun along with your dildos and your vibrators and everything in the same box i reckon there's got to be some funny stories out there about this exact thing, people moving. Surely people have had like some sex mishaps. Funny you should say that because I do have something I'm going to share with you later. Oh, wait, this is the gift that keeps on giving. Now guys, we do actually have a really incredibly special episode for you today. And it's an episode that I have been so looking forward to for so long. We interviewed Elodie Pullen. Now I know some of you will be

familiar with Elodie. Elodie is the partner of Alex Chumpy and Alex Chumpy, he was a professional snowboarder an Olympic champion snowboarder and last year he tragically died whilst spearfishing Elodie has her own podcast it's called Darling Shine so many of you are listeners of the podcast and we wanted to do an episode with Elodie last year about grief and speak to her about her experiences but her story doesn't end there she has the most incredible story because she recently brought her baby girl Minnie into the world and she talks so much about her life with Chumpy how she's dealt with her life since his passing and what it's been like since bringing Minnie into the world and I just I just love Elodie so much she's such an absolute she's real salt of

the earth type of person she's such a genuine wonderful woman and she doesn't want people to think that she's a hero or a champion for kind of overcoming what she has and working through her grief but it's so hard not to like look at her and think that she's truly an inspiration for how she just gets up and gets on with it yeah she's such a breath of fresh air but the reason that elodie's story is so much more remarkable is that she brought her child mini into the world after her partner alex had passed away that is what makes this story so unique and so different from anything we've ever spoken about in all honesty i learned so much because i didn't even know that taking sperm from someone that had passed away was a thing i didn't know it was possible

i know elodie didn't know it was possible the only reason it came to be was because one of her friends happened to have heard or read about it previously and she kicked her butt into gear because you have a time frame you have hours after this moment even talking about it now we've spoken to Elodie and I still can't get my head around what those first few hours and first few days could have been like but I think you guys are going to be just as in awe of Elodie and her story as we were so I can't wait to get into that and share her story with you but before that look before we do you know that there's always a few lowbrow things we want to share like we keep the deep stuff later in the episodes and the start well sometimes the start probably shouldn't happen

but it always does this one's interesting okay I wanted to talk about something which I saw it's been doing the rounds there's a couple of articles that came out about it this week but it's in regards to something that's been trending on TikTok we love a good TikTok trend don't we say that three times fast TikTok trend TikTok trend I won't do it three times but I could no okay the thing I think about TikTok is like it's really a subculture like there's so many different categories where you can find people who have like-minded ideas as you and really go deep in those sort of concepts. Now, something that has sparked a lot of interest, there have been hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views on these videos in the past couple of weeks and

months, is the whole concept of celibacy. Now, when I say celibacy TikTok, I'm not talking about celibacy because of religious views or ideologies. I'm talking about 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds who have opted into celibacy because they think it gives them more autonomy more freedom just like a better sense of self because they're not out there chasing the d i actually have a friend a very hot good-looking male friend he's an athlete and i remember him telling me a little while ago oh probably about a year ago i remember him saying like way before the trend that he did this he did this for like three to four months because he had read somewhere and someone else in the athlete world it said hey like if you don't masturbate you pretty much don't ejaculate

it does all these great things for your life now this is a pretty big you hold on to your superpowers you hold on to superpowers and this is a pretty big thing I've actually met a few athletes that I know that do this to a small degree so like before a match or a game or anything like that a lot of footballers do it they won't masturbate or they won't have sex with their partners because they think it takes their game down a level so it's this is actually a thing that people do but my friend did it for three months and I texted him when we're going to do this and I said hey I remember when you didn't jack off or have sex for for months like ages ago what was that experience like for you like just out of curiosity because we're doing this podcast

episode blah blah blah blah I just want to read you what he wrote back hey Brit yeah I did it for about three to four months truth be told I just got really horny slept with a girl slept with a girl twice without coming which was the hardest thing i have ever done and that was at the end of month two i saw small improvements in energy for training but nothing crazy towards month three i was just really angry and just thinking of fucking non-stop it was a debilitating level this goes against everything i have read today i know all in all is good dopamine cleanse for porn but it turned me into a bit of a pervert by the third month well somebody else who did this for uh three and a half months who's probably also a pervert is

producer keisha oh that's a bit rude well i think it's really interesting because everything that laura and i read that's why i wanted to go straight to the source from somebody that i knew and say hey what did it do for you and he while he said you know i felt a bit more energy overall he was like i was just a creep at the end he's like i was just i was super horny and it wasn't doing for me what everyone said it was doing but hey everyone's different keisha what did it do for you my experience was kind of like i can't so it was last year it was when we were in lockdown which probably added to the whole like it was easier to be celibate if you went in a relationship right uh i'd come out of toxic relationship one two skip a few decided that i needed to cleanse my

dating aura i like i'm just imagining you out there with the sage whipping it around did you do the old gwyneth paltrow steam the vagina as well i hope not because i'd kiss you she gave it a deep clean like an end of lease clean I paid some cleaners to come in I know I did not yeah so cleanse my vagina because I realized that I'd spent all of this emotional energy and like anxiety and feeling really sad and wasting all of this time on this person and I was like I just need a break like I need a full break I'm gonna completely dedicate myself to literally not replying to one boy no you went hardcore so I just I honestly was just like I just can't be bothered I need to fix my brain and it worked my god my career went through the roof I'm not even

kidding it was almost as though you kind of spent all of that energy that I was putting into dating or like you know just the little things like a couple of texts a day it actually ends up taking up time in your life and but it's always more than a lot like it's not just a couple of texts because if that's all it was then that's like very minimal effort it's the trying to date someone to then like have sex with them that energy and mental power that goes into that whole process but it's super time consuming to scroll back their Instagram till 2012 as well like that takes a lot of time exactly all this investigation of what they could possibly be doing with other people but yeah no it was great all jokes aside I think it was about three months that I didn't sleep with

someone like deliberately made the conscious choice to be like nah I'm turning away from this for a while until I've kind of like pieced myself back together it was weirdly cathartic and I felt a lot better and more confident in myself kind of going back into the dating sex scene. Well, there's been actually some research studies that have been done recently which suggest that millennials are having half as much sex as their parents, which apparently our parents were horny bastards.

I mean, that's a bit sad, isn't it? Oh, is it though? I don't know. I mean, yes. The answer is yes. I don't want to think about my parents having sex, but apparently we're having half as much sex. But Gen Zs are having half as much sex as we have,

which kind of goes against the whole thing that like, I mean I know that there's this fear that like young people are very sexually active and as a parent it's something that you're very conscious of you're like oh god do I need to worry about my 13 year old 14 year old but I think that we grew up in an incredibly hyper sexualized society like we grew up around it and were surrounded by it and I think even back to like our dating time so much of it centered around just like finding someone to be with have sex with there was so much validation that came from like the chase and having someone like you or admire you it's kind of nice to think that you can have the flip side of this and find some self-validation when you're not

chasing the D. But this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, it did say that 18 to 24 year olds were comparable with over 75 year old age group. Now that blows my mind. How are you 18 to 24? Because it's a pandemic Brit. No, we've been out for a lot. No, we've been out. I think it's more that they just don't feel like they're indulging and they use the word indulging in the article they don't feel a need to as much and i guess it's probably coming from things like this tiktok trend more people speaking out saying you don't really need it more people trying to channel their energy into something else or sex toys have just gotten heaps better and it's better than replying to a you up text is just to get laura's theragun out of her drawer that she's used

you definitely should not use a theragun that's a terrible idea everybody is huge do not use this thing at home no but i think that there's some interesting points in this whole thing and like maybe celibacy seems like an extreme thing to go and do like you know this whole idea of like oh god I'm not going to have sex for an indefinite amount of time sounds crazy it sounds like when I was thinking about it myself I was like this sounds like something that was very out of character for me because like I enjoy a healthy sex life as everyone our age does but it genuinely did really help me piece kind of my calmness around sex back together well I just think that there's so much of validation that can come from going out and trying to find a new sexual partner

or like you know if you go out with the girls if you're somebody who is very much on the dating sex scene like you know and has a really active sex life you're not always engaged in what's happening in front of you so like you go out for the girls you're not really necessarily thinking okay well we're going to go for a dance and then I'm going to go home because you're on the hunt yeah you're like you're half engaged with your friends and you're half like okay is that hot guy looking at me should I make eyes maybe I'll go home with him do I bend and snap do whatever you know but it changes the dynamic and I think if you cut that out completely whether it be for a month or two months and have this kind of like celibacy cleanse do your TikTok trend I can see

how it would have beneficial impacts the other part of this which I just wanted to touch on as well is like I'm sure there are so many people who are listening to this who were single during the pandemic and it was almost like forced celibacy I would love to hear from you how that impacted your dating and how it impacted the way that you're approaching your sex life now so if you're a life uncut listener and you have had a six month stint or a three month whatever it is if you've had a stint that has been like intentionally celibate how did that improve you as a person I mean I think it's important to know that when you don't have something you don't miss it and you don't want it the more sex you have unless it's Brit's friend the more you want

unless it's my friend but the more sex you have the more you want it if you haven't had it for a long time you don't feel the need or the desire anymore and I've been in like most of my relationships have been long distance to be honest like that's probably something I need to reflect on in myself another day but like most of my relationships have been long distance so I feel like I've I've gone ages without sex before because obviously I'm very loyal to my partners and it gets to the point where you don't actually miss it anymore and I get more productive than ever and I guess that's just because I want to fill my time with other things but like producer Keisha said before that's when I'm the most productive and that's when I start to be

very successful in every other aspect of my life so maybe there is something to it or maybe I'm just a bit hyper and just want to fill all my time so I don't think of anything else but for me like I am sort of here for it I don't think I would ever intentionally choose it like I love to have a great sex life but I can see why people are doing it well can I just chime in I think the one big difference with your friend and celibacy is that he was not coming right so like that has physiological impacts this is more about an emotional like psychological impact in my perspective anyway well it's almost worse if you're having sex with someone but you're withholding an orgasm it kind of like creates that that temptation is tenfold like that feeling of desire that

feeling of compulsion that is not actually celibacy whereas if you are completely abstinent from something and you get over the hump of the oh I need to have sex I want to kind of like you know, satiate this desire, you get over that feeling, then you kind of like, I don't know, you're in a different space. I want to say the TikTok trend that's going around, there are three main benefits that people are claiming. Those are clearer mind, because we all know that too much sex can definitely buddy the imagination, clearer mind, spiritual growth, and rids them of soul ties, mostly soul ties to fuck boys. But yes, it rids them of soul ties. I don't even know what a soul tie is. I guess I'm interpreting this as like when you are really connected with someone as in

like you know you might meet a guy you're dating you feel like this pull to them but you're not in a relationship so you don't actually owe them anything but you're wasting time like think of like a situation ship where you invest so much time in that person so much mental energy so much physical energy so much time you could be investing in yourself and it doesn't go anywhere and it's never going to go anywhere it's weeding out the ship yeah that's all it is yeah yeah i'm here for it i think whatever whatever floats your boat you're going to go through ebbs and flows in your sex life and your dating life you're going to have times where you have dating fatigue you could not think of anything worse than going to meet someone and having sex with someone and having someone in

your house in your bed inside you inside you inside everywhere like yeah physically inside your house your personal house your private house but then you're gonna have times where you're gonna want it more than ever and i think whatever floats your boat is great but for the people that have gone for a little while without sex and they're getting down about it maybe just try and flip your perspective go on join the tiktok trend maybe make a tiktok and tell everyone what your benefit is i'd love to see it yeah and i like that last week we talked about sex positions and this week we're talking about no sex withholding everyone withhold really done a full circle on this one we cover everything here alive but anyway it is time for our favorite part of every

episode and that is accidentally unfiltered and confessional oh you've got a confessional today yeah okay so accidentally unfiltered for anybody who's new and listening to the podcast it's basically where we share your most embarrassing stories and confessional is where we share the things that you've kept a secret the things that you've done that you probably shouldn't have done and that you haven't told anybody. But I have a accidentally unfiltered today and this one is very related to moving house and I think it's a goodie. In the middle of moving house, my boyfriend and I recently contracted COVID and then we had to isolate in his house for seven days. Unfortunately, the majority of my stuff was still at my house and

I hadn't packed it properly. So my dad, being the wonderful man that he is, offered to pack up my things for me before we moved. I'd gotten into my new home and I was unpacking the boxes that my dad had packed for me only to discover five vibrators, a used pregnancy test that I for some reason hadn't thrown away and several boxes of condoms. My poor dad literally hand packed these into a box and didn't say a single word about it. I still cannot believe that he packed the used pregnancy test i cringe every time i think about it r.i.p i am mortified and so am i for you what a legend but was the pregnancy test positive or negative just imagine like a used pregnancy test imagine your dad five vibrators why were there five don't shame the girl i wish i had five

i feel like i mean you just use the one i bought you but why i mean like i'm so five vibrators i would love to see them laid out on a table and see what the difference is with all these vibrators Maybe one's like a little rabbit. Maybe one's like a big, juicy penis with veins. Why don't we just call the dad and ask him? He'll be like, tell us. Far out, RIP you. At least you've got a good dad.

God, could you imagine looking at that and being like, that's my little girl. On your chicken. Lucky it's negative. Oh, no. Okay, well, I'm lucky that I brought the confessional that I have today. I went polar opposite and I went for something really, really innocent. Because I knew you'd be a sicko.

back in kindergarten we had a weekly raffle on friday where you'd win a prize over the week you'd get given raffle tickets for being really good or making gains in spelling etc anyway one afternoon i was the last one in the classroom and i saw a bunch of full raffle ticket books on the teacher's desk so i looked around no one was there i stole the full book i went home and wrote my name on every single ticket and then i sneakily put the tickets in the raffle box there must have been more than 50 tickets that I put in with my name this is more than the number of people in my class I won the prize that week and still to this day I've never told anyone I feel guilty surely she knew how could she put if you've only got 30 people in your class and there's 50 tickets in

there with your name on them surely that's a spoiler don't you also think like this is someone in primary school like where do kids get this savvy from like how like when do kids realize that they can lie and they utilize it she was in kindy she was fine like when does this happen like does Marley know does Marley lie to me at two and a half years old I don't know I reckon you know how she said she was going to her friends the other day Laura she wasn't she was in the backyard some UDLs Marley's walking out of the house with a bag that's like do you remember when I was in primary school I stole something and I still to this day feel guilty but it's a funny story my mom and dad were like real health fanatics my dad had a heart

attack when we're really young and then our whole diet everything in the food was just like immaculate anyway we weren't allowed sweets really and you know the hubba bubba that used to come in like the big round circles it's the meter length yeah the straps so the straps so there was this friend I had a friend at school and she was always allowed junk food she always had the best food I was always jealous of her and she always had hubba bubba and I was never allowed it so I was in target with mum and they had them at the counter you know how you can bet chocolates and stuff you stole something i grabbed a hubba bubba and i put it in my i don't even know where i put it i didn't have a bag i was down my pants we walked out of target and we probably got 50

meters down and i pulled it out and i started to eat it and mom saw me and she's like what are you doing and i was like what she's like where did you get that from and i was like alex gave it to me she's like you are lying to me where did you get it from right now and i was like i took it from target she marched me back and made everyone stand around the cashier while i had to tell everyone what i did including the cashier i told everyone that i stole the i was mortified i'll never to this day and like bravo mom because i never stole anything again but to this day i have never been more mortified in my life than telling a bunch of strangers and the cashier that i stole i mean a meter of papa papa and i never stole again that is good parenting shame them i couldn't

believe it what a badass I was that's as bad as it gets anyway guys on that note let's get into the chat with Elodie thanks for being here we're so excited about this episode but we do want to kick start we don't start any episode without an accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story we really like to throw you under the bus do you have one for us I have so many my friend sent me this photo earlier of me when I was asking her and I was like oh this one doesn't incriminate me too much no we need the ones where you're incriminated we want like the most embarrassing ones oh they're like suitable for a podcast and national audience I do so much dumb shit but this is just like yeah this I don't know this one's not that anyway I'm just gonna go with it so I was

about 18 a bunch of my friends were at the star casino having like a bit of a night there and then it's like one of those things where you have a dream and everything makes sense now that I'm retelling it I'm wondering why there was kind of like teller machines wherever we were standing waiting for transport there was kind of not like sorry not teller machines but pretend you're going into a bank and there's like those screens and like the holes where you would talk to the chick through the hole oh yeah yeah I don't know it wasn't even COVID times because it was like 10 years ago or something so I don't know why there was screens but where you go in and actually like convert your chips to money probably I don't know it's a casino probably I just cannot remember but

Yeah, it goes. She's like, it was a hole in the wall. And there was a woman standing behind it with money. I don't know if we were booking accommodation or getting the chips out or booking some, I don't know. So I was, like, a bit pissed. I've put my head inside this hole and so my head is, like, this close to the chick's head on the other side.

And she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, get out. And I was like, oh, I'm stuck. And I was, like, actually stuck for, like, an hour in this hole. Oh, your head actually got stuck. Yeah, and I couldn't get it out. So my friends are, like, over there being like, come on, like, we've got to go. And I'm all trying to get my head out.

We couldn't manoeuvre it like this particular way. Wait, wait, you're stuck in the perpex hole. I couldn't get my head. Show me, show me, show me. Okay, right now Elodie is showing us a photo of her head. We're going to post this on Life Uncut. It's too fucking good. You can have that photo.

I can't even see what is happening. How does your head get in there? No, honestly. you guys need to see this shit it is like you don't believe it unless you see it you will see this please go on to the instagram because i'm going to make a post out of this so i'm stuck in there with these two chicks on the other side and i'm like so do you guys have any margies back here like this a bit boring i'm stuck here like is there some snacks what are we what are we doing wait so what happened did they have to call emergency or call the police my head in a

particular way and got it out of there some wd-40s look you down oil you up quick trip to bunnings That is wild. So what was the motivating factor there? What made you go, I'm going to get really close to this person's face and stick my head through that hole? I think she's at a casino and she's trying to kill us. I was pissed and maybe I just wanted to like get to know whoever. Maybe I was just like, what did you say?

Hello, let's have a chat. Like, I don't know, just chucked my head through this hole. I don't know how it fitted in in the first place because it definitely didn't come back in. Why is it? This is the thing because I have gotten weirdly like my knee stuck in places before, but why do things go in and not come out? Well, that's the exact reason why a baby comes out head first

is because it doesn't really go the other way. Like that makes sense, right? So like my dog, I got this puppy and just a week ago her head got stuck. We were on a walk and she put her head between the railing like to look out over the ocean and went in fine, could not get it out. I didn't know how to get it out. I had to like squish her ears back, the poor thing, and I thought I was going to have to call a fire brigade.

Anyway, I went and got some water. Someone helped me and went and got water. We like slicked her hair down in her ears and I just like yanked her out of there. But why does she go in and not come out? it's the same thing going in like when you put a ring on don't you reckon you can put it on but then getting it off is like fuck yeah it's like your fingers swell up or am I the one that has fat fingers I just can't wait to share this photo on social media yeah it's pretty heavy like I to be honest that story kind of sucks except because I have the photo it makes it really good

like it's amazing I just trumped it like that was the best thing I have ever seen I feel like I couldn't do it without the photo so you were in there for an hour and then you finally slicked yourself out and then did you just pretend it never happened like just get on with your night Oh, I literally forgot about that entire night until I spoke to my friend this morning and she was like, oh, do you remember this? I've got a photo. And I was like, oh my God, it's all coming back. I'm going to have to use that. I've suppressed this memory so deeply. Do you know what's pretty good though? Elodie, there's so many parts of your story that I want to ask you about. You've just become a new mum. How are you? Like first off, straight off the bat. Are you sleeping? We have

little Minnie in the room next door. She's three months old. How are you coping in your first few weeks as a new mum oh thank you by the way for getting her to sleep and put her down because she was just squawking when I walked in I'm that weirdo that steals anyone's baby I'm like oh let me smell it I mean I would have loved it but I was trying to play it cool but you just came in like a hyena you were like swooped on it try it literally trying to eat her but how have you been how are you coping with this a new because it's huge such a massive and transformative part in any woman's life becoming a mum it's so massive she is a dream she's such a good girl like she has a bit of a witching hour in the Arvos but she sleeps well at night thank goodness because if I

don't sleep I am I need my sleep I think obviously going into it going into having Minnie I knew that I was going to be doing it solo on my own because I don't have Chumpy here and I almost feel like I can't complain about doing it on my own like when she does things I'm like no but I signed up for this and I love her and this is what I needed and la la la but like yeah it's just been the biggest thing that obviously I'll ever do in my life but it's been three months and she so far has been so amazing and we've been on the road because I live on the Gold Coast but I've been down in Sydney seeing my dad who's sick and so she's just had to kind of come on my journey and that's the thing as well like I think I'm just essentially living my exact life that I was before and she's my

newborn coming on my program I'm not going on her program and that's just because I didn't have another choice I had to come down to Sydney to be with my dad and now we've been stuck here for like about almost three months now like we came down when she was two weeks and she's just super adaptable because of that so I think in hindsight I'm gonna look back and be like really thankful for this time because she's kind of just coming along for the ride and adapting I mean it's even incredible the fact that you came down here with her alone at two weeks old like two weeks old is so new but what you just said I think it's subjective and relative for you to say you know I should just be grateful and I can't complain of course you can complain of course you can be tired

you're still in that situation and of course you're always going to be grateful at the end of the day and you love her but that doesn't mean you can't say fuck do I have to get up for the 10th time again tonight like I'm exhausted yeah that's so true I also hear people who have gone through IVF like they've gone through rounds and rounds of IVF and paid heaps of money and then when they finally get pregnant they feel like they can't complain about morning sickness and the pregnancy things because they're like I've worked so hard for this and I've complained about that part and now I'm pregnant I should be grateful and it's like no you're going through it you can complain just like anyone who's fallen pregnant randomly like totally allowed to you know

and the big thing as well with this is like feelings don't live in a silo you know you can be happy and you can be sad and I think that there's going to be a big conversation around that in a little bit when we get into your full story but you can be so incredibly grateful and you can be so incredibly exhausted those things are allowed to coincide and so like as a new mom I don't think you have to set yourself up with a different set of standards just because you had to work so hard to have Minnie. I do want to start your story and I think to be able to do that we have to go right back to the beginning of when you met Chumpy and who Alex Chumpy is. How did you guys meet? So Chump and I met at one of my best friend Laura's birthday party her 21st so it was

like yeah nine years ago now. We just hooked up that night and then that was it. He was going overseas really soon after and we just spoke constantly while he was away and it just like we were just on straight away even though he was away and then as soon as we came back it was just like we just clicked like a jigsaw and we pretty much moved in together straight away which is weird for me because I'm super independent I'm on my own thing I've never been like bound to someone I'm always kind of doing my own thing but we were just so yeah it was just so right it was like kind of fairy tale in a way and it just it just had to be and we didn't really even fight like soul yeah I just like soulmates from the beginning sometimes things just work like the second you

meet them they work and it sounds like that's what it was yeah it was just meant to be for me I think how long were you guys together for how old are you now I'm 29 I'm about to turn 30 yep so we met in 2012 he passed away in 2020 so for anybody that doesn't know he's a bit of a uh a god in the snow sports snowboarding world do you want to just give everyone a little background about what he did and who he was yeah so Alex Chumpy Pullen also known as Chumpy my love he's a two-time world champion board across snowboarder for Australia he's been to the Olympics a bunch of times and he's just an absolute legend but like off the snow as well he's just the best guy ever and he's just super active and he's good at everything and more so than snowboarding he was

like a musician as well I also think it's so interesting like I think we would have a perception of who he is based on his public profile and obviously you would have gotten a different version of him but was his public persona the same as his private persona or what was Alex Trumpy like you know at home yeah so on the snow he was super fierce and like competitive and I think people would know him as that because he was very much professional in the media and all that but at home he was completely different he was just like this kind of quirky hippie museo always laughing always joking not serious at all and on this note just super driven and he just had a goal and I was on the prize like a typical athlete but like a really like his mindset was just so

competitive and so he'd come home and that's when he would just go oh and just relax and that's when he'd come home and just relax and he'd get like the flu or whatever because you know how they say when you're like go go go you don't get that and he'd come home and just relax and he was completely different person at home but like both of those people are awesome competitive chump and normal chump are awesome but it just says a lot about athletes in general and how they can just have this switch absolutely feels been dating one for a long time yeah exactly they're obsessive yeah what plans did you guys have for the future were you planning on having a baby were you getting married where were you at in your life so chump and I yeah had lived together for I don't

know eight years we'd bought our dream house on the gold coast so we grew up in sydney or i grew up in sydney he grew up in victoria then we both lived in sydney together and we moved to the gold coast in 2017 or 2018 gosh i can't even remember bought our dream house got our dog who's the best ever we're both obsessed and it was like chumpy and rummy were like they were like a duo and i was just always the third wheel so we had so we had our dog and we were trying for a baby for over a year I have a low egg count so we were always probably going to do IVF we just hadn't started it yet that was the next step with our doctor so we were like frothing to have a family chump wasn't going to be snowboarding for too much longer he was 32 and he was starting to just

he was super obsessed with home and what we had like our house and he's like a homebody and loves to just potter around the house and he was going into different things so he was definitely going to finish up snowboarding so it was like perfect let's have kids now and our house is kind of like you know a family house there's like five bedrooms and a pool and everything like that yeah and then on July 8th 2020 he just essentially walked out the door one day to go spearfishing he's like an action man always out surfing spearfishing fishing out on the boat doing literally whatever he can to just stay active he's just like a waterman or action man basically left the house one day and just literally didn't come back he had a shallow water blackout under the sea when he was spear

fishing at the reef to catch dinner for us we had friends coming up and he was like i'll catch everyone fish for tonight we'll make fish tacos and yeah like simple as that he just had a shallow water blackout under there where there was a lack of oxygen to his brain because he was probably holding his breath for just a tiny bit too long and just passed out under the water so basically went to sleep and he had a weight belt on so he sank and if he obviously if he didn't have a weight belt on he probably would have floated and maybe coughed and caught his breath back or you know but he sank and was found down at the like on the bottom of the ocean since then I feel like it's been a year and a half and I still feel like I'm in so much shock about it I cannot believe he's

gone I cannot believe he's not coming back I say all the time like I swear he's just going to walk in the door he just I feel like his energy is so strong around me or just that he was such a big person such a character in my life and like everyone around us life that I just cannot believe that he's gone where were you when you found out when you got the news that something could happen to to chumpy where were you when chump left the house that morning he was going spearfishing so he packed up our car we yeah we have a van he packed up the van went down like just down to the local reef two minutes down the road and i was like oh i'll walk rummy out our dog took her for a long walk and on the way back from the walk so i'd probably been gone nearly an hour and a

half on the way back from the walk I felt like this insane chest pain like killing me right in my chest and I was thinking we had friends coming up to stay that night from Sydney and I was thinking oh what like is this am I stressed have I got to do heaps of cooking and cleaning am I like anxious because the girls are coming up and staying or like what's going on here I was just like this sucks this like hurts my you know my chest is killing me so I'm like stretching out my chest my dog was a bit like what's going on we're both looking at each other like oh I feel weird and then just brush that off completely so I always think back to that moment and I believe that was the moment so then I got home about 20 minutes later thankfully my mum had come over

she was helping me clean and she loves like she's good at cleaning bathrooms I hate doing that I like doing the vacuuming and the mopping and I was like you can do all the bleachy stuff in the bathrooms I hate that stuff so she's a legend she lives down the road so she was helping me clean the house and my neighbor comes over and she was like hey Elle um I saw a chump going spearfishing this morning and now I've just read on the Facebook community page that there's been someone that's been dragged in from Chumpy's Reef well it's now called Chumpy's Reef and straight away I was just like nah well thanks for telling me but like it obviously wouldn't be Chumpy like if anything he'd be helping that poor person or I just he's like the strongest fittest person

in the world he's like a fish also you just don't think that that person's ever going to be your person exactly you just never like you watch movies about this happening and my heart just breaks and I can't watch sad or scary movies I'm just bawling the whole time and you're always putting yourself in the actor's shoes thinking like imagine like that would never happen to me you know so I was like my neighbor I was like thanks for telling me but yeah it won't be chump thanks anyway bye kind of thing I started going back to cleaning and then about like 10-15 minutes later something just hit me in the face and I was like mom she was upstairs and I just screamed I was like get in the car we got to go for a drive so went down to the reef and there was like so

much commotion going on down there I was just thinking nah this won't be chump like he'll be helping so mom starts sprinting down to the beach they were trying not to let her through I was just I think by that point I was a bit like fuck I've got a really bad gut feeling that this is me this is chump like no words for that I just knew something really bad had happened instantly and then I thought back to that like I don't know it was all just clicking in my soul being that something fucked had just happened and there was this cop like a police right there and I just said what's happened down there and he goes oh you know we've found a body we've got a body we've pulled a body and I said well my partner was spearfishing out there and he straight away

said does he have any tattoos on his ribs and I was just like yeah he's got an axe on his ribs and he just couldn't even look at me he just turned around like walked away and yeah so that's I guess just I guess that was just the moment and like yeah people are always like what was going through your head and just nothing was going through my head I was just so blank and it's it's crazy to even think back so mum came running back up the beach and I think I was just in disbelief I was just like I knew it because I read his face and he couldn't face me even the cop didn't want to tell me like yes that's you know but mum just came running back up the beach and just grabbed me and her face said everything and I was just like fuck no like surely I think

what I was thinking or I was just thinking it'll just be one of those you know we'll go to the hospital he'll get like you know he'll come back or he's just passed out for a minute or something like you know it's not that serious and so to be honest the next hours after that a complete blur and days but basically it eventuated that it was chump and I've just been in shock ever since Elodie I'm so sorry to like I'm so sorry to make you relive it and tell your story because like i don't think there will ever come a point in time where you'll be able to tell your story and it not just hit you in the heart because even listening to that but brit and i have i'm like get your shit together britney you can't yeah like it's not it's not our story you know and

like sometimes i feel guilty for being so upset for somebody else and like in this case like hearing you tell the story like it's fucking heartbreaking because you put yourself in that position too you're like what if that was my partner or my family member and i want to like normalize I mean I think it's therapeutic and healthy to talk about like it's so hard to talk about but I get asked it all the time so I think it's therapeutic to talk about because you know there is PTSD there and if I don't talk about it and normalize talking about it people live with grief and trauma and they don't express it and bottles up inside them and it in turn like later down the track that causes like disease in your own being and also I think like we as a society

we're so adverse to talking about grief because it makes people uncomfortable you know like seeing somebody else's pain and dealing with somebody else's grief it often will avoid asking big questions that result in them being upset because we kind of don't want to we don't want to upset someone but the hurt is still there regardless of whether you talk about it or not how do you start I don't even think you start but like where do you start to work through that grief how do you start to kind of take a step each day that comes up what's next yeah I think and everyone obviously handles these situations completely different I've got widow friends that I've now met that have also lost the loves of their life and I've met them on social media and so we've

like banded together and we sit up late at night and chat and that's how that's literally how I got through at the start but I remember the first I mean I don't know if it was like the first night but I just remember in general thinking how can I go back to our house and sleep in our bed and go back to like our life and our things like but then also how can I not would I want to be anywhere else do I want to pack up everything and move you know there was like all that going through my head but the safest place for me felt like my room and our house was like my little sanctuary and that's where I felt safest to grieve and to process everything and I didn't want to even leave my house I didn't want to do anything but be in our space weirdly I don't know if it

was because I felt like he was there or I just felt like this protection in the house in such a vulnerable time where like I was just completely broken into pieces and and I was so glad I felt grounded in our house because I couldn't imagine and this would happen to a lot of widows or you know people going through massive loss they need to up and move and maybe also because COVID was around I couldn't just fuck off overseas and like restart and I had had a dog and do you know what my life essentially apart from chump being completely gone I just kept doing what we would do every day I just kept going to the beach in the morning with my dog and walking her and just keeping some sort of routine in my life I had all my friends and family around me constantly I was

barely alone you know what you just keep going like I just didn't have a choice and people are always like you're so strong you're so amazing I'm like I'm not amazing I'm not strong I just actually don't have a choice and I think I think I'm such a rational realistic person and I was just like I either die here today with chump like let my or not maybe not physically die but like let myself just die or I just pick myself up and I just keep going well that's my only option right does it get easier though as time goes on I feel like it did get harder a few months ago like I was in so much shock for so long so much shock I was honestly like a robot I'd just be doing normal things just out and about kind of doing normal things my friends would just be like

staring at me like how are you just you know out for a coffee right now like what is going through your head like I was just on autopilot it was like proper out-of-body experiences I would kind of like watch myself from above just doing normal things but I'd also be thinking like how are we just out and about doing normal shit why are cafes even open right now chump's gone like what but it's just I can't even explain it it's the most crazy thing but I think everybody does like you said everyone experiences it differently and no one is ever going to be able to understand what it's like but were there ever moments where you felt guilty like in terms of you were having fun with your friends or you were laughing or maybe you weren't thinking about him for 10 minutes

while you're doing something did you have moments of guilt like I shouldn't feel this reprieve and relief when he's not here it's such a catch-22 so I'd find myself like out with friends laughing my head off having a great time just months after but don't get me wrong people would say like hey if you don't mind me asking like you know or bring up chump or ask something and I'd be like hey you're not reminding me like it's always here it's right here so yeah I would be having fun and I would kind of feel guilty but then when I'd go home and crawl into a hole or say whether I'm alone or with someone and I'd like howl or like just be super have a really depressy day or like a big wave of grief would come and I'd just be debilitated I'd feel also so guilty about that

because I don't want him I just I don't want him looking down on me like just kind of dying you know or yeah so I don't know I'd feel there's just literally no right or wrong I felt so guilty about anything I did anyone knows that their loved ones are going to want them to be happy and move on he's not going to want to ever see you upset and that doesn't help the situation it doesn't make you say oh cool I won't be upset then yeah but I guess there is some comfort in that let's talk about the sperm retrieval you guys had plans for a baby you had and obviously that hadn't happened yet. I think 90% of people are not going to know what it is or that it's an option. Well, originally before hearing your story, even today, and I've followed a lot of

your story. I had thought that you guys had already gone down the process of IVF and that that had already been something they had his sperm or something already. So there was a decision about how to use it. I never realized that actually after Trumpy had passed away, there was a period there where there was a conversation around sperm retrieval. But it's very limited, isn't it? It's like 24 hours yeah you have to do it really quickly so what was that like yeah well I honestly don't remember a great deal so Chumpy's parents flew up straight away they're down in like on the border of New South Wales and Victoria so they flew up to the Gold Coast straight away and in so much shock as you can imagine two of my friends Laura and Chloe had floated the idea of sperm retrieval

with my mum and my brother and nobody had heard about Laura had by chance heard about it randomly and just maybe quickly researched it, figured out it was a thing and then floated it with my mum and my brother. Everyone was kind of like, oh, that's so, like, do we ask her? I don't know. But we're talking about floating this idea as in like that day, aren't we? Like the turnaround is. I think maybe that night, yeah.

Like the turnaround. This isn't like two weeks later. This isn't something you can go back to. No, no, this is immediate, yeah. So it was, you'd just found out that Chumpy had passed away. Yes. And your friends and family were thinking literally that same day, like how do we bring this up with Elodie?

Pretty incredible. amazing that they have the capacity to think like that in such like dire straits i remember my brother and i don't even know how i remember this i remember sitting out on the back deck just like with my head in my knees and my brother coming up to me saying i think there's like this way that we might be able to get chumpy sperm and i didn't even let him finish the sentence i was just like go yes do whatever you have to i don't know what that even means like yes sort it out with whoever you have to talk to yeah just make it happen pretty much I just was like that's that's the end of the conversation make it happen please so Trump's parents were obviously like all for it

everyone knew we were trying for a baby already so each month they were like are you pregnant yeah like you know it wasn't like a secret that we wanted a family we're trying for a while and IVF was definitely on the cards because I had a low egg count so it was literally going to be our next step just obviously didn't think I would be doing it alone so yeah they're all signing like you know legal things talking to the coroners and I'd like to be honest I don't even have to get my mum or Chloe on to tell you what they did because I was not even mentally or physically there for that incredible though that you can just sit there and say and like that you have the people around you that are like don't even think about it just say yes and we'll sort it and then you've just

got friends and family that I can imagine the stress and anxiety for them also just saying cool I have like 24 hours to just get this done and it blows my mind like what incredible a village you have around you how much time do you have so after somebody has passed away to be able to retrieve sperm for it to still be viable to use yeah so I don't know the exact timings I mean like legally I think each state's different but I think legally it has to be maybe no longer than 36 hours I think I did look this up and I think for your state it was 36 hours I'll double check that but that's not long no that's not long at all however sperm apparently can stay alive for a number of days I think depending on the nature of the accident it can survive within a person's body for a number

of days but like legally to retrieve it yeah 36 hours in Queensland and we were so so lucky that the sperm was alive and healthy when the doctor yeah retrieved it because I think he was so nervous that it wasn't going to be alive what was that like that period of life I guess when you've already decided you're going to have a baby you have all these plans you have all these ideas for your life is going to be then everything gets flipped on its head instantly but you still have that opportunity you say like almost instantly you will like go and do it whatever you need to do I still want to have this baby I still want to do this how were you able to like compartmentalize that so quickly I mean look I had to yeah I had heaps of counseling like I wasn't feeling much

at the fact at the that moment I was in so much shock still it was almost like I had to google how to grieve or like I mean obviously I didn't do that but in my head I was like the biggest thing that will ever happen to my life has just happened like this isn't normal at all what what am I going to do I need help so I started booking in psychology things and just trying to get my head straight but it was way too early because I still didn't know what was going on yeah it was the weirdest thing I think I think I was trying to get on the forefront of my grief but I just had no idea the vortex that I was in do you know what I mean I was so in it that I couldn't really it's like you were anticipating yeah grief like you were anticipating not that

you hadn't felt it but you were like I know I'm gonna need it but you hadn't even gone you didn't even know what those processes were yet exactly and I was so scared that because I'd felt nothing nothing nothing my body was just protecting me like the shock mechanism I thought that like a bus would hit me one day and I'd just be like completely just debilitated by it but basically thank goodness that didn't happen it was more just like slow waves of grief started flurrying in and I stayed busy I kept going I said to someone the other day like I think I grieve on the go like I'm just really good on my feet I don't really stop I never did before I was like always a very busy person and like super social too so my friends just come along for the ride and if I'm

happy that day I'm happy if I'm having a moment that day I'm having a moment but we always do find a reason to laugh or something like I'm not it's just super up and down and they grieve with me thank goodness so I felt like I was always able to express myself it like clicked one day I felt like I was just like no the next step for me is I'm having chump's kid like we've got the sperm what am I waiting for I'm young I'm healthy this is the time I want to bring a piece of him back I don't want to wait any longer and yeah I just I felt set up and confident to do it and obviously I'll be grieving forever it wasn't like okay cool I've accepted he's gone I'm done grieving let's go into the baby phase I was like I'm just going to live life alongside this grief

yes I'm going to be pregnant yes my health will be like paramount and I won't let like depression or anything get in the way of carrying like a healthy baby but it's just like this ongoing thing that I'll just deal with forever I guess and I think I've just accepted that and I try and just live like a very full life alongside just missing him and pining for him and but they say that grief is just love that has nowhere to go and I think having Minnie I've got someone to love and to cherish and to protect and she's like she's not chumpy she'll never be chumpy she'll never be like my husband or my person but you know I've got something to put my love and energy into and she's just the best thing in the world I don't know what I'd do without her. Was there ever a

time firstly what when you said there was one day where you were finally ready what was the time period between that and then secondly was there ever a time like was it always yes I'm having a baby or was there any reservations ever about oh gosh like I'm gonna look at a part of my past forever is that gonna be too hard was there ever this question in your head no so yeah I think we waited I mean wasn't even waited but it was about six months after when I realized that I just need to go ahead and do the IVF and I cannot wait to be pregnant and carry his child and have chump's baby like we were always going to and like carry on our dream and I wanted to carry on his legacy I never wanted him to be the elephant in the room I never want chump to

just die and be gone like I just I want to forever be talking about him like when I talk about normalizing grief I'm talking about always celebrating that person I never want to stop talking about him and his family's the same we get together we're always talking about him I'd hate if my friends stopped talking about him it's never something I wanted to be like okay that was a chapter in my life by that happened that was really sad I don't want to talk about it I want to talk about it forever I want him to still be a massive part of my life forever and we wanted a baby so why not carry on our dream without him. Minnie is like I mean I said I got to hold her like she's it's it's incredible like having a baby is incredible and no matter like how a baby comes

into the world you have this moment where you're like that's a fucking miracle like that human is a little miracle yours is genuinely a miracle what was the process around is it normal IVF like what did you have to go through in order to make it happen yes so and this is where I learned a lot about IVF my doctor had to do a process called ICSI because the sperm was not like ejaculated it was I don't know what you would call it extracted yeah yeah extracted so ICSI is just a form of IVF and they do it with lots of guys who are alive their sperm may just work in a different way or not work when it's ejaculated or something so it's called ICSI this procedure that they do with some types of sperm and basically they have the egg and they get like

the needle or something with the sperm in it and they actually just puncture the actual egg and inject the sperm straight into the egg so it's got the best chance of I don't know like taking fertilization so that worked thank goodness we fertilized a bunch of eggs the first round of IVF didn't work and the second round worked but to be honest when I signed up for IVF and I didn't have heaps of I mean obviously I had all the time in the world but I didn't have all the money in the world and IVF is expensive so I was like I'm not just going to push this thing uphill if you know if it's meant to be it's got to happen in the first few rounds I'm not going to do like 10 rounds of this like lots of people do IVF forever and my heart goes out to them because it's hectic

all the hormones and everything you have to go through so you had told yourself that you had said look I'm gonna give it like four times or something yeah I hadn't said a specific number but I was like I can't afford to do too many rounds so let's just give it a shot and see what happens and it was just like a case-by-case situation so first round didn't work second round worked and yeah I just literally could not be more grateful because Chloe like my best friend is going through IVF so many fertility issues and it's massive so many people go through rounds and rounds around so it's i feel so lucky that that happened on the second round i mean that's the thing isn't it it's like a we don't know what our fertility is and like you said you checked your egg count i

did the same i froze my eggs last year i have a really low egg count but there are so many women unfortunately that aren't as lucky in the sense that it took the second time how many this is just like a bit of a medical curiosity question how much sperm do they extract in terms of like did you know that you only had say three or four embryos or do you have an excessive amount of sperm that you could constantly try to make embryos so basically the doctor was able to extract like millions i believe of little spermies amazing you're like i'll take my pick yeah i could have a village but of the million say for example like if it was a million i don't know how many million or whatever but one percent of them were viable but i guess that's still a shitload if

you're talking about a million do you know what i mean i mean it's great for you now but it just sucks that women we get these tiny amount of eggs but men are just shooting out sperm left right and center so much like they're getting millions of those bad boys and we're like lucky if we can some of us are lucky if we can extract a few eggs i know it's not bloody fair i'm gonna pop it that's not fair okay so you took the second time did you find out i mean we know now you have a beautiful little girl called mini but did you find out what you were having did you keep it a surprise no I was always someone that was like I would never find out I love surprises and Chumpy was like no we would have to find out he's so I think the athlete in him is like you know they

have to control the situation and like he doesn't like surprises so he was always like we'd have to find out and I was like I'm not letting you find out like you're just not finding out so he was like growing in me yeah so he always like agreed fine it's gonna kill me but we won't find out and yeah of course he wasn't here but I didn't find out and it was just the best surprise not knowing but by the end I just knew she was a little girl I knew it everyone was saying boy and I think that they wanted me to have a boy because of chump and I think at first I was like oh if it was a little boy that'd be so cool but I'm so I just love that she's a girl and the more like as my pregnancy went on I really felt that she was a girl and I was kind of getting a bit

scared in case I mean obviously I would have been beyond stoked with whatever gender I got but I feel like if I was Trump's little boy and Trump wasn't here I'd feel like I'd have heaps to like live up to like how do I make you a world champion Olympian and I don't want this boy to feel like he's filling a void or something like totally I mean look Minnie could have been a boy and I would be definitely not saying this and not even thinking it because I'd just be so beyond was stoked to have a baby but now that she's a girl I am just so stoked and so glad I've got a little like a little best friend do you know what I mean what was the day like when you went into labor and you went into the hospital to have mini what was that process like for you like how was

your labor I'm such a perv for birth stories but like yeah what was your labor like and what was the experience who did you have with you my mum came into the birthing speech she was like my person she was amazing she was so strong and just held me together but I had like early labor at home from 4 a.m to 4 p.m before we went into the hospital around 4 p.m that day oh my god I'm already exhausted 4 a.m to 4 p.m I'm like I'm done girlfriend you've got no idea no I definitely do not cooked or it's absolutely cooked it is I mean neither of you are selling this to me yeah Laura like if you want me to have a child you know I've told you I'll go back for another one I'm gonna kidnap melodies in a second yeah don't we everyone's like it's the worst thing

ever but everyone goes back for more we're sickos you forget it's but it's not just that you forget it's the labor can be I mean not everybody has a traumatic labor but the labor is incredibly hard but that feeling once you have a baby in your arms it's euphoric there's no words for it there's what about when you have me in your arms is that does that not recreate not the same talk to me about that day what was that experience like for you well yeah so I labored at home for 12 hours and that was really just really bad period pain it honestly wasn't that bad and I was just bouncing on the ball at home and my house is like all my friends are always around and I just love it like that so it was kind of like people my friends were coming and going like like I'm in

labor yeah literally and they were just hanging around I was in the pool I was like inside yeah we were just moving around like i was trying to stay hydrated and we were just kind of laughing at the fact that i was in labor like sometimes i was really in pain yeah like okay fuck off now it's not funny yeah like and then it got to a point in the early arvo where i was like guys this is getting fucking serious now like i'm not laughing let's you guys are out of here mom let's go to the hospital like yeah so it got serious went to the hospital and she was posterior going posterior did you have yes my first one was posterior awful poor thing so i just had this thing like I'm so tough I don't want drugs like I'm doing this naturally and I did do it all

naturally but I would not recommend having a posterior baby naturally because you're like someone dosed me up right now oh do you know even my midwife said to me and like they're all like midwives always like you to do a natural they never really want to push an epidural no and when I had my first one posterior and I was in so much pain she was like nobody ever has them naturally when they're posterior just get the drugs and I was like give me a fucking seriously yeah so you are a wonder woman because it is an incredible amount of pain having a posterior baby oh my god the spine pain and the leg pain like it honestly I didn't feel like any of the contractions anymore because of the nerve pain it was oh my god thinking back to that just like I'm I'm hurting

I'm petrified I have my eyes if anyone would see it's like a wide open I'm like oh like just hover out the sunroof next like just c-section like just whip that bad boy out and so the name mini was that something that you guys had discussed like had you decided on names before this all happened or was that something you came up with for some reason well we had a list of names like as so many couples do but we were really serious about our list because we were trying for a baby but no mini actually wasn't on our list but i've always loved the name mini and it just felt so right because she's like mini him, like mini Alex Pullen is her full name.

Oh, I hadn't thought of it like that. Had you not thought about that? No, and now I've got goosebumps and want to cry again. I don't know why I didn't think about it like that. Oh, my gosh. Someone literally came up to me, like someone the other day was like to me, oh, my gosh, did you realise like her name's Minnie and then his name's on the back of it?

So it's like she's a mini him and I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Thanks, Einstein. Are you having a laugh? I was like, nah, I didn't think about that. I guess when I looked at the name and heard it, I didn't put it all together. I was just like Minnie because my friend's name, kid's name is Minnie and I was like, oh, that's such a cute name.

But I didn't think of it as it's a Minnie Alex Pullen. No, I didn't think of it like that. Brilliant. Now I feel so dumb but like well done. That is genius. But, I mean, you don't need to be thinking about my kid's name that much. Totally. Of course.

But, of course, I am thinking about all the, you know, how you think about like the nicknames it could get called later and like I was thinking about the name a lot obviously. so that was the point of the name but he loved the name Ava for a girl so that was my other name that I had and I was thinking Ava Alex Pullen for a girl with this whole like I mean your life has just changed so much in the space of a year and a half what has it been like bringing a baby into the world as pretty much a single mum and not doing it in the traditional way when we think of single mums I think we usually think of relationship breakdowns we don't normally think

of being a single mum but being a widow especially not this young as well you know I think that when we think of widows we usually think of our parents age losing their partners what has this experience being a mum but being a single mum and doing it on your own really been like for you it's just been such a whirlwind I think every first time mum would say that even if they're in a partnership like a relationship or not I mean look I've missed him more than ever lately and I think having Minnie coming down to Sydney when she was so young doing that on my own well actually I flew up a friend to drive down with me thank goodness she's amazing but yeah just all the little things like you know she started to smile she's starting to make heaps of noises she's getting chubbier and cuter and

I've got all these little nicknames for her and all the little steps and Christmas and New Year's and events like that are always just the hardest when you're grieving someone because you're just missing them and they should be there for those times and they're not and this is like the funnest time of the year he's usually home for the Christmas period and we're usually just having the best summer so lately I've been really kind of struggling without him here and it just happens that Minnie's been born as well and there's a lot of times where Minnie's having a witching hour and I'm trying to settle her and I'm so tired and I'm cranky and I'm like fuck I just I wish he was like here so he could you know help settle her and I could have a minute away but thank god I've got

amazing support so I often am not alone and I am getting heaps of help but yeah it definitely like lately like how am I I'm missing him more than ever right now like this has definitely been the hardest few months just a bit like fuck I wish you were here but also weirdly the best time of my life has also been since Minnie's been born because every mum would say that like I feel like I live too I don't know I've got so much going on that like this is so fucking hard but then this is also the best time in my life and they're just these two massive emotions are just co-existing and it's just up and down but but that's the thing feelings all feelings but grief and happiness they're not interchangeable it doesn't have to be one or the other like you said

you can have in one day you could be howling like you are you can have it at the same time exactly they don't have to be it doesn't have to be one or the other exactly I feel like even in that moment of like having a baby the pure happiness of having Minnie in the world but then probably alongside the sadness that Chumpy wasn't there to experience it with you exactly pulling her out was the best I straight away saw Chumpy's eyes in her and I was like I have a baby wow like euphoric as we spoke about before but also seeing it was I felt like I saw him in her eyes straight away so it was just like simultaneously the best and saddest moment in but the happiest like the happiness is always going to trump the sadness for me for sure and also like on top of that you're throwing in

without any trauma or tragedy you're throwing in just like hectic hormones that your body is experiencing anyway yeah you are just a superwoman and I know you say that when people say this to you that you're like I'm not a hero I'm not brave I'm not doing anything but you are probably not giving yourself enough credit for how you have handled this situation and what you have achieved and what you are achieving even coming here today to relive this with us like you just said you're not in the best place right now even though you're happy you're having moments of sadness and you're going through a lot of things in your life but you've still come here you've still turned up minnie's sleeping in the back room with my dog with producer keisha not alone she's been

she's not just just leave me in the room next door with the dog no but you're not giving yourself enough credit but would you go again would you think you'll have more little mini chumpies chumpies I mean at the moment I'm thinking I'm just so stoked with just one and she's perfect and I just feel so lucky to have her and I am alone and I just think having her little companion like just is so perfect so I'm not thinking at the moment that I could have more but yeah never say never because I do have the sperm there I've got more eggs I really could have more chumpies is there any limitations on how long in the future you can use the sperm or is that something that's like they're on ice they're on ice frozen forever i could 10 years time what has your relationship

been like and obviously you have such a strong relationship with chumpy's family but since having mini how are they able to be involved in her life if i didn't have mini i would always be super close with chump's family they're absolute legends and we're we're just really close like chump and his family are thick as thieves they are so tight they've got the most beautiful family and relationship and no matter what like yeah as I said if I didn't have Minnie I'd always be super tight with them they live down the coast so it was always like a road trip down to them and then we get that quality time together so it wouldn't be that I'd see them every day so they probably won't get to see like Minnie every day because we live so far away but we talk all the time on the phone

we're up and down the coast whenever we can be hanging out I feel like for them Minnie's just you know they have lost their son like it's the worst thing ever and they're so completely broken and yeah you look into their eyes and you can just feel the the void and the sadness like it's absolutely it's heavy and chump's got a beautiful sister too and they are so close and they're so similar in so many ways and so different when i'm with em i feel like i'm with chump in a way they're so beautiful i think that having mini for them just gives them like you know of course they have a purpose but it gives them a reason to look to the future and to smile and to it's just given them a whole new well it's given us all and like my family too just a whole new I don't know life

yeah lease of life and happiness but it's also like a living piece of memory as well I don't know that that's almost a weird way of putting it but like unless you've been through it I can not imagine what it would be like to lose a child at any age you know and that's just not how it's supposed to be having their child to be able to pour your love into and like what you said earlier about the whole grief being this love that has nowhere to go like mini has created that and provided that for your family as well and it's just incredible oh she's going to be the most spoiled love little thing it's incredible little spoiled brat one thing I wanted to ask you in regards to like social media which might be a bit of a weird turn but you have been really open with

your journey you've spoken about it on darling shine your podcast you've spoken about it on social media have you ever received any negativity around the science behind how it all kind of came about as in like has there ever been anyone that's like you know that there's a moral conversation around extracting sperm and like where is the yeah like what's the line yeah who gets to decide whether that is or isn't okay well I think like I'll get to that and I mean I think ultimately it's like mine and Trump's family's decision for sure and the people that know him in our relationship this is exactly what he would want and we just don't have a doubt in our mind about that but yeah like morally so I think on Instagram I don't get any I don't cop any of that moral

stuff from anyone but on Facebook and I don't even go on Facebook I'm such an Instagram person I never go on Facebook but apparently on Facebook whenever there's articles about me on there apparently there's heaps and I don't know if it's a generational thing because I actually I don't really know but I think maybe more the older generation hit up Facebook a bit more and maybe they're not okay with it maybe they're more traditional and there's heaps of I think there's heaps of hate on there I think it also comes from a lack of understanding though and like yeah generational 100% it could be but like you said you know you and your families are the only people who know the situation and can make that right decision but I was always curious because I just

feel like when you are so open about something that is completely vulnerable we open ourselves up for people's opinions and that can be a really like it can be a really challenging thing especially when it's something that's so personal and so beautiful and so healing to where you are in your life to even allow anybody who's from outside your world to infiltrate that but it goes for anything it's not even like it's just your extraordinary situation any decision that any couple or any person is making is their decision it's their family like but we live in a world where people feel like they're entitled to make an opinion on everything they're keyboard warriors and like really like fuck off is what I want to say I mean like all these people that think they can go on

someone's page like yours and give their opinion can fuck off oh absolutely I couldn't give two fucks what anyone thinks like I know I've done the right thing and I'm so stoked on what I've done I literally does not bother me tiny bit but what I was going to say back to that was when I was going to announce my pregnancy I did have a bit of a thing in my head am I going to be completely transparent and tell everyone what's happened and spread awareness on sperm retrieval or part of me was thinking should I just let everyone make up their own mind and real and believe that we were doing IVF already and like I don't know maybe we already had the sperm and just not be open but I knew that there'd be questions and I wouldn't be able to just like

lie or like not tell the truth but I did think about going down like like kind of be a bit ambiguous about how it happened but also like you said I think when you've sat in that level of grief you've lost your partner you also know how helpful that information could be to somebody else's life and what that could mean to another woman who's going through loss and also knowing the time restrictions and time restraints around it because I'm sure that there will be people who have experienced this and didn't know it was an option and missed the chance to have the life that you have with the baby that you have i get messages like that all the time like wow thank you for spreading awareness on this because i lost my partner a few years ago i would have done this

if i knew you know and hindsight is a bitch yeah like if you don't when you don't know any people say that for another question regarding the sperm retrieval you and chumpy weren't married technically but in every other sense you were obviously like husband and wife like yeah you were that tight-knit community yeah for literally like the legal process was it enough that you guys were de facto for you to decide that this was okay or did you still have to get official documents signed by his family so if somebody was going through this right now and they'd lost their partner yeah and they said yes I want to do this even if they've been with them 10 years does someone from his family still have to say well I'm okay with it like if they said no would

have been able to be possible still well I think because we were de facto and had like so many basically a billion other pieces of paper apart from marriage that mean that we're together like you know mortgages and banks and everything like that it would have been fine but just under the time constraints having his parents there to quickly do extra quick sign off to give approval kind of thing it definitely just gave us the go-ahead but it would have been okay I believe because we were, like, married in every other sense. In every other sense. And Minnie's just having a little squawk in the next room.

Well, lucky we're almost done. Well, Ellie, I just want to know what is next for you? What's the next step for you and Minnie? I just want to pour everything into Minnie and our life and bringing her up and just give her the best life ever by the beach. I don't really know what is next for us, actually. You don't have to decide now. She's like, oh, my God, now I don't know, Laura.

I mean, you're like, maybe get some sleep because they have a newborn baby. One day at a time, Laura. Yeah, that's the thing with grief and everything I've gone through. It's just literally one foot in front of the other for me. I actually do struggle. Well, I think before I had Minnie, I fully struggled to look into the future because it just scared me. But now I have Minnie, I feel so strong about our future and I don't really care what else

happens as long as I've got her and she's got me and we're just going to be happy and healthy together with our dog. well you guys i'm sure every single one of you is going to want to know more about this incredible story and your life and minnie's life and you can listen to it on the podcast you have a podcast called darling shine yes it is and it has been dominating the podcast chart so if you're a podcast listener you would have seen it where else can people find you what is your instagram obviously don't use facebook but and not literally like don't give your house address but where else can people find you oh my god that was such a dad joke come and knock on my front door

she did say that the house is always open elodie loves to drop by my instagram is elodie e-double-l-i-d-y underscore i think yeah you can find me at darling shine the podcast choke my address up there too yeah elodie thank you so much thank you so much for like coming today for sitting in the in our house in brit's house in the studio for bringing mini and letting me have a cuddle but just for sharing your story and for walking us through so much of what you have experienced in your life I know you say that it's not an incredible thing or that you're not strong but you did have a choice you chose to continue to put one step in front of the other and a lot of people in your situation wouldn't be able to do that so I just yeah I have so much respect and admiration for you and before

we go you do have is there correct me if I'm wrong a documentary coming out oh yeah and a book or you've got like a bit going on so a documentary did come out it came out channel seven produced it called bubba chump and you can watch that on youtube amazing i'll add that to the list yeah my widow friend in the uk lottie and i we actually did we started writing a book months ago just like in the thick of our grief like late at night we just started writing shit down and basically we've got this ebook out she lost ben her beautiful partner about four months after chump passed away and we felt like everyone told us that there was like this pattern to how you grieve like the six stages of grief and you reach this acceptance phase and everything's fine but

we definitely don't believe that grief is linear there's no rule book to grief they say that you feel like all these emotions in order and then you like tick them off the list and you keep going and I feel like I feel all of the emotions in any given minute in every any given day like all the time they come back to bite me when I think they're done and there's definitely no rule book to grief and it's literally just about survival like just surviving the first few months so when Trump first passed away I wish that I had a resource like this so we decided to create one and it's called now what and you can click I guess like the link in my bio I think the website's called now what grief.com we'll pop it in the show notes as well Elodie thank you so much crying in

the room we better go and grab her thank you so much for coming and being a part of the pod we've Loved having you. Thank you so much, girls. It's been so good. You know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our lowlight of each and every week. Brittany, what is your suck? My suck is Delilah, my cute little puppy dog.

Also, like, I like that you're just going to talk about your dog in a suck but haven't actually really talked about the fact that you got a dog yet. Have we not? Not really. Got a dog. It's like being this kind of sordid secret. Look, I got a dog a little while ago, a couple of months ago, but she was living over at Jordan's house most of the time

because I couldn't have her in my house. She just used to come for visits and they looked after her so well. And Producer Keisha would also kidnap her. Producer Keisha takes her a lot. It's taken us a little while to kind of explain to Producer Keisha that she's not the mum of Delilah. Rude. This is the first I'm hearing.

Excuse me. We have a contract. I'm her secondary caregiver. There you go. like that's the contract in Keisha's head but yes pretty finally post a photo of Delilah and everyone's like why are you taking photos of Keisha's dog no she's been around for a while but like I just feel like we just had a few private months bonding together I didn't want to launch her on you know I was really protective you know how some parents are like I don't want

to put their kids on the internet I was like just really protective you're like posting photos to Delilah with like a face like an emoji over her face just so that no one knows her identity anyway I've hard launched Delilah I've hard launched her but the reason she's my suck this week she's my suck in my sweet but the reason she's my suck is because she annihilated my plants and you guys know that like plants are my pride and joy and my house is like a jungle i wake up in the morning and she's just gone to town on them so brit's house now looks like maddie j's house when he tries to take care of plants they've all they're all destroyed and it makes me feel good because my house is thriving at the moment i like this one i have this one beautiful big palm like

beautiful did not look like it should have been in a house but for some reason it was the happiest plant i've ever had and she just went to town on it so i've had to like pull them all back she's looking a bit dead now but i have hope i think like brit's like underselling this this was like a 500 bird of paradise plant that was bigger than me and it now has one leaf it's so sad anyway and one of them the one leaves half eaten i'm just trying to like bring it back so that's my sack but my sweet is obviously just i'm obsessed with delilah so she's the best thing and she's my best little friend and it's so nice i live alone so it's so nice to have some company dogs they're hard work I feel like it's a kid like having that puppy again I forgot what it was like just

the constantly having to be there and take it outside and do everything like keep it alive keep it alive and like to go away not leave it alone all these sort of stuff but yeah so I'm just happy she's my sweet now she's I wake up and she's there she's got the cutest face I've ever seen in the world but that's it what's yours okay my suck for the week I mean it's pretty obvious I think moving house unpacking actually do you know what it wasn't me slamming your head into the cement wall that's fine i'm gonna make it very specific unpacking my bathroom box was my suck of the week because so many of my toiletries i hadn't put the lid on properly and they were all leaked throughout the one box which everyone knows it's like that's the shittiest thing when you

travel or you pack or anything finding like an entire thing of moisturizing cream that's just emptied out into the rest of your makeup shit was my suck it's the worst when it's in your suitcase like when you've done an international flight do you know what's even worse when you mix all your clothes and your makeup shit and everything in the same box and it's all over in your podcast equipment yeah literally there it is moisturizing cream my sweet for the week is okay now I feel stupid because mine was also plant related but I'm so who are we 30 year old women I'm so excited that we have a backyard that like my plants are now thriving I have rehabilitated a fiddle fig anybody who's been following I mean they've only been here three days okay when we walked into this

house guys there was a fiddle fig that was inside this house and the house had been obviously locked up for a couple of weeks and it was in dire straits and I have already brought it back to life in three days it's looking great so it lived that fiddle fig came with the house that fiddle fig came with the house I would have moved here for that plant do you know why because it was so fucked when we arrived and now look at it I'm glad that you're beautiful thank you I'd like to name it Jesus it took three days to resurrect and that's it I'm just so happy that we're finally in a bigger place I've been putting it off for so long because like I said on last week's episode I'm just such a creature of habit I hate I don't like moving I don't like new things I like to go

to my same coffee shop I like to do the same thing I like to eat the same thing for breakfast every day Laura's gone to a whole new suburb I'm it's I'm far from Bondi people actually I'm not I'm three kilometers but anyway it feels very different but I'm loving it I'm so happy that we're in a bigger space and we have a yard it's just like it's changed my whole outlook I'm very very happy and that is it from us guys if you want to write in your questions for ask uncut send them into the instagram life on cut podcast just put ask and cut at the top we want your accidentally unfiltered we want your confessionals we want any funny shit that has happened to you all go into the dms if you're not part of the facebook group either it is a life on cut discussion group on

facebook so where you at that's where all the juice goes down and also maths is starting this week and i'm pretty fucking excited about it just gonna say that we will be having some discussions about maths in the facebook group if you want to jump in there as well we have a friend on there don't we oh we'll tell you about that next week though but anyway guys that is it from us if you've loved the episode which we really hope that you did interviewing elodie was just such it was just such a joy she's a wonderful woman please jump on apple podcast leave a review you can leave a review on spotify as well and you know the drill tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends and share the love because we love love

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