Life Uncut - Not everything happens for a reason. Grief and life after loss with Lotte Bowser

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Hey Lifers! It's Britt and Keeshia's birthday! The conversation around milestone anxiety (especially because one of them is turning the big 3-0) rears it's head again. Laura & Producer Keeshia unpack whether Keeshia's joy around her birthday this year is linked to being in a relationship & what it means we need to be doing for our single friends on their birthdays! There's a new study that has shown that (in hetero relationships) men are more commonly the first to say "I love you." A particularly interesting part of the study showed that it usually takes 69 days for them to say it... we're not the ones crunching the numbers here.Then we get into a truly great interview with Lotte Bowser. Lotte Bowser is a writer and podcaster. It was a modern day romance where two people both swiped right and fell in love almost instantly. They moved in together, they travelled together, they got engaged and then in 2019 Ben was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In late 2020, Ben died and Lotte had to 'say goodbye' from a hazmat suit. Lotte has had to learn how to navigate life as a young widow and how to move forward with her life. In this chat we speak about:-The stages of grief are bullshit-Grief can be so isolating and so lonely-How to support someone through the loss of someone, and also what not to do-Finding purpose and moving forward after someone you love has died Lotte has co-written a grief workbook called “Now, what?” with friend of the podcast and host of Darling Shine Ellidy Pullin and is currently writing a book of her own. You can follow her journey here Check us out on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug, Wollongong land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm producer Keisha filling in for our gal Brie. Why are you moving the microphone at the same time? I just realised it was a little bit too far away from my mouth.

Do you know what today is? I do. Does anybody else know what today is? It's Brittany's birthday! Also, producer Keisha's birthday! Can you believe Britt and Keisha are born on the same day and I'm just like the third wheel of this relationship? I'm the true third wheel of Life Uncut.

Michaela, one of the girls in the office this morning, she was like, have you guys done like astrology charts and have you worked out I think the birth chart I don't know I'm not very astrology but she was like you guys need to do that because there's a reason that the two of you work together so closely and you have the same birthday not only like work together they were all the closest friends maybe I'm really attracted to August 21 girls that's my thing that's what's your kink August 21 it's a good day it's a bloody good day okay so Britt is not she's actually on the interview later on in this episode, but she's not on the intro. And the reason for that is because

Brit's life at the moment is scheduled around fertility and like having the injections and going to appointments. And the thing when you're doing fertility treatment and you're doing like the egg freezing journey, which I learned this through Brit, it's all timed around your cycle. So you have to be like at the drop of a hat, your period says jump and you're like, how high? So this morning her period said you must go and have an ultrasound. So Brittany's getting internally examined for her birthday what a treat what a joy she can't have sex with her boyfriend so she's getting a probe put inside of her uterus do you reckon she actually needed to go and do that today or she was just like what am I gonna do on my birthday I know what will

make me feel good have you not had a pelvic ultrasound before oh she's having an ultrasound today yeah I know what that is I think because I had one when I got diagnosed with PCOS they wanted to check if I also had PCO which is polycystic ovaries so they put this like cold camera it looks like a thin dildo and they put it inside of you and they like move it around so they can get a picture of your eggs and for me there were all these cysts covering it so I think she's gone to get the pictures of you know what's going on I mean I'm not using the right scientific terms but what's going on with her eggs so they can kind of count how many follicles there are and all that kind of thing. No, I've definitely had, I've had an internal ultrasound having babies. So I do know

what this is, but I didn't realize that that's what she was doing. Anyway, Britt will be back on Thursday. She can tell you all about this herself and she'll update you guys on like what the process is for her second round of egg freezing. But Keish, I absolutely love that you're on today's episode. And the reason for that, not just because I love doing it with you, but last year on your birthday, you did the episode with me as well. So this seems to be a running birthday theme. And last year, although like birthdays can be such amazing, exciting, beautiful celebrations of like making another year around the sun, you spoke about something kind of like a milestone disappointment is what you coined it. And this idea that during birthdays,

it's a period for you where you are not as happy or you're not as excited. And it kind of brings up the things that you don't have in life more so the celebration of the things that you do. how do you feel about it on this big 3-0? Yeah so this is my 30th so this is a particular milestone and I think since we had that conversation I really sat and thought about it a bit and I got a lot of messages from beautiful people that listen to the podcast being like I feel exactly the same this is so normal and we spoke about how when your birthday rolls around it's kind of like that reminder of you're another year older similar to New Year's you know, like, what have you done in this last year? What have you accomplished? What have you

achieved? And then the flip side of it is, well, what are you missing from your life that you really want? And so last year, like I really spoke about the fact that I had had, and I do think that I've had some unusually negative things happen on my birthday. Like I've been made redundant. I've lost family members. Like I've had some kind of actual very life shitty things happen, but it just didn't ever seem to live up to the expectation I would see other people in my life that were like it's birthday week and they were so excited and I felt almost the polar opposite I actually had this immense sense of anxiety of like oh god like everyone's gonna be giving me all of this attention and I just feel as though I maybe I'm not measuring like I just had this

weird internal guttural like awkwardness about it did you feel as though that amplified year on year like as you get older that that feeling became more because it's almost like and I know when we talk about the things that you don't have in life whether it's that you haven't got the career or you don't have the relationship or your life just hasn't met the milestones the arbitrary milestones that we set for ourselves did you find that with each passing year that feeling got worse or was it just kind of this overarching birthdays fucking suck feeling I think it did I think it wasn't linear like it wasn't like each year it got worse and worse and worse but I think the massive part of it was that you know I grew up in the kind of environment where if someone had said to me

oh you'd be getting to 30 you wouldn't be married you wouldn't have had a family which is what I thought I would have as you know as a teenager you're like oh that's what I expect to have in my future and I think it just became a little bit more like well the years are going by like plan a was here and my life was leaps and miles away we're playing f right now yeah but I also acknowledge that plan f has been the fucking best you know and so I guess it was just this weighing up of like what I expected my life would be like at a certain time and what it actually was like at a certain time we had an interesting conversation in the car on the ride over here and you said that this birthday has felt significantly different though that you felt like you've

gone into your 30th feeling happier but also I think you recognize like the cliche of why you feel happier this year yeah I hate to admit because I don't think it's very self-empowerment I don't think it's very feminist to be like yeah this birthday felt really different because I woke up with someone that I really care about my lovely boyfriend made me feel so special over the weekend. We went for a beautiful dinner last night. He spoiled me with gifts and then like he stayed over at my house last night. So I woke up to him this morning and I kind of hate that it felt so beautiful. I wonder if I would have felt the same about turning 30 had he not been a part of my life and had he not made me feel so special because I think it really goes back to the

fact that like I weigh up what I do and don't have on birthdays. And like, I think if I had have been turning 30 and still single I maybe would have been like the years again oh you're into your fourth decade now and like you haven't found someone and so I feel as though a lot of people that would have done that would have felt really lonely and like they weren't living up to what they wanted out of their life. I know I don't know why I'm getting emotional I think it's because I kind of feel a bit guilty for being like well you know you should love yourself enough and you should be proud enough of what you've done that you don't need a boyfriend to feel good about yourself but the truth is it really does make me feel better about myself so like maybe

that's a bit of a fault but it's the truth it's not a fault like and I know I mean we talk about relationships all the time it's this double-edged sword right on one hand we want to talk about being single in a way of if you can reach a place where you feel empowered by being single and you feel independent and like you have control over the life you live and control over your own happiness all those things you know being single is way better than being in a relationship that it's an unhappy or unhealthy relationship but just going back to something that you said this idea that it's like almost anti-feminist it is okay to acknowledge the fact that some people feel lonely and they are looking to be in relationships and it's something that they fundamentally want in

their life because you know when we talk about relationships all the time we often preach and Britt and I have both done this like we preach that you know you have to get to a place where you're okay with being single where you know it's great to be independent it's great to know and to value all the things that you bring before being in a relationship yourself but I do think that socially we put so much importance on relationships we have placed relationships as a almost like an indicator of success there is what success have you had in your work life and there is what success have you had in your personal life and hugely that personal life is romantic relationships and I think secondary to that is our friendships and I wish

that dynamic would change but I think birthdays and new years particularly are these real milestone moments that can make people feel incredibly lonely when they don't have the thing that they want and I want to reiterate the conversation we had on last year's episode it's okay if you do feel lonely in those moments and you're not a failure for wanting to have something that you don't have and I guess it's just this nice reminder that life is not static just because you're you're not where you thought you would be this year doesn't mean that you won't be there next year and just riding that wave that is so true we say like amongst ourselves it's insane how quickly things can change yeah and like they can change in the most positive of ways as well

and I think that that's what I've kind of experienced this year in particular but another thing I realized was that like I said earlier I had really gone into birthdays and I would say it to everyone around me like oh I'm not really a birthday person like I don't really want to do anything for it. And I don't really want the fuss like, you know, that's not who I am. Over the weekend, I went out for dinner with my brother and my sister-in-law. They came to Sydney. We went to this beautiful restaurant. And then I was taken out for dinner last night as well by my boyfriend. And I actually felt the most special I have felt in such a long time. And I kind of realized that I think I actually was saying those things about my birthdays in past years.

because I was almost trying to decrease the expectation that I had of how I would feel on the day for myself as a protective thing yeah as a like if I tell everyone it's not a big deal and like I don't want to expect anything and I'm going to set the bar low I actually think that it was more so me trying to protect feeling disappointed if those things didn't eventuate like if I actually was a bit like huh you know because the thing is is that when you are single and I guess I only realized that this morning because I have been single for my last quite a few birthdays but like I woke up this morning my boyfriend was there and the first thing he did is give me a cuddle give me a kiss and say happy birthday and I was like oh my gosh this feels so

nice but when you're single you wake up and there's no one there saying that to you if you wake up early you probably don't have any texts on your phone and so you just like get up and do your normal thing and like it's a normal morning and then you know you might have these friendships from people you might not you might not have that many people that are that close to you in your life and so I think it's I don't know it's just something that I've been thinking about and this morning I was like I think I actually tried to set the expectations so that I wasn't disappointed myself more so than anything this is such an important reminder to people as to why we should especially as we get older never deprioritize our friendships because we do this so much it's so

common especially for women that they get into relationships and then they deprioritize their friendships because they get sucked into the bubble of love then they get sucked into the romance of their new relationship because we put romantic relationships on a pedestal but the thing is is like romantic relationships are not necessarily always a guarantee you might be with this person for a year not you specifically you know all of us if you might be with someone for a year you might be with them for 10 years you might be with them for 15 years but at some point that relationship may run its course and so if you abandon all your other friendships the friendships that will be there through all of the rough times that your romantic relationship

will go through and all the changes that your romantic relationship will go through then you do have those periods in life where you wake up and you go who else do I have around me and going back to this idea of success and how I would say throughout my whole life I thought having a romantic relationship was the pinnacle of success in terms of my personal life having a relationship that was like a good relationship that was going to give me a family that was going to end in marriage like all the things I have with Matt I would have put that at the top of the apex of what was success in my personal life but I think over the years I've realized just how much my relationships with my girlfriends which is equally at the top of the apex for all of those

reasons which is why we're getting down and dirty for Keisha's 30th on Saturday we're going to a bottomless margaritas and down the road Matt and his podcast Matt is like now in love with his podcast co-host Ash because I never see him or hear from him again because he's always like in the backyard on the phone to Ash my worlds collide here because for anyone who doesn't know I also edit two doting dads which is Matt and Ash's podcast so I have this world like we have a group chat that we talk in every day and I feel like I'm creating a really beautiful friendship with your husband but I also feel as though I'm getting to know a different side of you because I hear all these stories about you via all of his cooked experiences with his wife who

is absolutely neurotic not neurotic but yeah both of them are going to come to my birthday party and we're going to have a bloody ball I'm so excited now I feel like a bit of a wanker because I'm like I'm having a party and everyone's coming but I'm really excited and yeah look I guess my point of why I wanted to chat about this is because last year I did get on here and say like you know I don't want to be the type of person that evaluates my success because I'm not in a relationship because it doesn't live up to what I expected my life to look like but the truth is I actually do think it's a big component of why I feel so different because I think if I was turning 30 and I hadn't you know found a person that I can see a future with and that I'm making future

plans with I do think that I might feel a bit differently and that's just the truth like I'm not proud of it being that way because I used to think that the pillar of success came from other people looking in you know like my family being like why don't you have a boyfriend yet yeah when are you gonna meet someone but the thing is is what you don't realize is like that sort of external judgment only reinforces it is compounded by other people's opinions it is compounded by when your family and your friends or anyone says like oh like let me get on your tinder and let me to have a play and try and find your boyfriend or your parents questioning why you're not in a relationship yet I definitely have switched the way that I'm going to approach these situations for my friends

who are single I'm gonna make more of an effort on their birthdays because I know that they're waking up and no one's cuddling them kissing them and saying happy birthday so to all of Keisha's friends she'll be in your bed sucking your toes happy birthday to you I want to read out of you happy birthday to Brit happy the biggest happy birthday yeah sorry that you're having an ultrasound for your birthday I would sing you happy birthday but I wanted to read you this review that we all got guys if you listened to last week's episode you would have heard that We sang all of the Miss Her lyrics that you sent in. They're amazing.

But Sophie Fran had this to say, the singing is unbearable. Please never, ever do a singing episode again. And to you, Sophie, I say I can't promise anything, but there won't be one for a while. And I'm really sorry if it was that offensive to people. Being honest, you have a nice singing voice. No, that's a lie. No, yours is nice.

I will, I mean, I feel like I'm really putting Brit under the bus here, but she is aware of it. She's a little tone deaf. She's a little tone deaf. She gave it a crack. You know what? I'm more proud of her for trying to sing because when you can't sing and you're aware of that, it can be kind of embarrassing.

Khloe Kardashian on one of those episodes of the recent series of Kardashians, she was like, where's the auto tune? Where's the auto tune? And she said it about 17 times and I was like, Khloe, we get it. You can't sing. Like everyone else is just taking the piss and having a bit of fun. They made a Christmas album. And she refused.

I noticed that they didn't have any of her singing on the actual show So I reckon she's gone to producers and been like, don't you dare let any of that audio go to air. Well, that is actually, that's how Brittany should have behaved after listening to last week's episode. And I had to like go and do the second lot of editing on it. I was like, oh yeah, this shouldn't go out to the world, but we're going to do it anyway. Well, look, like I said, Britt is on the interview that we did today and we have such a beautiful

episode, like interview to get into. We interviewed a woman. She's from the UK. Her name is Lottie Bowser. I've been following Lottie for quite a while on her Instagram account. and her story is beautiful and completely devastating at the same time. I mean, I don't even know if you could call her story itself beautiful, but I think her journey towards recovery, discovering herself and the way in which she talks about dealing with trauma is really

beautiful. What we're talking about on today's episodes is we're talking about grief. We're talking about loss of a loved one. And I think Lottie is probably one of the first people that I've seen on social media talk about grief so openly because as a society it's something that is hidden away especially death of a loved one death can make people so uncomfortable talking about it makes people so uncomfortable people don't even want to bring up asking how someone is once someone has passed away and the reason for that is because we think oh we don't want to make that person feel uncomfortable we don't want to make that person cry but if you have ever lost someone who is incredibly close to you and in this case Lottie lost her fiance Ben during COVID

I will wait and let her tell the story but she said goodbye to Ben wearing a hazmat suit in Mexico by herself it's incomprehensible what she went through during the loss of her fiance but the thing is is if you've ever lost someone who you love you're never not thinking of them it's never a bad thing to have someone ask you one if you're okay or how you're coping or bringing up their almost their memory because it gives you an opportunity to keep their memory alive I think the thing I love so much about the way Lottie spoke about grief is she spoke about this idea that we've been sold on the stages of grief and what grief looks like and how there's almost like a linear pattern to it but in her experience she said that she thinks that the seven stages of

grief are absolute bullshit because on one day she might be feeling better and the next day there's two steps backwards and it's almost like a wave of which you kind of move through grief but you never actually get over it you just acquire more skills to be able to live through it and also Lottie she calls herself the widow sister of Elodie Pullen so many of you would be familiar with Elodie's story she lost her partner Chumpy and now she has a little baby Minnie who is Chumpy's daughter but they connected through their mutual grief via social media and they have written a book about it as a way and a tool for people to be able to deal with their own loss their own trauma and what grief does. It's funny you mentioned that connection with Elodie because I think that was

something Lottie sought out to feel less alone and through listening to Lottie I really it's not that I hadn't considered it as much as I don't think I'd realized the depth of how isolating and lonely grief can make you feel and she also spoke about how you can support someone who has lost someone you know someone that you love that might have lost a partner or a parent or you know anyone in their life she spoke about how like there seems to be quite a lot of attention around the initial stages of it you know and then you have the funeral and then everyone else's life other than the people in this nuclear circle they kind of go back to normal you know they go back to work and they go back to their daily routines and they go back to dropping their kids off at school

but their world is entirely changed beyond belief Lottie said that even going to the coffee shop that they used to go to was a really hard experience for her and she kind of spoke about the best way to support someone that you love going through it and it's this constant checking in over the course of time not I and I feel as though it was something that made me go I need to check in on the people that I love that have lost someone because I haven't checked in on them for six months you know and I might still be struggling and I think I really realized well it was a little bit coincidental I said just previously when we're talking about birthdays that I have a loved one that passed on my birthday oh sorry

um yeah so to give a bit of context as to why i just got really upset i lost a stepbrother of mine um through suicide uh quite recently and i realized when i was editing this chat that it was about that time of the year and i hadn't checked in on my other stepbrother that i'm quite close like i just love him so much and i realized that i hadn't checked on him because you know life is busy and and I I guess I was just it was just this really important reminder I think listening to Lottie I text him and I was like hey I just wanted to message you today tell you that I love you really hoping you're not feeling alone I know this time of the year is going to be really really hard yeah yeah and then we kind of spoke a bit about his brother

and it was really beautiful to relive the happy bits and like talk about those happy bits but yeah this this episode came at a good time for me to kind of remind me thank you Lottie you did a very good job of reminding me that I need to keep checking in on the people who have lost people um I love you I'm so emotional today oh my gosh you're not I shouldn't have worn mascara I love that you shared that Keish because that was sort of the biggest message I took as well and I think so many of us can be guilty of it you know everybody is going to lose someone that they love in life we all are and because grief and loss is not really talked about and death is something that we so fundamentally avoid it means that once that initial shock like once the

earthquake subsides and a bit of time passes so many of us don't do the due diligence and like you said unless you were at the center of it everybody else's life goes back to normal and whether it's a grandparent or whether it's a relative or whether it's a friend of a friend like, like I said, we're all going to lose someone at some point. And I think that this is just such a beautiful, beautiful episode to listen to, which will one, if you have experienced grief, it will make you feel less alone. But if there is someone in your life who has, it'll give you the tools to understand what you should do in order to better support the people that you love. Okay. With, I promise there's not a lot of crying in this. Lottie has done a very,

doesn't cry at all Lottie has done an amazing job of getting to a point where she can talk about her story where it's almost compartmentalized but we will do the crying for everyone um now there was something before we get into this interview I wanted to talk to you about Keish because I think going back to kind of what you touched on at the beginning this idea of how we prioritize relationships and also how socially there's almost like these rules of like what we deem as successful but we spoke about this on last week's episode was it last week I don't know It was a few weeks ago. Keish, we spoke about how you've been with Toblerone

for quite a while now and the words I love you have not been dropped. Even though you're crying about him on a podcast, we still haven't said I love you. We're not there yet. Now, I know that you guys are playing the waiting game as in, well, I think you're playing the waiting game and he's oblivious to it.

So one of my friends messaged and they were like, what are you going to do if he listens to the podcast? And I was like, oh, no, we've spoken about he's not to listen to the podcast because I talk about how much I love Stephen Bartlett. Speaking of which, if you know who Stephen Barlett is, we're interviewing him soon. Keisha and Britt recently just interviewed him and it's going to be phenomenal. So that's coming out in a couple of weeks. Highlight of my life. That episode is coming to you very shortly. I think it's next

Tuesday, actually. He's the, for anyone who doesn't know, he's the host of the podcast that I bang on about all the time called Diary of a CEO. Anyway, he was just the best. Okay. Well, that's coming next week. But this week, what I want to talk to you about Keisha, now you said that you were waiting to say I love you, there is a standoff that is currently happening. Toblerone is unaware that he needs to say I love you first. I thought it was going to happen this weekend. I thought it was going to be in some of the moments,

like I really am so grateful for the way he treated me on the weekend and we had some really beautiful conversations and I was like. I love you wasn't one of them. Yeah, it wasn't one of them. I thought maybe it would happen. But I am in the position where I'm like zip those lips, girl, you talk too much, wait until he says it first.

Okay. Well, if you do wait until he says it first, you would be of the majority. So there's been a new study that has come out that has found that men in heterosexual relationships are usually the first to say, I love you. Really? Yes. Which is in contrary to popular belief, because I think wildly people assume that is the woman who says it first. Now this study was published in the Sage Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and it interviewed over 3,100 people. And of that, the vast majority, and this is across multiple countries. So we're talking australia brazil chile colombia france poland and the uk the only country of which women were more inclined to say it first was france every other country men are getting in there

with those three little words that is so weird because there's the cliche that french men are the most romantic yeah true most people say it within 69 days into the relationship while women what a great number to land on maybe it was during a 69 that they say it for the first time yeah it was a typo it wasn't on the 69th day it was during the 69th um guess who's just walked into the studio happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday we're not allowed to sing anymore we're gonna say britney happy birthday to you oh you sounded like marilyn monroe then guys thank you that was a beautiful rendition of something i'm not sure how was getting internally probed this morning thank you so much producer kisha for stepping in i have had a wild morning

what a way to kickstart your birthday with a probe in your vajayjay you're cute yeah it was a fun little morning but it took a very long time i'm obviously very i'm trying to win you guys over with coffees here to buy back your love because obviously i wasn't here this morning that's okay we've had a cry we're good i cried too we started on a low we okay let's get back on track so the reason why i wanted to unpack this is because i thought yes it sounds i mean it's who cares right okay men say i love you more but the thing is the more that you unpack this and you look into it the reason why i think men say i love you more or first sorry is for the same reason that men will propose it's because socially women have been we've almost been given this tag that we are needy

that we are desperate, that we are too much. And for fear of coming on too strong or coming on as like the crazy women will take a backseat and not say, I love you. Even if they do feel it because they don't want to be branded as too much. Spot on. I have nothing more to add. Like the truth is, and then, you know, again, something I feel a little not that empowered by is that I'm just terrified that if I say it and he doesn't, I'm going to feel like there's this weird power dynamic shift in our relationship and that you know it'll just make me feel a little bit full-on but i also think it ties back to this idea of being chosen like for so long especially when you think about a woman walking down the aisle being given away by their father like there's

this idea of being chosen and this is very heterosexual relationships chosen by a man very few women and i know there are some but very few women will propose to a man first and i can't tell you the amount of ask uncut questions that we receive by women who are waiting for their partners to propose. And they're literally waiting because they don't want to do it themselves. There's this expectation that their partner will do it, but they're unhappy with how long it's taking. And I think that this all ties into it. And it's all part of this idea that women are perceived as being too much if they're the ones to say it first. I wonder if Rita Ora has set a new trend because Rita Ora recently, well, a year ago,

she proposed to her now husband so they got married but she did it and she's only just recently said that so nobody knew they got engaged right no one talked about the story then they got married and it was only in the last I think four or four to six weeks that she came out and said well I proposed because the moment was there and I didn't want to wait and I wanted to marry him and he said yes immediately and I thought that was really cool like someone that's in Hollywood somebody that people aspire to be that has all these influences like it's cool if you ladies want to propose i i absolutely agree and i also think it just it pertains back to this idea of the patriarchy but it really does this idea of like men need to do things first

women are submissive women wait for their turn and all of this ties into the same thing so for me i was not surprised by these statistics but i think it was interesting to unpack the why behind it i mean officially i said i love you first to ben now this is like an area of contention because we like to fight it out and I like to pretend I didn't but I did I definitely did by accident yes but I still meant it and then I took it back because healthy I was like I retract my statement no but I think I didn't want to say it first for that exact reason I wanted him to be the one that did it but then there's a part of me and I don't know if it happens when you get older where you just don't give as many fucks anymore about a lot of stuff I don't know I don't know if that flows

over for everyone into relationships I think that there are such like social norms in how women and men behave in relationships that are so deeply ingrained in us that I think for some people yes you don't give as many fucks but for some people it's we're just conditioned to behave in a certain way totally and when I say I don't give as many fucks I still wanted him to do it like I still wanted that that was still ingrained in me for him to do it first but then the moment sort of just flew out and I thought oh well who cares okay what about like for a proposal for example would you Did you ever see yourself being like, Ben's taking too long, so I'm going to do it?

I would 100% not do it. I love this. I love how we're all talking about being like, you know, fuck the patriarchy, do what makes you feel good, self-empowerment. Yeah, you should be the first one to say I love you if you feel that way. You should be the one happy to propose. And then both of us are sitting here being like, I'm actually terrified. Yes, but, like, I mean, it's the same conversation we had

at the beginning this idea of like when you said that you used to feel unhappy around birthdays and now you feel infinitely happier because you're in a relationship we have this milestone it's so easy to preach one thing it's so easy to say how we all should behave and i i listen to podcasts and i know we've done it in the past brit giving advice is so fucking easy following that advice and living that advice and being an example of the things that you say is really really hard and i think everybody not just us but literally everybody is guilty of that from time to time yeah and I feel a little bit like a hypocrite but that's exactly what it is actually I feel a bit like you're not practicing what you preach and you know when they say it's so easy to give advice to

other people when you don't have skin in the game yeah I'm living proof of that today I genuinely think just thinking about this now like not being funny I want Ben to propose but that's because we've only been together a year if I had been with my partner for a very long time and it hadn't happened yet and an engagement was something that was really important to me and you know we knew we were going to get married but he just wasn't pulling his weight then I would probably do it I think if it was a longer term situation but it's just for now it's so new I really want to unpack what you just said you said if he wasn't pulling his weight and that's because we have this expectation that that's what the man is supposed to do they're the one who's supposed to yeah do

the romantic proposal and like but guys this dates all the way back far far before this example that i'm gonna give but you know the idea of being a wallflower the idea of being a wallflower is being at a dance and sitting at a dance waiting for a man to come choose you and no man chooses you so you're just a wallflower you're left sitting on the seat it's my year six formal over again but this is what i mean this idea of being chosen in heterosexual relationships permeates all these different dynamics of what it constitutes a relationship it's from the very early days it's from being asked out on a date it's from taking the very first step it's from making the first move all of these little mini milestones have been placed in the hands of men and I think

that that is starting to evolve and like you for example you have been like the biggest advocate for like shoot your shot and ask a guy out on a date but that is definitely against what socially we have been taught and what we've been taught is that if a man wants to he will and he will ask you end of much to consider no yeah yeah I mean I'm still about shoot your shot in every aspect I think fucking shoot it and if you get shut down and you're back to the wall flower that's okay you go back to the wall for a hot second and then you peel back off and you get back out there oi before we get into it i just cried as well do you want to know why because you're really hormonal yeah but that's not why so quick little update then we get into

the episode my follicles are still really small which is that's not why i cried so it just means i need more hormones right like they track them they throw the vagina probe up there they track the follicles they're still too small i've only got seven of them so it's not a lot and then because i went so over in the timing to get back to my car i got to my car and i could see the parking man there and i was like no and i ran up to him and he hadn't like he was just about to do it and i said please sir it's my birthday and he was like it's too late you've gone over and i was like it's my birthday and i have small follicles he's like what i'm like he's like and now you have $120 parking fine. I was like, please don't, my follicles are small and it's my birthday and I

couldn't get back here in time because my follicles are small. So then I got in the car and I tried to drive away and he went out into the road behind me. I could see in the rear vision mirror taking photos of my car. He didn't. What a fucking jerk. Yep, small follicles and all and he still took photos of my car. Is he kidding? And then I cried because I was like, now I've got $120 parking I'm so looking forward to introducing today's guest Lottie Bowser now she's originally from London she's a writer she's a podcaster and in late 2020 Lottie tragically lost her partner Ben one thing that I think is so courageous in the way Lottie speaks about her experience in losing the love of her life is how she speaks about grief and trauma and being that she was so young when

she became a widow herself. I think that it's one of those experiences that unless you have lived it yourself, you can't even imagine to relate to. But also the part about this conversation that I'm looking forward to sharing with you is how do you support people in your life who are going through grief? Because often we are so conditioned to turn away from it and we don't know how to deal with death and loss because it's so scary and it's something that's not really spoken about very often. Lottie, welcome to Life Uncut. Thanks, lovelies. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I mean, I know I mentioned this to you before we got on, but I've really been looking forward to having this conversation with you because I remember coming across

an Instagram post that you did quite a few years ago. And it was something that you said about grief at the time and about comparisons that people make that I had this moment where I was like, I'd never heard anyone speak about it in the way that you did as openly as what you did on social media. But before we get into all of that, can you take us back a little bit to talk about how you met your partner Ben and what your relationship was like yeah I'd love to I love any opportunity to talk about him I feel like this is how we keep our people alive right so Ben and I met when I was 24 I'm 33 now so nearly 10 years ago nothing romantic about it we met on a dating app both of us swiped right went on our first date and within a month I think we were official

like things moved quickly this is not how it usually works on dating apps yeah I was I have to say I got really lucky but I'm a big proponent of them because you know it fucking works I feel like this is proof that you know you can meet amazing people I'm a dating app love story as well yeah oh I think dating apps are great me too yeah I think they get a bad rap I feel like as much as there's many people on there who are looking for a good time there are just as many people on there looking for relationships because 99% of the population are on there yeah there are loads of fuckwits on there like don't get me wrong like you have to go through the turds but like you can get your love story yeah you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff for sure but yeah I think

it was maybe like the second date that I'd been on on this particular app and yeah things moved quickly as I said we were official within a month I think we were living together within three months because we were spending like five six nights out of seven with each other like carting you know dirty underwear across other sides of London when we were staying at each other's houses and we just thought you know fuck it let's move in and the rest was kind of history we had four and a half magical years together throughout my early mid-20s and then yeah shit went south in July 2019 which I'm sure we'll get into but it was beyond my wildest dreams you know it's so weird now in the wake of everything that's happened because I remember thinking to myself often and

my friends remember me even saying this to them out loud, you know, it just feels too good to be true. It feels too good to be true. I feel like the bubble's going to burst and lo and behold, it did. How do you feel when you look back at that now, when people say that to you and when you really did feel like it was too good to be true, do you still feel like that can be something you could live by or has that been tarnished for you? I think it's really difficult to reconcile with the fact that bad things can happen to good people you know that's been really difficult particularly with you know putting myself out there again dating again opening myself up to love again the notion that oh my god like this too can end is kind of terrifying you know I think

people that experience a trauma or a loss of any kind have a really hard time with that it's one of those really weird things because you know when it did happen when he did die I was like oh fucking hell there was a part of me that kind of knew it was gonna end this way and then maybe this is a conversation for another time but when you think about past lives and contracts soul contracts things like that I'm really into all of this stuff it's been a big part of my recovery and coming to terms with losing Ben but you know was it gonna always happen I don't know it's it's it's a curious question right that I've I've sat with for some time before we get into kind of like where your life is like now and how you have dealt with the not even dealt with but how you've lived

through the trauma of it what was Ben like who has been as a person oh my god like magical and you know what people will probably roll their eyes and think yeah yeah you know hindsight rose tinted glasses but you ask anyone who knew and loved the guy let's say loves right because the love still continues he was just magnetic like a really special human being just left like this sparkly afterglow in his wake you know the kind of person that when he entered a room the attention was on him just really beautiful beautiful soul beautiful inside and out and just had a real zest for life and it's something that really comforts me and there's not a lot you know there's not there's not much consolation really when you lose somebody so young he was 36 when he died but he really

grabbed life by the balls you know he had a pretty extraordinary life as a music agent which granted him opportunities that some people in 80 years wouldn't be lucky enough to have so I take some comfort from that you know he had a very fulfilling life albeit short. It hits home when you put a number on it doesn't it when you say 36 when you died and then you think of how old we are now and the people in your life that are that age would be very confronting I can only imagine how many years were you together before he got sick? So I think we were about four and a half years in when the first diagnosis came around it was July 2019 and then it was 16 months from that diagnosis to his death it's very quick really but I think we just celebrated our sixth anniversary when he died

so when he had his first diagnosis I'm guessing life is just all perfect and you have this plan about your future and what your future looks like and what you're building towards and then all of a sudden you find out that your partner's sick but they don't seem sick so what was it that happened and what was that process at that time like? I was giving him a massage actually a few months before the diagnosis and I noticed that this lump was protruding from his skin between his shoulder blade and his spine and I mentioned it to him and because he was a martial artist he did a lot of jiu-jitsu he dislocated his shoulder a number of times over the years we just assumed that maybe it was some fatty tissue or some tissue that hadn't kind of healed properly from one of

previous dislocations and we shrugged it off we thought nothing of it he took a break from training for a while and we thought you know let's just see what happens let's see if it goes away fast forward a couple of months and it didn't he got an opinion from the doctor who said it was nothing to worry about that it was a fatty lipoma another month passed and I was like you know what I think you should get a second opinion on that just to see because it's not going away feels like it's getting bigger even and he was fast-tracked through a diagnostic process he had an MRI scan he had a biopsy taken and this is all within the space of two weeks I think that's when things began to turn slightly and we started to worry that you know for doctors to flag it and

rush you through a diagnostic process there's clearly some concern here and it was only a few days after we got back from Glastonbury Festival that we had this follow-up appointment at a hospital just outside of London we went cancer was like the last thing on our minds I think we'd obviously entertained it but we shrugged it off we thought there's no way you know he's 34 and a half he's really healthy he works out he didn't smoke you know he drank no more than the rest of us so it just didn't make sense for it to be anything serious and it turns out it was it was a stage three malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor which is a real mouthful it's a very rare type of soft tissue sarcoma which again I'd never heard of before was there

a part of you though at that time when you'd already been to a doctor and a doctor had said it's fine it's nothing was there a part of you that felt angry that was like we thought that this was something and then it was passed off as nothing like was that a reaction during this process? Yeah, it's terrifying. You know, after he died, there was just like months of rumination, you know, oh my God, what if, what if, what if? There was so many different points, so many forks in the road, different decisions that were made that could have been done differently. And for a long time, I tortured myself wondering, well, could the outcome have been different? You know, if we'd have caught it sooner, if we'd have done this instead of this, it's just one of those

things that you have to let go of you know because it causes so much needless suffering on top of the pain but yeah quite possibly but then doctors are just humans right and they make mistakes and that's what's so scary and I think you've really got to trust your instincts and advocate for yourself if you do suspect that anything is up you know because they don't always get it right and it obviously is extremely rare which means your doctor probably had never come across it in their entire life. Like I'm assuming you went to your local doctor or GP or somebody like that. Yeah. Getting this diagnosis and this whole process, was this before COVID or was this just as COVID was starting? This was before COVID. So it was July, 2019.

He had surgery a month later. It went well, but again, the doctors don't really give you any clear indication. You know, they don't say, right, everything's done now. You're healed. You can sort of sail off into the sunset. He had radiotherapy that was meant to be the insurance policy to stop it from coming back we were told that you know should things have gone well it would be years before we could expect any recurrence radiotherapy I think finished mid-November we flew to Australia just after Christmas a few weeks later got engaged and started that new year on a high thinking we'll just look back at that year as like the time that you had cancer you know yeah crazy what a crazy you survived yeah like wild but you know we can move forwards now everything's

done we can clap our hands and just get on with our lives and three months later COVID hit I think maybe two weeks into the national lockdown in England and we went for a routine scan it was the day after his 36th birthday and that's when we were told that the cancer had spread to his lungs so it was just three months after finishing radiotherapy which gives you an indication right of just how unstoppable and aggressive this disease was to be honest I went into those doctor's appointments with my fingers in my ears I was just like la la la I'm in denial I don't want to know about stages I didn't even google you know this particular cancer I was like Ben is going to be the exception to the rule because there are people that defy the odds right and turn

around terminal diagnoses like days from dying so I'd always hope that Ben would be that person it's so interesting to hear that you were very much in denial because I guess I mean on one hand maybe now in retrospect you look at it and you go that you're in denial but maybe at the time you process it as being positive like we're gonna beat this and we're gonna do this together what was that period then like so the cancer had metastasized to his lungs was he admitted for treatment were they able to treat or was it very much like there's not much more that we can do at this point so when you receive a terminal diagnosis really the only outcome really that you're aiming for is to extend your life right so there's no talk of any cure by that point they proposed doing

surgery to remove some of the tumors so ben had a big lung surgery i think maybe a month after but you know any time left between receiving treatment is time during which the cancer progresses so really it was you know every day every week counted for Ben but this was you know at the height of the pandemic and it was still a pretty unknown you know entity like no one really knew what it looked like what the impact of it would be and of course because our national health service in england was overrun with covid patients cancer was kind of put on the back burner i think there's something like maybe 80 000 surplus needless deaths oh my during that time cancer deaths because of the delays to treatment yeah it was really fucked up so i think you know had it

not have happened during the pandemic again another what if yeah but it happened so we just have to deal with the facts as they come, right? The fact that it's COVID, like everyone struggled in some ways, but I can only imagine the tenfold of the isolation that he would have experienced and you would have experienced. We were together, just the two of us in lockdown trying to navigate all of this. We couldn't have family or friends come and support us. And, you know, they say raising a baby takes a village. It takes a village to navigate a cancer diagnosis or any serious illness you know you need support and so we were very much reliant on each other for that and I think it was really difficult for both of us to try and hold space for the other person's experience

whilst navigating our own thoughts and feelings around it but I think in retrospect I feel that I because I was so intent on Ben healing that perhaps I didn't give him enough space to express his fears and there is this rhetoric isn't there when discussing cancer I think there's this discourse around like cancer patients being brave and needing to be strong and you know and actually what if they're just fucking terrified and need to have that kind of held it's also I've heard you speak about it in terms of like the language that we use around like fighting a battle that we've lost a battle that you've lost your battle to cancer and it's as much as people fight hard to stay alive everyone is fighting hard to stay alive it's a roll of the dice as to who gets

better and who doesn't get better I did appreciate the way that you described that because it sometimes can imply that one person didn't fight hard enough absolutely yeah I feel very strongly about this and we've got to reconsider the language Ben didn't lose he's not a loser in all of this it's just that the outcome was that he died and the reality is we all die someday from something you know hopefully we all reach the finish line when we're 80 90 that's what ideally we'd all like to sign up for but yeah he didn't lose you know there's no winners or losers when it comes to cancer. When Ben's condition got worse you made the decision the two of you to go over to Mexico and to have treatment over there can you talk us through

what that period was like and also why you had made that decision so he'd had three cycles of chemotherapy with the nhs which is england's national health service it didn't work the cancer continued to spread like wildfire over the course of those months and his doctor said there's nothing else that we can do for you go home make arrangements get married and essentially wait to die and we thought fuck that you know so long as he's breathing there is hope right it's not over until it's over and so I spent the next couple of days at my computer furiously researching anything that could you know offer a little bit of light a little bit of that hope within a week we boarded a flight to Ibiza actually we had a little holiday in between

which was so needed that was his favorite place and the place we wanted to get married then we were in mexico and he went into a really grueling treatment program at this alternative center in tijuana which is on the west coast it's a border city just below san diego fucking wild out there it's like one of the most dangerous cities in the world i was going to say what a strange place to offer the treatment because when you think of tijuana you think of drug cartel and kidnapping and I know that sounds extreme but that's what it's known for no that is literally it but also come and have health as well it's like well I think because of its close proximity to America there's just loads of medical tourism you know they offer these kinds of treatments for

a third of a fraction of the price less than actually we were very fortunate in that we had done a lot of fundraising previously that funded the trip enabled us to explore these alternative to treatment. So yeah, he did that for a few weeks and things were looking good. It was the first scan over the course of those six months that showed signs of the cancer slowing down. In fact, some of the tumors had stopped progressing entirely. Some had even shrunk, which was just incredible. I can't explain how amazing that felt. And I'm really glad that Ben experienced that too, but he died believing that he was healing right I take a lot of comfort from that and so things were on the up you know finally after all these months of fighting then in a really cruel turn

of events we both started to feel unwell and his condition unraveled in 24 hours I think he was admitted to the treatment center overnight so that the doctors could monitor the cough he'd developed a few days prior and then all of a sudden the following morning he was struggling to breathe and he was transferred to the hospital on the other side of the city and intubated straight away and for anyone listening who doesn't know what that means he was put on a ventilator essentially he's tubed medically induced coma straight away upon admission there was no opportunity to even have a conversation about it you know we were separated at the doors to the intensive care unit and the next thing I know he was he was asleep he was on life support

and when was it that you found out that he had COVID so I think the following day I think within 24 hours yeah so I had no idea what happened you know just the evening before we'd been sat in his hospital room chatting he was obviously coughing and struggling a bit with that but you know he was here he was awake he was conscious he was Ben and it all happened you know it's really difficult for me even now almost three years later to access those memories I think that's a common thing when we experience trauma right we just lock it away somewhere in the recesses of our subconscious but I had no idea what the fuck was going on there were no answers and you're alone separated also with COVID and no idea what's happening or how to be with your partner yeah so obviously

the rules at the time were to quarantine for 14 days following a COVID-19 diagnosis so I was then in quarantine in a hotel room for the next two weeks by myself whilst Ben was on life support and he was on the ventilator for 24 days and every day was a fucking roller coaster you know critical stable it's just one thing after another pneumonia a super infection sepsis it's almost a month and all the while I'm just sort of you know sat in this hotel room twiddling my thumbs thinking what the fuck's gonna happen did you get to see him again at that point were you able to be with him at all even if he wasn't conscious were you able to be in the room so because Ben's case was so critical they did make an exception they allowed me to visit twice over

those 24 days I think you know for maybe half an hour at a time so yeah I was able to be there for an hour you know yeah and what's that I mean like I was even conscious in the way I asked it because it's like did you get a chance to say goodbye but it's like it's not even a moment like what are you in a hazmat suit, being there, unable to talk, unable to say all the things, especially when you've had this like false sense of hope that things are going to maybe get better. And then it's so drastically removed and taken away. Yeah. It was unbelievable, you know, how we arrived at that point after all of those months and then for COVID to be the thing that did it. and the reality is if Ben hadn't have had so much cancer burden in his lungs in his pericardial

space you know by that point it was in the lymph nodes I think it was much worse than we liked to think it was yeah of course if he hadn't have you know been a stage four cancer patient COVID probably wouldn't have impacted him as much I mean it would have maybe impacted him in the same way that it did me you know it was just a chesty cough a little bit of pain and that was it but I guess there's a part of you that can't think like that because it takes you back to what you said earlier where it's the what ifs there are so many what ifs that will eat you alive because you don't know what the outcome is what you know is what happened and so did Ben pass away on the 24th day? On the 24th day yeah the 14th of November he'd contracted

sepsis the longer that you were on a ventilator for the more likely it is for complications to eyes basically they want to get you off and that was also what was so tragic about it was that you know within a few days they were like you know he's doing well we're going to try and get him off the ventilator we're going to try and wake him up and actually we did have a phone call with him where he ever so slightly opened his eyes you know he was a little bit conscious the doctor believed that he could hear us and then things just got progressively worse so it was sepsis in the end that I think made everything snowball and in the end all of his organs shut down and his body just gave up you know couldn't take any more. Lottie how do you even begin to process that

oh I feel like I'm gonna cry how do you begin to process that like when you're on your own when you're in another country when you're scared you've all of the things and I think it's one thing to talk about being widowed but the amount of additional factors that you had to experience as well how do you process that how do you good question I just it's taken a lot of work you know I don't believe that it's just a matter of time healing the wounds I don't think they ever really heal as well I think it's just a case of well firstly integrating absolutely integrating the trauma and then learning to live with the wounds right yeah there's been a lot of stuff that I've explored you know that has helped there's definitely not one silver bullet but yeah

it was inconceivable you know and even now I have moments where I'm like fuck he's actually dead like it just doesn't make sense to me still I can only imagine as well like when you've experienced something like this that's so big and it's changed every part of your life and then you go outside and everybody else's life seems unaffected and it's like how can everybody else get on with their day and how does everybody else just move on with life when everything that is familiar to you is different now it's so bizarre I even remember the first moment stepping out of the hospital after going to see him after he died with one of my best friends Jazz who thank god for her you know she did fly over to be with me for a week or two before I just remember

thinking how is the world continuing to spin right now how are people going about their day how am I seeing trees lining the avenues and Ben can't see the trees you know and Ben can't see the blue sky and it was just it's the biggest head fuck it's almost indescribable how you reconcile with that when you received the call that he had passed on were you still by yourself in lockdown or were you out of lockdown and able to go to the hospital and be with people because I just can't imagine facing that on your own in a room yeah I was actually just sitting down for lunch in one of the local cafes close by to the hotel with Jazz when I received the phone call Lottie you've got to come to the hospital because we think Ben's about to pass away and

yeah there's a word to describe the experience that followed it's called a dissociative seizure where your body cannot cope with the amount of trauma and stress that it's under that you essentially black out right you have an episode of like complete dissociation where you are detached from your body your body might be shaking violently because your nervous system is so activated and you just you know your recollection of those events it's like there's just a memory lapse it's like time that I can't really account for and I can access the memories now but it's very fragmented it's almost like recounting a film right it's not really my life how do you now even with retelling and I know that you've spoken through your story many times like you've told the

story but how do you even now because I feel as though in the way that you say it like you're saying the words of what happened. And you can say it in a way where, I mean, I feel like I would be a blubbering mess, but maybe you get to a point where you have said it so many times that you're like, this is the process of telling the story to be able to get it out without having the tears and everything else that go along with it. People must think I'm a fucking psycho, honestly. No, not at all. I feel like it's like something you just said. I feel like you're telling the story like it's a movie and it wasn't your story like I feel like that's how you're recounting it because maybe it's how you compartmentalize things definitely and you know what this has been

a thing for me since day one really I've been very capable of recounting the events in a pretty articulate way you know without all of these emotions coming to the surface again I think that's a coping mechanism I think it's dissociation right just a complete detachment emotionally from what happened of course it's horrific right it will always remain to be so there's a lot of pain still of course attached to Ben's death him not being here anymore but I don't know I think for me it's been very cathartic as well you know in talking about it It's helped me to process more pieces of it as time has passed. What you dedicate a lot of time to now that you're writing books on

and you're speaking about is grief and coping with grief and how you move on. Can you talk to us about the stages of grief for you and what that time looks like after Ben's passing? Well, firstly, I've got to debunk the whole stages of grief thing because, like... You're like, it ain't true. It's not true, guys.

Wow. Because I think this idea of stages of grief, it's almost like this is a formula and then when you reach the last stage you'll be okay but I I don't think it could ever possibly work like that because maybe you go to stage three then stage one then stage seven and then you come back again and it all happens in not a nice clean order totally and also there's six stages right and like let me tell you there is a myriad of emotions that you won't have even felt prior to experiencing the death of a loved one right it is a complete clusterfuck and in any given moment you'll experience several of these at the same time

right and it is that it's back and forth two steps forwards you know 10 back you never know how you're going to feel in any given minute you know let alone a day also I don't think there's such a thing you know the sixth stage is acceptance and my interpretation of acceptance is reaching a place where you are no longer in resistance to what is right that's not to say that it will ever be okay that Ben died it will never be okay that my dad died 10 months after Ben but it just is what it is you know and I'm no longer resisting that but I think it's a lifelong thing really we don't get over the loss of a loved one how could we you just learn to live with it that's it. Lottie what was your friends and family like around this time because I feel

one of the things about grief is that nobody is taught how to deal with it and nobody is taught how to deal with other people's grief and seeing people in pain and suffering is something that makes everyone uncomfortable because we don't have the coping mechanisms for it how did you process that period and what were your friends and family like? I think what was really challenging for us was that obviously this happened during the pandemic I returned from Mexico and went straight into a four-month lockdown at my mum and stepdad's thankfully I wasn't on my own in our flat in London I made the decision to move back in with them for a while but there was an absence of community we couldn't come together we couldn't do all of the typical things you'd

associate with losing somebody we had a 30 person funeral at a distance behind masks that was recorded for people to watch at home and and that was really hard you know we couldn't hug we couldn't embrace each other we couldn't grieve as a community because yes I was somewhat in the center of it all I don't want to you know take away from other people's experiences of course Ben's family were absolutely devastated just like I was but you know my friends lost a friend as well in Ben so that was really hard but they were amazing at calling texting checking in sending care packages doing what they could with the circumstances that we were in at the time you know but it's definitely very revealing and you're right it's so unprecedented we don't talk about

death we don't really talk about difficult things I think in general so when they happen we're ill-equipped right we don't know how to navigate any of it some people were amazing and others weren't but you know three years down the line I'm more forgiving of that now because you just do your best right with the tools that you have. Did it change your relationship though with the people who weren't able or didn't come to you and I guess support you in a way that you might have expected or needed? Yeah I think what's been most surprising about it is that you expect something like this to bring you all together. And actually what it can do is it can cause fractures in relationships, right? Again, now in retrospect, I understand that that's because it's just unprecedented and

it's so difficult. People are trying to deal with their own emotions. Not everyone can hold space for other people. Actually kind of understanding that while people were willing to offer their support my grief was mine and mine only to carry there's this rhetoric that you're not alone but you kind of are you kind of are because yes people can walk alongside you and help you carry some of the burden of grief but ultimately there was nobody else that was ben's partner right so it is mine to carry i think that was actually quite empowering that realization i have to find a way to hold this and to move forwards on my own when you say there were people you thought would show up and it didn't what did it actually look like when people weren't there for you and the reason

I ask this is I think there are a lot of people out there that don't know who to be or what to be to someone when they're going through something traumatic were there specific things that you would have liked more was it that they weren't physically turning up but they're not giving you as much emotional support as you wanted was it no text no messages or did they just disappear what did it physically look like I think all of the above basically I think there is an assumption that the funeral offers closure to some degree bearing in mind a funeral is a few weeks after somebody dies you mean like oh you're done now like you've said your official goodbye and let's all move on kind of thing yeah it's like support like everyone kind of gathers around you in those

first weeks and then after the funeral unless you are like in the center of the impact zone life kind of picks up and you carry on and that's really hard for the people that are still kind of left in the rubble right trying to crawl their way out of the wreckage the support just starts to drop off and months pass you don't really hear from people anymore that's just really hard to reconcile with because you're still grieving and you're still grieving beyond the earmark you know so I think for anybody listening at home who has a loved one who's lost somebody just keep checking in as time passes. There must be something extra isolating about being so young and being a widow and I know that you found your community especially

with people online like reaching out and finding Elodie even though you are literally countries apart but having the fact that you're both so young and experience something different in its respects but in losing your partners did you feel at the time like well no one's going to be able to relate to this because most of the time when you think of someone who's lost their partner they're in their 50s their 60s their 70s and onwards you don't ever really hear about anyone who's in their 20s or in their 30s who's been widowed totally I felt so unbelievably lonely as much as my friends could offer their support and sit with me in my grief for a time they could then turn away from it they could go back to their partners that weren't dead and kind of carry on

with some semblance of normal. And I desperately needed to connect with other people that understood even a fraction of what I was experiencing, which is what led me to countless nights in the early hours, scrolling through Instagram, typing in hashtags, looking at different pages, reading the comments section, sliding into people's DMs. Hi, I've also lost a partner. If it would be helpful for you to speak to somebody I know that I would really like that too yeah and that's how all of these amazing friendships were cultivated but yeah it's incredibly isolating you're right you don't expect this shit to happen and there's nobody else you know bar the people that I've since met online as a result of this experience who'd gone through anything similar at my age

is that how you formed your friendship with Elodie who hit up who who slide into whose DMs it was me it was me first you slid in you know it was really interesting so I'd I'd followed Elle for some months before Chumpy died because Ben was in the music industry and he was friends with Fisher Elodie's best friend's husband's manager so yeah there was a few degrees of separation and anyway when Chump died I remember feeling so triggered because at this point this was in the midst of Ben's chemotherapy treatment and things were not looking good and I was looking at this young woman I thought fuck like this is like looking into the future I can't be you know I just can't expose myself to any of this and then when he did die I thought shit you know I need to I

need to contact this person so I messaged Fish's manager because we followed each other we'd met in IB for the years before and asked him to introduce us. What led you to write the book with Elodie because you you guys the two of you have co-authored book around grief what did you want to get out of that what was the purpose of writing the book together I think we just wanted to help as many people as possible because we'd been so open with our stories of loss and grief we were inundated with messages all the time people sharing their own experiences of loss and grief and we just wanted to reach as many people as possible you know so many people were going through similar things and we couldn't give our time to each and every person so yeah it was

a way to help others but also to help ourselves you know financially because it was a lot you know it was very time consuming and I loved it I loved feeling purposeful you know it gave me a sense of purpose to feel like I was in service to others and I could transmute this horrendous experience I'd been through you know to support others going through similar things but yeah and I think just offering the kind of support that we wish we had as well I feel though it must be such a huge responsibility and I don't want to say burden but I can only imagine that sometimes it is when you have so many people who reach out to you with their grief and their trauma and then you're always the sounding board for everybody else who's experiencing something that's horrible that

they're going through how do you deal with that is there ever a time where you're like I know that you're wanting to talk to me about this or you're sliding into my dms with your horrible thing that's happened but right now I'm still processing my own trauma and I can't give enough bits of myself to you I think I found a real sense of purpose amongst it all at the start but it definitely started to take its toll because you know every day it's like just relentless trauma dumping essentially yeah no I watched my husband get hit by a car my mum died of cancer just so much pain and yeah it reached a point where I had to pull back but it's died down a little bit now because I'm less you know there's so many other things that I want to talk about beyond death and

loss and grief they are exactly the most cheerful of subjects so yeah which um we feel bad now guys I am here willingly honestly what are your thoughts on trauma dumping because I think people can be guilty of it without realizing the impact that they have on other people when they share and we experience it from time to time it's that double-edged sword like very grateful to have a community where people feel so able to share and we actually had chloe fisher on recently we spoke about it in terms of fertility and in terms of miscarriage and loss like often when someone feels a connection to someone because they think that they can relate they think that that's an open avenue to share anything that's happened to them, but then sometimes forget about the burden that

has. How do you draw the line or how do you protect yourself, I guess, from trauma dumping and the impact that has on you? I think it's a case of just being aware of your own experience emotionally, mentally, and setting boundaries. You know, you don't need to engage with every single person. And I say you, I'm basically speaking to myself here. You don't need to engaged with every single person I think I definitely felt a sense of duty a sense of obligation to respond and to support everybody but you know I'm just one person you guys are just two people there's only so much you can do you know whilst trying to carry your own shit so what I try to do is gently guide people in the direction of resources other kind of avenues for

support well I guess that's why you write the book right so that there is a place that you can channel people to that doesn't take any more from you so three years has passed now and what does life look like for you now because you're in Portugal you've just moved to Portugal you've got your permanent residency congrats yeah do you know what life is fucking beautiful oh I love hearing that I like I could never have imagined reaching this point in those early days of grief all that I felt stood in front of me was an unending ocean of darkness right I'll never be happy again I'll never I'll never smile again laughing no like my life is over my life is over I'll never get close to anybody again god forbid should I ever be intimate with anyone again

all of the above has happened plan b is fucking amazing I very quickly realized that I couldn't stay in London it held so much trauma and pain for me every which way I turned you know our local coffee shop the tube station the cancer center the entire city held all of these memories most of them were good but most of them were extremely painful and I just needed to start over I needed a blank canvas you know with which to kind of reimagine my life again so I came on holiday it was the first holiday after Ben died once all of the restrictions had lifted to Lisbon which is where I'm now living I loved it so much and I thought you know what I don't know what's going to happen I don't know what my life is going to look like from here on out but I know that I have

to follow the thread of joy and by you know at that point it really was a thread I was hanging on by a thread but I thought fuck it you know the worst has already happened what's the worst thing that could happen in the wake of Ben's death I just took a leave and it has served me so well it's the gift that keeps on giving I love it here I'd always wanted to live abroad and Ben's work kept us tethered to London so when he died I thought god you know what I'm just gonna do it I'm gonna follow that dream to live abroad and to experience something different when you've experienced something so painful and you're so aware of what that hurt can feel like how do you get to a place where you allow yourself to maybe be hurt again, to date or to fall in love or all

of those things when you know how impermanent it can sometimes be? It's a good question. I think there is this duality that exists in the wake of a loved one's death, at least for me, in that, yes, of course, I am so aware, you know, that things can change in an instant, right? And you never really shake that off i don't think i think it softens over time but it's always there but what exists alongside that is this sense of urgency to reach for joy to grab life by the balls because of the fact that things can change in a second right and i think losing ben so young time isn't guaranteed as much as we'd like to think it is fingers crossed i am here tomorrow you know but I might not be so it's like his death galvanized me to like really just go for it you

know to dive in and that for me was also a way of honoring him you know doing it because he couldn't yeah eventually that then shifted a little bit I was very much living for Ben at the start but now I'm living for myself the big question are you dating now I am oh yeah he's great he's amazing yeah it's been a fucking journey let me tell you like dating after the death of a partner is wild it's definitely not been the easiest but yeah this is the hard launch guys I'm dating someone oh this is a hard launch I didn't know I saw the hard launch on Instagram I already saw a few little soft launches I've been soft launching yeah it must take someone who's very self-assured and is also very empathetic to be the person who dates you and I mean that by when there is somebody who

has passed away who you the only reason why you're not with them is because they're physically not here anymore it could be almost such a huge thing to live up to you know or the comparison to do you ever find yourself comparing or is it truly just that it's so markedly different that these things can live and be beautiful and joyful but separate oh um this is juicy so I think both I think yeah the comparison thing's really hard it's definitely softened over time but I've been so open about so much but this has felt very well firstly very difficult to navigate to reconcile with you know dating again lots of guilt compounding all of the confusion and and stuff but also it's felt very sacred you know something that I've kind of wanted to figure out myself

before I kind of I mean I don't know if anyone cares but you know before I kind of announce it to the public a lot of people would be caring because you shared so much totally of the of the hard stuff and and the trauma and so many people have come along you the ride for you I can only imagine the guilt that you feel but there would be I don't know who wouldn't be rooting for you to find some happiness after the darkness you've gone through honestly so I hope you never feel like anybody would judge you because I have no doubt that everyone just wants you to find your happiness again yeah and you know the reality is there's not a lot you can do about death you know can't bring Ben back so at some point you've got to move forward and it's a really unique

situation and that you know it's just so radically different to a breakup. This was the post that you put on Instagram quite a few years ago now and it was the thing that I read that I was like I cannot even begin to imagine how insensitive it is but I can understand that people are doing it as a way to relate almost saying like I went through a breakup that felt like a death you know it was so painful that I could relate in some ways and I remember you being like there is no comparison there is no breakup no matter how bad it could possibly be that could ever compare to a death but people still sometimes use it as a way of comparing pain as though it's comparable yeah and you know absolutely breakups can be savage right that's not to diminish anybody's experience I've

had some horrendous breakups throughout my lifetime but it's not the same it's not this let me tell you like the death of somebody it's harder I know we like to think oh but you know it's it's all relative and there are things in life that are just fundamentally harder right I understand how some people do feel the magnitude of the pain that comes with the breakup that like you said you know not all feelings are equal just because we feel like they might be they're not and I think the key is to just hold space you know to not rush in with that comparison because unless you have been through it and even then you know there's things that Elodie will have gone through that I haven't experienced and vice versa actually our process has looked very

different you know she experienced a lot of shock a lot of numbness for a long time and I didn't have that I don't think until much later just holding space which is really hard to do especially when faced with really uncomfortable emotions what do you think is the biggest thing I know this has changed everything about your life right down to where you're living and what you're doing but what do you think is the biggest lesson about yourself that you have taken from dealing with grief and living through such a huge loss I think there's that saying that you know you don't know what you're capable of until you're given no other option and for a long time I struggled with feelings of inadequacy feelings of self-doubt I think everyone can relate to that to some degree

right particularly as women but yeah I just feel kind of unstoppable now you know it's given me this resilience and this power that I didn't know I had so not to take away from how horrific it's been as well but it's you know there are some really beautiful things to have come from this experience and I'd have honestly slapped you if you'd have told me that at the start you know that I would learn lessons that there would be silver linings but there absolutely are I can see that now in hindsight how do you feel about the saying we've asked this to some other guests as well in the past but how do you feel about the saying everything happens for a reason oh my god do you want to tell them to get fucked yeah fuck your face like yeah it's the general consensus

like if anyone says that to you it's an instant fuck off literally are you fucking joking i love that response it's just so reductionist and so like i don't even take what i do kind of take it personally i do but think about all the billions of people on this planet suffering try telling that to you know a refugee that's been displaced that saw their entire family mutilated or like a starving child that literally starves to death how could you possibly reconcile with the fact that it happened for some higher purpose like no guys shit happens well the reason i ask is we spoke about it with chloe fisher also you know when you experience a miscarriage or you can't fall pregnant and or you want something so badly and it's not happening and somebody with

completely amazing intentions says it's for a reason like you have to take faith in something might have happened or been wrong or something better is coming and I think people need to become hyper aware of the things we do say to people in those situations because you need to understand that sometimes good intentions aren't just enough you do need to consider what you're saying and this is one of those things saying to somebody that has gone through such a loss and trauma that hang in there it happened for a reason you might not know now but you'll know later and I used to be that person 10 years ago because that's how I dealt with things in life I'm like it must have happened for a reason I'll know down the track but let's all consider what the terminology and

the words we're using when we're talking to people in these situations I think the big thing with this as well and from my experience is that often when people say it it's goes back to this idea that they're not very good at dealing with somebody else's grief and so they're using it as a tool to try and make it better to placate the grief that you're feeling because they feel like they need to say something. And it's like, that doesn't help. All that does is reduces it down to make me feel like the way I'm feeling is less significant. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you're right. I think it's a coping mechanism and we do have to consider people's intentions, right? Obviously they're just trying to offer some kind of consolation

and comfort, but yeah, it very rarely is comforting for me. It feels very dismissive and just fails to acknowledge all of the suffering that people experience and I think it's also a way we don't like to entertain the idea that maybe just bad things happen for no rhyme or reason that there is this innate randomness and cruelty to life you know and if we're lucky we'll reach the finish line relatively unscathed but you know maybe not I think that's really hard for us humans to reconcile with because we don't ever want to imagine ourselves being in a similar situation so it's like a way to kind of have control even you mentioned something at the very beginning and it felt too early to touch on it then but I'd love to know how you see things now you mentioned

that there's been many things that you have considered or researched or ideas that have helped you cope and I can't remember exactly how you put it but like you know spiritualities even that you have explored as a way of what your understanding is to make understanding or to make reason of everything that's happened do you ever feel like Ben is around like do you believe that there is some connection to him still or is there ways in which you are reminded of him during your days? All the time I've had some incredible signs some incredible conversations with mediums that have confirmed that he's here that our loved ones don't just cease to exist they don't just disappear into a void of nothingness like you know they might have shed their physical body but

they're very much around us at all times and for me entertaining the idea that ben was just he was just gone you know was enough to kill me right i like my survival felt as though it depended on it on making contact with him on receiving reassurance that he did still live on in some way so yeah i dived into a lot of different things lots of documentaries on near-death experiences past lives reincarnation a lot of books lots of mediumship sessions it's been incredibly healing for me the way that I see it now is that we're still a team yeah everything that has come since is as a result of loving Ben and losing Ben so he's still supporting me from the other side you know it's just that he's kind of handed the baton over and I'm doing our work

together I'm telling our story I'm you know living life on his behalf until we are reunited it's funny you know I don't mean funny but when we logged on we'll just tell everyone what happened at the start oh yeah when we logged on to do this chat with Lottie my phone and my computer we always put it on do not disturb so that when we do these interviews we can't get text messages we don't hear anything nothing can happen and the second my phone was ready it was on do not disturb my computers on do not disturb the second you logged on and we started to talk my phone started receiving messages the sound was out loud and we couldn't turn it off and I was like I'm sorry this has never happened and you were like oh it's probably just Ben it's Ben and you know I believe

in that I really do because I've had these things in the past and there's a part of me that thinks you know what that probably was Ben that probably he probably knows that I'm into this as well and we say we receive you know like receive yeah there's a lot of people out there right now that are going to think we're crazy and that but you know it's something that I can't deny you obviously can't deny it either and I think if that's what helps you get through your day like take it and run with it that's it like why not entertain the possibility that your loved one is still here that when you die you do go on to somewhere it sounds fucking great by the way it sounds so great where they are like have you had experiences or mediums or not examples necessarily but specific moments

where you're like that is something that was profound for me like only he would know that or only he would have those conversations so I'll just give you a bit of a debrief of my mediumship sessions I've had a few now straight away it was like I'm getting a b sound it's either a bob ben or a dan b or a d sound straight away she got ben's name she described him curly pear brown green eyes, was even doing his mannerisms and like speaking in the way that he spoke. He didn't like come through her, like some weird kind of, she wasn't possessed or anything. Nothing like that. But also just to rewind a little bit, I like to have one foot in this world, right? And one foot in that world. So I need facts. I need details. I'm not just going to see a feather and be like,

oh my god it's ben right or a rainbow it feels too generic for me to feel assured that that is definitely him so i actually booked our session using i think my sister's email address she has a different surname to me she's married so you know she couldn't do any googling couldn't find out about me or him or our story beforehand and anyway for two and a half hours she proceeded to tell me intimate details about his life my life our relationship his illness and his death she told me things that only ben and i knew about things that happened between the doctors at the cancer center the doctors at the intensive care unit at the hospital that nobody knew about you know so she actually came to the conclusion that your partner ben had died oh yeah yeah she was

like yeah she was like he had a random cancer it kind of started you know in the chest and then They had spread, but it wasn't that that killed him. It was a buildup of toxins in the body, which is essentially sepsis, which leads to the organ failure. He was asleep for the last month of his life. But, you know, you weren't in your home country. You traveled. You traveled to the other side of the world, I think, to explore treatment.

Oh, my God. And there was no way she could have? No, no, no. And I've since had sessions with her, and she told me that I'd meet somebody. She told me that I'd move. everything that has happened in my life she anticipated she'd already told me about she's very detailed so she got my dad's name she got ben's family members names and i'm not just talking a letter it's like steve your dad a lot of you know i'm gonna have to get these details from you

i'm gonna have to go see this lady 100 definitely i reckon everyone listening to this is going to be like give it to me first before she books out we can't send these details around everyone lydia must give you such a sense of not even a sense of but it must give you a moment where you're able to make a bit of sense of it a bit of peace almost from having these moments where you realize that we're so grounded here we put all of our purpose and all of our understanding of what we can see touch and feel and do but then to have these moments where you are able to sit down with someone who gives you a bit more insight into maybe where things are at now for ben for your experience. Do you get some closure from this as well? So much so. Yeah, I really do. And just

knowing, you know, what I really struggled to come to terms with was the suffering, right? And I think there's one thing that I will say is that I feel that there is an assumption that because you get to say goodbye, that it makes the loss easier, right? It fucking doesn't. Also, let's just do a little thought experiment here when somebody is lying on their deathbed and death isn't always you know yes it's a natural process but it's not pretty yeah right there can be a lot of pain involved what are you gonna do stand over the bed and wave bye then bye love you see ya you know it's not easier to see that and there was so much suffering for ben not least physical pain but the emotional turmoil of like staring his mortality in the face right so that was really

hard for me and this is definitely a manifestation of trauma I couldn't seem to reach a place of like that's over now he's died he's not suffering anymore what the medium was able to do for me was to assure me that Ben is no longer in that place in fact you know he's living his best life over there you get to be the best version of yourself there you can choose you know which version of yourself you are so you know he's got his gorgeous curly brown shoulder length hair back he's like really embraced his hippie side he's wearing the kimonos and yeah and I love that you know I love that and it brings me a lot of comfort Lottie you are absolutely beautiful and thank you so much for sharing I know we covered parts of it where one it's keeping his memory

alive but also too for you it's re-bringing up trauma and also re-inviting people to tell you theirs but we are so grateful for how courageous you are and also to hear someone talk about grief and to talk about loss but also to be able to talk about that there can be happiness that lives beyond that in a very different way I think is so incredibly powerful thank you so much for sharing all your story with us thank you lovelies it's been a pleasure honestly I'm so happy that we were able to make it work and an honor to be on your pod as well i love it i just listened to the episode that you had with chloe she's amazing she's amazing we love the darling shine girls they're yeah they're phenomenal they're beautiful we are going to link everything about you in our

show net to the podcast so the books and your instagram and where if anyone wants to have a look at you please don't harass lottie don't troll the dump but go and follow oh honestly guys i'm in a good place I do say my inbox is always open and it might be that yeah just manage your expectations all right it is time for our suck and our sweet you guys know that we never finish an episode without our highlight and our low light of what happened in the preceding week Keisha you can go first birthday suck and sweet I have a couple sweets I don't have much of a suck that's good you know what it's okay to not have a suck sometimes I feel like if we're just trying to shoehorn a suck in there if life's been good and then you're like yeah i had a bad coffee you sound

ungrateful yeah i've had a really like i've been really bloody grateful for this week my suck can be that i had delilah over the weekend and she got a bit smelly towards the end and then now my lounge smells like wet dog because she's you know when she you're at the dog park and she looks at you makes eye contact and then lays down in the puddle and you're like bro buster does that but his like thing to roll in of choice is duck shit so if he sees duck shit he knows and he'll look at you and he'll be like oh try and stop me and he's got the twitch and then he'll just and because he's got three legs when he lays down it's like the clumsiest thing you've ever seen he plops down he just like flops into the duck shit rolls around in it and he'll just have green smears all over

his white coat it's like kids when they pick up something they're not supposed to and you're like don't do it oh yeah and they make eye contact and do it anyway toxic trait buster covered in duck shit what's your sweet oh i have two one was that i had the most beautiful weekend with the people that i'm just the closest to i ate at two of the best restaurants in all of sydney i feel so spoiled i went to aria which is on sydney harbour jesus christ the fancy i didn't i had no idea my brother and sister-in-law booked it and i didn't know that it was like a mortgage it's the restaurant yeah it's fancy matt moran's restaurant yeah we love matt the second one i went to was one of Neil Perry's restaurant, Margaret in Double Bay.

I ate like a queen this weekend. I literally ate the best food I've ever eaten. Welcome to your 30s, Keisha. Yeah, that's what you do in love. No more cans of tuna for you, baby. But my other sweet for the week is that you and I got to interview Stephen Bartlett on Thursday Night Brit and it was the best. Laura and I have already spoken about it.

Don't worry. I've already shared my love for Stephen Bartlett. I was very left out while I was being assaulted by the probe. you guys could have all these chats and I don't know what you chatted about yeah Stephen Bartlett was a really good one well my suck I guess was that I missed the episode today which was really sad because I feel like I've been a bit MIA the last couple of weeks which is all purely because of the fertility shit my sweet would be I don't know can I just say it's my birthday I guess I had a great dinner with some friends last night Ben did a really cute thing that you guys were

involved with um he sent me a present and i wasn't allowed to open until midnight and then this morning i woke up to a video and he went and got all my friends friends that are here and then friends that are away and my sister and my family to record like happy birthday message and he sent me a video he put it all together he did an edit on the video you know he required it like two weeks ago and i was like how long is it going to take this man to edit this video he was like the deadline is the first of august to be fair though i only got a tim last like three to four days ago so he did good he splashed it all together he probably knows you as well everyone else probably got a deadline of three days ago but you got a deadline of a month ago oh no he was good he had

to remind us like he had to i was exactly the same as laura and i was like i'm so sorry i'll get it to you i'm sorry but what guy thinks of doing that it was so and frenzy hasn't met yet he like messy frenzy hasn't met to like get them i was really did it make you feel special on your birthday yeah it really did he really really did he was so chuffed he's like i have to watch your face as you watch it and he watched me watch it because he was like what he wanted to like see me happy he's like i just wanted to see you happy looking at your friends and i was like you're really cute. That's really beautiful. And then things spiraled out of control with the parking officer. And then it went downhill rapidly. What is your suck? My suck is that Lola has an ear

infection and has done for the past four days. I did witness that yesterday. Yeah, the poor little baby. So it's not a bacterial infection. It's a viral infection. I'm sure you're all hanging on the edge of your seat to know exactly what. We flew to Magnetic Island to go and spend some time with my dad. As you guys know, the koala, Terry Byrne. And it was like day one. She was just super restless had kind of come home from daycare the day before and was up every single night all night the devil incarnate yeah i was on the phone to laura and darling you could hear from down you could hear from the other end of the house like for me screaming mom screaming and then laura's like matt i'm on a meeting can you bring it to me you could hear that matt went to pick her up and

she's like don't touch me and matt was like i physically cannot even bring her to you i cannot pick her up to bring a dude yeah it was sad I mean on one hand it's like so nice being the favorite parent but on the other hand I'm like yeah not today kiddo like go to your dad for five minutes the favorite parent when you want kisses and cuddles not when they're needy you want them to be the other parent also like when they're hitting you because that you're not making the headache better you're not fixing the problem so then they're hitting you but they also don't want the other parent they only want you to hit it's like ah this is a loveless job anyway that was my suck I hope she's better as quickly but my sweet was honestly I had the best four days

it was so fucking good we went to Magnetic Island I know I mentioned it on Thursday's episode last week but it was my dad's 70th birthday and it was not just a 70th but it's kind of like a family reunion and my my parents got divorced when I was so young and our family have been so split and so separated so there were cousins there that I've only ever met once in my life some of my aunties and uncles I've only seen a handful of times in my entire life and it was just so beautiful being able to like be together and meet my whole family in such a just like no fuss we spent so many days together so you actually got time to meet them properly and have great conversations with them all of the cousins so my dad his brother passed away Danny but his boys I got to spend time with

them and then on top of that they brought their kids so our kids all got to hang out and it was just really awesome and I think it was one of those moments where I was like okay well we're the adults now like Alicia and myself Alicia my sister we're the adults we get to dictate whether we have a relationship with these people who are our family you know our parents didn't do a very good job of creating those connections but now we get to do that and we get to really kind of define whether we want to you know how much we want to be connected to them and it was just such a beautiful reminder that like you know it's never too late to have those friendships with your family it's funny you can go through life and still have parts of family that you don't really

know or spend time with i have like cousins like that too because my dad's one of six my mom's on a four they've got kids their kids have got kids yeah and they and they might maybe live away well like one of them will pass me on the street some of them and i wouldn't know them and i'm like that's crazy yeah it's crazy yeah it was awesome yeah but that was it now he's back to the koalas just dad and the koalas now i want to remind you guys that we have our live show that went on sale last week tickets are selling out like we have sold so many tickets we are so excited to see you guys all there. Some of you have bought like the VIP packages, which means that we get to have a meet and greet beforehand. We get to meet you guys. It's going to be amazing. We have a very,

very special guest who's going to be joining us at every show, which we're announcing tomorrow on Wednesday. So please, if you've been thinking about buying a ticket, go and get yourself one because like it's going to be so fucking fun and you don't want to miss out. And to all our Kiwi friends across the pond, don't forget we're coming to you too. Yeah, we're coming to Auckland. So spread it around bring all your girlfriends your boyfriends bring everyone it's going to be so much fun anyway that's it from us guys you know the drill go and leave a review you can join us on instagram at life uncut podcast or on the discussion group on facebook which is life uncut discussion group don't forget tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends and

share the love because we love love we've never done a three-way before Thank you.