Love Lives - Getting over a breakup by gardening, with Alice Vincent

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

Support Millennial Love with a donation today: https://supporter.acast.com/millennialloveThis week, Olivia is joined by author and journalist Alice Vincent to discuss her memoir, Rootbound, which has just come out in paperback.In the book, Alice talks about a year of her life in her late 20s when out of nowhere, she found herself single, living out of a suitcase and overcoming heartbreak.The two discuss how Alice found a new lease of life in the wake of her breakup through nurturing pot plants and surrounding herself with greenery.They also discuss the complexities of writing about ex-partners and the strangely cathartic compulsion to make your private life public when you're having a tough time.Follow the show on Instagram at @millennial_loveSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was the season of chaos and all through the house not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity and more. This week I'm joined by author and journalist Alice Vincent to discuss her excellent memoir Rootbound, which has just come out in paperback. In the book, Alice talks about a year of her life in her late 20s when, out of nowhere, she found herself suddenly single, living out of a suitcase

and trying to overcome a major heartbreak. We talk about getting over a breakup quite a lot on this show, but the reason I was so keen to chat to Alice is because her method was quite unique. In short, it was plants. Obviously, it's a bit more complicated than that, but in Rootbound, Alice explores how it was through nurturing pot plants and surrounding herself with greenery that she was able to find a new lease of life in the wake of a breakup. Enjoy the show! Hi Alice!

Hey Libby! How are you? How is lockdown 3.0 for you? Wow, it is grey, isn't it? It's so grey. I'm trying to stay positive and take every day as it comes but you know counting the blessings all of that I think it's just such a roller coaster like some days you're like this is totally fine and then others you just kind of an inexplicable wave of sadness descends um but no we're ticking along keeping busy yeah I think keeping busy is uh the best thing to do whether it's like running to the supermarket just to buy

I don't know sugar or something like every little thing and it's important to get out as well even though that seems like that's something that is being clamped down upon now but you can only exercise for uh an hour or something I can't even remember what the rules are now well I mean does anyone really know that it seems everyone's confused about the rules but yeah no I feel you like my rule is essentially when it's sunny I get out on the bike and go for as far as seems feasibly allowed and then if it's miserable like it is today it's okay to bunker down I think in comparison to other lockdowns where things have been a bit more stringent I think we've just got to really

go with how we're feeling at the moment. Yeah totally um so today we are going to talk about lighter subjects than lockdown thankfully we're going to talk about your memoir Rootbound so can you start us off by explaining to the listeners what the book is about? Yes, certainly. I am famously bad at explaining what the book is about, but it is essentially the story of a year in my life in my late 20s when my seemingly solid life, the nice flat I lived in, the nice partner I thought I was going to marry, the seemingly cool job that I had, everything kind of fell apart a bit and I had to forge a new way of living and one of the things that helped me do that was by getting really into growing plants and accessing nature and

reveling in the green spaces that were around me, even though I lived in London and didn't have a garden. And it also draws on the other generations of people who have gone to ground in times of trauma. And what's interesting is this book was written very much before the events of 2020. But then, obviously, in the spring of 2020, when lockdown first began, the pandemic happened it was quite amazing to see people going to ground again and everyone started becoming fascinated with growing things and gardening and tending to their house plants as means of coping. Yeah it's so true I've actually really tried to get into it myself and I need your advice because

I am terrible at it I have killed maybe five plants and I also I just I don't get rid of them quick enough because I'm too lazy so I just have loads of like dead plants in my house it's like a tiny botanical cemetery yeah it's really it's really uplifting um so would you mind by um reading out a passage from the book because one of the I think most poignant and relatable parts is is this particular moment when you describe Josh your partner at the time leaving and I think it's something that people will be able to identify with quite a lot. Sure. On the morning it all fell apart the skies were clear the kind of deep and unrelenting blue that leaves the ground carved up with shadow I was looking at it as I mindlessly

spooned cereal into my mouth when Josh walked into the room and told me he wanted to go on a break, that we needed to go on a break. Minutes earlier I had eased myself out of his sleeping arms. These events didn't make sense. I couldn't process them. I didn't want to. Perhaps he tried to explain but I can't remember what was said. The words reached my ears distorted as if he were talking underwater. The cereal softened in the bowl slowly collapsing under the lapping tides of milk. I felt submerged by it all. When I came up for air one sentence remained. I feel like I'm falling out of love with you well I just think that passage is so brilliantly written not just because you focus on all of the details of the thoughts that kind of come in and out of your head but the way that you really zone in on how that's the one thing

that you hear the loudest like I think I'm falling out of love with you because it's so it's so blunt and so brutal and seems to just come out of nowhere and I think that is so that is unfortunately so common particularly at the age that you're describing in your late 20s when it's like you know everyone talks about your Saturn return when you get to like 27 28 and you have this huge lifestyle change and that is when a lot of people break up and it tends to be like you said the the couples that you think are going to go the distance and then it's suddenly out of nowhere something just switches so I really love the way that you talk about how going to the ground kind of helped you overcome the trauma of that would you mind talking to me a little bit more about

that and just explaining what it was about nurturing plants and kind of like surrounding yourself with green that you found to be so healing yeah it wasn't even like oh god I feel terrible I'm gonna garden you know with me but I mean I did all the stuff everyone does after a breakup I went to like 10 festivals I refused to go to bed at a civilized time I drank way too much you know all that classic like posting embarrassing selfies to Instagram all of the normal tropes that happen happened and then I'd been gardening for a while before this it should be said like I'd kept a little balcony garden but that was so intrinsically tied to my sense of home, to the flat that like I could no longer live in.

And that didn't even come to my mind. I was like, that's something that stops with this relationship. So it's done. But I just kind of, once all the parties and the festivals and everything happened and I was slightly better at being by myself um with my own company which I think is a really terrifying thing in the in the first wake of a breakup if you're used to being around someone all the time or having that sleeping body next to you like it is terrifying to confront what that is like and once I kind of gotten over that a bit, you know what, it kind of just presented itself to me because this all happened in late spring, early summer, which is obviously a very fertile time.

And there is just like flowers were literally just blooming on my balcony without me doing anything to them. And there was a few days in the immediate aftermath of the events that I just read about when it was also in the day that Joe Cox was killed and everything was just so heavy and I went out onto the balcony and this kind of these perfect poppies had bloomed um in the space of the grayest day and and I thought well that's it like the natural world just keeps going on like we are part of a much wider system that will carry on like I'm probably one of 300 people who have had their lives turned upside down today and the rest and this is all going on anyway and I found that so reassuring it was a time in my life where it's very difficult to to mark time or passing and it felt both listless and and I didn't have any control over anything but nature and the natural cycles of gardening and plants were carrying on and I kind of began to

realize that if I could clock into that that was a way of seizing control when I had an understanding when I had none of that in the rest of my life. it's so interesting because so many people actually go through that cycle like you said in the wake of a breakup like there are the kind of stereotypical things that most people do like drinking too much and making very bad decisions as sort of like a rite of passage like cleansing ritual um but I think once you're over that it's going to nature is such a intrinsic thing and like I've had people on the show before talking about how hiking really helps them in the wake of the breakup or surfing or you know we had Victoria Pendleton on the show talking about how doing extreme sports just really helped her because it's like showing you what your body can do and you know I think with

the ocean in particular as well kind of that like vastness and like kind of what you said about realizing that you know there's so much else going on that is stable and consistent the ocean will always be there like the plants will always be there it's a really, it's just a really reassuring thing. Yeah. And it's, and as you say, it's the enormity of it. Like I was a novice, a gardener a bit, but I didn't know anything. So there was, there was that kind of weird hobbyistic side to it as well, which was like, I want to learn more. There is a whole language I don't understand. Like I can throw myself into this kind of slightly weird a very private fascination because My mates weren't into gardening so it wasn't even like it's like let's hang out together and do this

It was like this is just me and me getting used to spending time with myself and my thoughts And often it wasn't even physical gardening in my space. It was like finding parks that had beautiful landscape gardens or looking at everyone's window boxes as I walked down one of the many new streets I slept on when I was like finding somewhere to live permanently. It was kind of finding a new way of looking at the world. What were some of the parks and places in London that you discovered and found to be particularly healing? Because I know you write about this in the book and you mentioned it there, but after the breakup you obviously didn't have anywhere to live. So like you said, you were living in various different parts of London. How long did that go on for? And it was it was the long and the short of it is that we kind of did we time shared flat like the the kind of practicalities we were always incredibly civil and good with uh sorting out in quite a grown-up fashion so essentially it would be one month where

one of us would be in the flat and then the other person would take it um which and when i say it now is like a ludicrous idea but that's never that's what we settled on and it is constantly moving and so so you know it was things like I was flung back into Hackney for the first time in about five years um and so London Fields suddenly became somewhere that I went um and you know what the and and places like oh yeah so how long did it go on for it went on I think by about January I was settled so it happened so it was about five or six months that's a long time and I think to feel to feel like to use this word uprooted in that way is um yeah incredibly disconcerting when you're going through

all of that kind of difficulty and you're like emotionally speaking I guess so I can understand why like the stability of the natural world provides some comfort yeah the one that actually and this you know just because I was settled by January I still didn't get a permanent place of my own until September so it's 15 months of being not really sure of any future which for someone who's quite neurotic about planning was in many ways very freeing and terrifying in equal measure but the um the one that I really connected to was Brockwell Park Community Gardens which are in South London and they they're a community garden so you know it became like a kind of sunday ritual for me um i would go the minute they opened on the sunday morning and i'd

spend all morning in the winter so this was like november through to kind of february march um doing mostly boring heavy labor like digging stuff and you know dealing with ponds like and weeding like nothing fun or glamorous but there was this kind of ritualistic sensory pleasure of being like cold and moving your body and the way it feels to breathe out warm air in the cold like that felt somehow kind of cleansing and other and it was really useful at the time. You kind of touched on this earlier, but I want to ask you a bit more about it. What is it about breakups that you think can make someone

kind of lose their sense of self and want to find, want to like throw themselves into a new hobby or a new passion? And do you think that's something that women tend to do more than men and like women tend to feel that kind of loss of self because I mean from my experience and from my friend's experience that certainly seems to be the case it was certainly the case for me I mean and I wonder why that is it's interesting when you say do you think it's the case for men I wouldn't know I mean a lot of them do a lot of stupid shit after a breakup which would suggest that maybe it is a sense of a lot of sense of self but like for me I hadn't been single so this all happened when I was 27 on the cusp of being 28 and I haven't

been single since I was 22 like so the key part of your 20s where you are like tinder dating finding your career or having different groups of friends and changing your hair and your clothes every six months like all of that I had been with this one really stabilizing person and so when I wasn't with him anymore I really was like who am I and not only who am I but who do I want to be now what parts of my life before that is no longer accessible to me do I want to take forward and what do I not and I do think that I don't think I changed radically but I did change how I kind of lived my life and the the kind of the

I guess the things that are important to me changed a little bit um and and gardening is nevertheless like a hobby it's something that is therapeutic for me I wouldn't say it's a personality trait but I think it happens in breakups because often break like certainly that first big relationship it is happens in quite a formative time in your life anyway I think as people we're changing all the time and I think when you do get to a point where your whole life and your identity is very much enmeshed in being a couple which I think is actually something that happens a lot when you are younger having been in like like various relationships throughout my life like when you're

older it's very refreshing coming to a new relationship when you're a bit older because you kind of know what you're not going to stand for having done that already um and there is that sheer infatuation with the with those first people that you are just like I'm going to stick to you and I'm going to we're going to be a we and the excitement of being a unit which maybe doesn't apply when you're older yeah also I think I think growing up with social media also plays quite a big role in that like it you know it's very easy to make fun of all the kind of hashtag couple goals posts on Instagram but it's it's it's a thing people like you said they create these like joint identities together and you know they create an image of their relationship and put it

out into the world and obviously it's never going to be a completely accurate depiction because how could it be but it's like a part of being like oh this is who we are you know and it's almost like taking pride in that um it's interesting yeah the instagram thing is interesting as well because like there are I mean still on my private account there are still photos from other bits of my life that aren't really relevant anymore and but not that many like the vast majority of that relationship happened at a time where people were Facebook obsessed rather than Instagram obsessed so didn't have that urge to like glow up my relationship in a social media way which I think is a very real pressure and like you see some photos that people put up and with their partners and you're like wow you look like you're in a magazine like it's not something that I did

on Instagram on Facebook yeah but fortunately everyone stopped using that now so yeah it's not something that I did on Instagram on Facebook yeah but fortunately everyone stopped using that now so yeah it's um yeah it's funny that it's there's so many politics with Instagram when it comes to relationships it's something I really enjoyed writing about in in Millennial Love in my book there's a whole chapter just on Instagram because it's like there is there are so many different things it's like what's the difference between posting about a partner on the grid versus on your stories and how long should you wait to post about someone and what if they're posting about you but you're not posting about them and what if they haven't deleted pictures of their ex should you delete pictures of your ex like there's so many strands

to it so I think I was I took it it took me, but I can remember the first time I put up a photo of me and my current partner, like, and I think we may have been going out for like two years at that point before I put up a photo of the pair of us on, on my account. Because I don't know, I'm quite, I guess I'm an an older millennial but it also just felt like such a public declaration and that's the other thing that happens if you come out of a breakup and what Rootbound also talks about is what happens when you fall in love when you're really not ready to fall in love because that's what happened after the breakup and I was just terrified of like being of admitting mostly to myself that I had that I was in a new relationship

writing about um falling in love and falling out of love is such an interesting thing to do and that you know I'm saying that as someone who does it herself because it's such a it's such a private experience it's one of the most intimate things that you do in your life so to make it public can seem a bit strange to someone who doesn't do it um so would you mind explaining how how it helped you writing about it and why you wanted to do that why you wanted to make these experiences public it's so interesting because I'm actually a really sounds ridiculous I'm a private person like conversationally in groups of friends with my colleagues I'm a private person I got engaged in May uh and I didn't tell my colleagues about it because it felt weird to over zoom and then there was a piece in Vogue published about

my engagement they were like hang on did you get did you get engaged and I was like yeah and they're like why are you do you know what I mean like that kind of sums up like very happy to write about it not so much to talk about it and so for Rootbound for me it was actually an innately I didn't even realize it at the time it was only when I kind of spoke to people afterwards that I realized that it was incredibly therapeutic for me because I wasn't talking about these feelings and it gave me a space to do so albeit in a really relatively public platform yeah but it doesn't feel that's the thing though it's public but it doesn't feel public because obviously when you're writing about it you're doing it in the privacy of your own home normally and it's just you and your computer and it kind of just feels like you're

writing in your diary or something and then it just so happens that loads of people will read it but I guess when you're writing it you don't think anyone's going to read it do you? No exactly for me it was as it's always been a form of like getting my thoughts in shape on a page and the people I was most concerned about reading it were the people I know in real life because I know that you know sometimes some of them will say oh my god I'm reading your book and when it's like a kind of acquaintance and I'm just like oh okay but then otherwise I'll go to events and complete strangers will be like oh what happened with you and Matt like because they've read the book and then I tell

them and they're all like oh my god that's amazing and you know I mean that's that is to talk to strangers about it. It's wholly fine. This Giving Tuesday, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality. And we've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. Together, we can create a world where no one is left behind. Donate at CAMH.ca from November 25th to December 3rd, and your gift will be doubled for twice the impact.

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Did you talk to Josh about writing the book? Did he know? What was that kind of process like? It was something that was very, very present in my mind the entire time I was writing it. I bet. Because contrary to what it might seem, it's not an easy thing to do like we had as as I wrote back in the book an amicable mature kind breakup it was painful for everyone it was not acrimonious and so then to do something like this might be seen to be really problematic and I totally understand that but nevertheless it's my story there are a few things I did that I hoped would protect him namely changing the name um making him a relatively unrecognizable person not really talking much about our relationship glossing over certain

things that happened in the wake of it but um which is kind of how I legitimize it to answer your question once the edit was done on the book which is when like a book can totally change I told him about it um although he had caught wind of it before and was like what's going on and then I explained my reasoning and I think we were kind of all square on that um I felt that we had reached a point of kind of um not permission because I wasn't seeking it but a kind of you know cool like we were we were chill I I don't know kind of what's happened next to be honest but it is a huge thing to do and it was it's still something that I think about um because whenever you're writing about a memoir that is the kind of ethical and moral quandary behind it like there are real people in this book

um some are named some not so much and what is it like for them yeah it's a really interesting thing I spoke to I think I spoke to Elizabeth Day about this quite a lot when she wrote her memoir when she wrote How to Fail and I asked her if she because she had some quite difficult breakups that she talked about in the book and I remember asking her if she had told the men that she was including them in the book and they weren't as in-depth as how you've written about Josh it was kind of just like little stories here and there and and she said no I haven't because frankly fuck them she said that much more eloquently um but she basically said you know what it's my story I own my story I own what happened to me and I have a right to share it

and you know like you said it's about being really careful about the way that you write it and it's about not trying to you know uh insert your voice into their story and trying to focus on you know how how it happened through your eyes and how it affected you um because you know it's your book it's not about them you know you're using them as a vehicle to tell your own story yeah and it should also be said at this point that like uh matt who is my current partner is is definitely gets more air time in this and he was like remarkably chill about the entire thing um this is what i wanted to ask you about next so the second the second half of the book obviously focuses on you falling in love with Matt your now fiance

um so for those who haven't read Rootbound could you tell us how you guys met yeah we met at a party um we met at a party that had been organized by some mutual friends and um I nearly didn't go to that party and neither did he uh and I always sorry to interrupt you but that always happens isn't it so it's like oh I nearly didn't go I nearly didn't go and I'd gone to meet a friend um and we'd had a lot of wine at dinner and the restaurant was really close to the party so we thought oh fuck it let's go and um and he went because uh he'd he'd been out in Suffolk all day on a job or something anyway um I think it's it's fair to say that we were probably both looking for the same thing even though we'd not met each other before which is

that like frankly I've been a bit of a dry summer so I think it was just like oh okay like this is good timing um and I genuinely never thought I'd see him again after that evening um but evidently we did see one another again so and and you touched on this earlier but how how does he feel about the book you know he like you, he is mentioned much more than Josh, obviously, and features much more prominently. So how did he feel about it? At what point did you let him read it? The thing is, is that he's also, he's not anymore, but he was a writer.

He's changed his career now. But he was very much a catalyst in the in the book's existence in the sense that I really distinctly remember him kind of sitting me down on on a Victoria Line tube train and being like you have to write this book because I want to read it but I think I've just been whiffling on you I mean you know you you you're writing a book like you know oh god well I can't do it oh but I want to and I think he just had enough he's like you have to write it and I think that was a bit of permission granting I needed um and with regards to him I mean I think he thinks he comes off really well which he does honestly so I think he's kind of fine with it I've always thought it'd be quite interesting

you know by the time that the book came out I still after especially having been through such a savage breakup I don't take anything for granted even now like we've decided to get married like there's every chance that we might break up and then there is this very well documented uh narrative of us falling in love that's something I've thought about quite a lot. That's interesting because it also goes back to a little bit to what we were saying about social media, about putting photos up when you're in a relationship and then having that record if that relationship dissolves.

It's like, it's a little bit of an uncomfortable thing. It's like, well, you can't just delete your past. I mean, you can delete Instagram photos. You can't delete a book. But it's a difficult you can't just delete your past I mean you can delete Instagram photos you can't delete a book but it's a difficult thing isn't it yeah the way I've kind of made peace with it is the fact is the way I've made peace with a lot of other things in the book which is that um and authors say this a lot which is that the the book is kind of an active thing while you're writing it and then once it's published it's not really yours to hang on to anymore like it exists people read it um some of them will know who I am like life life kind of happens so and I guess you also have to think like you know there's comfort in

knowing there's the circle of people who know you compared to the number of people who will read your book it's probably quite small yeah yeah well what would hope um yeah hopefully it's not just your friends and family that read the book my mum's bought 10 copies um well exactly and I feel like the people who do know me, like if we were to no longer be together, that I hope their thoughts would be beyond, oh, well, you wrote a giant book about him. I hope they'd be more like, oh, babe, are you okay? We have to wrap up. But before we go, it's time for our Lessons in Love segment of the show. So this is the part of the podcast where I ask every guest to share

something that they've learned from their previous relationships um so Alice what is your lesson in love for us today I've cheated a bit um and I've learned this as much from my current relationship as from my previous ones but I've been thinking about it and I think what I would say is is that I've learned that love to be in love is a choice that someone makes daily you wake up and you make that choice unconsciously or otherwise every single day and I think that the problems start to set in when you start taking things for granted and when when you maybe stop making that choice it's a choice as conscious or unconscious as deciding whether to have a shower or a bath or whether to make a cup of tea or not but it's nevertheless it's an active thing um i love that that's so that's so important to remember and something

that you really don't hear very often because it's not that's not how love is presented in popular culture for example it's kind of like something that just happens to you and that's so not the reality whatsoever it kind of suggests that you know it's you don't have to work at it and of course you do yeah yeah this is it it's very much it's a choosing it's um and some days it's easier to choose than others I guess yeah and the taking someone for granted as well I think it's do you think that's something that happens I guess at a certain point in every relationship after you've been together for a certain number of years or months because you're so used to one another it becomes quite difficult not to kind of get so used to them being there you always forget to choose them yes I think that's

when the the rot sets in really is that there's for me especially after the events of the book I was kind of hugely allergic to comfort and I was terrified that to be comfortable with someone would inevitably mean a kind of decline in in quality of relationship when obviously a lot of people crave that comfort and I'm not and now a few years on I've learned that comfort is wonderful and it is sign of solidity but you still have to it's still really important to choose to do those things like every morning I will have a cup of tea made for me and ask would you like a cup of tea and it's it's a ridiculous and largely unnecessary question but I love that it is done

that like it is an active decision um and I make just as many in in the other way yeah I do think it's important to remember what you've got. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you're a new listener to Millennial Love, you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or anywhere else. You can comment and leave us a rating too

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