Saturn Returns with Caggie - 2.8 This Too Shall Pass: Julia Samuel

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

In this special episode of Saturn Returns Caggie is joined by Julia Samuel MBE, a British psychotherapist specialising in grief and child bereavement. Her second book This Too Shall Pass: Stories of Change, Crisis and Hopeful Beginnings was published in March 2020, just as COVID 19 was changing all our lives. Caggie and Julia discuss grief in all its forms, and how we can become better equipped to navigate the seas of change.    --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. Everybody needs to have a little flicker of hope in their life that they turn their attention towards, that they build a picture of what it might be like, that they have a plan for it and a belief that they can make it happen because that will help them sustain the waves and the downturn of the tumultuousness

over which we have no control. Today's very special episode of Saturn Returns, I am joined by Julia Samuel, who is a psychotherapist and she has spent the last 30 years working with bereaved families. She has worked both in private practice and in the NHS at St Mary's Hospital Paddington, where she pioneered the role of maternity and paediatric psychotherapist. A lot of you have requested that I do an episode around grief because I think collectively what we are experiencing right now is a grief. We're experiencing collective grief. Grief doesn't necessarily have to be the death of someone. It can be the death of something,

of normality, of, I don't know, a relationship. There are so many ways we experience grief. of, I don't know, a relationship. There are so many ways we experience grief. And so I wanted to get someone to come on the podcast to talk about that. And I was talking with my mom about it and she said, you should get Julia Samuel. And I was like, well, I don't know how I'd go about that. And anyway, my mom got me her book, This Too Shall Pass pass that came out at the beginning of lockdown and I mean it couldn't be better timing in terms of releasing a book like this it's it's an expression of all that she's learned from listening to hundreds of different people that aims to inform and support and inspire of like stories of loss essentially and um it was actually sitting in my sitting room and my old flatmate came over and she goes oh that's my next door neighbor and I thought well that's how I'll get her on

so she very kindly agreed and we had this wonderful conversation I learned so much and I think we made it especially long episode because of what everyone's experiencing right now and I know it can be really tough and I think you know we often deny the darker aspects of ourselves and the things that we find painful and and difficult and I think Julia sort of faces all of that head-on in a really sort of amazing profound way and so I hope you enjoy it I hope you take something from it it provides you some comfort if you are going through a difficult period right now which I know many many of you are well Julia welcome to the Saturn Returns podcast I'm very excited to be speaking to you very excited to be speaking to you keggy i don't know where we're

going to go in the um atmosphere in this but it'll be interesting to find out well because i'll just say when i um wanted to speak to someone specifically about grief yeah and my mother actually over the summer when i was in the isle of Wight during lockdown. He got me this Two Shall Pass and I was reading it and then I was on the beach one day and this woman came over to me and she said how are you finding that book and I was like I'm really enjoying it actually and she was like I've just read Griefworks and I was like oh have you and she just stood there for a moment and she said my husband died a year ago and I found it really helpful so I wanted to know what that was like and I think because I'd read a bit of it and

I was curious you know it's not a normal encounter for one to experience quite personal very personal two strangers two complete strangers on like a public beach just standing there and I said I was like how has the last year been for you and she's like it's been tremendously difficult and I was like have you felt supported by people and she was a bit you know uncomfortable and a bit unsure but then she was like well you know I've been bought a lot of like lasagnas or whatever but it doesn't really do the trick and then she just burst into tears and I then I mean I probably shouldn't have because it was like COVID time but I just got up and I hugged her and we just stood there so nice for such a long time and it was just this really beautiful encounter it was like two complete yeah and so it was kind of like brought

together by your book and I was just like wow it's lovely but it means you can trust your instincts right because that's the instinct. That's what people need. It's the single biggest kind of predictor of your outcome and your grieving is the love and connection to others. And so when you have a warmth and a connection with a stranger, that's a very special, unique thing. It's a really lovely thing. And I'm very touched that it was around my book isn't that nice it was and I was like I have to get her on the podcast and then we were in contact over email

and you did say you're like I don't believe in astrology and I don't believe in what your guests are talking about are you sure you want me? And I thought, oh, yes, I am. Actually, I don't know that I don't believe in astrology. I'm sceptical. But I also come from a position of I'm open to people's experience and their beliefs. So I don't naysay other people's views. They're just not where I've got to for myself as yet. But who knows?

Maybe you're going to persuade me. Maybe you'll be converted by the end of this episode. What was your sort of religious framework growing up? So I was brought up as a kind of CV. When we were young, we went to church on Sunday at school we had chapel in the morning and as we got older we went to church twice a year Easter and Christmas so not at all religious really but I love churches I love so I married a Jew and I love ritual but you didn't convert I didn't convert no but I like going to church I love the music I love the community I love the belonging and

similarly I like going to synagogue so I love the connection and ritual and the sort of community of people coming together under in these cases the umbrella of religion and people coming together under, in these cases, the umbrella of religion. And I think it's, as human beings, what we need. We need to belong and we need to find our tribe. And, you know, everyone is much more secular. Very few people go to church. But I think there is much more interest for that reason in spirituality and I think there's something about the safety of institutions that gives us guidance and rules that people miss you know I think all the books that say the 10 rules of life are very popular because we don't have the 10 commandments anymore totally and that's where I think sort of astrology in a strange way has landed and

has created quite like, you know, it's hitting the mainstream in a way because we still have an appetite for that aspect of ourselves. But religion doesn't serve in the same way that it used to, or we're not serving religion in the same way that we used to. Like I was brought up actually in quite a Christian framework. You know, my mother used to take I was brought up actually in quite a Christian framework you know my mother used to take me to Alpha Course weekends and stuff like that yeah so like I mean she was really trying to get us HTB exactly which if you know of it it is it's I do it's quite full-on um in its own way it's sort of like a I don't know it's like guitar playing and very like modern Christianity. And I remember that like growing up.

And then, of course, I had school, which was chapel and stuff like that. So I'd say my actual personal belief system is probably still quite rooted in that tradition. But I don't go to church and it's like my own personal relationship with God however like this astrology and everything I think is something that and you talk about this a lot in your book like how we need a balance between structure and chaos and I think that astrology provides some sort of structure in the cosmos it's like well if that's happening that way then it's okay and I kind of see it as like well whether you believe in it or not is sort of irrelevant it's how it serves as a tool for you navigating your way through life in the same way that religion does so some people say to me clients I have Mars is in alignment or something I don't even know the language but you know they

say something like that and then I probably know those clients. Then that helps explain to them why they keep missing the train, why they feel scratchy or why they feel sexy. So they often use astrology as an explanation for their energy, positive or negative. Do you see that as a bit of a cop-out? No, I think that's what they believe. I'm not sitting there going, la, la, la, I'll wait till you finish. And then I'll come in with what's really true. I'm curious that that really helps them understand themselves. And so I go with it completely. Yeah, that it's a tool

that works for them because I do think that there's a fine balance isn't there between using that as like an instrument to help navigate your way through things versus um sort of negating responsibility and being like well mercury's in retrograde therefore like that's why my life is out of chaos and I have no responsibility in it at all yes and I think that would be unhelpful you know one of the things i say in my book is that everybody has to find their own set of tools whatever those tools are but you have to find things that enable you to you know heighten your impulse control to manage your feelings to build good relationships to have enough structure that you get to work on time and you keep your job

you know to keep yourself navigating through life in the chaos that it's that it is sort of set that it is particularly now the impulse control thing I found quite interesting because even though we're sort of progressive in so many aspects of our lives that seems to be one that we're almost encouraged to constantly numb we seem enabled to sit in our own discomfort a lot of the time. And I think one thing that I've observed is like people on, obviously pre what's going on now, but when I'd be on the tube and stuff and I'd just be watching people and you'd see an emotion come up for them, something that they didn't particularly like,

and they'd just grab their phone. And it wasn't like a conscious decision. It was impulsive. It was just like, that's what we are now, have essentially trained ourselves to do. And I thought, oh dear. Distraction. But when I talk about impulse control, I'm not saying don't feel what you feel. What I'm saying is be aware of

what you feel let it come through your system and then don't impulsively jump on the man who's sitting opposite you because you fancy him but think is this a wise thing to do maybe i should have a drink with him first so that you have gears in your impulse control. Interesting. So that you have better outcomes. So, you know, you may be looking at me now saying, oh, she's a pain in the ass. But that isn't going to get you the best podcast. Because if you tell me that, I'm probably going to go, well, you bitch, and I'll put the thing down.

So you won't get a podcast. So you need to let yourself know that you find me really annoying you don't agree with me and that you have other thoughts too that you allow other people's points of view to be on the podcast that you are open to learning further things and so that you stay enough in communication with me that you don't go on your first impulse. Which is what a lot of people do. Which they do. How does one create that space in between?

It's three things. First of all, it's being aware of what's going on. Often people have a sort of stab in their stomach or they can feel tightening in their chest or a kind of surge of longing or whatever the you know all the different feelings that you have so you have to have internal awareness of what's going on inside you then you need to be able to kind of make sense of that for yourself in your mind like I'm feeling scared I'm feeling excited I'm feeling curious so give yourself some understanding of what that energy is. And it might be I'm scared and I'm curious. You know, there are often lots of contradictory feelings going off in the same time. And then breathe and decide, given I feel this, what is the best thing for me and then maybe the other person or whatever the outcome you want is to do, rather than picking up your phone and distracting

yourself and then shutting yourself down and not getting your needs met that's good and i just want to ask how did you get into the line of work that you're in now i actually started when i was about 29 so i've been doing it 30 years i was chairman of a fundraising arm of a charity called Birthright, which was fundraising research on miscarriage and infertility. And one of the trainings that I could find volunteer posts for was bereavement in a local bereavement service. But actually, I think much earlier than that, both my parents had had very significant losses before they were 25. So my mum had her father, her mother, her sister and her brother were all died. She was an orphan by the time she was 25. Oh, wow.

And my dad, his father and his brother had died by the time he was 25. And they had never kind of properly grieved those deaths. So there were black and white photographs around the house of people. I didn't really even know who they were. I certainly didn't know what they were like. And so I think I was brought up in an atmosphere of the things that you feel and what really matters isn't voice but you only talk about what doesn't matter and I think that gave me a curiosity to find out what was going on because that never matched what I saw on people's faces so I think very early on I was much more interested in what was going on inside

than what they were saying on the outside because you've talked about how you felt like your sort of emotional intelligence wasn't as as valued growing up or perhaps more like as a society we don't value that sort of intelligence and that you were slightly affected by that for a while was that to do with your family or was that the school system or I think it was society I mean you know we're part of our environment and my parents generation were brought up by parents who'd fought and survived the first world war they fought in and survived the second world war and there was no room for what you felt there was no room to kind of analyze and express how you feel you had to survive and get on have a stiff upper lip and keep going keep calm and carry on and so the sort of understanding and psychological knowledge

of therapy has grown inordinately even in the last 10 years I mean social media has completely transformed people's appetites and also people's engagement with understanding themselves so would you say that social media has been hugely instrumental in like the progression of this I think it's been incredibly helpful. My only reservation is that people give themselves diagnosis of feelings when actually what they're feeling is normal. So maybe they're feeling very worried about something and then they'll give themselves anxiety disorder. Or they're feeling very low and they'll say they're depressed.

Yeah, labels galore. I guess I'm aware myself, my experiences of mental health are just probably quite normal of feeling low it's not necessarily the most debilitating thing and there's a whole there's a whole spectrum of it and we can all relate on some level to anxiety and and depression those are quite like those aren't a threatening state of being whereas I think the less sexy mental health illnesses like schizophrenia bipolar they are quite daunting and we don't know we don't understand them and we don't know how to connect to someone perhaps that's in during like having an episode and so we kind of like put that away in a similar way that we often

do with grief when someone goes through like the loss of a child or something it's like we can't imagine what that would feel like so we don't go there because not that we don't care but we just don't know how I don't think it's that you don't care, but I think it scares people. Yeah. Because it's so unbearable. There's a part of a protection of yourself that you don't want to let yourself know that someone you love can die. And you certainly don't want to let yourself know that a child can die. You know, that that tears up the rule book of life, doesn't it? You never expect a child to die. You never expect a child to die.

And I mean, one of the sections I really like in Grief Works actually is at the end, which is how friends and family can help. Yeah. And the main message is not to turn away, is to do exactly what you did on the beach with that woman, which is to turn towards someone and listen to them and say, I'm sorry. I think people get frightened for many many reasons one is they don't know what to say because they think they need to fix it and this isn't fixable I think sitting with someone or standing opposite someone who's distressed they send off bodily signals of distress into your body and that's quite disturbing and you don't quite know how to sit with them and breathe rather than it makes you want to fly makes puts you into fight or flight and also I think it puts us in touch with our own mortality

and mortality of the people that we love so there are lots of very understandable reasons why we tend to kind of back off rather than step in but people need you to meet them where they're at and if you just let yourself know that by being human as you were and connecting and listening and being kind that is the world to somebody else you know letting them tell you about them their husband their dad their child is a gift you know beyond measure and it's certainly one worth offering even if it gives you some levels of discomfort listening and being there. We discuss a lot about the power of just listening and how we don't really do that a lot of the time. We're always like preparing for what we're going to say rather than actually just being able to hold space for the other person.

able to hold space for the other person I guess that's you know fundamentally one of the tools that you use in therapy is just being able to listen how do you cope with that on a personal level I mean just to sort of go one step back I think one of the downsides of social media and I'm not at all against social media is that it's a transmitting voicing tool and it isn't a listening tool and so people as you were saying rehearse what they're going to say or they curate what they're going to say yeah and it's all about being heard and I think we really need to tip that balance more back into listening because actually if you listen to someone it changes you on the inside as well it doesn't just support them and allow them to be who they are it allows their words and their feelings and their being to enter your being and affect you and change you and it can expand your

being so for me I am actually a really good listener I mean that would be the one thing I can say that I do and I can sit there and really pay attention. I mean, that would be the one thing I can say that I do. And I can sit there and really pay attention and notice what's going on in the other person. The price I pay on a personal level of working with bereavement and often very traumatic and difficult deaths is that I have so many stories, 30 years worth of stories of terrible deaths that when I'm with my own family, I'm with my grandchildren or my pregnant children or whatever, you know, eating a grape. I've worked with three or four families where the child's choked on a grape, drowned in a bath, you know, died on a bicycle. So all the ordinary things of life, I've seen the extreme end. They're like 0.5 percent. of life, I've seen the extreme end. They're like 0.5%. So, you know, with my children and my grandchildren, I'm much more anxious. So I literally cut their grapes up into like 15 pieces.

And Sophie, one of my daughters, she was laughing at me yesterday. It's like, mom. Or, you know, when they're on their scooters or bikes before they get to the edge of the road I'm like no stop so so I transmit those stories interesting into my family which is unhelpful maybe it'll keep them safe so they won't get run over or drown or choke but also but is that exhausting for you it's's not exhausting, no. It's annoying for my children. They're very sweet about it. They laugh at me, basically.

I was going to ask, is there anything that scares you? It sounds like you're fearful of everything because of it. Well, I mean, so I'm not frightened of my own death and I've done an ethical will, I've done my advanced care planning, I've done an ethical will I've done my advanced care planning I've done my living will but I I'm frightened of people I love dying because I know they can die in a way that most people don't know so most of us go around believing rightly that the night will end as the morning did with everybody that you love being alive. I see that in a moment out

of a clear blue sky, you know, an eight year old can be healthy at school and be dead by two in the afternoon. So I can't not know that. But you know, I do tons of stuff that keep me balanced. And I think the benefit from it is that at the end of every day when everyone's alive, I'm incredibly grateful. I feel so lucky. What I was going to say, it must give you a huge amount of gratitude for life. Preciousness. I mean, sometimes I'm a spoiled old bag and put all of that out the window and have a tantrum about things that don't matter. Well, you're only human.

Most of the time, I feel very grateful when everyone's breathing in and out I asked um some people on social media if they had any questions or thoughts around around this but someone wrote does it ever really end and that kind yeah that kind of hit me. No. So, I mean, we're not machines. So the intensity over time definitely changes. So that what we talk about now is that you accommodate the loss, that it becomes part of you and you build your life around it. The biggest thing in grieving is daring to trust again daring to live and love again when you've had your heart broken it's really hard to dare that life isn't going to do

this to me again and to also give yourself permission because the pain keeps you close to the person that's died so there's a wrestle about i need to show them that i love them so i must suffer you know there's there's masses of dimensions to it but over time with the right support to themselves and self-compassion and everything people do learn to dare to live again and love again and some people even have what's called post-traumatic growth that they feel like they've grown from the experience not that they it ever diminishes the level of the loss or the pain but it's changed their perspective of life it's changed them to the extent that they actually feel bigger and stronger as a result

but we you know when the the person dies the relationship doesn't end the love never dies so loving them carries on with you and they're in you or in heaven or whatever your belief system is till you die. And so you can hear a song 30 years later that will feel like yesterday that the person died. If it's a song played at the funeral, say, or their favorite song. So it's there to be recalled, but it doesn't diminish your life you grow with it through your life if you allow yourself to feel the pain and grief and a lot of people sent through the sort of um irrational fear of people dying even though there's nothing wrong it's called like thanophobia or something they said thanophobia could be death phobia, yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, it sounds like you, in a way,

but probably more warranted, have a little bit of that. I think phobia is your own death, fear of your own death. Right. I have seen a few people who are frightened of death and dying. You'd want to find out what the touchstone memory of that was. So I'd get them to think of the feeling in their body and then float back until the time they can remember feeling that feeling in their body the fear in their body and then try and ground it in an experience that they had and then we'd work with that experience

you know people talk about the body remembers the body holds the score yeah and that your response is hardwired if it's a traumatic memory to put you into fight or flight or freeze quicker than you have time to cognate to think about what's likely or more realistic then we process that and they probably that probably clears it through their system actually the the body keeps the score um that i find has been incredibly useful to me and i think that we do we store everything in our body and and things get trapped i believe that that's how you know it can manifest into illness and disease and all these sorts of things and we don't acknowledge that very much. Well we know that it affects our immune system that when you have a lot of cortisol in your body

which is the fight or flight or freeze hormone and that your system stays on alert and doesn't wind down you don't have so much oxytocin which is the reverse it kind of helps wind down and connect you that when you're on alert all the time you are less able to receive the connection to other people so you're less relational interesting so that feeds a loop but also it lowers your immune system and so from that you get quite a lot of illnesses um Bessel van der Kolk and Antonio Damasio are the two neuroscientists that talk about the body health school well that I was um listening to something about the mind body connection and I tend not to want to talk about like coronavirus on this but because I've got a couple of friends and you know people in my family that I

are experiencing like physical manifestations of of a mental anxiety. Basically, I wanted to get your advice for people listening on what ways they can address that, because we are you know, I mean, your book. I feel like you must have had like a prophet come to you when you feel like there's going to be a pandemic. Can you write this book for everyone? you're like March the 5th it's insane stories of crisis change and hopeful beginnings I mean who bloody knew I literally was really I was like she must have known she didn't she did not have a clue I mean the timing couldn't be better and I like highly recommend everyone to read it because I think pre this time we weren't very good at negotiating with change you know or we try and negotiate with change that's why I wrote the book exactly but now we're in a time

where everything has changed so much our future feels so unpredictable and it's that you say about the paradox of like once we accept the sort of unacceptable we can then change that's it very well said I don't need to add anything I think when we try and wrestle control over things that we fundamentally have no control of we become more and more brittle ang angrier and more powerless. So certainly the pandemic has turned the volume up on uncertainty in a massive way. But the truth is we have never had control over the things that matter to us most, whether we live or die or what people feel about us and whether they love us. We profoundly influence influence but fundamentally

we have no control and all of life transitions like aging and you know the minute you have a child you have to begin to let that child go from being out in your womb to weaning to toddling away from you to going to school to eventually leaving home and setting up their own home so loss is always the other side of love and life and I think we try and ignore the fact that it's loss and we project it onto other things and I and I do think smartphones and digital technology give us a sort of full sense of our own agency and our control. The fact that we can book a plane ticket, not that we're going anywhere, or food or whatever it is within seconds, gives us a sense of power. That over the very big things that matter to us most, we have no power. And so for the pandemic, I think, first of all, you have to kind of have the serenity player

of accept the things that you cannot change change the things you can and really have a look have the wisdom to know the difference between the two so put your energy in the places that you can have outcomes not your energy in places where you have absolutely no influence whatsoever so i would always say you know news feeds are contagious they absolutely spread the virus psychologically in the most horrible way. So maybe if you have to know the news, look at it once a day, but don't keep kind of going on your feed. And then, you know, for each day, try and have a kind of mixture of having the best day that you can have and keep it in the day. Don't project very far into the future. Yeah. and that i would say

would be true for anyone that i see that's grieving or longing for something is that if you keep your skylines short you open yourself up to much less fear because often what we imagine is limitless and we can create nightmarish videos in our mind of what potential miseries we can face yeah but if you keep it in to today or the next few days you know bite-sized chunks then we can bear that you know like for aa that you just don't drink for today but if you think i'm never going to drink again in my whole life it just doesn't seem achievable and have some structure i always i mean i bang on about it in both my books is exercise because that lowers your fear levels and your stress levels interesting makes you feel better so something that gets your heart rate up and it doesn't have to be kind of cycling 20 miles you

can do 12 minutes five minutes i think going outside is much better if you're allowed physically to go outside that being outside is better being in nature is even better better if you're allowed physically to go outside. That being outside is better. Being in nature is even better. So if you live in a city, go to a park. You know, how you have your mornings will influence your whole day. Yeah. Morning routine. Morning routine.

So, I mean, mine is I get up, I exercise, I do a five minute breathing, I do some stretches and I eat my brekkie. And I do that every single day. Different exercise every day. And I've done that for like 30 years. I'm such a big believer in that. Yeah. It really does. some stretches and I eat my brekkie and I do that every single day different exercise every day and I've done that for like 30 years I'm such a big believer in that yeah it really does and I think people do have a tendency to sort of check their phone and go on Instagram and we we bombard ourselves with so much useless information that by the time it's like 7 30 we hate our lives you're looking at Kim Kardashian in her massive palace

having her gilded life I doubt she does nobody ever does really but you know you can make yourself misery by comparing yeah comparison's the death of happiness

my phone doesn't turn on it goes off at 8.30 at night and comes on at 8 in the morning that's good that's very good I've just started deleting certain apps off my phone until someone tells me that i need to do something on it oh cool if it's not there as an option i just replaced it with the chess app because i was like

if i like have that need you know i'm like well you can play chess instead i think that that's a healthier alternative because we have to you know regulate ourselves and like everything you've just said about we need to create that infrastructure if it isn't there externally so much and just making like your day manageable and goals that are achievable that give you a sense of accomplishment rather than thinking too far into into an unpredictable future which was always unpredictable like you say it just feels far more doom and gloom because of the news and because of the pandemic exactly I do think I mean for those that are lucky enough to still have their job and I hope as many people as possible keep their job

I think working from home is so shit you know trying to maintain boundaries between work and home those that with families and when they were homeschooling we need transitions i mean a lot of this too shall pass is about recognizing transitions allowing transitions going from one place to another allowing space between places you know what the gestalt term the fertile void you know not switching yourself like a machine and we need it in our day and we need it like a machine and we need it in our day and we need it in our attitudes and we need it in our behaviors so that we have a break from being one version of ourselves to step into another version of ourselves and I think one of

the reasons people feel so depleted not only is because they're on zoom all day but because the boundaries between work and home their work self their relationships their work have been completely dismantled and blown apart yeah because you you're a twin aren't you yes so you you speak a lot about finding you know you're most comfortable around other people and you connect that perhaps the fact that you've actually never not been even in the womb you were in utero yeah which I found really interesting because I'm someone that's actually I like my solitude a lot do you yeah that's where I you know get filled up is by being alone I need a lot of alone time but I can feel myself during this time slipping into an old pattern of like isolation basically and like you say we need the contrast we can't just like stay in solitude and then I'm

like well that's the kind of person I am so that will be fine forever it's like I have to know that I've also got yeah I've also got to like do things that are good for my mental health and that for me means going out and spending time with people and having human connection and everything like that. I imagine you're an introvert and so you need alone time to recover rather than extrovert or a version of that on the spectrum. Yeah. But for Saturn Return, tell me what got you into it and what roots you to it and why it still influences you and inspires you. When I was in my early 20s, I was pretty reckless and ungrounded and imbalanced, and I was just yo-yoing from one extreme to the other.

I used to drink a huge amount. I never knew when to end a party. I found it very hard to just focus on things. And I had really no fixed sense of self. And then I guess it started a bit at 27. And I went through this period where I was like, I know that that's not who I am anymore or who I want to be. But there was a sort of social exile that I felt perhaps I inflicted upon myself but that I experienced during those years and you say that thing a fertile void void that kind of resonated for me as like a couple of years of of that because it gave me the space to really be like okay who am I at my core but also who do I want to be going forward and neither of those things were like the way I was behaving before and that is known as

your Saturn return and I can't remember who first told me about it but I was living in LA so probably someone from LA and I just remember thinking ah that's interesting because this has felt very isolating and personal and like I'm the only like everyone else has it all figured out everyone was sent the handbook of life everyone's sorted yeah and mine got lost in the mail but then I realized that actually probably a lot of people might feel that way if I do so most people yeah exactly and also with social media and everything it's this thing of presenting like the perfect version of yourself that we all fall into believing and then comparing ourselves to and thinking well we've just got it wrong but there's this massive disconnect and so I just became quite passionate about this idea that you know there's also humor in sharing these experiences which I think is such a key ingredient like a happy life is to be able to look at things with humor and to and to laugh at ourselves and laugh at each other

even in like life's most difficult moments sometimes exactly exactly but I guess I had to establish enough of a sense of self to do it and I had to go through certain experiences that were painful for me but they were all necessary things And I think a really key component was, as they happened, the shift between coming from a place of thinking I was a victim of life to moving out of that headspace. And I was like... Being the agent in your life. Exactly.

So, yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. A little bit? That you came to it through your own experience, that you needed to change, but you needed to find your own map inside yourself. And this was a map that aligned with who you find yourself to be. And it ignited imagination and purpose

and a way of thinking that gave you an understanding of yourself and an energy about living that you didn't have before exactly because like I said a lot of people sent in um messages about you know grieving your former self and it's a I can definitely relate to that and I'd be curious to get your thoughts on it because you do touch on that in the book those versions of yourself I mean I call it a living loss so it may be if you were married and now you're divorced or you're a teenager and now you're stepping into adulthood or you had a job and you've lost your job so a lot of that is tied up in your identity you know I'm a solicitor or I'm a wife or I'm a husband or I'm a mother or I'm a teenager.

And in order to develop and grow, we need to allow the sort of earlier versions of ourselves to fall off us, you know, like a snake loses its skin. But it isn't that they rip off us. It's that the things that we do to block the change are the things that do us harm over time. So it's like you allowing the organic and natural process of change to evolve and adapt us and change us given our new circumstances. And I don't think you ever lose sight of who you were before I think you carry those earlier versions of yourself inside you and you can access them and they can give you information or wisdom or kind of thought so you don't cut and move on you evolve and adapt and change and grow through, but always with the roots of your past influencing you.

Does that make sense? That does make sense. And you talked about it with Elizabeth there a little bit, this strange thing when we grieve a future not yet realised, whether that's because we've fallen pregnant and then suffered a miscarriage or whether a relationship has ended unpredictably and we don't know how to feel about it. You grieve the dream and the hope.

Yeah. I mean, the moment you're pregnant, your picture of your future changes at that moment. You don't just see a blue line. You see yourself as a parent. You see the baby seat in the back of the car. You see yourself walking down the street pushing a pram so the picture of your future is video like in front of you when you

see the blue line and it gives you if it's a pregnancy that you really want excitement and hope and so when the baby dies whatever gestation you grieve the loss of the future that you had every right to expect and you hope for. And that is a real grief, but it's an invisible grief. I mean, all grief is invisible. But some losses are much more acknowledged and allowed than others. And I think thanks to people like Elizabeth Day, miscarriage and baby loss is more in our understanding now. But I think we still find it. People sort of think, how can you miss what you never knew? But you can.

You really can. And that's justified. It's a justified experience. I wanted to ask you a bit about, if you don't want to talk about it, it's fine, but when Princess Diana died, because she was a very close friend of yours, and you said about how there was a feeling that you felt when everyone was grieving it that you felt um annoyed a bit about that because they

didn't know her and like grief it is such a a personal thing that we do sometimes take um it's like ours do you know what I mean and I had an experience when I was younger when a friend died when I was 15 a very close friend and I just remember like not wanting to share my grief with people it's almost like I was territorial over it I was like I this is mine and you don't understand what this feels like even if someone was experiencing their own version I got very protective over it and I think when you you obviously experienced that on a huge scale because everyone was mourning Diana could you talk a little bit about that if you feel comfortable with it grief is both incredibly personal and unique and very universal and so what I felt subjectively isn't correct objectively, because of course, everybody has a right to grieve someone they knew or they felt they knew. And I think like with your experience, when someone close to you died, people are very different.

Sometimes people want to hold on to the pain because it keeps them close to the person that died and the feel of talking about it or sharing it with lots of people will somehow dilute it and that they will then take ownership of it and also you can get competitive mourning that you know amongst a friendship group or within a family when someone dies there can be a competition of who is closest yeah you know if it's children of a dad died my dad loved me best I was his favorite child so I miss him most and within a friendship group some people don't give themselves license to grieve because they feel like I'm only a friend it must be much worse for the husband or worse for the parents or people who are closer and so I think my understanding in reality is that we need to let ourselves grieve and feel the way that we do however that is and that there isn't an order of what's worse

or better and that there's space for everybody is basically what I'm saying yeah a simple measure of the loss and obviously things can be very complicated is the is the is the extent of the love so the more you loved someone and the more significant they were in your life or that the loss is in your life if your job is everything in your life and you lose your job that would be a very significant loss and that's one of the unfair paradoxes of life isn't it yeah the risk that we have to take you know how willing are we to love that deeply means how willing are we to get our heart broken loving is a risky business you know being able to love to give love and receive love is fundamentally the measure if when you look at people who when they look back on their lives those that have loved and be loved um were happier they live

longer they're healthier they're wealthier they have less physical pain and less psychological pain so love is our best medicine it's the strongest most powerful thing we have and of course it's a very risky business that's actually something that I mean I'm I'm just fascinated by relationships are you in relationship um kind of yeah sort of what answer is that if I was your kind of kind of girlfriend or boyfriend whichever you're I'd be like what well to be fair it's just that I've gone bright red. It's very new. But yeah, I am.

I am in a relationship. So now there are all these gates. Dating. Well, this is the thing. It's like that. Exclusive. Boyfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend. Yeah, there are all these labels to it.

Which bit are you? Are you dating exclusive? We're in a relationship. We refer to what we're experiencing as a relationship but yet I wouldn't necessarily I feel it's a bit premature to refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend and actually I don't know whether I really um resonate with that labeling anyway anymore people don't like labels do they I mean I they're completely new to me I have no I mean in my day you were either a girlfriend or boyfriend, and you weren't. And there weren't nearly so many rules. I know.

We've just become, we've got so many choices. That's actually, so I want to go into like that with you in terms of relationships, because you do sort of say that, you know, how we're able to love and be loved is defined, in a sense, the quality of our our life and we are living in a time where there's just an abundance of option and choice and how you know that influences how we go into relationship and whether actually the framework of marriage and stuff is sustainable because of the way we are living so my fundamental belief is that the love relationship that we have,

and I mean in love, not friendships, is the measure of the quality of our life. And so that it's down to us individually and in the couple that we're in to make that work. Because there are so many options now and so many choices, and you can have multiple relationships, gender fluidity, sexual fluidity, relationship fluidity. I think in some ways, people get overwhelmed by how many choices they have, and they get very confused. and they get very confused.

So it's much harder to commit. You know, I'm a woman of my generation, so there was never a dating app. I've been married for 40 years. I married when I was 20, so I'm very biased by my own experience. Which is amazing. Well, your experience is still what people aspire to have. And you say how you've had sort of five marriages

within your marriage, which I think is really interesting because I think a lot of people just get to like this is still what people aspire to have and you say how you've had sort of five marriages within your marriage which I think is really interesting because I think a lot of people just get to like one hurdle and they're like I'm out where's marriage number two and in the structure of like marriage being based off people's life expectancy being a lot longer you know yeah now so it's like well you should probably you should add another marriage i mean i really think that there isn't a worse or better so somebody else who's my age who's maybe on their third marriage and had three really good relationships and three very good quality of life in those relationships and it's worked for them I

absolutely respect and value that I think you know research shows the outcomes for divorced children divorced children always suffer so I don't I really don't have a judgment about it and there was a story in my book of a woman who had a husband and two lovers and she was an amazing woman had a husband and two lovers. And she was an amazing woman, Anne Maria. And, you know, I really didn't judge her at all. And I loved the way she experimented with herself and with sex and love and well into her sort of 50s. And I thought that was fantastic. So I think we have to find our own way. But if you, again, you look at the research, way but if you again you look at the research going into a relationship it isn't that you find your soulmate it's that two people could commit to work together to make the relationship work and the sort of overarching question is are we a good fit you know are we nice to each other do we

have the same beliefs do we work well with difficulty? Do we overcome difficulty together? Do we support each other in the bad times? Do we have the same values? Do we want the same things in life? So those are the things, rather than fantastic sex and multi-orgasms, that are probably... Which are great. If you have all of that, then go for it, babes.

But it's not something to be, I think, like historically, I've always based relationship off that primal animalistic first thing and then I'm like, oh, this is my partner for life. And then, you know, I don't actually really know them very well. And then six months later. And that's so fun though. It's fun. That's so fun.

It is fun. And you have to do that. I. And that's so fun though. It's fun. That's so fun. It is fun. And you have to do that. I mean, that's amazing. But it isn't the thing that you should measure whether this is my life partner. No. And I actually don't think there will be life partners in the same way.

I mean, there are less divorces now because there are less marriages. Interesting. So before in my generation, it was like you were educated, you're employed, you're retired, and you probably had two or three bosses through your lifetime. And now I think we have these multifactorial lives, lots of jobs, lots of roles, and maybe multiple relationships through our lives.

Do you think monogamy then is a not sustainable or realistic thing today? I think it's much harder. I really do. I mean, if I was a young person now, if I was 25 and looking that I'm likely to live until I'm 88, which if you're 25 you are, would you get married and think you can only have sex with that one person for that amount of time?

It's a big ask. But it's a beautiful ask. But if you look into the future it's like oh my god so but I mean it has worked for me I've been very lucky I really love my husband I love him more now probably than I did 40 years ago I mean there are times I've wanted to run him over and really hate him but I've never wanted not to go to bed with him or not to wake up with him and I love you know I love being with him so I'm very lucky I think that's so lovely you also touched on how women if you were born after the 1990s 80s more sexual or more women are more sexually but since women went into the work yeah so now

women work as much as men they have more part-time jobs and they aren't paid as much as men, but they are out in the workplace as much as men. So 50% of the working population is women. And do you think that correlates to one's sexuality? It's correlated to their infidelity. This is so fascinating. So since women have left the home, they've been much more unfaithful

because they've had much more opportunity, much more freedom and more money. they've had much more opportunity much more freedom and more money yeah would you say that because obviously the people think that men cheat and women don't and that's based off a biological thing that that's just the way we are but would you say it's actually more a societal thing of the structure of actually well culture culture that women didn't have the option because they security was an extension of the man's working life. And now women have freedom. There's no question women's libido is as strong as men's and they have as much erotic energy and seeking excitement as men do.

There's absolutely no question about that. Is there anything else you'd like to share in terms of for people navigating the seas of change right now especially i was talking to um esther perra last week who is amazing who is amazing she is amazing i was very lucky to be talking to her and i was was talking about hope, that, you know, we need hope is the alchemy that turns a life around, but that people want certainty over hope. And then I said, where certainty ends, hope begins. And she kind of stopped me in that moment.

And I think that is right, that people want certainty right now. And that is a false wish. We can't have certainty. So where certainty ends, hope begins. But we do need hope. Everybody needs to have a little flicker of hope in their life that they turn their attention towards, that they build a picture of what it might be like, that they have a plan for it and a belief that they can make it happen, It might be like that they have a plan for it and a belief that they can make it happen because that will help them sustain the waves and the downturn of the tumultuousness

over which we have no control. That's beautiful. My pleasure. Thank you so much, Julia, for coming on the podcast. I've loved speaking to you. I've loved speaking to you, Katie. We didn't talk enough about the moon and stuff well I sensed we were gonna go there then I was like that's not I mean we can if it's like that's fine we've done that but it was it was really fun lovely meeting you

you can find Julia Samuel at Julia Samuel MBE and me at Kagi's World Saturn Returns is a Feast Collective production the producer is Deborah Dudgeon and the executive producer is Kate Taylor until next time thank you very much for listening and remember you are not alone goodbye