Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 100: Julia Haart

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Julia Haart is an American fashion designer, entrepreneur and author of her bestselling autobiography 'Brazen'. She was also the subject and executive director of the Netflix documentary series 'My Unorthodox Life', about her life as a working mother of 4, after she left her ultra-orthodox Jewish life.Julia updated me on her latest projects including a new type of shapewear that she has developed. She explained how her little daughter Miriam gave her the courage to leave her husband and their community, after she asked to play football as a child but was not allowed to because her knees would show.She also shared her three rules for being a good parent, and explained how work, for her, is freedom.  Julia is an inspiring speaker and I guarantee you will be inspired by her energy and passion!Trigger warning: references to mental health, wanting to commit suidcide, and eating disorder. Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Can you hear the music? I hope it's quiet enough in here.

I am talking to you from Portsmouth, where I've come for a Nation Radio event. I'm about to sing for half an hour. I'm going to be interviewed by Foxy, Neil Fox, Dr Fox, as I know him. And I'll sing a little bit. And there's a load of lovely people up front who are, like, competition winners, and I'm in a hotel, and I'm getting ready, and then I thought, oh, I have to speak to you,

which is a nice thing to do, but, yeah, I can hear Prince Kiss coming through the door, and if you can hear it, quite frankly, that's quite nice, right? Good song, Prince. So we've reached the 100th episode. I'm pulling a little party popper as we celebrate that. That's really amazing, you know, 100 episodes. Hand on heart, when I started the podcast, I think I thought I'd do a series. And I deliberately when I was recording it, if you've noticed, I do blocks of 10, and then have a month off, and then I do another block of 10.

if you've noticed, I do blocks of 10 and then have a month off and then I do another block of 10. So I deliberately, when I did the first series, I deliberately recorded, I think, 11 or 12 so that I would already have started a next series so that it would not give me the incentive to keep going. Not because I didn't already love it, but because I was a bit shy, I think, about having a podcast. So I kind of tricked myself into keeping going for a bit and then I got more confident about asking people and I got more excited about the people out there that I wanted to speak to and it just started to roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and here we are three years 100 episodes down the line and thank you so much let's celebrate together um I'm giving you a celebratory high five listen this is our

hands clapping wow you've got a really hard hand sounding a bit like a table in a hotel in portsmouth this week's guest so i was very very i was actually quite blown away that julia replied to me i was talking to a friend and she was telling me, oh my God, you have to watch this show on Netflix, My Unorthodox Life. So I started looking into it and I was like, this story is extraordinary. Julia Hart is now 51, I believe. She has four children. And she would say that she kind of got born at 42 because 42 is when she left a very fundamentalist branch of Judaism which saw her living a very restricted life women in her community the Yeshivish community were the ones who would be the breadwinners they would work all day so that their husbands could study the Torah and not work. Her children, her female children, her two

daughters were expected to follow into the same life. Julia felt like she was slipping away. She wasn't really a whole person. She had ideas of things she wanted to do and everything telling her that that was not an option, not the life expected for her. Whether it be in physical form, like the outfits she was expected to wear or the expectations of where she might work, what cultural things she might be exposed to, what books she might be reading, what she might be watching on TV. She's got a book called Brazen, which is incredible. I really recommend it if you want another book to read.

It's amazing. And she's very articulate. When you're reading the passages when she's in her sort of former life, you feel claustrophobic. And her children were a big, big part of what made her leave, what gave her the power to leave. And I think you're going to be quite startled by her answer when I said, you know, what would you have done without your children?

You know, we speak about that. So anyway, I just sent a little very um I don't know plucky I suppose little dm on instagram to her and what surprised me she replied pretty much straight away and when I spoke to her I realized it's because Julia is a big communicator and she's a big inspirational talker and she I think is still a bit shocked at where she's found big inspirational talker. And she, I think, is still a bit shocked at where she's found her life headed and empowered by it, but also very, very keen to keep propelling the message about people being able to live the lives they're supposed to live

and living in freedom and acceptance and love and all the good stuff, really. It was a really lovely thing to speak to her. She's gotten so many pearls of wisdom we didn't have tons of time together we spoke for about 40 45 minutes but wow so much smartness in there so this is a brilliant one for my 100th episode because it kind of sums up so much of the sort of guests i was hoping to speak to really interesting extraordinary people who've led interesting extraordinary life but also who are very generous with the lessons they've learned hasn't always

been easy but they've managed to find a way through and they want everybody else to feel that they're living with that same level of freedom and for want of a better phrase self-love and I'm accepting yourself all the good stuff as I said so oh can you hear another thing tunes that's foxy you're getting her in the right spirit uh i will speak to you on the other side and um oh thanks for sticking out with me for 100 episodes see you in a bit so i think the best place to start is the here and the now what are you up to at the moment what have i caught you in the middle of oh gosh um closing up some investment rounds to start to restart plus body um so i'm really excited about that, my shapewear brand. We kind of invented a new kind of shapewear that doesn't look like shapewear.

It's colorful. It's got patterns on it. It looks like lingerie because I wanted to eradicate the idea of women because over $8 billion worth of women wear shapewear. Oh, wow. Women all over the world wear shapewear young old people make some people feel more comfortable they feel better about themselves whatever it is um you know so um

i was trying to figure out why shapewear was beige white and black it's so true all shapewear is beige white and black yeah and so true all shapewear is beige white and black yeah and like usually when guys answer me they're like oh because it's skin color I'm like guys have you never seen a woman's lingerie it's pink it's purple it's green it's orange it's I mean it has nothing to do with it being the color of your body it has more to do with the fact that the material is so dense it's it's compression wear and and it's it's meant to stretch right yeah that's what it does the problem is when you stretch a fabric that's been dyed you get those little nasty white lines oh i see yes you know the color gets distorted

the pattern gets distorted our clothing that we wear meant are made to fit us so when you dye something it's made to sit on your body without stretching because the minute you stretch it, it dilutes the color and it messes with the shape. Yeah, that makes sense. So that's why shapewear is beige, white, and black because the minute you start coloring it and patterning it, it can distort. So we've created a new system of we don't dye our clothes. We heat fuse our clothing. And when you heat fuse color into clothing, it becomes unmovable.

It's unbelievable. You could stretch it from here to eternity. The color doesn't budge. The pattern doesn't budge. You take it off and it looks like you're wearing beautiful lingerie, except whoever you're taking it off in front of, you don't have to feel uncomfortable. And then after that, the next season, we're going to be adding swimwear because I've invented bathing suits that are shapewear. Oh, that sounds good.

I would like some of that. So anyway, so that's what I'm working on now. I'm really excited about that. And I'm working on the investment for Heart Sphere. So everything moving ahead. I've got a lot of activities that I'm doing with women currently. I just spoke on Sunday at an Iranian protest in support of women in Iran who are literally being tortured, poisoned, killed, and imprisoned

just because they don't want to wear hijabs and they want to go to school and be educated. Yeah, this is quite an incredible time, isn't it, in the history? Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And I got involved with an organization called Emerge, which helps women into office, which helps put women into office, you know, and helps women understand how to run for office, gives them the support. And they've put, I don't remember the exact number, they've put over 200 women, if not more, into office. So I think that's an extraordinary organization because I think we need our voices to be amplified. I also got involved with the ERA movement because it's coming our way this year, and we want it to finally be voted in through all the states and

get written into law. So I'm on the board of that as well. So I'm doing a lot of things that I can do to help women until I get my company back. And also I went to Ukraine recently. Yeah, I was to the front line. That's incredible, Treb. Delivered some ambulances and medical supplies and met the most extraordinary freedom fighters who just won't give up. Well, all of that sounds like an amazing, any one of those projects is incredible. But it sounds like you're really trying to find as many places to put all this energy. I have too much energy. And I love to work. This is what I do. I built my career in nine years. I love to work. I love to create. And I just have this massive conviction that if we join together and if I can find other women like myself who want to change the world,

who want true equality for women, not what we have now, not where, for example, in America, this is beyond crazy, there are more laws controlling a woman's body than there are controlling guns. Wow. Think about that. That's astonishing. In Texas, until I think the year 2006, they just repealed it recently. I'm not sure if it's 2005, 2006, somewhere in that arena. You weren't allowed to have a vibrator.

Until 2006. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And they showed this thing in school because there were certain schools in Texas where you could bring guns, but you couldn't bring a vibrator. Oh, my goodness. That doesn't sum up everything that's wrong in one. That just says everything you need to know.

Yeah. So when, you know, Roe versus Wade got repealed, I became extremely politically active. And I realized that it's not, you know, my original idea was, okay, I'm going to make so many rich women through business. I'm going to help empower an army of financially independent women. And so I'm not going to worry about politics. I'm going to focus on business. Well, when business got taken away from me, it's simultaneously, this whole Roe versus Wade thing happens. And it hit me that that doesn't, it's not sufficient. If the laws in the country, I have no equity, then no matter how much money they have, they're still not free.

And in the end, the point is freedom. That is the point. In the end, the point is not having to ask permission, being true to yourself, living life on your own terms, and benefiting humanity in your unique way. And so everything I do is towards that goal and I'm just going to keep on fighting until we get there and I bet as well you're amassing as you say this army of of women and all of that I am all like being put into this big like force for good which is an exciting thing yeah yeah so between like the era and women in iran and we did this thing called female founders forum where we bring young women entrepreneurs and vc funders together in my house to get funding for their new companies yeah um and when you think about the

fact that vc financing goes to two percent of vc financing goes to 2% of VC financing goes to women. 2%. 2%. 2%. So when you think of all these things, you realize, okay, I can have my political group of allies here, my activist group of allies here, my business allies here. And if we all join all of these women together in every different arena. Yeah. We can create a movement so large that we won't be able to be ignored. And that's what I want. Yeah.

And I'm going to fight to get it. It always blows my mind how much, there's so many things that are such recent history, the things that have helped shape what it is for me to be a modern woman now. You know, getting the vote in this country, you know, the suffragette movement. It's so recent. We're not going back. It is so recent. It's crazy. No.

But it also shows you how much can be done. Yeah. And in the 70s in the BBC, I read an article that in the BBC in the 70s, women were not allowed to wear pants. Well, in Paris, I only found out recently, they only just changed the law in Paris in 2012 to allow women to wear pants. Well, in Paris, I only found out recently, they only just changed the law in Paris in 2012 to allow women to wear trousers in Paris. Can you believe that?

They were because it was seen as an old-fashioned law, but it still was actually in... But it was still a law. It was still a law. 2012. It's madness. It is madness. It's genuine madness.

And I feel like on one hand, we're getting, you know, there's more women in universities, there are more women in higher paying jobs and so forth and so on. So on one hand, you definitely see advancement. The more we start to climb towards equality, the more of a backlash that is, there is to keep us down. So the more we grow in college, the more they repeal laws like abortion so that women will have to be staying home in the hospital beds, in their kitchens, because they have to raise their babies. So it's this constant fight between every advancement we make, they try to find a way to take it away from us. Yeah. Yeah. Ever was it thus. But it doesn't, I do believe that every day, you have to feel that every day things are getting a bit better. That has to be the kernel, doesn't it? To kind of feel the optimism and the drive.

That has to be the way you view it. I'm literally, that's, I mean, that's felt to me, that is the way I've gotten through this year. Every time I get down, I remind myself of the suffragettes. I remind myself of all the women who came before me. And I remind myself that being an arbiter of change is a lonely road. But if you believe it with every fiber in your being, it will come to pass. And so I just basically give myself pep talks all the time. Yes.

Well, I think that's vital. And I suppose it must be pretty crazy for you because I don't know if you would agree with this, but I think part of the reason why your story has resonated with so many people is obviously what you've experienced was very extreme. But I don't think there's any woman I can think of that doesn't know what it feels like to feel like there's a boundary there and feel I just I think it must have been so crazy for you to do this big pull every fiber of

yourself into changing your life and emancipating yourself to find that actually modern life is not quite as modern as you would expect? I mean, you can't imagine how difficult that was for me because when I left, I thought, okay, I'm going to work, I'm going to create, and people are going to see me for who I am. I am in this world in the 21st century, not in my old world, but in the new world, This world in the 21st century, not in my old world, but in the new world, no man can take away my accomplishments, my abilities, what I've built. And then last year, all it took is one man saying, liar, thief, no proof, no documentation, nothing. And I come with thousands of documents, hundreds of pieces of proof, and I'm still not believed. And there was a part of me at that moment, I have to say that was a very long moment for me because I felt like, what was the point of it all? I'm back where I started. I'm back where

a man can take everything from me without an iota of proof and the world will let him. And that was really hard. Really difficult, really painful. I'm sorry you had to go through that. That's, you know, it's just, it's got to be part of my journey. And what I've learned from this, I learned a lot of things. One of is who my true friends are, but internally I've realized that as much as I had eradicated and eviscerated so much of that inferiority placement that I was in, in my old world where men just knew better. They were smarter. You always had to please them and appease them and all of those things. No matter how much I fixed that in my business life, I hadn't touched it in my personal. I was still trying to make the man happy. I was still trying to bend myself backwards to please him. I was still constantly forgiving and thinking, oh, but this is that, and this is that. And I did not behave like an equal. And I realized that I have still a long

way to go before that second-class citizen mentality is truly gone from my heart. And every day this past, I would say, the first six months were so hard. I was just surviving. But in the last six months, I've really been working on myself and reminding myself that my needs also matter and my voice should be equal to a man's and that I am not inferior to a man and I need to learn that here, not just here. But I suppose, you know, if you've had 40 years of one way of living from when you're small, you know, that. So that's, that's a constant, isn't it? Exactly. I am still a work in progress and I'm lucky that I realized that now. And I've started, you know, changing my behaviors in the sense like, okay, this is going to sound so stupid, but it really made a huge difference to me. So I started going on these dating apps and um one of these apps like you can see if they like you first yeah you know so you know it's it's called Raya anyway so you go on there oh you

know Raya okay so you go on there and you can see if someone liked you first so I I'm sitting on there and I'm scrolling through people and I see this one person and I say, no, I don't think this is the right person for me. And then I look up and see that they liked me. And my finger almost hit the yes button because in my head it was, well, he wants to go out with you. So you got to go out with her. And then I said to myself, what the actual F? Three seconds ago, you were about to say no. His desire should not impact your decision. And so I hit that no button and I felt so empowered because I realized that it was an act of true freedom for me to say no even when the man said yes. I know, it sounds crazy.

No, I think that I would be the same as you. I'm a people pleaser. And I think that desire for approval from other people, if you've got that in you, it runs very deep. It really does. So bringing it to, because obviously my podcast is all about how motherhood is impacted, usually work. But for you, your story. It's all about motherhood. I mean, I've only got you for another half hour it's quite frankly it's not but anyway but your

story is so incredible and I wondered how intrinsic the fact that you became a mother is to what happened next in every direction really because if you if you take your mind back to when you first became a mom I'll tell you yeah it's real simple I'd be dead if I didn't have my children end of story I would not have left my community I would have committed suicide my children are the beginning and the end of my journey out of my community. My daughter Miriam's little voice, when she wanted to play soccer and my husband told her she can't because as a five-year-old child or whatever she was at the time, her knees would show and some man might pass by the soccer field and see her knees and therefore she can't play soccer. Now let's not even talk

about what kind of man gets attracted by a five-year-old's knees, but let's just leave that aside for a second. Let's say she was 11 or 12, whatever the age is, right? And my daughter daughter turns to him in her squeaky little kid's voice and says, but why do I have to worry what he thinks? And my husband said, well, you're responsible to make sure that men don't sin. And she turns to him, my logical, brilliant little child and says, oh, well, is he responsible for my sins? And my husband said, no. And she said, looks at him and says, well, that doesn't make any sense. And for the first time now, I'd been thinking this for the last 20 years, 30 years of my life,

but I'd never said it because no one around me had ever said it. Every woman I know was perfectly content to be a housewife and a mother, to let her husband make the decisions, to have him be the boss, to have this continuous thing where it's high school seminary marriage to high school seminary marriage to high school seminary marriage, teenage marriage, no education, pregnancy, pregnancy, pregnancy, grandmother, teach your children the same way, this never-ending cycle. And so to me, I was like, I'm crazy. Why am I not okay with this? What's wrong with me that I can't accept that I have to make myself invisible because a man may have a sexual thought about and hearing pure logic come out of the mouth of my five-year-old child I was like yeah it doesn't make sense it's not me it's this system so Miriam gave me permission to say, I'm not the crazy one here.

The system is bad. Without her saying those words, I would never have even contemplated leaving. Wow. She gave me that courage. That's incredible. To really think I want out. me that courage. That's incredible. To really think I want out. Now, I'd wanted out of my marriage that I'd been dreaming about since, you know, my first, you know, even before my first daughter was born. But to think to myself, I want out all together. Yeah. That I hadn't been able to

really, I had my, I'd already started a little escape fund, but in my head, my escape fund was from my husband more than my community. And when she said those words, I realized it wasn't about my husband. It wasn't his fault at all. Yeah. He was just doing what he was taught. It was the system that was the problem. educating myself, watching contemporary television, reading secular literature, really educating myself about the 21st century because I didn't know anything about it. And then, okay, take eight years where I become progressively more and more modern, right?

First, I start watching television secretly. And then by the two years before I left, I'm going to movie theaters. I don't care who knows, but I'm still covered head to toe. I'm still wearing my wig. I'm still following all the rules. I'm just not doing any of the ancillary, what they call things that they put on you that are not necessarily law. So all of this happens, but then I still don't leave. I prepare, I educate, I read, I watch, I make money, I get my trust, I get my little escape fund, all of this stuff, and I still don't leave. And the year that I walked out the door, 2012, The year that I walked out the door, 2012, was so painful for me because the dichotomy between who I was and what the community wanted me to be, it was exploding inside my psyche. It was killing me.

Who I am and who they wanted me to be were so diverse. I'm not quiet. I'm not shy. I love to study and learn. I am an educator, and I am educated,. I love to study and learn. I am an educator and I am educated and I like to invent and create and build. I have all of this inside of me. And I was told that all of that was bad. I got yelled at at least once a week for educating myself, for learning something I wasn't allowed to study. This was my flaws. And so it came to a point

where I just couldn't take it anymore. And so I decided I was too scared to leave because it's so hard to explain. You're literally stepping into Mars. You have been brought up in the 1800s. It's genuine time travel. So try imagining jumping into the year, you know, what are we, 2023, right? Imagine going into 2023. Or let's just give you 200 years. Imagine going into 200 years into your future. You'd be petrified. You wouldn't understand how things work.

You wouldn't know how people are. You wouldn't know how relationships worked what I mean just imagine what that would feel like especially from the 1800s to the 21st century think of those changes that's what it felt like and it was just too scary I was too afraid yeah that is petrifying and better the devil you know often as well you know it's still petrifying you might not have been happy but you're still somewhere where life is predictable as a shape. Exactly. It was horrible, but it was predictable. It was the only life I knew.

And so I decided I was going to kill myself. Too scared to leave. Couldn't stay alive there anymore. So I had to. So and then I spent a bunch of months trying to figure out how to kill myself. Because I didn't want anyone to realize I'd committed suicide because if I did, my children wouldn't get good shidduchah, meaning they wouldn't have good matches. And just like in the 1800s, it's all about the match, right? It's all about the marriage.

So if I committed suicide, they'd never get to get married because their mother would be a lunatic person who committed suicide, right? So I couldn't do that to my children. So I had to think, how can I die without anyone realizing that I did it purposefully? So I decided to starve myself to death. And I literally, I ate half a tomato and one piece of toast probably for a good six months. Oh, my goodness. I purposefully starved

myself oh Julia I was so emaciated I was so emaciated when I left you could see every single bone in my body I looked really scared and I probably would have succeeded I think a month or two more I would have died do you think as, there's part of you that's also seeing if anyone even notices? Nobody noticed. Nobody noticed. And because, you know, you're just people didn't notice. I was always very thin. So, you know, I just got much thinner, right? I wasn't like I was ever not pretty thin. So it just, I just kept shrinking and people just, you know, said, oh, wow, she's even like, nobody paid attention. And so I figured an eating disorder, people think I have an eating disorder. It's way less, it doesn't have the same stigma as suicide. An eating disorder, people say,

oh, great, her daughter will be skinny. That's good. So great. After all those babies, her daughter will be skinny. That was like, you know, I figured myself this way. I can leave without damaging my children forever. And that's where I was at. And that's what I probably would have done if not for the fact that my little daughter, Miriam, now she was in. I can't remember what grade she was in at the time. She was 13. Yeah, we'd have the same system. 7th or 8th grade. I don't remember. grade she was in at the time. She was 13. Yeah, we'd have the same system.

7th or 8th grade. I don't remember. Anyway, she comes home and she's hysterically crying. Hysterically crying because she got accused of cheating. And she hadn't cheated. She's just really brilliant. And her answers were her own. And she hadn't cheated. She's just really brilliant. And her answers were her own. And the same day that the teacher accused her publicly of cheating, the girls in the class took that as permission to make fun of her because my daughter's like me. We're outliers. We just don't fit in. She wore sneakers. She didn't wear pretty Prada dress shoes. She wanted to run and jump and play sports. I mean, she's one Spartan for her age group.

And I think once for all women, twice already. She's a very athletic driven person and none of that was okay. So they made fun of her for her sneakers and for the fact that she was different and that she was like a boy and all this kind of stuff. And she just came home and she's like, but it was my work. I'm being punished for doing too well. I'm not believed that someone else must have helped me because a woman can't do this on her own. A girl can't do this on her own. So I did two things.

At first I called her teacher and I brought her to tears and made her cry, which she deserved because my daughter, and she had no proof. It was just that it was too good. That was it. That was her whole, I mean, anyway. And then I packed my stuff and I walked out the door. The next morning is when I left because it hit me then. It hit me then, looking at my daughter's tears, that if I died, yeah, I'd be saving pain for myself, but my daughter was going to be me, especially Miriam, who just was like me. She was always getting in trouble for studying too much, for being too sporty, for being too

outspoken. She was a little rebel from the time she was born, and I realized she would be here She was a little rebel from the time she was born. And I realized she would be here where I was at 42. She would be here. That was her future. And I realized that I would not let that happen. So I had to live because I had to take my children out so that they could have a future that was very different than mine. And I never would have had the courage to do it otherwise. If it wasn't realized, and think about this.

Miriam is the youngest person in Stanford University history to ever teach a class. She taught a class on augmented reality as a freshman. This is a girl who didn't own a computer until she was a teenager. She taught herself how to code off of YouTube. And she is the first youngest person in Stanford history to give a class. And had I stayed, guess what would have happened to her? She would have been married off at 19, like all the rest of us. And she would have been married, by the way, to a man. And my daughter is a bisexual. She would have been married off to a man at 19 years old.

She would have never gone to Stanford. She would have never educated herself. She would be making babies and serving Shabbos dinners, like all the rest of us. Exactly. It's an identikit future awaited her. Yep. That's it. And the fight gets knocked out of you, doesn't it?

The fight just... And that's it. The fight gets knocked out of you. You just give up at this certain point. They wear you down. And so my kids saved my life twice. They started me on the journey to freedom, and then they pushed me out that door. And if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be alive today.

It's a fact. I would not be breathing on this earth if not for my children. My children, they saved me, and they are the most extraordinary human beings. I love them with every fiber of my body. And I just feel, sorry, I get a bit emotional. Well, you made me emotional too. It's incredible. They give me strength every day. They really do. I'm really blessed. I feel so blessed to have. Well, the other thing it made me think of, sorry, it's making me emotional.

The other thing it made me think of is that when it comes to parenting, when your children are growing older and becoming adults, it's very important to not have this version of how things used to be because I think sometimes you can kind of lose, you have this sort of crystallized bit of parenting where maybe they were, I don't know, eight or 12. And then you kind of lose each other sometimes. But what I really notice with the relationship you have with your children is that love is always in the present tense. Because they have to know who you are right here, right now.

And you're doing the same thing with them. And noticing every nuance and what matters to them and who they want to be because nobody's you're in each other's corners like a hundred percent right to me my cardinal rules of parenting are are three number one never lie to your children i don't care what it's about don't ever lie because the second you do you know you if you like for example you know um your children asks you about sex you have two opportunities you can either say i think you're too young for the subject i'm not comfortable speaking about it now let's say the date a year from now on this day at this time, and we're going to have that conversation.

Or you tell them the truth. What you do not do is create a mythology about storks and babies and buns in the belly and smiling and kissing can create a child because your children will never ask you questions again. They will know that you lie and they will find other resources to tell them the truth. So rule one, don't break it. Never lie to your children. I have never once in my entire life lied to my children. If there was a question they asked, they asked me that I didn't feel comfortable answering. I just told them I don't feel comfortable answering. The one time that I can say, you know, well, I don't think we have time for it. But if we have time, I have a very funny anecdote.

But anyway, rule two. Rule two is don't decide who they should be. Don't have a plan for them. Let them tell you who they want to be and then help them create their plan. Do not impose your own desires, your own image of what success looks like, of what happiness is for your children. The only person who can know that is the person in that body, that soul, that heart. And you have to give them the opportunity to discover what it was,

what it is that they're passionate about. First, my child wanted to be a hairstylist. So I put her through hairstyling school. She did that for a while and realized that wasn't for her. Then she wanted to go and become a chef. So she and I went to culinary school together. And she's worked in a restaurant and realized that wasn't for her. Now, did I think, oh my gosh, can't she figure it

out? Of course not. She's young. She knows that the world has so much capability and capacity for creation. And she was trying to find her niche. And then she realized that she loves fashion and that she loves design and that she loves sharing her aesthetic and her fashion sense with the world. And she became a fashion influencer and blogger. And she, I've never seen anything like it. I mean, she works 10 hour days. She's incredibly successful. She totally self-starting and has created a massive career for herself, but she had to find her own path. My job as a parent was to help her once she told me what that path was my job was to help her walk it

that's how I see parenting and then the last one is don't make love conditional love cannot be conditional if it's conditional it not love. And what do I mean by that? In my relationship with my parents, it was a very conditional love. If you behave like this, we will love you. If you don't behave like this, we won't speak to you. Right? When I left the community, I got cut dead because it wasn't an unconditional love. It was a love conditioned on my behaving in a standard that they felt

comfortable with, that they wanted. That's not love. That does not make a person feel loved. That makes a person feel constant insecurity and fear because they know that if they put a foot wrong, that love will be taken away. To have real love, it has to be unconditional. One rule I've had with my children our entire lives, and I know they haven't broken it because they've told me crazy things. So I know that they've actually stuck to this. And I've known the two times that they broke it, they literally two days later were like, oh, my God, we're so sorry. We can't keep it to this. And I've known the two times that they broke it, they literally two days later were like, oh my God, we're so sorry. We can't keep up to ourselves. They tell me everything that's

going on in their lives. My thing with them was always, I don't care what you do. There's nothing that you can do that you're going to tell me about that's going to make me love you less. You tell me you had sex when you weren't supposed to. I'm going to love you as much as before I knew that fact. You tell me you did X or Y. It's not going to shake an iota of love that I feel for you. So you need to know that as long as you tell me the truth and share what's going on with your life, you will never be judged. So like when they were younger and they did something that they weren't supposed to,

they came forward and owned it because they knew that their love and my love for them was safe. It wasn't going to impact it. So they owned it up and they, we would talk about it and we, you know, and they would change that behavior. My daughter used to do this thing.

I mean, this is not a bad thing. It was just something I was trying to fix. She would switch of and so. So it's like she would say, sorry, she would switch for and so. So she would say, I want to read this book for, I want to learn how to play the guitar. Okay. Yeah. So she would mix up for and so.

Yeah. So I was trying to get her to, you know, understand where so goes and where for goes. And I told her, look, if you can have a week where you don't mix the things up, I'm going to buy you this camera because she wanted to do all this videography. And she was very passionate about it. I said, I'm going to buy it for you, even though it's not your birthday, it's just a regular day of the week. If for two weeks, you can not do the switch. And my little daughter, I mean, this is, I think she was like 12, 11, 12, somewhere around there at the time. She calls me up from her friend's house where she was spending the night and says, don't get me the camera.

I just set up. Wow. She called you. I would never have known. I would never have known in a million years. But we had a pact. We don't lie. And we tell the truth.

And we don't keep things secret. And so she told me. And, of course, I burst out crying because I was so moved that I would never have known. Did she still get the camera? Of course she got the camera. Of course she got the camera. I was thinking that. She tapped on two days to her two weeks and she got her camera. Yes.

And so I think that is, you know, part three is that your children need to know. You know, I had a young girl come up to me recently who told me, look, I'm 17 years old. I've been sexually active for two years. I'm scared to tell my mother. And I think I may be pregnant, but I don't know how to get birth control. I don't know anything, but I'm scared to tell her. I remember thinking to myself, this is every mother's nightmare that their children won't talk to them when they're in trouble. And why does that happen? It happens because this girl does not feel unconditional love. She feels that if she tells her mother, her mother won't like her anymore. Her mother will look at her differently. And so she doesn't tell her.

So your children need to know that the love you feel from them is unconditional period and that there is nothing that they can say or do that will ever shape that love that's inside your heart yeah that's my three rules well those are three very very wise rules i like them all and i i hope i apply them i think i think I already do a lot I tell the one about not having a vision of who your child should be is something that I kind of learned from my first born really because I think you have your first and then you're looking for reflections oh I recognize that from your you know from your dad or your grandma and then after a while you're like oh no drop it they're just their own person. Yeah, just their own person.

But if I could just ask you, I mean, obviously, your children, as you say, have been such a, like, they are basically the reason why you are here, which is so powerful. But what is work to you? What does work mean for you? What's your relationship with what work represents, I suppose? Well, to me, work is freedom. I don't take being allowed to work for granted. And, you know, like EWG got taken away from me, even though it shouldn't have.

It's not the first time that's happened to me, right? This idea of work being taken away, not being allowed to fulfill what I want to accomplish is to me the diametric opposite of being free. And so to me, work is about self-expression. It's about sharing your passion with the world. It's about thinking of something outside of yourself and hoping that what you do today can somehow help generations tomorrow. And so I involve my children in my work. We all work together. To me, it's all part of, like, all my kids are involved in my work in one way or the other, whether it's the TV show, Shlomo is the CFO of one of my companies. My daughter Miriam and I are doing, what's it called? Heart Sphere together.

Batcheva and I have a cooking and drink making series together. I include every one of my children with what they're interested in, somehow in my work. We work as a family because we work towards the same goal. We work towards our actions today have to impact tomorrow. And of course, we want to be successful. We want to make money. But to me, that money is a tool to build my next success so that I can help even more people.

And we can create this army of financially independent women, which is my purpose in life. That's it. Yes. I can feel it happening. It's funny. I was thinking in your book, when you talk about not being happy in your first relationship, when you were married, in your first marriage, you were married at like 19. I mean, it must've just felt like you were trapped before you'd even got started. Yeah. And I was thinking, when you tried to tell people I'm not happy, I was thinking what a sentence that is. Because when people say I'm not happy,

sometimes the opposite of not being happy is actually not happiness. Because happiness is almost like a next level of things. But if you don't feel free and seen and heard happiness just isn't even on the table so the opposite of not happy is just about being able to have some agency in your life that's right that's all I wanted yeah I wanted to have some decision making yeah I want I just wanted the I I thought I needed permission to be myself. Do you ever dream you're back there or do you now feel resolved?

Not once. Isn't that funny? Not once. That's a great question. I've never once dreamt that I'm back there. Wow. That's actually amazing. Yeah, it was actually kind of cool.

Thanks for asking that. I have never once dreamt of being back there. I have nightmares about, you know, truth and justice not coming out. I have nightmares that, you know, men's voices are just more believable. I have all those kinds of things. I keep fighting anyway, but I have not once dreamt about being back there. That's pretty wild. That is pretty wild. We must have done a very good job of... What a wonderful question. You just made my day. Well, I think that's impressive. That's your subconscious. That's something you've done.

You probably spent a long time hard, you know, remapping those wires. You're right. That's it. Now I'm trying to remap other wires. I'm trying to remap the wires that tell me I am worthy of goodness. Good things can happen to me. Sometimes I don't have to fight for everything. Sometimes blessing can just appear. that circumstances should not ever detract from the joy you feel in your heart. We have to be so self-sufficient as women that nothing outside of us can break the core strength of who we are. That's how strong we have to be. And also you said at the beginning that, you know, the last year has been really tough and that for a while you're just surviving and feeling like you're back where you started. But from my perspective, you've amassed so many people,

this army, this virtual army, they are all around you. I think you're incredible. You can sign me up to whatever your venture is. I think it's funny because when I was writing my notes, I don't normally write out notes, but I did because there was so much complexity

and I wanted to make sure I was across it. And when it printed, it's got majority of my questions on one. And then the next page, it just only had one sentence and it says, and I'm just getting started, which is, that's where you're at, Julia. That's it.

I'm just getting started. That's it. You're right. So I send you all the best from across the Atlantic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. It was my pleasure, and you're so wonderful,

and I really loved your questions. I'm sorry if I talked too much and you didn't get to go through all of them. Don't know. Golly, I would rather have your wisdom like that than hear my silly voice. Your voice is not silly. Your voice is extraordinary,

and you've given me a gift, actually. You've made me realize that there is not silly. Your voice is extraordinary. And you've given me a gift, actually. You've made me realize that there is some growth here because you're right. I have not dreamt about going back to my world. That's pretty cool. That's very cool. I will celebrate that. Yes, do that. what an amazing woman right thank you so much julia i kind of left our chat feeling like all fizzy with that kind of feeling of like yes so many good things so much good advice and also it's just such a lovely thing to have time with her i mean it's extraordinary isn't it she and i have lived very very different lives And yet we had this bit where it crossed over and I got to speak to her for a while. That is a real privilege.

I love that very much. I'm still here in Portsmouth, by the way. I'm about to get ready. I'm actually going to be late in a minute if I'm not careful. I'm on in about 20 minutes and I haven't got my glad rags on yet. And I've only got half my face on and I actually left half my hair care stuff at home. In fact, I left a massive bag of makeup at home, which in a way is quite good because it means there's just not that much I can do here. I left so many things. Also, it's good because tomorrow, so tonight I go home, then I leave in the morning, I take the kids to school,

then I get on the tour bus, start the weekend, I'm going to support Gwen Stefani at Warwick Castle tomorrow night, then I'm doing a foodies festival with the band on Saturday, then on Sunday, I'm playing the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury with my band woohoo that's so exciting but it's good that I've done this trial run to Portsmouth with my bag because it means I've realised I've left half of it behind can you imagine I wouldn't have my eyelash glue for Glastonbury this cannot be how would

that field of people see my eyelashes if I didn't have the eyelashes on they're probably not going to see my eyelashes are they it's quite a big venue anyway take a breath um what do you think shall i wear i've either got a top and a skirt that's like a navy blue top with silver or sequins or a green sequin place it would you reckon i knew you'd say the place it fine all right will do okay i will see you for the next series thank you for sticking out with me please, please keep your suggestions coming in

if you're someone else I should speak to. I read every single message, I promise you. I love it when you put nice little things on places like Apple where you get your podcast. It gives me, you know, look, I'm not going to pretend I don't read that stuff. I read all of that stuff and I love it and the feedback's glorious and you guys are lovely.

Thank you so much to my husband Richard Jones for editing everything two seconds, thank you so much is there someone trying to come in, I'm about to get changed, what's going on thank you so much to Claire Jones for being my amazing producer, she's been with me from the very beginning as has Richard, as has Ella May

who does my artwork and maybe you have too, maybe you've been there since the beginning if so thank you so much, maybe you've joined me along the way thank you so much maybe this is your first episode with me uh yes I am always this rambly at the beginning and the end of the podcast don't worry you can just skip this bit there's all those little nice circle things that could get you forward 15 seconds I'll probably still be rambling in 15 seconds but it gives you a little bit of hope a glimmer of hope that maybe it'll all be over actually it will all be over now I'm gonna love you and leave you thank you so much I'm already halfway through recording the next series some more glorious

guests but keep your suggestions coming I'm really really glad you're here thank you so much and see you soon I'm off to go and sing for Dr. Fox bye Thank you.