Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 24: Cariad Lloyd

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

This week I'm talking to Cariad Lloyd, actor, comedian, writer, podcaster and mum of two. I hope you'll agree that this is a really positive and uplifting chat, even though we are talking about death. Cariad lost her Dad when she was 16 and we talk about how that has affected her through her life, including when she became a mum. In the last 4 years she has spoken to over a hundred people about their own experiences of losing loved ones, in her popular podcast, Griefcast, which she launched just as she became a mum herself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Peloton all-access membership separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running. 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 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. Hey there my little pop cats. How are you doing this week? How am I doing this week?

I'm sat here in one of the top bedrooms on the top floor. We've got one bedroom where I possibly slightly, well actually I haven't got any choice. It's going to sound fairly. There's literally no alternative. I've got my five-year-old, my eight-year-old and my 12-year-old all in a room. How much longer do you think my 12-year-old is going to be happy to be on the top bunk? Hello, Ray.

We need the box of the mask and accessories. The superhero accessories bag. All right, give me two seconds. I'm just recording the introduction to my podcast and then I'll get the superhero accessories bag all right give me two seconds I'm just recording the introduction to my podcast and then I'll get the superhero accessories um right how much longer do you think Kit's going to be happy to be on the top bunk he's 12 years old now how much longer do you think he's been happy that's how I feel about it I think maybe another year max uh. Don't worry, I've got a plan. My plan involves essentially moving Sonny out when he's 18 into my mum's house.

This is my long-term plan. He's all right with it. My mum's all right with it. That's my plan. He's only turning 17 this year. He's 17 next month. Anyway, so this week, what have I been up to? We did a kitchen disco last night. Um, and it's actually really good fun. Uh, you never know how they're going to go

actually, because obviously they're live. So there's a lot of jeopardy involved. And it really, I got the giggles very early on because the kids, well, it didn't seem too interested in doing it. And my five-year-old Jesse for the first time said, I don't want to do the disco. I'm just going to play my games. I'll'll see you later and then he sort of sprung into the playroom at 6 25 so five minutes before we went live wearing a Woody from Toy Story costume with a lion furry hat two odd gloves saying I'm a new character I'm called Disco Banana so was good. Ray came along dressed up as his toy monkey. Weren't you Ray? You're dressed as a big monkey. And I've been recording some new podcast episodes and this week's guest is someone I've been really keen to speak

to from the beginning of doing the podcast actually. I think because her podcast, Griefcast, has meant a lot to me. So I spoke torie ad lloyd who has got uh two hats she wears most of the time one hat says comedy writer and actor she does improvisational comedy teaches improv does comedy writing edinburgh fringe you know tv panelist uh comedy stuff. But on the flip of the funny, funny, the other hat is all about talking to people about grief. And so Grief Cast is conversations with people who've lost someone. And they're just really lovely conversations. And I think I used to listen to it anyway,

even before I'd experienced too much grief in my own life. I think because I I'm a little bit fascinated actually by grief maybe it's because it used to be so taboo and it's still sort of emerging but um after my stepdad John Locke died last year I started listening more and um I think once you're in that club wearing that cloak it's really comforting to hear other people speaking about it cariad has two children the last one was born last year in the midst of lockdown and we talk about having two small human beings uh all of the usual stuff about working and life and love and it was a real pleasure to talk to her so thank you so much to carry out for her time. Thank you to you for your ears once more.

And while we're listening to this one, I'm just going to stay in this room. I think Ray's going to just hang around and we're going to find the superhero accessories in a minute and just continue having that kind of a Saturday. All right, lots of love. See you in a minute. Bye-bye.

Cariad, am i right in thinking you've got two children is that right yes i have two uh one is nearly four and one is yeah eight months i think so i had him just before lockdown one is that february you had him february is that right yeah march febru February March okay well thank you very much it's funny I uh I really wanted to speak to you but I want to sort of clarify that I probably there's probably a bit of me that you know your podcast the grief cast podcast it's such a brilliant thing anyway I've listened to it over the years a lot I know you've been doing it for four years now but um but obviously it's become extra significant now that I'm a sort of new member of what I think you'd call the dead dad club uh right yeah yeah yeah once you join the club the the episodes have a little bit more power to them don't they because you're like oh I get it

yeah exactly but you know I wondered if that happened to you a lot with people kind of coming to you as a sort of I feel like I always want to bring up my stepdad in conversations and that people are a bit squeamish and I knew you wouldn't be no not at all yeah yeah I'm definitely the person well first I'm really sorry to hear about your stepdad um and secondly yeah I think what happens is it's really weird if you're not in the club at all which just to clarify is what we call people who have had a significant loss like you kind of inverted commas get it if you're not in the club you I think when you hear oh there's a podcast about death you're like oh okay not for me thanks maybe later um and then when you join it you're like oh thank god somebody is having these

conversations and that's why I started it really because my dad died when I was 15 and when I was 15 it just was like nobody talking about it it was like you said everyone was so squeamish and so awkward and so like oh well chin up and you'd be like what does that mean like so yeah I am now I guess pretty unscreamish about death and grief having spoken about it on a podcast for four years and not having had a dead dad for over 20 you get pretty good at talking about it yeah because I I read somewhere that you said that you felt like you had kind of almost like a radar for people that were maybe wearing the cloak of grief at that time and you sort of if you were at a party or something you'd find yourself talking to the person that was maybe going through something like that yeah I didn't I didn't know

how it was happening but I'd always yeah you'd be at like some party in your 20s or a teenager and you'd be thinking what's the point of all this we're all gonna die and then you start talking to someone they'll be like oh yeah my like my mum just and you're like oh oh we do like we get and then you'd have this really genuine conversation with someone about life and death and then you turn around and your mate's just like thrown up a bottle of archers and is like snogging the bloke that she said she wasn't gonna snog you're like god this is hard it's hard to know this. Like when everybody else is, is just like living because they're so young. But yeah, I did get quite good at sort of accidentally sussing out people who wanted to talk about it. And I mean, I guess you could say quite good, or you could say

people who didn't want to have that conversation backed away from me. I was probably left with the only person who was like, yeah, I want to talk about it. And everyone else like okay cool see you later carry on you're gonna get a drink she's talking about death again well do you think you mentioned there that it's kind of it's quite an awkward bedfellow to your teenage years and seeing your mates like drinking peach naps and snogging people and stuff so did you feel like it did was like an extra like the third person and you know in the room when it came to like you and your mates and then the fact that you're grieving for it. Definitely. When I, I talk a lot about teenage bereavement and when I've interviewed people who've lost people as teenagers, I think the problem is the joke we always have is like, you're, you know, one day you're 15 and the next

day you're 45. And it just ages you so quickly because, you know, you're, you, you're aware of mortality and like most teenagers aren't, understandably, like they are reckless and they do what they want and they don't think about these things because that's the point of being a teenager. So it kind of, it steals your teenagehood. And it happens if you lose a parent, you know, under 10 as well, like it steals your childhood a little bit because you're sort of aware of things that you don't really want to be aware of at that point. You know, you'd quite like to be um you know before he got sick I think you know my biggest concern was like you know are those my favorite jeans dry because

I'm going out like have we got a party they're the best jeans and does my friend really like me like all these concerns it seems so important and after you've lost a parent especially like your biggest concern is god I hope the other one doesn't die like that's that's like a lot you're 15 to kind of juggle so yeah I think it just slightly ages you and slightly makes you aware of a life lesson that most people get much later in life so it's not like we always joke on the show like everyone's going to join the club eventually I just got here early so you know yeah swing it around perhaps yeah and I guess as well it's when you lose someone when you're sort of before you're an adult or you know at least sort of independent and have that space then I think you can probably

feel a little bit more the mercy of chronology really because it happens in such a sort of significant time of your life and then you can sort of distract yourself out of it sometimes when you're younger and life is still going on and it might be that it takes a long time to catch up with you the significance of it in a way that probably doesn't happen in the same way if you're in your 20s or 30s where people talk to you about it in a different way and they pick up you know you're better at like modifying your emotions or saying oh today is a sad day I guess when you're younger it probably gets a bit more lost in in amongst everything else that's happening definitely and the research that I've read and from talking you know doing over 100 episodes of grief cast what I've you know

not scientifically can say but can say is what happens if you lose a parent as a teenager is you don't deal with it till you hit your 30s so your teenage years are just shock like what just happened to me your 20s are just like kind of chaos lots of things that you don't connect to the death you're like that's got nothing to do with it that I can't say goodbye to people and I'm really anxious that's that's just separate issues and then I think most of us hit our 30s and like oh hang on I think I haven't dealt with this because, and I used to feel really guilty about that, but now I'm much more kind to myself. And I'm like, oh, you just, you just can't deal with it as a teenager because you don't have the vocabulary. And I think it happens. I think

what's interesting now is because teenagerhood is slightly extended. So people in their sort of early twenties are still, you know, they're not buying houses and having kids like my parents generation are so I think a lot of young people feel like that as well like you know most of their friends are still partying or going out like 22 23 24 and then if you lose a parent at that age as well like it's like oh you're this bit where you're supposed to have fun I mean I guess what I talk about a lot in the show is that there's no good time there's no good time to lose someone and whatever time it is there'll be specific things that affect you and it's just about trying to be aware of like you know if you're a new mother or if you're the mother for

the fifth time and you lose someone like there's a very whatever's happening in your life will be affected by that grief and trying to get people to accept that there's never a time it's fine there's never a time that's like oh well they die a time that's like, oh, well, they died, but never mind. We move on. I'm this. And I know people in their 60s and 70s have lost someone who are bereft by it. It's grief. It's just grief. It's how we process someone dying. And I guess as well, there are different types of grief

and grief that comes along with tragedy. Someone dying earlier than they should or in the wrong order of how life normally plays out that's got to be a slightly different different type of grief I'm not saying it's I'm not saying that one has more weight than the other no no yeah grief with tragedy it's true and we talk again the thing I always say is like there's no grief hierarchy like whatever you feel you feel although the one caveat to that is child loss and everyone kind of agrees on that every expert I've spoken to has gone it's completely different room of pain because it's not the right order and things so

um I do think but I think you know I've spoken to people who've you know lost a grandparent and it has destroyed them in the same way there's somebody who's lost a father like it's about your relationship to them what they meant to you where you are in that point like grief hits so many points of your life so yeah and if they if it's a very tragic death if it's sudden if it's a shock if you haven't seen them there's been an argument there's so many things that can affect a relationship which will then affect a grief so I do think it's about being really kind to yourself and just allowing the grief to be there rather than justifying it grief is an emotion just as like

sometimes you're happy for no goddamn reason like sometimes you're really sad for no reason like it's like oh well I said goodbye to them they were in their 90s like they died peacefully you can still be sad as much as someone who's like oh they were crossing the road and a bus hit them like these things are sad it's just sad when someone dies and I think we like to apply logic to justify our emotions to make ourselves feel better why we're grieving rather than going we're humans if something happens to us we will grieve so you you mentioned that you had a baby in February the most so March you said this year yeah this year so just before the world completely tilted just literally before lockdown

pretty bonkers timing and then your eldest do you say is four? yes, she's four and so was she born around the time that you set up the podcast? yeah, yeah I did a really odd thing

which now I look back and I'm like what was that about? But I'm a bit of a workaholic. And when I got pregnant with my first child, because I'm a performer, it's quite hard to be pregnant as a performer, I definitely found a lot of doors were a bit closed and a bit more like, well, you're pregnant, you know, you don't need to come and do this gig, or you don't need to come do this job. you don't need to come do this job so I kind of started thinking about a podcast because I was like well I could do that at home and then my daughter was two weeks late and I had all these writing deadlines and I was like basically I can tell I've got one I've got this much space to do one project and my heart was like do the podcast even though everybody else is like offering you things and this podcast is some stupid idea I was like do it do it do it so I had recorded the four episodes hadn't like done anything I edited them I you know taught myself editing and SoundCloud got them up there and then was like great done I don't have to think about this bloomin idea about death anymore I can

just go away and I'm just gonna have a baby and then I had her and then I just started getting emails from people going oh my god like I didn't know other people felt like this I thought I had a breakdown it sounds like I'm actually grieving um I've never told my wife what happened to my parents I I was told never to mention it and now these people talking about it is making me realize oh this is how I feel so then I was like oh god shit like seems like this is like useful and helpful and maybe this would help me and help other people so yeah yeah literally they're the same age the podcast and her basically that is pretty crazy but it's probably there's probably more to it than you know yes definitely like I'm sure my therapist

um would yeah have an opinion on it but I think it was also about just wanting something that was mine before I had a baby that would be and I think also which is very common when you when you've had an early bereavement or you know bereavement your 20s whatever when you then have a child it it raises a lot of a lot of issues because suddenly you're becoming a parent when you don't have a parent around and it's it can really things that you thought were very dealt with are suddenly like we're still here you didn't here. You didn't deal with us, we've just been dormant. So I think it was also about processing my dad's death as I became a mother. Yeah.

Because that was really a lot to deal with. Is that something you'd thought about before, like about how it would be when you became a parent? Is it something, you know, did you always think you wanted to have kids one day? Yeah, I always knew I wanted to have kids and I always knew like he wouldn't be there. But I didn't really go any further. I just stopped myself there because I thought well that's a painful thought that's in that there and of course once you've had a baby you you can't stop the thought and

you start thinking about them when they first had you and and you realize how you obviously you really realize that they were just people doing their best and all the stuff that you maybe were like, oh, that's so annoying. You're like, oh, it's really hard. It's hard being a parent. I always thought that you were, that they'd muck some, you know, things that you're annoyed about.

You're like, why didn't they do that? Why didn't do that? You're like, because they were tired. Because they were really tired and you were annoying. That's why sometimes they were mean or shouted. So it made me a lot more empathetic, I to his plight and um and yeah I think it just brought back a lot of pain and funny enough when I started the podcast and I had mentioned I had a baby and someone emailed me and was like oh just so you know this is going to be hard it's

going to bring up loads of grief stuff and this I mean she must have been about a month old and I was like what a weird thing to say like how mean like of course it's not and then I was so grateful that they had kind of warned me and so we talk about it a lot on the show now of like that that process of shifting from you know not a parent to a parent if you don't have a parent or if you've lost you know a brother or sister or grandparents or another child like it that shift in your life will bring up the losses because it suddenly becomes more poignant who's not there definitely and there's things they're missing out on enjoying with you and meeting that small person that's you know continuation of the family and also the place where you turn to for advice or just to you know talk back about an earlier memory or what do you

remember me at that age or the casual stuff yeah that can be really hard definitely and my husband has lost both his parents so she's like we've got my mum is the only one going so we're very precious about making sense she's always trying to go up ladders I'm like stop going up bloody ladders like it's dangerous there's only one of you so it feels a bit like the beginning of an episode of casualty and people are doing that sort of thing not yeah not having someone there for those questions or yeah like you said memory all that silly stuff that doesn't seem like it means anything when you have access to it but when you don't is so painful so previous to you having your little girl were you doing is it comedy or the way in writing yeah I was I was an actor I was I went into comedy because acting was slow so I was like I'll just write my own stuff and then I did Edinburgh and then you know I always did lots of

improvisation so I started a show called Ostentatious and we do improvise Jane Austen and it was just yeah comedy radio like whatever whatever anyone was willing to give me money to do basically so I didn't have to be a temp I was a temp for a very long time um and then yeah I was very lucky enough to kind of be able to generate enough of my own work to make it work so yeah that's why when I did get pregnant I was like okay you need to think of something that's not gigging because you can't you can't go out and gig anymore that's and I didn't want to I didn't want to leave her that was with a shock to me I thought oh god just leave her she'll be fine and then you get to a gig and you're like oh I don't want to be I didn't want to leave her. That was the shock to me. I thought, oh, God, just leave her, she'll be fine. And then you get to a gig and you're like,

oh, I don't want to be here, I want to be with them. And that, I didn't expect that at all. I thought I'd be much, much sort of cooler and not bothered about my children. I know, it is hard all that, especially with the first one, I think. Because also, if you're doing things like stand-up and Edinburgh stuff, it's quite hard to know if you're still that person sometimes I think once you've had a baby sort of lose yourself a little bit sometimes yeah

definitely I'd completely lost myself and you have to reform yourself which is really hard and if you've lost someone you're having to reform yourself in the way that you did when you lost someone so that's why I think it's um a bit sort of like triggering I don't love that word um and so I went to Edinburgh by myself without her when she was about eight months old, did a week of gigs and was just miserable from beginning to end. Just like couldn't believe. And I'm a bit extreme, like I won't sort of believe something until I've done it. So I sort of did push myself and I was like, oh yeah, no, I don't like doing that. Confirmed, confirmed. I don't want to do that anymore so yeah the podcast became something that I could do at home and you know could be in control

of the hours of it so I was like oh great let's let's focus on that for a bit and I think as well I don't know if you'd find this true but from my from where I sit sometimes it seems like the world of um the women I know that are in acting and comedy they don't necessarily know when motherhood's a good thing to introduce into that anyway um so maybe I don't know did you have many peers that had already done that no I really didn't I really didn't I had a few I knew like two other women who were comedians and they lived in south London and I'm not south so it was like oh god and um you know even like friends from like uni and stuff, like even, I mean, it's funny

because my mum always likes to chirp up with like, oh, Tom, I was your age. I had two kids and you were at school. And you're like, it does for our generation. It's much, much later. So yeah, that I didn't really have any friends who had babies. That's changed in four years.

Like a lot more people have started having kids and making that choice and obviously it's I have plenty of friends who don't have kids and that's absolutely fine they can completely support you but again it's that slight feeling of that I talk about with grief of like I would never say to anyone you're not welcome in this club but it's like do you really want to be in the grief club I mean I wouldn't it's not great don't walk in here unless you have to and a bit with motherhood it's like it's quite really want to be in the grief club? I mean, I wouldn't, it's not great. Don't walk in here unless you have to. And a bit with motherhood, it's like, it's quite intense. It's quite stressful.

And there is something really healing about talking to someone who is in the same predicament, much as my friends who've chosen not to have children also have friends that they talk to about that. So it's important that women have other women to talk to about those choices, because society will always make you feel wrong about whatever you've done. Yes. Yeah, and I think it's a bit like with my podcast, ostensibly it's talking to women about how things change for them when they've had a baby. But obviously there's all sorts of things that can happen in your life that make you feel the same emotions in terms of thinking, hang on a minute, am I I'm up to what kernel of this is where's me in all this and and actually it's funny you mentioned about the podcast feeling quite sort of selfish about it I think that's such a underrated quality to have in your life actually something that you just feel is yours and you can be a bit

protective over it and I think a podcast is a pretty perfect medium for that because it does feel so so intimate and you could totally set the boundaries of when you record how you record who you want to speak to but when you did I mean I suppose podcasts were definitely around but I feel like the kind of trajectory of people taking it as a place where they go to get their information and find a community is kind of growing and growing all the time. Oh, yeah. Like when I started, lots of comedians were doing them. It was like lots of people doing funny podcasts,

but that was it really. Like it was very, it was compared to now, it was so small. You know, like I remember like, yeah, the first British Podcast Awards, which was so tiny. And then the one, then the next year I entered and, and no good way to say that, I won some. And it was like, you know, bigger, but still not as when I then hosted the next year.

And it was like, oh my God, this place is packed with people. And all the people who've been there from the beginning was like, do you remember there was like 30 of us? And like, we all knew each other because they were all from comedy or like sort of television. And yeah, I'm,'m I I feel lucky to be honest I feel like I happen to choose a medium that circumstance the invention of iPhones the invention of good headphones and a pandemic have made like oh couldn't be more perfect to have a

podcast so oh that's just one good choice but in the slightly like roulette of life like I wasn't sitting there being like you know what would be good you know what's clever I really I I find my best decisions always made by just doing what I want to do there's never any like oh that would that would be good and I remember in 2016 walking along being pregnant and I just thought to myself god everyone's got a bloody podcast all these comedians got a bloody podcast and I thought if I had a podcast I'd just interview people about death oh that would be terrible no one would listen so and I literally just batted it away it was like god can you imagine like why would anyone do that and then the idea just kept knocking at my door just keep going do it why don't you do this I kept thinking because

it's a terrible idea who would listen who would listen to people talking about death how depressing and then I was like well maybe I could make it not depressing and I could interview comedians so that they would like make jokes so at least it would be at least you'd end the episode having laughed a bit so you won't feel really depressed or sad so yeah I think um podcasts are an amazing thing that I just luckily fell into yeah but also I think you know when you say that the idea kept knocking at door you do have to put a lot of time and effort into what you're doing and I guess with you talking to people about some of the most you know toughest times of their life do you feel quite porous when you're doing it do you feel like you sort of carry

carry on their story for the rest of the day or a couple of days afterwards yeah it's hard I've got better I've got better I used to take on a lot and also I guess what I've been um what I didn't expect to happen you know when I talked to someone about loss of a parent I'm kind of like much more on a you know I kind of know how kind of roughly how they might have felt obviously every grief is completely unique but having to talk to people about child loss has been a huge huge eye-opener for me from you know early miscarriages to late miscarriages to having to deliver a baby to losing a child you know a two-year-old and I have found that one of the hardest things I've had to do but one of the sounds like such a stupid thing to say but like I do mean it like humbling

because it's made me realize in that way that death stories do, of like, everyone has their own pain, you never know what people are going through, people can go through extraordinary things and survive, and that's not to sort of, you know, I don't like it when people make a podium of victimisation, of like, but look what they did, how amazing, it's still shit for that person, but just seeing the strength of people

and how they're willing to share that narrative has been really amazing and then putting out an episode there's a particular episode by um Jason Green who lost his daughter um when she was two years old and he wrote a book about it called Once More We Saw Stars and it's incredible and it was one of the hardest interviews I've ever done like I just I just felt I just felt, yeah, it was just so emotionally difficult, and putting it out there, and then just getting emails from people being like, thank you, thank you for talking about it, it's really helped, or, or my friend had just lost a child, and I was able to recommend it, and so as long as, I think as long as it feels useful, um, it can be a really, it gives you that strength to, to carry on, but yeah, I, you know,

it gives you that strength to to carry on but yeah I you know I didn't expect that when I started this at all and I've had to learn to kind of yeah sometimes put the stories away and be like that's not my story and I've got better at it definitely at the beginning it was it was hard not to feel like you were conjuring the dead a little bit too much well also you're raising your own kids at the same time so presumably the time you're talking about um that little you know the two-year-old that died you're raising someone that's probably around the same age and i i was listening um the day to the the conversation where you spoke to sarah brown um for baby loss awareness week so i think it was only in October that it was released. And that was, you know, when you've also got a little baby at home. I think you said your little one was only about four months old then.

Yeah. And I think, you know, well, that is really hard. And I mean, you know, if you're, the thing that happened, I felt like instantaneously when I became a mum, is that if you're reading a story and you're reading about something that happens to a child, you're in that story. That child is your child.

For the moment, you're engaged in it. And if I watch a film and there's something terrible that happens to a child at the beginning, I'm always like, that's such a cheap trick. You've got me now. You've totally hooked me. Because how can I watch anything happen to a small person and not put yourself in that narrative,

even if it's just touching the outsides of it and when you're talking to people in an intimate way that's a really big thing to take on I mean have you ever spoken to someone and thought I don't know actually if they're really if I'm the right person for them to be speaking to when they're opening up I felt like that with the Sarah Brown interview

so Sarah lost, they lost their baby i think it was 10 days after she was born and i think again please forgive me my dates are not very good i think it's about 18 years ago that happened and they set up the jennifer brown um research laboratory which has done incredible work for neonatal survival and yeah you know she's an incredible woman and she was so kind because she actually messaged me before we did the show. And she was like, are you sure you want to do this? You've just had a baby. And I was like, yeah, fine.

You know, that's what I do. I talk to people about death. No biggie. Don't worry about it. And she was like, you really don't have to do it now. We could wait. Because she obviously fully was aware of, like, I'm going to tell you this story. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, fine.

And it's funny, that in my I always record an instruction sort of separately just say this is who I'm talking to and in that episode I apologized because I just was like I just felt like I'd done a bad job because I just felt it was too close to my birth for me to because I'm the same like if I if I see anything with child loss like in television I can't watch like literally I live my life watching Strictly and Masterchef because I'd like I can only cope with like the worst thing happened is someone gets votes off yeah you were very good I was a big fan um because so I couldn't cope with is like oh they got very off but they have a lot like I I am so emotionally weak when it comes to any kind of

narrative because of I think what the stories I talk about in real life but then again I had some very kind emails from people just saying there's no there's no right way to talk about this you know child loss death is really hard and and I'm always saying that to people it's funny you don't take your own advice do you but like if I have a friend who's also a parent and I've got other friends being like oh what should we say and I, just say you don't know what to say. Just say, you know what? I'm so sorry. This is so awful. I'm probably going to say things that are really wrong.

Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong. But I just want you to know that I love you and I'm here. Like there's no problem with being wrong. But we as a society, as a culture, find it really difficult. We feel like we should know everything and it's like why like when at school did anyone sit you down and tell you this is what death is this is what someone sounds like when they're dying this is how you should organize a will like this is how to speak to people about it and the thing that I always compare it to is when I was growing up and there was like you know somebody had a baby in the town and you'd hear my

mum would I'd hear her talking oh lovely oh he's lovely oh how are you oh yes and I learned I listened and I learned oh when there's a new baby you have to make these noises like that's what you do like you can't just go oh baby thanks anyway I don't want to talk about like okay good lesson learned we talk about babies when they turn up but when did I learn to talk about death because all you would hear is someone go oh someone said pass away oh I'm I'm very sorry anyway and so you think oh I see the lesson I learned as a child is like why you don't talk about it and when my dad died you know some people would talk about it a bit but I heard a lot of people saying to my mum things like oh chin up and oh gosh how dreadful well thinking of you keep strong and so I was like, oh, I see no one

talks about it. And then I was left thinking, well, I want to talk about it. Like, it's this huge thing. Why does no one want to talk to me about it? So I think it's about acknowledging that we all need to get better at it. We all need to practice it. We need to talk about it in front of children so that they learn when they're older, if it happens to a friend of theirs or any awful situation, they know that they can be wrong can be wrong be you know get their big clumsy feet in the way and that that's okay and again with baby loss I think just being willing to start the conversation is what I and again I haven't been through it so I'm only speaking from what people have said to me but being willing to have that conversation or at least try and do it really messily is better than going

please don't talk about it, you're upsetting me. No, I know. Well, people are, that's always the sort of, I suppose the most sort of, it's a very human nature instinct to have, but it's also ridiculous when you think about it. Like people will say, oh, I didn't want to mention it in case it upset you.

And the person goes, I'm already upset. Like you're not, it's not going to be you mentioning it. That reminds me I lost my, my child, my brother, my dad, whatever, you know, it's, it's, I think, I think you're right. And I think that's so true what you say about the learned behavior. I mean, I suppose your, your eldest is still so little. Is it, is it at all part of the conversation in any way when you're only four? We try, we try.

Like my, again again being kind to myself I feel like sometimes I don't deal with it very well but I'm I'm like you know what carried you're learning you're learning how to explain to her that grandpa is dead and so are granny and granddad so occasionally you can see she's confused or she's got very into she's just started saying things like my mum showed her a picture of her mum, my granny. And then she was like, is she dead? Was she old? Is that why she died?

And we were like, where's this come from? Okay. And I was like, I just try and be honest. I just say, yeah, you know, grandpa is dead. He's not here. And what I find really interesting is that when you say that to a child, what you feel is like oh god oh my god what am i doing she's gonna know the death exists it's so awful and what a child does go oh okay

because they take facts don't they it's like right they're dead great and obviously as it gets she gets older we will talk about it but i think it's for me anyway it's very personal i'd rather she knows from now he's dead and so then she can start getting used to the idea of what happened and people die rather than 12 being like what your dad's dead you've never mentioned it like what does that mean i'm obviously i'm not going to be that person because i do a podcast about it so i don't know it's not going to be about it so yeah exactly she's gonna she's gonna find out probably pretty soon so yeah i just try and think get it in the vocabulary now i'm not you know i don't like show her pictures and be like

there he is he's gone like but equally like if she sees one i'll be like oh that's my daddy yeah he's dead my husband had a really funny incident they were in the playground and um he was with her and there was a little boy and he was a bit confused. He was like, where's her mummy? And he was like, oh, well, she's working and I'm looking after her. He was like, hmm. And then he looked at my husband. He was like, where's your mummy? And my husband was like, oh, well.

And he just didn't quite know what to say. So he said, well, she's dead. And he went, oh, right. And then he ran off and went, his mum's dead. His mum's dead. And my husband was like what like you're like six are you trolling me

like what is this why are you shouting it everywhere but obviously he just this kid just didn't know what to do with that information but yeah my poor husband was like

didn't quite know if he should have said it but yeah he was like I mean that's one way of dealing with it isn't it it's like yeah

that's taking being open to another extreme I would say but um I see you've got a book coming out next year is that right in February I do yes about death I love to talk about death guys yeah it's it's um called your you are not alone which is what I say at the end of every episode um and it's based on yeah things that I've learned from doing the podcast basically so it's about

grieving and how it works how it used to work you know what not to say to people what to say um you know and yeah lots the why the five stages isn't unhelpful like modern grief basically sort of like a helpful modern guidebook to dealing with death which yeah very sadly is now obviously very apt but when I started writing it we didn't have a pandemic so it didn't feel like it was going to be quite so on brand for 2020. It really is it's very very very on brand I mean I think that's you know you said before about when people have wandered into you know the sort of the grief room and you've thought oh you sure you want to be in here it's not tons of fun but actually I've always been quite fascinated with um the way we culturally deal with death and I think it's come out of the fact that

you know I've always found it a bit a bit icky knowing what to say but I really want to be better at dealing with that so I think your book will be brilliant because if if everybody you know even for people who haven't had a really significant loss themselves they'll know someone that has and just being able to keep that conversation and I think from my own experience when someone's lost someone or when I have you just want to be able to bring them up whenever you want to so that there's because they're still part of your life they're still ongoing and while you're here they're here so that thing where you kind of mention them or you're you know your friend mentioned someone they've lost and you kind of you know you kind of obviously want

to say like oh here we go but then also once you actually let it unfold it's so much healthier isn't it just to have it interwoven into everything else that's going on and then it's not a big kind of boulder that's dropped every once in a while where you think oh golly I don't know how to handle that yeah and I think that's what I mean about talking to my daughter about it like if you make it this you know huge mountain you're gonna have to discuss with your friend or like bring up it becomes big but if it's just something you check in regularly and that's oh you know we always say on the show just check in regularly with someone who's lost someone like and it doesn't have to be like hey I'm gonna come around I'm gonna stare at you and be like how are you like a text how you doing I'm thinking of you I'm thinking of you is the most brilliant text I think you can send because it's

just like I don't we all know what it means I don't quite have the words I know this is too big to put a text message but like I'm just letting you know I'm here like yeah and it's something you said there which is so interesting which we bring up a lot of like just because he's dead yes he's dead but I'm still alive therefore my relationship with him continues and that's what's hard when you have lost a parent and you become a parent is that relationship changes again but instead of being able to um have that conversation with them they're not there so you're revolving by yourself with like oh this is how i would have talked to my dad and they're not there to finish that conversation so it's so important that we realize like yeah dead doesn't mean that's it they're gone they never existed and it's a really

lame comparison but i always talk about if someone has a child and when they're 10 years old they're still looking after them you know no one's like a bit weird they're 10 get over it why are you still talking about them like we let people talk about their kids the whole of their lives why do we do that with other family members be like your dad died 20 years ago oh when are gonna wrap it up I'm kind of I get it he's dead it's like well he's still my dad like it was kind of a big kind of important person to me so yeah I think if we can just get better at having the small conversations like you said the little ones and the other thing I think people I wish people would be kinder to themselves so if someone brings

it up and I've had this I'm not perfect by any means someone brings up someone who's dead and it's a bit of a moment we think oh I don't want to say and then the moment goes you've missed it you've missed your window of talking about death and suddenly children are there and it's too busy there's nothing wrong with going back and saying someone I'm really sorry you brought up your dad and I just didn't know what to say but I want you to know that I've thought about it and I am willing to have a conversation I just got a bit panicked when you when you did it but I'm sorry. Because I think we sometimes think, well, that's done. I missed my window.

They said it. I wasn't prepared. I thought we were having a normal cup of tea, you know, talking about Strictly, but suddenly death got brought up. Oh God. Like, it's absolutely fine to go back to people and be like, hey, oh, I've been shit.

I'm really sorry. I wasn't there for you at the beginning. And I've had people who've joined the club much later and then messaged me who knew me when they were younger and go god I'm really sorry I didn't deal with that very well and I'm like don't worry about it you were 17 like what could you have done like it's fine but I also appreciate them being like god we didn't talk about that at all did we and you're like no no one no one really did so there's always room to um repair what's happened and there's always room to have that conversation it doesn't have to be

the perfect time or a big conversation it can be lots of little conversations yeah I suppose it's so when you started the podcast after you had your baby um did you always feel like, oh, I've got this real impetus now to keep this going? Did it feel quite a natural bedfellow to new motherhood? Yeah, it weirdly did, I think, because... I think I'm just thinking out loud. I think I was so used to being the girl whose dad died.

Like, that had been such a formative part of who I was because it happened when I was very young. And now I was so used to being the girl whose dad died. Like that had been such a formative part of who I was because it happened when I was very young. And now I was expected to be this mother and just happy and joyous. And I wasn't. I had a really difficult birth with my first child and very, very difficult recovery. I got re-hospitalised for stuff

and I was not well for a long time. So I wasn't enjoying it at all. I was really miserable. So I think part of me really appreciated still having a space like you said that was mine though I could talk about who I used to be and death and this world that I was quite familiar with and it grew very organically like as I said I I recorded the first series was four chats and I thought well you don't need any more than that do you four covers it it's all right and then of

course you start meeting all these different people with different stories and you're like oh my god that happened to you that's incredible that's incredible this you know and then people start emailing going oh you haven't actually covered this kind of angle and you're like oh yeah I haven't I haven't covered early miscarriage I haven't covered grandparents who raised you like there's so everybody has such you know yeah fascinating narratives so yeah it just kind of grew and grew from that and I just kind of in my head actually my first ambition was to do 52 episodes because then I was like there's one for every week of that first year okay and I was like that's you know you can get through the first year and then what I realized is Cariad this isn't 1985 like people don't wait for their weekly podcasts they listen to them all

in a binge so then they would be like yeah it's been three months I've listened to everything and I was like oh god I expected this to last you a year whoops so um yeah now I just carried on but I was I was happy to get to 52 and now I think we're like 118 or something so wow I now I feel like there is definitely an episode that will cover most things I'm still there's still growing you know obviously there's always things you haven't covered properly but if most people email me with their situation I'm like try episode 75 or 72 actually so yeah I try and make sure there's always something that could be recommended yeah well I think sometimes when you start a project I really relate to you sort of not making like long-term plans,

but just being quite instinctive about it. And I think probably with something like, you know, grief cost, sometimes you start something and then the penny drops sort of like as you go along about why it was really, really important you did it. And I think you know you're on the right path with something if you have that hunger to kind of, I want to actually represent so much so many types of grief and open up the topic and really expand it because everybody's affected

in some way um I mean you know it's the old adage about it being you know the one certainty in life isn't it that we're all gonna die we're all gonna know someone that dies it's just what happened and that's what I sort of the more I talked about the more it became baffling to me that some people weren't talking about it because I was like god it's gonna happen to you you're not magic like and I what I think is interesting is like the one you know not everyone's gonna buy a house not everyone's gonna go to university not everyone's gonna have kids like not everyone's gonna get married like there's all these big things that we hold up quite high that are very actually niche really but everyone will know someone who dies or they will die. Like that is universal.

It doesn't matter, you know, where you are or what class you're from or what culture or background. It's something that touches us all. So why aren't we talking about it more or prepping each other? And I have an amazing episode that I did with Dr. Catherine Mannix, who's a palliative care consultant who wrote an amazing book called with the

end, with the end in mind about how to help people have a good death and we went through in that episode like literally what happens when someone dies like the sound they make what this means I've had so many people email me and go oh my god I listened to that episode then my something died and I was able to go oh I see that's not pain that's okay that's what this means I'm like that should i feel like so passionate like people shouldn't know that these sound like when someone is dying of a terminal illness very specifically obviously not um if something happens more in an accident way like the doctors and nurses are aware of what happens when someone dies as you know as they

should be and we're not and they can't stop and tell you like oh this is okay they're busy or as we know or doing their best as they can't stop and tell you like oh this is okay they're busy or as we know or doing their best as they can under the circumstances so if more people talked about it if more people knew what happens when someone dies much as you know we talk about with birth like you know how a midwife can look at you and be like now you've got three hours mate before i need to do anything like we need to have those instincts reminded of ourselves and when people died at home more I think people were more in touch with it and I'm not saying god you know not everyone has that

choice and not it's not right for everyone my dad didn't die at home like he he couldn't have done he was far too down the road of um sickness to be able to do that so it's not to say everyone should go back to being close to the dead but definitely to be aware of like be aware of what happens when we die because it is going to happen yeah and I actually think that's so true I mean um when when my stepdad was dying um Richard was much had much more clarity about all that and he was sort of watching what the doctors and nurses were doing and understood the stages whereas I was kind of not really I think I was a bit I don't know if it was denial or just a sort of feeling really on the back foot like I'm not the expert in the room here so I was

just sort of not really necessarily understanding all the indicators probably also kind of hoping I was a bit wrong about what was happening even though you sort of do know really but sometimes that's quite helpful in a way like I don't I don't know if it would have changed things but i think i think now i'd probably quite like to listen now and be like okay yeah that makes a lot of sense because once you've had the the bit where you've experienced the death you think a lot about what goes before but actually that that very intense bit when they're actually dying is something that you don't really that's not a memory i revisit very often no like it's not like a massively important part of yeah it is and it also doesn't feel like it says much to me about my relationship with John

or anything that's necessary in that way but it's still quite it's quite traumatic it's really it's really traumatic to watch someone die it's really traumatic and and that again like to just talk about these things if like that doesn't mean what do I mean like I think sometimes because it's traumatic we just avoid it and it's like it still happens it's still there like I watched my dad die and it was really traumatic and for years I was like don't think about it don't ever open that box and now I've got you know and it's taken me 20 plus years to go actually that happened it was really important it was really painful and that's okay like that's okay those two things can exist together that it was painful and awful it doesn't represent our relationship it was really awful and

horrible but also it happened and I can allow that to have been but I've had people email as well about that episode saying oh you know my so-and-so died 20 years ago and I listened. And now I'm like, oh, I always thought they were in pain at that bit. Or I always thought this and now I realise they weren't. So it's never, again, it's never too late to understand what happened with the death. And I think your body protects you. I definitely went into the kind of bubble when my dad died of like, oh, la, la, la, I don't really know what's going on.

I'm a teenager, don't really want anyone to explain it to me and um the day he died I asked not to go in I said oh I don't want to go and see him today can I just have a day off and my mum was like I think we might need to go in today and I was like oh god I just want a day off because I was just unable to process it and I think also that sounds like you had great support from him and if if you have someone you love and trust absolutely who can then who can take that role of this is happening it enables your brain to go i can check out a little bit because i can see that somebody else is is looking at it in a slightly close way that i just can't right now and that's yeah that's what a good death is is having those people who can support you and hold your hand through it as you hold their hand through the person who's dying it's it needs so much to help someone die as much as it

needs so much to get someone to be born you know it's like it's not neither of those processes are very simple yeah no it's true and i think i suppose it's just uh it made me think as well a little bit about listening back to that chat with sarah brown and her talking about how prematurity can affect babies and i ended up having two premature babies and there's a lot of stuff i didn't really understand about what prematurity meant and like even now i've got like my eldest is 16 the next one down's 11 and you know some things are still coming to light about i don't know certain learning difficulties sort of you know dyslexia dyscalculia type you know in that spectrum and i'm sure it goes back to premature babies and i'm like why

didn't anyone at the time just say by the way this is some things i could have saved myself ages of just trying to work stuff out but i think yeah as you say the doctors and nurses at that moment they're busy they're doing the job that's at hand and there's just lots of conversations that maybe just don't get had because if you you know if maybe had someone had come up to me when I had a three-year-old baby and said oh by the way you know they might find some aspects of the conventional education system a little bit challenging when they're older I probably would have said can you leave me alone just exactly that's the thing is like again it's a bit like birth or you know I think once you've had the baby like why did no one tell me and you're like

people might have said it and it might not have gone in because you just what's the point of taking in that information right there and that's what i again like being kind to yourself like there's so many things i was like oh i should have done that i should have said this to him or i should have realized he was dying then and you're like someone's dying you just get through the hours and the minutes with them and then in time with therapy we're talking to people with love with support whatever you choose to do you can go oh yeah I guess that I could have done that but you know I didn't and that's okay as well like I made the choices I made under the circumstances and that's why I love that episode with Catherine

because it's so sort of calm and from the point of view of someone who's seen people die so many times and understands the process of that to just have someone very calmly explain it to you it made it it related to my dad's at 20 years on I was like oh I remember him doing that that's what that was was it like oh okay nobody explained that but if you're not going to retrain as a palliative care consultant why would why would these things come along to you it's true it's true well jumping ahead a bit so you you've had your baby as your second baby this year were you a bit apprehensive then if you had quite a difficult time after your first yeah I was but

I mean to go I um I am not massive as in like i'm short petite person and my husband is a very tall man and so i learned from the first time that we make giant babies and um this time around it was so big that they scanned me every week obsessively insisting i had gestational diabetes because how would a baby be that big and I kept being like they kept testing me they were so suspicious they were like you definitely got it you definitely got it and the results kept coming back not you don't have it and they were like but he's so big he's so big I was like uh yeah I don't know what to say other than my husband is really tall he's six foot four like what I five foot three. Let's just do the maths here.

And so I, yeah, I was apprehensive, but I made every single different choice, basically. So I had an emergency C-section with my first and an elective to the point where the last scan, the sonographer looked at me in the eye and was like, please tell me you are not going to try and do this by yourself. And I was like, oh, no, don't worry. No, we booked electives.

She was like, I couldn't. You've got to tell me how big your baby was now. Well, nine pounds 14. Okay, yeah, that's pretty good. Just shy of 10 pounds, actually. Yeah, and I have to say, I know there's much bigger, but I am not a big person. So people kept saying to me, twins,

so he was born in March, from December, people were like, oh, any day now? And I was and i was like yeah march and then they would just look worried so i stopped saying it i used to lie at christmas people kept saying oh any day and i was like yeah oh christmas baby just to see that reaction when i was like no actually it's one and it's i've got to wait till march they were just like oh god so yeah massive so I was actually much less apprehensive because I I did that thing second time round of going here's all the things that went wrong let's make sure we don't do that again um and that was very helpful and how was it having a baby and then going straight into a lockdown I shouldn't laugh it's just no it's

hilarious it's literally you know when people are like, well, it's so many things. I'm sure anyone who's had a baby this year can appreciate, like, no one cares. No one cares. No one cares you've had a baby. They're in a pandemic. No one gives a shit about your new baby. Like, the only people who care

are people who've also had a baby in a pandemic who could be like, yes, it's so hard. It's so hard. Also, second time round, people don't care. You might actually, there's massive banging going on. That is the baby banging something in the kitchen. Don't worry about it. It was really weird and surreal,

but also fine in the way that having a baby is, you know. And I think the biggest thing was, like when they announced lockdown, I was like, well, I'm not going anywhere. I hadn't any plans to go anywhere. so I wasn't that bothered because I was like oh well okay and actually then my husband was at home and I didn't have to do like get her to nursery so I was like oh well you know for the first month I was like this is actually quite nice no visitors I'm not having to stress about anything month two I was like okay okay well starting to think I'd like to

you know see a friend month three I was like this is unbearable because it was just like having the you know um she was three then having three year old at home having no child care trying to keep her entertained I mean he really definitely had second baby syndrome where like it just was like containing three year old when you're only allowed to go out once for an hour it's like is he fed fine ignore him he's fine he's just he's fine don't even look at him when you're stuck at home with all your kids you just have to prioritize like who's the one here that needs to be dealt with and then yeah yeah exactly well I'm not speaking to you because you've got way more but I found two like oh my god this is so hard but then I think having that so hard it was so hard

but then I think having that for me it was all defined by the little ones actually because the older ones like they they were quite self-sufficient and yeah you know my elders too if I'm like okay it's a day where you know we just go loaf around at home they're like that's brilliant they'd like to spend all day in pajamas anyway so it's really it was really the little ones where I was thinking oh how do I do this and when when lockdown started, Mickey, my youngest, was 14 months. Oh, God, right. So you've been similar. And I just, he was so busy.

Yeah, busy all the time. And, you know, just what do I do with him, really? Yeah. I know, and it's funny because when I had my daughter, I'd be a bit sniffy about a baby class. Like, oh, yeah, they're all right. They're fine. I was, like, praying for just to sit in a circle

with some women like singing you know wheels on a bus it would be like that would be so good right now that's what he needs I need to go out and that's what I think's hard just not having other other people who've had babies that you can kind of connect you know you obviously you're messaging lots of people and but once it eased and I could meet friends who just had babies that was that was really nice but you also yeah you know I mean you don't complain there's things way worse way worse we're very very lucky and very privileged hugely so but it you do I did definitely miss that like just taking him out for a walk and having a cake with someone in a cafe and then going to a baby class that you know that bit where you're sort of like hanging out with them and showing them off as well showing off a small

baby is really nice and well a giant baby i'll give you an example he is now eight months he wears 18 to 24 month clothes he's so he's so strong i'm not joking i live i live in a big block of flats there's no lift I have to climb a lot of stairs he carried a loaf of bread up he just held it in his hand eight months old just carried it and I was like he's so heavy I'm like oh my god I can't carry you and I was like oh he's sort of holding the bread and I was like okay well that's good I'm not gonna disturb yeah he's like oh my god he's so strong and so massive so but yeah I didn't get I didn't get to show him off but people still stop me and go oh what a love what a bonnie baby which means

your baby's massive that's what bonnie means we all know that is what bonnie means I had my third baby was very chubby I used to have that a lot with him too um and is it the other thing I wondered about for people who've had babies this year if when everybody says about our rubbish 2020 is you like can we just have a tiny moment for all the people what this is actually their birth year you know something good okay first child 2016 do you remember 2016 Trump got in David Bowie died everyone spent the whole year going this is the worst year ever I was pregnant I was like I mean it's some things are good like some things are okay all people do to my face god this year is awful can't wait for it to be over and then I thought well it can't get worse than 2016 when I had her and everyone was moaning to

me all the time and then 2020 happened I was like literally a constant barrage of this is the worst year ever and I was like well remember that remember 2020 people because you were also people who moaned about 2016 yeah so hey when we we might go back to 2016 joyfully right now so just appreciate what you've got at the moment no that's so true and I've actually only just I've only just sat a sink with you because I had you know 2015 and then 2019 so I just slightly you got in the good years you got in the good years 2016 is when everybody there was loads of deaths it was there was liberty death prince as well sad about it and then yeah trump got in at the end of the year and everyone was like well cancel it cancel 2016

i mean i had a baby it was that was a good thing. And also I was also quite postnatally depressed and ill. So I was like, yeah, maybe, maybe I've made a terrible decision. This is awful. But then I got much better. Do you think the podcast helped you with that? Yeah, I do. I do. In a way, you know, way that I would never have foreseen and didn't consciously choose.

But I think it, I would book interviews and then I would say to my husband I have to go I've got this interview I have they're going to be there I have to go yeah but what that meant was you know half an hour on the bus to myself an interview with someone and the bus ride back and it was just like two hours I was like oh I'm still me I'm still me she's still here so I think I very consciously needed something that was like not about yeah a baby and I said I I do think that's connected to having such a hard start like it was it was really bad like lots of things went wrong the actual pregnancy and was fine but like the moment I went to labor loads of stuff went wrong so I think when you're left with you know a bit of a traumatic time you do really feel like what the just happened to me like what just happened whereas this was

you know birth in a pandemic it's very different like everything's actually a lot calmer you know because you're not rushing around and you're not trying to be yourself because you can't so you can't go and gig you can't go and see your friends you can't be like well I'm just gonna do this stupid thing and take the baby on a train for three hours because I'm sure it'll be fine and you're left weeping going I should have stayed at home there's a lot of staying at home so actually I think he's had a much nicer time because I haven't rushed back to kind of proving that I'm still a human being I've kind of gone well I'm just gonna stay

here for a bit well I mean you mentioned like not feeling like yourself but when so how soon after you did the run of shows when you said I think your daughter was about did you say eight months when you went yeah I mean I went back to work when she was four weeks I did a job when she was four weeks yeah madness absolutely madness what was the job like an acting job yeah it's just an acting job and I had a rehearsal and everyone I turned up and bless um the director and the writer I think the director and the writer, I think. The director and the producer had kids. And I walked in and I said, hi, I had a C-section four weeks ago. And they went, okay, Cariad, okay, do you know what?

Let's just sit down rehearsal. Let's just all sit down. And then we did a run, like we read through it like once. And I was like, are we going to rehearse it? And they were like, you know what, Cariad, I think you can go home. I think you can go. And I was like, oh, no, no, I'marse it and they were like you know what Karen I think I think you can go home I think you can go and I was like oh no no I'm gonna I'm fine they're like nah and both of them had like um partners who had c-sections and I think both of them had this look and I've like send her home she's mental she should not be that was for murder and successful which I yeah wow I yeah then I filmed when she was like six weeks old. But like self-employed, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had other people definitely, I've had other mums definitely judge me and be like, oh gosh, I couldn't have done that. And I'm like, there ain't no thing as maternity leave when you're self-employed. And then of course, you know,

I then didn't work for like three months or something. You know what I mean? So you have like weird bits or I'll do one gig or I'll go and do another gig. So that's the thing with self-employed people think you go back really early but it's like oh actually I'm going back because I don't know what the next year is going to look like so I'm going to have to do something now but yeah I definitely had a few people be

like oh god I don't know how you did that and it was like uh painfully and because I had a bill to pay so I did it also there's no one telling you that you're not allowed to and you're actually you know I think you kind of do it if you can and then sometimes as you say you sort of try things on and then look back and think oh golly actually that wasn't right. Yeah I definitely looked back and was like oh that was yeah I shouldn't have done that but I did and it was all right. Yeah you get through it it just feels a bit weird I remember when I had my third baby and I was so convinced he was going to be premature I'd left a DJ gig in the diary luckily with my husband but abroad I think we had to go to where we go it was somewhere like

oh golly somewhere in eastern Europe that I'd never been before and I'd forgotten about it and then I had a six week old and I was like oh what looks in the door I was like oh we're going away tomorrow and it was just it really threw me um so yeah it's all part of the process isn't it like you that's what I think with my second I got much better at being like you learn you know what sometimes you do stupid things you just you just learn from it yeah and it's actually all about you as well not your baby because your baby's like completely fine actually at that point it's just about how you feel really there's no real rules to it I mean and now nowadays I mean

I suppose this year's been a very odd shape but ordinarily what's the sort of divvy between your sort of acting and comedy and all that and improvisation and your podcast life yeah it's sort of just in the mix really so I like yeah I just I act write, I do lots of improvisation and I do the podcast and yeah, this, I run an improv show called Ostentatious, which would normally be performing weekly, doing a UK tour. We would have done Edinburgh. So that's like a huge part. So yeah, it's just like, I just add it to my roster. How long has Ostentatious been around now? Nearly, I think we're about to hit 10 years actually really um yeah i know i know but i didn't realize it was that long that's amazing yeah it's mad isn't it

um it's quite long for an improv group they normally implode so we've done quite well done really well yeah so that we were supposed to have a full western run like we you know they they tried to do show the week we went into lockdown and the theatre got closed so yeah we were still kind of like should we be here what's happening because that was you know nobody knew when everyone didn't quite know and I was in hospital being like are you guys gonna do the show and they're like uh we're at the theatre uh not sure so yeah ostentatious is also a huge part of what I do and then grief cast is another massive part and then I'm writing um the panto for the national theatre this year co-writing it

so I'm also doing that oh I don't know that oh well thank you for giving me your time you've got lots of other things to do oh any excuse to have a little chat and a cup of tea is joyous to be honest I love it you know what that is basically the secret of I think why I started this at all it's like this is literally I'm not even joking all year this is the only time I've had I've been able to have an uninterrupted conversation. It's actually, it's what hyperglyphs are. You're like, no, no, no one's allowed to come in. It's actually very important.

I'm actually working. But you just get a moment to yourself and a cup of tea, and you're like, oh, if I can't go to a cafe, I'll have a podcast. Exactly. Really recommend it. To the extent where I think I kind of get a bit surprised when people say they've heard them, because I'm so selfish about it.

It's sort of, you know, even if no one listened, I'd still be recording series after series. I think that's a good podcast. That's a sign of a good podcast. If you're like, I'm just doing it for me, so I enjoyed it, that's where other people then go, oh, I enjoyed it too. You're like, great, great.

I will let you get on to all your other projects in a minute. But I did want to know how the improv stuff helps with raising kids. That must be quite a useful skill to have, being able to improvise, surely. It is. I definitely think it is. Because the big thing about improvisation is there's no wrong. So you yes and everything. So if they say they want to do that today, cool. That's what we're going to do today.

But it took me a long time to put my improv brain into my mum brain because my mum brain was like no I've put the playdough out nicely I bought some pine cones in we're going to do this because I saw it on Instagram and now I want to do it because I think it makes me be a good mother and then she's like I don't do this is really boring I want to draw my feet and you're like and I've got much better at going yeah okay let's draw on your feet then fine like just whatever you know be led by them but yeah it definitely helps in terms of um making up stories it's really handy for uh doing gibberish that's another big improv thing pretending to speak French which is we've started doing so we both she pretends to speak French to me and I speak French to her but now she thinks she can

speak French so you're I speak French to her, but now she thinks she can speak French. So you're like, do you want to go on a vacation with me? Yeah, yeah. So I do. It's just made up, which is my favorite thing to do. And then she saw a man speaking French and she was like, oh, I can speak French to him. And she was going, I was like, oh God god this feels very racially

uncomfortable actually culturally uncomfortable I just do it as a silly thing to make you laugh and now she she was like he's not speaking French like we do yeah he's French that's what's happening darling he's actually speaking a language um so yeah it definitely can help but you know you still you still ultimately have those days where you've got nothing. You've just got nothing and you can't. Like, I had them even this morning, you know. Everyone woke up early.

Nobody behaved themselves. Everybody was screaming. One of them wasn't wearing trousers. One of them wouldn't eat anything unless it was on the floor. Like, it's just like improv is no help then. No, but also you've got to pick and choose your battles. Like, my fifth one like I literally sometimes would just give him his food in a little bowl and put it on the floor like he's a cat

I think I'm gonna have to start doing that because he's just so determined to be on the floor so I was like today I was like he was just picking up cornflakes at the floor and I thought all right maybe that's don't worry they were really small cornflakes in case someone thinks I'm choking him um they were like tiny crumbs of cornflakes. I thought, well, you seem really happy. That's what I've got better at. You seem happy, so who am I to disturb you? I saw Mickey the other day.

He had something in his mouth. I said, Mickey, what are you eating? He went, cat food. Don't worry, they survive. It's okay. It's all right, it's delicious. I suppose if you put his food on the floor, sometimes he is going to get confused, poor kid.

He'll be a comedian it's a great story it's a brilliant stand-up routine about how his mother thought he was a cat you've got to be able to laugh around here definitely otherwise it's definitely the opposite yeah I think that's like that's what we've got better at is just laughing whereas we used to always think we'd failed you know like oh we've done this wrong this isn't what you're meant to do and now we've both got better at turning each other and being like I mean it is hilarious that you know they're both screaming and both naked right now that is quite funny if I was watching this I think it was funny it's just and everybody else has that it's not it's actually it's what most people experience

is just that we don't normally talk to people about those things and I think that's one thing I reminded myself of this year actually because when Because when I had my first baby, someone bought me that awful book, The Contented Baby Book. Oh, God. And I literally put it in the bin because it was just like, this is not the kind of mother I think I am. And it made me feel terrible. There's like two days I attempted it.

You know, it's all very regimented about, you know, which breast you're feeding from and how high up the blinds are for what daylight's coming in and how much toast you're eating. It's very odd. When the pandemic started, I felt the same kind of thing of like, oh, all the other families are organized and they're in routines and they're getting up early and they're doing exercise together and then they're going for a bike ride

and then they're doing the homework and they're on it. And then after a while, I was like, I don't know how to be that family. I just know how to be our family. And then I just kind of, my shoulders just dropped and it was like, let's just do what we do. We don't have to worry be that family I just know how to be our family and then I just kind of my shoulders just dropped and it was like let's just do what we do we don't have to worry about that super family like maybe they do exist but I'm not capable of being that person so I don't think they exist either I really don't I think you know social as we know social media is such a dangerous wonderful wonderful amazing tool that's also like made of glass and will cut you if you're not careful yeah so it's like you have to be so careful because I had the same I was like right we're gonna like get up every

morning and do a different topic and I'll take the baby then you take her and I was like we're standing there you know covered in food weeping it's just like yeah as soon as I just was like as long as like no one's screaming it's fine right like if they're screaming they're hungry something's wrong they've hurt themselves as long as like they're happy it's fine and like our parenting has changed during pandemic as well like we had no television before the pandemic and we were quite strict about it because i grew up like watching so much television so i'm i'm addicted i have to really be careful and then the pandemic lockdown started i was like mate I've ordered a telly he was like but all these decisions we talked about I was like out the window we are being locked down

we're having a television frozen is on I'm doing it I was like we need to give up on this these high standards and just yeah do that you said be the family that you are there's any advice isn't it just be you be yourself it's much easier yeah it is it? Just be you, be yourself. It's much easier. Yeah, it is. It is. Oh, Carrie, thank you so much for talking to me. Thank you. I've absolutely loved our conversation. And go and find your enormous baby. So big. So massive. so that was lovely carrie ad lloyd and didn't you have so much good advice about how to deal with grief i think one of my favorite things that she said in terms of um a good thing to have in your armory really when you're dealing with grief because let's face it so much of it

is quite squeamish and we all worry so much don't we about what to say to people when they're grieving but i think that thing she said about when she said you can revisit something so if someone I don't know let's say they've just lost a parent and you're chatting to them and you sort of missed the window of bringing it up and then saying look I'm really sorry I didn't when you mentioned it in passing I wasn't I didn't really know how to deal with it and now I just want to say I'm really sorry I just thought that was really sensitive and smart and I think um something I'll definitely continue with and the other thing I'd say speaking to my mum um about how she's dealing with her own grief is that sometimes when people talk to her they say

oh I didn't want to bring it up because I didn't want to upset you and the thing is if someone's grieving then you know they're already already sad and I think actually when someone you love is no longer in this world I think there's just this part of you that just wants to speak their name and let everybody know that they existed um there's a lot of power in that and yeah the other thing I thought was really funny and really stayed with me from Carrie's chat was when she was saying about, when she said, you only have a baby in lockdown, no one cares, no one cares. And I said, what about when you had your first baby?

She was like, that was a rubbish year as well. That's when David Bowie and Prince died. And it was like, this year's terrible. So I thought that was pretty funny as well. Next week, who do I have for you? Oh, I have Ellie Taylor, who is actually another comedian. And she has written a book called My Baby and Other Mistakes, How to Ruin Your Life in the Nicest Way Possible. She has a toddler who's only two months older than my smallest. And we had a really funny chat about what it's like to go from being someone that maybe thought they wouldn't be a mom

and was actually quite repelled by a lot of sort of mum style stuff which I do kind of get it does feel quite repellent sometimes because it feels like it's very homogenizing feel like you're going to lose your identity but also you just think oh why do you want to go on about the fact you're a mum all the time but now that she's a mum she's absolutely obsessed with it to the point where she actually stalks women in the baby department in John Lewis so you're going to hear all about that she provides you with a good pickup line if you're looking to talk to new mums and Ray is anything else I need to add no he's still patiently waiting for his superhero accessories aren't you

um oh actually I should also give a big thank you to Cariad who didn't delete our conversation because when we chatted, I realized that horror of horrors, we hadn't saved it properly. I say we, it was completely my fault. I can't really bring Richard into that. So thank you to Cariad for not putting me in the bin just yet so that you could hear it too. And on that note about sharing is caring, I bid you adieu and have a lovely rest of your week. And I will see you soon. I don't know why I keep singing my outros, but it just feels appropriate.

I'm going to sing a song for you in mind. Must be still that disco spirit lingering from last night. Lots of love. Woo-hoo! Ray, has Mummy gone mad? Ray, have I gone mad? Ray? Have I lost the plot? No.

Yeah, I think so too. Bye-bye. Thank you. We'll see you next time. you've got five minutes or 50 peloton tread has workouts you can work in or bring your classes with you for outdoor runs walks and hikes led by expert instructors on the peloton app call yourself a runner peloton all access membership separate learn more at one peloton.ca slash running