The Life Of Bryony - Unleashing Your Inner Goddess: Poet Nikita Gill on Embracing Rage, Silencing Self-Doubt, and Reclaiming Power

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

This week, I’m joined by poet and author Nikita Gill, whose powerful writing has helped millions find hope through heartbreak and uncertainty. We explore how language and storytelling can transform pain, how to let go of harmful societal fairytales, and why unlearning shame about our emotions is the first step toward healing. Nikita shares her journey through trauma and self-doubt, from growing up amid conflict to fighting feelings of loneliness and depression. We discuss finding strength in community, redefining our self-image, and embracing the messy, wild parts of ourselves. Nikita’s inspiring ideas on resilience, empathy, and rebuilding out of ruins offer comfort and clarity for anyone feeling lost or overwhelmed. If you need reassurance, a dose of hope, or simply a reminder of your own power, this episode is for you. BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE Nikita's book, Hekate, a retelling in verse of the life of a child of war turned all-powerful goddess of witchcraft, necromancy and crossroads, is available to buy now.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU Got something to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512 - just start your message with LOB. Use the WhatsApp shortcut: https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB Prefer email? Drop me a line at [e-mail]   If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it - it really helps! Bryony xx   Credits:  Host: Bryony Gordon   Guest: Nikita Gill   Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig   Assistant Producer: Ceyda Uzun   Studio Manager: Sam Chisholm   Editor: Luke Shelley   Exec Producer: Mike Wooller    A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seriously popular. Now, I know a lot of you come to this podcast because you're feeling lost, alone, misunderstood. And that's why I wanted to speak to today's guest. Nikita Gill is a poet and a friend of mine who has an incredible ability to always, always, make me feel better about myself. Her words have this extraordinary power to light things. up, especially when the world feels so dark. Language is something that belongs to all of us.

It's democratically ours. And it's our shared heritage as human beings. To be able to use language to be able to express ourselves properly is a real gift. And to be able to sit and listen to others is a real gift. If those two things were things that we were able to get a grasp on as humanity as a whole, I think the world would change. the better. So today, if you're feeling a need of some guidance, some love, some reassurance that you're not alone, settle in, switch off the outside world and let Nikita's beautiful

wisdom soothe your soul. I love you, Nikita. And I wanted to get you in. You have you have a new book out all about Hekati. Yeah, yeah, that's correct. The witch in Greek, Greek mythology. Yes, yeah. But she's also like the guider of lost souls. She literally lights up the dark. And I think that's what you're like too.

I think that's when I think of you. When I was reading this book, I was thinking, Nikita is a modern-day Haccati. And I was, and, and, and, and, and I think you're also, this is how I want to kind of place you. People often say an Insta poet, you have nearly 900,000, nearly a million followers on Instagram, which is a not insignificant number. But I would describe you more as like a modern day Rumi.

And for anyone who doesn't know who Rumi is, that's okay. Rumi was a 13th century Persian poet who came out with such profound insights that Beyonce named one of her children after him. And I imagine that in centuries to come, there will be,

there will be like really cool sort of Beyonce-style figures naming their children after you, Nikita. Thank you for seeing that. First of all, Brini, I love you. Can I like take you everywhere? with me because that is the coolest way anyone has ever introduced me ever like no one's ever compared me to Rumi before that is like thank you I really appreciate that I love Rumi's work

so that means a lot to me but yes Hickati is yet this book is it was so scary to write in some ways but also it was an exorcism in many ways I guess to talk about that because let's just for anyone who like doesn't know the story of Hickety I can I never, like me, I can't even pronounce her name right. There's so many ways to pronounce her name. She's such an old goddess that her name changes in the mouths of everyone that pronounces her name. And I think there's something great special about that. Also, this is the other thing.

When we are growing up, we are taught about like the lovely goddesses, you know, like the pretty ones, the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Hecatee is firmly, she is living in the underworld with the dead, with the half dead. So talk to me about what appealed to you about her as a figure. So what you just mentioned Aphrodite, and I find that really interesting that you mentioned her because you're right. When people talk about Aphrodite, they do talk about the fact that she's the goddess of love,

but they erase the fact because that's what patriarchal erasure is. The pretty part, we like the pretty part, but she's also a goddess of war, which is why people are very uncomfortable with that aspect. of her. She's a goddess of war as much as she's a goddess of love. Hecatee or Hecatee in the same way is the goddess of liminal spaces and the crossroads and the keys and magic and strange things. There were so many goddesses who were these goddesses of these stranger things, which don't fit into what the patriarchal notion of what a goddess should be, the goddess of. And so much of their

stories were erased for that reason like even the bigger name goddesses like the olympian goddesses there were so many aspects of them that were erased so that the pretty aspects were just left behind but these are very powerful goddesses they're not goddesses are not supposed to respond to what the patriarchy wants them to do anyway that's why i love about hekati because she just she is a law unto her own and i think everyone who becomes a law unto her own is both liberated but also reviled

because we all have to live in this structure that has been set up by this world around us which is a patriarchal world whenever I speak to you and like I remember when I first met you and it was going back before the pandemic and we were we kind of met at a dinner didn't we and you always make me feel so

like you make you make those untamed parts of me, those wild parts of me, like sing, you know, whereas usually in culture and what in the world, and I wonder if anyone tuning into this gets this where we are so, we feel so ashamed of our anger and our rage and our, and, you know, anything that isn't pretty and nice, you know, and it's, and you, you kind of make me feel okay about those bits of me, you know, I love you for seeing Well, because often they're very appropriate. So to explain to people, so it's you are a poet. Yes.

So it is a novel in verse. Yes. So it's just the whole thing is a poem. Yes, basically. So it's kind of like a modern epic poem. Yeah. I wouldn't say that it's like an ancient epic poem. I have used the scaffolding of that.

But it very much stands in two words. It is this ancient story about archetypes as much as it. it is a modern story about girlhood and womanhood. And I wanted it to hold both those places together. And the best way to do that for me as a poet was to tell this story in verse format.

And I think one of the best compliments that I've been given about this book by three or four people now. And if it affects those three or four people that way, I'm very happy with that is that people were like, we finish this in a single sitting because it flowed so quickly.

It flowed so quickly because there with poetry, you can't have filler sentences. Everything has to earn its place. Every single verse, every word in every verse, must earn its place there. We talk a lot about how people don't read anymore, you know, and there's a lack of concentration. People, you know, the rise in ADHD, all of that. And actually, just while you were speaking there,

I thought, what a wonderful way to get people's attention, to write a story in verse over. 300 pages. Yeah. I mean, it's also like a challenge for the reader. And I think that a lot of people, especially people who are neurodiverse, will probably read this book and realize that, A, poetry is not something to be scared of.

Poetry is for all of us. And the second thing is, it is possible to tell an entire story this way. And there's something very ancient about telling a story in verse this way. because it's how Homer did it, right? And it's how, but at the same time, it's such a modern story in so many ways while still being this story of this ancient goddess.

Because she's a goddess of liminal spaces, I wanted to occupy those liminal spaces myself when writing this book. It's like, what does this book want to be? It wants to be a liminal space for someone to escape into and then come out going, oh, I recognize the word around me a little better now.

Can I tell you the past, that really stood out to me and that made me recognize the world around me a little bit more. I already put it on my Instagram on the week over the weekend and like it just got liked by thousands of people. I love you. And it is a woman they cannot control. I should probably ask you to read this given that you wrote it. A woman they cannot control whether goddess or mortal is a dangerous woman. That's the kind of, that's the story of Hecatee, Hecatee, isn't it? Yes, that's it.

So much of my work revolves around honoring feminine rage and where it comes from. And so much of feminine rage comes from this notion that we should allow ourselves to be controlled by structures that don't benefit us. And even for Hikati, she begins as a child of war. She faces that all-encompassing loss that refugees do. She's a goddess and she becomes a refugee. She's taken to the underworld for her protection. For her protection.

And she's left with strangers. And that's a story that we know is happening today. Right? And it's happening to people now as we speak. And it's happening to people across the world. There is no one who is safe from becoming a refugee. It could happen to anyone. And I really wanted people when they picked up this book to understand

that we are safe in so much as our countries are safe or we are not at war or there are a myriad of reasons like there's not been a natural disaster which has displaced us. But if it can happen to a goddess, it can happen to, anyone and that is why human empathy right now is more important than anything in the world and as a goddess you know the the greek gods in a lot of books are portrayed especially the ancient books are portrayed as quite they can be quite callous yeah um especially towards mortal lives because they're gods they are mortal they can take a life they can you know turn someone into a snake or

they can do what if they can do hikati's story very much is that she has a real fondness for mortals. And she has a love for them. And there is a reason why she has a love for them. And it's because they see her when the gods don't. You know, and they see her as something more than a goddess because she doesn't know she's a goddess at the time. And I think there's something really powerful about that symbiotic relationship between her and the mortals that she gets to know. But also, she's a goddess who doesn't know her own power. Yeah. Which is very relatable. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, I think most of, I hope that a lot of people tuning in know that they are goddesses, but we're all goddesses trying to work out what our power is.

Because we, we do, we, we, we subscribe to this society that tells us we need to be this, we need to be that. And for me, life has been about working out, well, what is my power? People keep telling me to stand in my power, but I don't know what it is, you know, and getting into my 40s has been working out, these are the things I know I'm good at. These are the things that I know I excel out. And I'm not going to let the world cause me to hide my light under a bushel. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so hard to look at yourself and understand. Because I think a lot of things that I used to call my flaws, I realized are my strength. Yeah. My superpowers. And I was taught that they were flaws. What were the things that you considered your flaws when you were younger?

Do you know, I was a very sensitive kid. I was a very, and all of my teachers said that she's a very sensitive kid in a really negative way. Very negative way. They were like, there's something wrong with Nikita because she's a very sensitive kid. And then I think a couple of years ago, I met someone at school, from school, like some, obviously we're older now, but someone from school who said to me, and I don't even remember doing this because it's so long ago. but they said to me that you were really kind to me

when no one else was and it made a real difference to me and that's because I was a really sensitive kid who could see this person was being bullied and that they were being made to feel alone and no one was being kind to them and that that experience made me realize that this over

sensitivity that I was told that I had was it's the reason why I'm a poet is the reason why I'm able to find the most lonely people in a room and make them feel like they're not lonely anymore. And I think that's such an important skill to have in this life. And all of the teachers and my parents who made me feel like I needed to harden myself and forget that skill would have done me a great disservice if they had succeeded. Can we talk about your childhood? Yeah, of growing up. Yeah. Because I love to get into that. This is a therapy session, Nikita.

So you were born in Belfast. Yes. To Indian parents. Yes. So there's a lot of like outsider feelings going on there, I imagine. I don't know. You tell me because maybe there weren't. I think.

So it's really interesting being born in Northern Ireland during what is called the Troubles, but was really colonization, right? Being born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and then being taken to Kashmir. and they're both areas of a British bandit audition, which is really fascinating. And they both have religious tension, right? So my childhood was, it began knowing these things, these things that probably I didn't realize that wasn't normal for children to know.

Right? So Northern Irish children who were born at the time would know about this. Kashmiri children would know about this. Because an irregular war is not like, you know, all out bloodshed and warfare. An irregular war is, there was a bomb blast here, there's a curfew tonight, there's, you know, electricity is going to be cut at a certain time, terrorism, you know, is something, there's an army presence over here, be careful going there, there are demarcade areas,

that's what an irregular war looks like. It was kind of insiduous. It is just sort of, it's not the war we imagine of constant bombardment and constant. it's like just creep it creeps into it's under the surface yeah it's under the surface and on on over the surface you look at both kashmir and northern ireland are beautiful places they are stunning right but under the surface there was all of this going on and there was so much there was so much that I learned as a child that as I got older I realized that oh I shouldn't know those things because other kids don't know those things.

I do, right? My grandparents continued to stay in Jammu about 10 kilometers away from the border right now when there was like the India-Pakistan there was those tensions rising. My grandmother, and this has happened frequently when I was there as well when I was a child,

she was saying how they were like, she could hear the bombs, and you could hear the gunfire, you could hear the missiles, you could hear all of that, in their house you could hear it you could the you know things would rattle you could hear all of that that's where it means to live in a border town you know next to a so much tension so my childhood was full of things like this and then of course my parents were from two different faiths

so my father's Sikh my mother is Hindu and I was sort of raised in both religions which kind of is a really beautiful thing because when you're raised in two religions you realize that all religions are valid because you're raised in so obviously my mother raised me in my father's faith but I was fascinating by the Hindu gods and like

you know my mom was very, very keen that I learned she's a storyteller so she taught me all about the Mahabharath and the Ramayan and then of course all the Greek gods so she taught me mythology before she taught me fairy tales

so what you said then obviously my mom mother raised me in my father's faith. Yeah. I find that really interesting. At what point did you, because I'm assuming it's eunuchita, there was a point where you questioned that. Yeah.

Yeah. So I find my family's a little bit strange when it comes to faith. And I'll tell you why. You could have just said my family's a little bit strange. Yeah. And that would have related, that would have resonated with all of us. I'm not saying, I mean, like my family's a little bit strange. No, they are.

They are strange. Like I think we all come from strange. families. I don't think there's a normal family out there. Does anyone have that? No, but the thing is, Nikita, we think they're normal. Yeah, yeah. And then when we're really good at convincing ourselves that this is normal. And then when we become adults, we're like, shitting fuck. This is it. I like that word. Shit. The phrase is great. Shitting fuck. That was not normal. Anyway, sorry. Sorry. So your family were a little bit strange when it came to religion.

When it came to religion and not in a, oh, you know, we're fundamentalist or anything. It's just that we had so many fates inside the house. And the reason is because I say my mother was Hindu. She does pray to the Hindu gods, but her parents, her father was Hindu and then he converted to Sikhism. Her mother was Sikh. And then she married my father who was Sikh, basically. But out of the two of them, she was the more religious one. And they were both raised in Catholic boarding schools.

They both went to Catholic school. real mismatch going on. Exactly. So it was a little bit strange when we came to when it came to faith. And my mother's way of like recognizing that was going, oh, so all of it is real. Every, every religion. She never went to my religion is real. Yours is not. She went every religion is real. The reason she chose Sikhism is because it is the youngest out of the religions. And also Sikhism does this thing where we do saver. And saver is where you serve the community essentially. You have. have to, and she really wanted us to be raised by brother and me in service to the community around us. When I was a child, I was a very pragmatic child. People would ask me what I want

for my birthday and I'd just be like, books, like, you know, get me a book. I'm happy with that. But my mom would always say, like, what more do you want? And I think I hit about 13 and I didn't, I was like, I feel very lucky. I have my books and I have like my drawing and my painting and that. I'm very happy with that. But there was a Gurdwara, which is at an orphanage, basically. And that was the Gurdwara that we went to very often. And I said to Mum, can we, like, start donating there on my birthday instead of, like, getting me stuff? Like, I've never been a big fan of stuff.

So I said to my mom, can we start doing something for other people? Because I clearly don't need more. You know? I'm happy. with what I have. And it wasn't like my parents were wealthy and it's not like I had a lot. But in my eyes, I had enough.

So till date, what my mother does is she gives my body's weight in, so I weigh 65 kilos. So my mom gives 65 kilos worth of rice and dal and vegetables and stuff to the Gurdwara. In a Guitwara is... Sikh temple. Sikh temple, right.

Yeah, so Sikh temple. She gives all of that on my birthday to the Gurdwara because what they do is something called Langar. And Langer basically is a community meal which is cooked at the Gurdwara by volunteers and then you feed the community. Anyone can come and eat. You sit shoulder to shoulder and you eat.

So she goes every year on my birthday till date since I was like 13 years old to give that there. And you know what? Like I'm really glad I was raised by parents that made me realize. that you don't need to be a billionaire, even a millionaire, even like, to some degree, a thousand there, you know, to be happy. Yeah.

And to be happy. Yeah. You know, give me a good book and, like, you give me my, like, work and, like, my art. And I'm very happy with all of that. I've been that person since I was a kid. Have you? Because I read, there was a poem I read where you spoke about wanting to talk to your 13-year-old self. Yeah.

Which, when I say I loved it, I don't, I don't mean like, I love that you have had a mental illness, but a conversation with my mental illness. Yes. And I wanted to talk, which is a bit, which is the conversation that I have also had with this kind of little voice in my brain saying, you're worthless. Yeah. And in the poem, and you say back, no, I'm not. I'm, you know, I'm trying, I'm doing my best. and then the voice says you're a bad person and you're like no i'm a good person who sometimes does bad things yeah yeah can we can you would you feel comfortable talking about that that

aspect of your mental health and how that's shown up shown up for you over the years yeah um of course so i was a very bullied kid in the school and that is why Yeah, I think I did my parents a disservice earlier on when I said, like, you know, when they said, like, stop being so oversensitive. I think I did them a disservice by saying that, like, you know, portraying them as that as a negative. What they were trying to do was protect me. Yeah.

Because I was so oversensitive, I was an easy target, you know. And I was an easy target in school for a lot of kids who obviously now, looking back, had things going on at home themselves. Because a lot of bullies are bullied to themselves. A bully themselves. Hurt people, hurt people. Exactly. They bullied themselves.

And they were kids, right? And this is what kids do. They don't know how to emotionally regulate. So they find an easy target and they go after them. And I was an easy target. I was an easy target because I was extremely oversensitive. And I was an easy target because I would cry a lot, you know. And I think there was like, there's another story there,

which I won't go into any details about. abuse going on as well. And I think the combination of those two things, when you have them, those kind of experiences when you're really young, I think it makes you, it causes, it does cause mental illness. It causes a lot of trauma, which can lead to anxiety, which can lead to depression. So I was a very young kid when I first started having suicidal thoughts. I must have been 12 when I wrote my first suicide note and I made my first list of how many people would be better off if I wasn't here anymore.

I was 12. And I feel really sad for that little girl now that she was in that place where she even knew how to do that. But that's who I was and that's how much the word hurt me when I was a child. And I think as I got older, it has made me really protective towards children's mental health, especially, because I think people, even when I was young, and you know this when you were young, people still have that idea that children are very resilient. So we can survive anything. And it's not true.

Children just don't have the language to express what is happening to them because they can't emotionally regulate. It's not resilience as much as it is. I don't have the language to tell you. survival as well. Yeah. And it's an adult's job to teach them how to regulate. And of course, that adult isn't always there for them. No, that's exactly what it is.

And also, you know, maybe the adult doesn't know, even if they want to. They weren't taught themselves. It's like a history of not having the language. And I am such a lover of language. You know, I think language is something that belongs to all of us. It's democratically ours. and it's our shared heritage as human beings and to be able to use language

to be able to express ourselves properly is a real gift and to be able to sit and listen to others is a real gift, right? And I think if those two things were things that we were able to get a grasp on as humanity as a whole, I think the world would change for the better.

I think we wouldn't have as many struggles as we do today. We just learned how to, one, master language to be able to communicate our feelings well and to listen to each other. There are a lot of people out there who just haven't been listened to about their pain and their trauma and their depression and anxiety. They just haven't been heard. And women especially, I don't think I've met a woman until date who hasn't struggled with her mental health at some point in her life

and simply not been heard. Well, dismissed for it. Dismissed. You know, that's the other thing. We're so often taught to dismiss the way we feel and kind of gloss over it so that we can become these fairy tale characters,

you know, the way that we're taught. And this is, I wanted to speak to you because oh, there's so many things I've written down. But, you know, you say in a number, another one of your poems, womanhood is rich with unlearning, how to unlearn the way you hate your body, how to understand that there are a million new versions of you hiding under your skin. And talking, you talk about unlearning fairy tales. And I think so much of your work is about, is about encouraging people to unlearn these stories that they have been told growing up.

And I love when you talk about sleeping beauty. And if you had a daughter, you had a daughter, You would not, you would be teaching her that it is not okay that a prince is coming and kissing her while she's asleep. Yeah. And you write, I'll teach her to say the word no before she learns yes. I will teach her that others may think she's being difficult, but nobody's opinion matters as much as her own. I mean, how many of us need to be taught this now, right? And most important of all, I continue in Nikita's words here, I will teach her never to feel guilty or wear her body as though it is a gift to anyone except herself. If I could drop this microphone on the floor without being told off by the studio manager Sam, I would do that.

And then you go on. I mean, like, it's just as endless. You also teach your daughter that her body is the most powerful gift in the way it heals her. I love that. You know, your body is a gift in the way that it allows you to live, you know, and exist. And I, you know, just thinking about that, it's like the stories we tell ourselves because the stories we have been told as children limit us so much.

Yeah. Yeah. And they're, you know, stories can be used as a way of liberation or a means of control. And we know that because we are living in these tumultuous times. Yes, one could say very tumultuous. Yeah, the understatement of the century, right? Tomultuous times where we have a lot of myth making going on around us and a lot of stories being told. And you can see who has learned with story would appeal to which community which would turn them against another community

and so much of that is what is going on right now and I can see it as someone who works in language and someone who is a storyteller I can see the way that mythology is being used and a very modern mythology is being used to switch to turn one community against another. Well, yeah, I mean, I mean the St. George's flag and the tale of St. George who actually, as you point out,

was he was a Turkish Palestinian he was a Turkish Palestinian guys my favorite clip from the weekend is the one have you seen it someone there's a guy filming from above and it's a guy with the St. George's flag around his back

and he's getting an onion bargey from the Indian street food I saw that the best bit about it is the commentary from the guy going bro, get out of my country, but give me an onion bargey first. Give me some of your delicious Indian street food first. It's so funny. It's actually incredible because I can guarantee you,

the man who is doing this probably doesn't think that food is from India. He probably thinks that food is British. Yeah. He thinks onion parjis are British and samosas are British and they're English food. And I think that's so fascinating. Because this country. Again, well, it's a learning, isn't it? It's like all about, I mean, so much of life is about unlearning falsehoods that we are taught.

Yeah. And I feel that quite profoundly as a woman, you know, I'm now 45. And I feel like the first 30 years of my life were trying to live up to this fairy tale. that I had been modelled throughout my childhood, you know, like I need to be pretty, get a man, get, you know, have a child, you know, and some of these are genuine things that I, you know, might have liked anyway, where I'm not taught it, but it's like, yeah, but also be good, be good, be happy, be happy,

or all times be happy. Don't be sad. Don't be cross. Don't be cross, Briney. For God's sake, don't be ridiculous. Don't be ridiculous, right? And now I feel I'm into that era of, of well, I'm well, I'm deeply into the next 30 years of my life, 30 to 60, where it's like I'm unlearning that and I'm having to learn what actually do I want to live. what are the beliefs that I want to live my life by,

that I want to model to my daughter, you know? And then if I'm lucky enough to get to 60 to 90 or whatever, like imagine what power, what grown-like, witch-like power goes on there. It's great, isn't it? This is why I'm so, I think I reached, when I reached my 30s, I sort of became obsessed with the dark goddesses, what they call the dark goddesses, but, you know, goddesses like Hikati. And Nix and Sticks, who plays Hickati's, who is Hikati's foster mother in this book, Sticks.

And obviously, Carly, who is the goddess of destruction and sex and time, because all of them. Why not? And, you know, Lilith, like all of these goddesses who don't fit in to what is supposed to be feminine and soft and pretty. And I love what you just said when you said, you know, we are taught to, you know, have a baby and have a man and do this and do that. And maybe you would have liked those things anyway. But they did feel like this is the path which has been selected for you as opposed to the path that you wanted to select for yourself. Exactly. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to find these things out for ourselves?

Exactly. Exactly. You talked just then about the goddess of destruction. And I'm glad you mentioned that because I wanted to talk in so in in in this book, this new book, but in so much of your poetry, the theme is, is rebuilding out, you know, on the ashes of destroyed things. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And it's about learning that the most terrible things that happen to us.

can lead to some of the best things. And I really feel like this episode is for the lost, well, I feel like this podcast generally is for the lost souls who feel alone, who feel a bit misunderstood. And but also for people who are just kind of floundering doesn't feel like the right word, but they aren't sure maybe they've just gone through something really dark that feels like the most terrible thing

and they can't see their way out of it. And I love how you, there's another poem you wrote called Cities and Ruin's and You, and in which you talk about how like New York was built out of, is it, crumbled English cathedrals? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So in World War II or Second World War, as we call it in this country, a lot of the ruins that were, because, you know, the Blitz happened and, like, a lot of, like, our old buildings were destroyed in the Blitz. And so much of that was taken to build, to rebuild.

Like, so many of those, like, old buildings that were destroyed were essentially taken to rebuild. And they were, like, circulated around. It's just a really fascinating story. Wow. So, so much of New York was built from that. And Rome was obviously built on its own ashes. Yeah. Everything, all these cities that we love and we know so well were built on their own ashes.

And it's fascinating. if you look at their history. But I like how you, you talk about that and you talk about that the endings, perceived endings, actually being beginnings. Because you talk so much about hope. Yeah. You know, and having hope when there is none.

And I just wondered if we could talk about that for a bit because it feels like the, it feels actually like the most important thing, especially, I don't know, like when life, does feel like bleak quite bleak but i was you get a bit emotional now but i was you know yesterday i was with my best friend who lost her husband um quite suddenly a year ago and i've sort of spoken about that on and off in this podcast and i was reading your poetry and i was thinking i must send this to her i must send this to her i must but in time not right now because you know it's fresh it's still

quite fresh but i was thinking about how everything is it's like even when we're in the darkest of times and it can feel impossible to ever imagine a time when you won't it won't feel this mad it won't feel this chaotic it won't feel this tumultuous you know and you don't have to have lost someone suddenly or to be going through something terrible like even just sometimes I don't know like and I don't know if this resonates with anyone you know anyone listening or watching I go on social media or I look at the news and I just think, oh my God, we're living in the darkest of times, you know. But so often a theme in your poetry is that, well, we are always living in the darkest of times.

And it just, life keeps on happening, you know, the, you don't help the trees don't, you know, like, there's another poem you write about, I'm going to go out and tell the rain. I'm going to go out and tell the trees that this is a dark time, you know, and they need to be a lot to it. And the nature is like, yeah, well, we've sort of. He's like, shut up, bitch. Nature is like, shut up, bitch. I just take so much comfort in that. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, I think what's really incredible about humanity is that we are in constant states of existential crises. Even the ones of us who don't acknowledge the existential crises and constant states

of existential crises. They're the ones in the most existential of crisis. Genuinely. But I think that. That's the beauty of the human species, is that we move from existential crisis to existential crisis. And if you look at nature, so I went to the Forest of Dean, the beginning of this month. And the Forest of Dean is so old. It is so old. The trees, some of them over there are thousands of, like over a thousand years old. And I keep thinking, what have those trees seen?

Right? Like, they've seen soldiers, like, from multiple wars who have. probably camped out under them, right? War after war after war. They've probably seen humanity completely change, you know, from not even having electricity to God knows what. You know, like they've seen so much. And they are still standing there like old gods, like old guardians, keeping an eye out on our soul. And I think there's something so powerful in that because they give back to the world as much as they take from it. And there's a lesson in those trees and in nature and on all of these things. So when we have these existential crises,

like going out into nature or looking at the night sky or talking to a tree, or even just looking at a tree, you realize, oh, I have, if I'm lucky, 80 years, 90 years, if you're very lucky, right? How am I going to use? What Mary Oliver say about her one wild and precious life? Right? Like, there's a reason why that resonance. with so many of us because we only get that much time. We aren't like the trees. We don't have a thousand years or 400 years or 500 years.

All we have if we are lucky is those 80 years. And I have so many friends who didn't even make it to 40. Who didn't make it to 40. I have so many friends who didn't make it to 30. And so I think we owe it to ourselves

for everyone who didn't make it to live as wholesomely and as much as possible take like hate bear who is an amazing poet talks about squeezing life like it is a fruit and enjoying every bit of juice that comes out of it squeeze every bit of it and enjoy every bit of it because that is what we are here for and of course there's been this situation which has happened where there's been this march and it's been really disheartening for people really painful for people And my form of resistance to that is to be extra kind

to every single person I have seen go out of my way for them. And I'm one person. I know that that extra kindness changes someone's day. And, you know, maybe it sounds like cliche to people. But I know that by doing that one kind thing, I have made someone's day better when we have just had this very painful moment. happen, which has probably made them feel small.

And that is all this is, so all of this is supposed to be about. Like, I'm a poet, I know, I see, I'm maybe I'm an idealist, but that is what all of this is supposed to be about. Nikita, Nikita, just so you know, I can't speak for everyone listening or watching, but you have changed me today and you're, have changed the trajectory of my day. And I'm pretty sure that anyone who has just witnessed that beautiful, beautiful soliloquy, let's speak in poetic terms, will have had their day

changed too. And that's what this is all about. And I just want to thank you for coming in and soothing my soul and everyone else's souls with your fantastic wisdom. Long, you continue to give us light in these dark times, Nikita Gill. I don't know about you guys, but I've got chills. That was soul-stirring stuff. And I want to know what you got from Nikita in this conversation. Has it made you rethink some of the stories you tell yourself? Please send me a DM on my Instagram.

Instagram. That's at Brianie Gordon. And also know that Hecatee is available to buy now at all good bookshops. See you next week.