Woman's Hour - Age-gaps in dating, Women and Epilepsy and How to Build Resilience

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Experts in epilepsy say women are disproportionately affected by the condition. Around 300,000 women have it in the UK. Epilepsy Research UK say that hormones can affect epilepsy, and drugs used to control it need to be very carefully balanced with medication that women take like The Pill or HRT. Women with epilepsy are also ten times more likely to die in pregnancy. Dr Susan Duncan is a consultant neurologist. Torie, 30 and Ruth, 60 both have it. Dating apps have changed how you can meet a potential partner and you can choose exactly what you like as all the information about sexuality, age, background and sexual preferences are laid out. Our reporter Henrietta Harrison, in her forties, recently joined a dating app and was inundated with messages from men in their twenties but felt uneasy about some of the approaches. It seems the ‘older woman with a younger man’ dynamic is growing in popularity on dating apps and it has long been popular in porn. She wanted to understand more about the attraction between younger men and older women. Henrietta spoke to 28 year old man we are calling Richard who is in a polyamorous relationship and regularly dates women in their forties and fifties. What is resilience? Is it something we are born with, or do our life experiences help to shape it? And does failure help us to build it? Jane discusses the issues with the writer and podcaster Elizabeth Day, author of Failosophy A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong, with the Psychologist, Emma Kenny and the Paralympian and motivational speaker Martine Wright MBE. Producer: Henrietta Harrison Editor: Karen Dalziel

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. It's Thursday, the 8th of October 2020. Hello, good morning. Welcome to the programme. Today we talk about resilience. Can you acquire it? Does failure help you to build it? I think there's no doubt that at the moment, all of us are having to dig into our reserves of something or other.

It might be resilience. We've got some really good guests on this subject this morning, actually. Martine Wright, who survived the 7-7 terrorist attack. That's Martine Wright, MBE, actually, motivational speaker and Paralympian. We also have the psychologist Emma Kenny and the writer and podcaster Elizabeth Day.

So plenty of people involved in that. But I'd love your thoughts on it too. Social media at BBC Women's Hour is where we're at. We're starting though this morning with a conversation about women and epilepsy. And I thought this was particularly important to do, especially in the light of the Cumberledge Review, which came out in July, and drew attention to the sometimes catastrophic effects of three different medical treatments given to women. The oral pregnancy test Primidos, pelvic mesh and the anti-epilepsy drug sodium valproate. Thousands of women of childbearing age are prescribed it, but they should be on a pregnancy prevention programme.

Epilepsy Research UK believe that hormones can affect epilepsy and drugs used to control it do need to be very carefully balanced with medication that women inevitably take, things like the pill or HRT. So Dr Susan Duncan is a consultant neurologist at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. She's also the principal investigator for the Scottish Epilepsy Death Study. And we can talk to two women who have epilepsy, Tori Robinson, who's 39, and Ruth Robertson, who is 66. Susan Duncan, first of all, good morning to you. Good morning. Tell us, how many women have epilepsy in the UK?

Well, we reckon in the UK there's about 500,000 to 600,000 people have epilepsy. So it's roughly going to be about 300,000. So there's no gender difference here? Well, there's a slight gender difference, slightly commoner in men, but essentially no. Okay, but women and men are physiologically very different. So what about the impact of the female body on epilepsy or vice versa? Or vice versa? Well, there's a number of reasons. I mean, the first thing, of course, is so-called catamenial epilepsy, and that's the exacerbation of seizures or them becoming more

frequent during the menstrual cycle. And this has been a source of fascination since Victorian times, with some studies showing up to 60% of people reporting increasing seizures, usually around the time of menstruation. There's no internationally defined, accepted definition of the condition, but there have been studies done into it. Sadly, they've been fairly inconclusive. There was a large study back in the early 2000s, bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health. And they looked at about 200 women and they did a very nice double blind placebo controlled trial of progesterone. And they found that it didn't help in catamenial epilepsy. The theory is that oestrogen is epileptogenic and progesterone, which is the other main female hormone,

is not, is anti-epileptogenic. And just before you start to menstruate, there's a sudden drop in your progesterone levels and you have unfettered oestrogen levels and that's what makes the seizures worse or more frequent. But unfortunately, the hormonal manipulation did not work for the majority of women and it was declared a negative study. That is disappointing, isn't it? It is, yeah. Okay. Does it mean, because of that link or possible link, does it mean that girls are likely to start having epileptic fits around the time of puberty? Not necessarily. I think there are certain epilepsies, what are called the generalised

genetic epilepsies, and the sort of classic one is juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, which tends to start in adolescence, which of course is when girls start to menstruate. And these epilepsies, particularly juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, juvenile absence epilepsy, tend to be slightly commoner in girls anyway. Whether it's hormonal or not, we've never really sorted out, but it's probably the combination of these particular epilepsies starting at this particular time in life. And that's also when girls start to menstruate. So there's been no proven link as such. Okay, let's bring in Ruth robertson um ruth i know you're very and it's very important that i mention this you're not defined by your epilepsy you happen to have epilepsy i think that's really important to say and you are someone who's who's

worked as a psychotherapist that's right isn't it that's right yes yeah um but you were um somebody who actually did start epilepsy in your teens yeah i, I was 14 when I had my first seizure, yes. And what happened around that time? Well, I'd moved down from Edinburgh to Sussex, and so that was a big kind of shock. Apart from that, I don't think anything in particular happened. I don't know if that can sort of cause you to start having epilepsy but i suppose i was a a teenager and so that's the kind of time these things sometimes

um you know show their face how were you treated oh i think the local gp came in and uh you know, I was given various medications that I went off to. And that made me a lot better. And I was fortunate in that it was at that time it was nocturnal. And for quite a lot of my life, it has been nocturnal. But nonetheless, the seizures were quite bad. I mean, I think I went to see a neurologist, but what can I say? I mean, I don't think I knew much about it really, except for what happened to me. Was there any sense in which your family tried to protect you? Did they suggest that perhaps you don't have a very active social life, anything like that? Well, I think my father was quite alarmed. And I think the doctors also had sort of,

were sort of saying, you know, well, she shouldn't, you know, do much and she shouldn't, she shouldn't go out by herself and, you know, make sure she's, you know, so I was kind of being put back into the role of a much younger child. My father was quite alarmed and was quite keen to go along with that because he had had a brother with epilepsy who was also severely disabled in other ways as well. But my mother said, no, she's got to have a proper teenage life. And in fact, at the time, I just thought, this is the end. I'm never going to have a boyfriend. I'm never going to get married. I really felt that, you know, life was sort of falling apart. But my mother was the one who really said, no, she's got to go to parties.

And you, to my father, you've got to go and pick her up at the right time, you know, not too late. And so that's what happened. Right. Thank you. That, I suppose, would be back in the 70s, Ruth, something like that? Yes, it would. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Slightly different for you, Tori, now only 39. How did your family react? Quite frankly, in a rather pants manner. You know what? So I was diagnosed when I was 10,

and I was just plonked straight onto the drugs. And it seemed pretty straightforward, just like kind of dope up every day. But do you know what? I wasn't believed by one of my parents that I had epilepsy until I was 32. So, yeah, but Palava is putting it in a nice way. OK. And the impact on your adolescence, what was it? You know what? It was just pretty awful. So, like, I used to be nearing the top of my class. And then as soon as I was put onto anti-epileptic drugs, that was kind of it.

Everything was so, gosh, I sound like I'm such a moaner, but it really, really was awful. I had to work, I kid you not, you know, twice, three times as hard as I had to before. I'd like fall asleep on the bus on the way to school on the way back. And my social life disappeared. And my confidence was just non-existent. And were you fearful of having a fit? Do you know what? Yes, I was to a degree. What was interesting in the beginning was when I was really little, I used to, in inverted commas, enjoy my seizures because they kind of took me away from the stresses of life. And it was a type of focal seizure. But later on, and especially after I'd been diagnosed, I was I was scared because I didn't know what I would do in front of other people. You know, what would they think of me? Life was difficult enough as it was.

But I was actually very lucky in that my friends were very supportive. They were, you know, a good lot. But I was also very open about it from the beginning, which helped, I think. Yes, perhaps slightly easier for you at that time to be open than Ruth. And Ruth, I think you did say that your fits were confined to the night. Were they exclusively at night? At that time, they were exclusively at night. Yes, I think, except for sometimes when I was ill and things like that. And yeah, just occasional, just, you know, aberrations like that. But yes, they were. So that did mean that I was fortunate in many ways. And I did realise that I was fortunate in many ways. Though I absolutely go with Torah about, you know, school and difficulty of being able to concentrate and that kind of thing. It does have an effect on all the medication and so on. Oh, it must do. Absolutely must do. Now, in your case, Ruth, you've had children. Was it something you anguished about or was it something you just really wanted to do? I think a lot of my friends were getting pregnant and kind of,

there's a kind of funny time in life when, yeah, I just sort of thought it'd be good fun to get pregnant. And so, yeah, I went off and became pregnant and then went along. And the doctor said, yeah, you're pregnant. And actually, something I didn't tell you before was I was then sent along to see somebody else who showed me lots of pictures of disabled children to kind of encourage me to have an abortion, I suppose. And when I said I didn't want an abortion, he sort of went, oh, and put the pictures under his desk. Right, let's bring in Susan Duncan again.

Susan Duncan, why might that have happened? Well, I think in the 60s, 70s, even early 80s, there was this feeling that in some quarters that women with epilepsy shouldn't have children, that there was an increased risk of fetal abnormality, particularly with some of the older drugs. We've talked about Valparate, but Finitone was another one. And I think just frankly, good old fashioned prejudice. Epilepsy was tied up with notions of criminality and learning difficulty, and we didn't want this cascading down through the generations. I think attitudes have changed. And I would have

to say that the vast majority of women with epilepsy have normal pregnancies and normal, happy, healthy babies. And if you are a woman out there with epilepsy and you want to have a baby, go ahead. But I think it's very important that before you get pregnant, you go and get advice. And this is where epilepsy nurses play a very good role, a very important role. And they've been a great boon in the last 20 years. Because if you go for preconception counselling, they have access to all the latest data about the effects of anti-epileptic drugs, different anti-epileptic drugs on the unborn. They can get that from our Belfast database and from the European database and they can advise you before pregnancy is the time to make any changes in anti-epileptics which we sometimes have to do and to get you onto folic

acid. The other thing is that epilepsy nurses will also funnel you into the antenatal clinic where women with medical conditions are looked after so that ideally means that you'll see an epilepsy nurse during your pregnancy. If you're lucky in Edinburgh, our lead epilepsy nurse is also midwife, which is a great boon. And you will then have a birth plan. So you can labour normally, but you'll have a birth plan so that there's very clear guidelines about what to do if you have a seizure before you have your baby or during labour or immediately after. And you'll also get support and be followed up after. It's very important immediately, postnatally, if you're trying to breastfeed, not getting enough sleep, to get all of that support. Because that's a very dangerous time for women.

We know that from the confidential investigations into maternal deaths in Britain, one of the women with epilepsy are particularly at risk of death in the first 12 months after delivery. And often it's sudden unexplained death and epilepsy. And the suspicion is these women are maybe forgetting to take their drugs, they're not getting enough sleep, they're having breakthrough seizures. So it's a very vulnerable time for women. And it's very important that before they get pregnant, they get all this advice, get all this set up so that they can come through it right but the take the take-home message is if you're a lady with women with epilepsy and you want a child go ahead thank you um that's i'm glad you made that clear but tori i know you have decided that you will you will not

be having children yeah that's right and you know i i just made that decision when i was actually very young i thought i might change my mind when I became older. But I and I really respect women who do choose to have children. Actually, I know lots, lots and lots of women with epilepsy who have chosen to have children. But it has been really stressful. I know one woman who was so worried, had a seizure, fell down the escalator. I'm not trying to put people off here, but found a fell down TFL escalator. Luckily, she was OK and the baby survived, who's really cute, by the way. And I have another friend who's had two children and she has epilepsy.

And it was really strange. This is why the brain is so interesting and why we need much more research into this. Like her seizures were, well, she didn't have any during her pregnancy. So her health became much better. OK, can I just quickly throw that one to Susan? Is that common, Susan? I'm sorry, that health is better during pregnancy? Yeah.

Well, it depends. The majority of women, if they've had good seizure control before they become pregnant, continue to have good seizure control. If they've had difficult to control epilepsy before pregnancy, sometimes that epilepsy continues to be difficult to control. But sometimes it improves and there may be lots of reasons for that. Maybe they get more support. Maybe they take their drugs more regularly. It's very important that women do take their drugs regularly during pregnancy. It's variable. But in the main, if you've had well-controlled epilepsy before you become pregnant,

you will get through pregnancy without any seizure breakthroughs and so on. Can I just say it also depends slightly on the anti-epileptic drug. There is one drug, Lamotrigine, that can be affected during pregnancy. Its levels can drop. And again, this is why we are very keen to get women with epilepsy funneled into the nurse-led clinics so that this can be kept an eye on. And women have to be told if you're pregnant and you suddenly have a breakthrough seizure after a good phase of seizure freedom, get in touch with us so we can have a quick look at you and maybe increase the drugs or see what's happening thank you very much that's dr susan duncan a consultant neurologist um just very very briefly thank you to ruth robertson who

i thought was absolutely brilliant um quick word from you tori on your blog because i know there's loads of stuff you get out there on your blog and you're you're just incredibly honest about this you totally own it and good luck to you by the way but tell us about your blog thank you um yeah so um do you know what after my brain surgery for my epilepsy which was back in 2013 i had a temporal lobe resection um and i just decided i was i was quite fed up with the population of homo sapiens who kept choosing not to learn about epilepsy um and so i started a blog and it seemed to be really popular that turned into Epilepsy Sparks. And now we've had contributors from every continent, bar Antarctica that is. And it's so exciting because we have patients contribute, family

members. We have neurologists, scientists, and there are so many people out there who are really passionate to actually help us thought affected by epilepsy and by the way by us thought i mean um us patients with the diagnosis but also families um and friends you know because i think everyone would rather sort of know what do you do if you have a seizure what are your limitations if you have any um and also it's really great to get the word out there for people with learning disabilities, because often they're kind of like left behind. But it's really important that because there are a significant percentage of people with epilepsy do have learning disabilities, they need to have that voice. And just one more thing, just more quickly, what I have found really uplifting

as someone who's had brain surgery, but still on drugs and still sometimes has seizures is research into epilepsy because it gives us hope, you know. Of course, and I'm sure you do need that and I absolutely get that. Thank you so much. That's Tori Robinson. Thank you. And you can find, we'll put a link to her blog on the Woman's Hour website, bbc.co.uk forward slash Woman's Hour. Now, you mentioned this yesterday, we've been talking about this all week.

Our reporter Henrietta Harrison, who's in her late 40s, she's asked me to say that, recently joined a dating app and was inundated with messages from men in their 20s. She's feeling a little bit uneasy about this. It does seem that the older woman with a younger man thing is definitely a thing, very much a thing on dating apps at the moment. So she wanted to understand a little bit more about this. Is it just sexual or can these relationships last? So she spoke to a 28-year-old man. We, for some reason, are calling Richard and a few of you have picked that up on

email. Thank you for that. Richard is in a polyamorous relationship. He also regularly dates women in their 40s and in their 50s. Now, this is plain speaking language, frank stuff. So if you're not in the mood, you can turn to Ken Bruce right now. Now, here is Richard explaining he's been dating older women for years. When I was much younger, it's definitely a stage where I, I mean, if I'm honest, I eroticised their age and their age difference. And the relationships were much more simplistic, much more sexual, much more physical. And I guess as I sort of grew up and sort of got over that phase,

my appetite for older women didn't diminish in any way. Now it was more the age just didn't bother me. So you meet most of the women online, that is that fair to say almost almost entirely what would you say are the benefits in your mind of dating or sleeping with an older woman many and varied um i mean so so first off, older women, you know, they've been in their bodies for longer, you know. So older women, on average, tend to be more comfortable with their bodies. They also tend to be more comfortable with their sexualities. They tend to know what they want and they're not afraid to ask for it. Or indeed, just to go and get it, which are all very attractive qualities. And also I think the appetites of an older woman

more closely resemble a younger man's. And I would say they're uniquely fitted in this sense. You know, young women and young men aren't actually that well suited physically. They're really not, which I would argue why so many relationships fail, you know. In what way? So can you give me a little bit more detail? So when you say older women and younger men are matched sexually that's in terms of appetite how long they want to have sex or how much they want to have sex and how is that then different to a younger woman and again we're we're talking on average obviously um something I've

always found interesting and sort of explains a lot of the behavior and in biological sense which is that when a woman approaches menopause her body has a last push um to get pregnant which means that older women have a surge of hormones and a massively increased sex drive because you know their body is preparing to shut down that that bit of their you know their cycle and the effects are you know quite obvious and quite enjoyable i think everybody likes to feel wanted and whereas you know with a younger woman typically there might be this sort of this sort of give and take this this courtship dance an older woman will just devour you so as a as a bloke you feel appreciated by old women yeah i know there's definitely you feel more appreciated you know worshipped even in the right circumstance

you know they an older woman will make you feel more attractive they'll make you feel more wanted they'll make you you know often a lot more satisfied you know and then there's just certain obvious things like you know depending on the woman's life practice makes perfect you know if someone's been doing something for 50 years versus someone's been doing something for you know 10 then you can imagine the one with the more experience might be better at it in terms of you know you're talking about

this sort of sexual disconnect between couples of the same age or similar age can you just explain a little bit more i don't know whether it's to do with you know the way that you know you're saying you feel appreciated by an older woman can the younger woman feed an insecurity do you think i feel like do younger women make you feel insecure um i feel like that there can definitely be more gameplay. Younger women often like you to make the effort. So there's an expectation, would you say, from younger women that you don't particularly want to have to live up to? In part, in part, yeah.

Any situation where you feel like you have to earn your place at the table can spark insecurities you know um and for different people that might be different things you know um depends what drives your ego i'm just sort of wondering whether the generation of women that are closer to your age than to my age whether they are more demanding of you than say an older woman would be yeah 100 in what way so i guess this comes back to power. In terms of earning a place at the table, with an older woman,

what you bring to the table is almost innate and effortless. It's your youth. Yeah, you're young. And because of your youth, that makes you desirable and that gives you the power. And you don't really have to do anything. And yeah, that's fantastic. Whereas suddenly, with a younger woman you don't have that that cheat code anymore in a sense there's much more

sort of equality between lovers at the same age you know okay well without my my trump card of of of youth what do i have you know what am I bringing to the table, actually? You know? And also, you know, if you're not the one being devoured, then you have to, you know, be the aggressor. Then being the aggressor in any scenario, you know, again, creates thoughts of, you know, am I doing this right?

Do you think the fact that older women can't get pregnant, do you think that creates a freedom? In what sense? Well, in the sense that they're not an option, they're not someone you're going to marry, they're not going to be someone that you have kids with, in which case it provides this kind of levity to proceedings. I guess it's a very obvious sort of limitation

and where managing the expectations on both sides. Like, yeah, I guess it can give it a rather uncomplicated feel. You know, sort of both sides knowing that it can never be. Yeah, definitely. You know, whereas, yeah, with someone closer to your own age, there's always a sense of, oh, well, we could,

this could turn into something. You work as a model. so you have worked in this world where we worship the perfect body. What's it like being with an older woman, given that she's not conforming to that beauty that we, let's face it, it's upheld by all of us to a certain extent? First of all, attraction in and of itself is complex. To say there's some sort of generic old woman body,

it doesn't really make sense. You know, women age in all sorts of different ways. First of all, you know, I would argue that a woman's face ages much faster than her body. Also, when you're younger, there's always a sense of novelty, you know. It's just different. And different can be great you know even different just for the sake of being different so the women's bodies or aging faces was

not a barrier has never been a barrier to you no it's still it's just it's just variation it's just something else to be enjoyed i've always had a feeling that you know if a woman's attractive she's attractive and i have never found that age or colour or size or anything really has gotten in the way of that. I'm on a dating app and I've been approached by a lot of younger men and I feel sort of slightly uneasy about it it feels slightly misogynistic slightly predatory I mean would you say that there is a trend of younger men going for older women purely for sex? Yes. A lot of men probably do it like some sort of trophy, you know. The word milf gets thrown around a lot.

And, you know, almost some sort of like ridiculous lad culture right of passage where sleeping with an older woman is some sort of achievement that you do once just to say you've done it and it completely dehumanizes well both people really is there porn around this milf thing as well i think we both know the answer is yes okay and do you think that's contributed to this growth of younger men wanting older women um the porn around it part lost chicken or the egg i feel like yes most people start watching porn probably about 10 11 years old and you know porn involving older women is one of the more popular types but i i think the fascination with older sort of matriarchal

women and the sexualisation of them probably predates porn, you know, that there's some sort of almost biological pull towards that. So going back to these blokes, so you think it's almost like a box-ticking exercise. I mean, the other thing that I find with men as well is some are more artful than others. I mean, the approaches from some men

are really quite crude and quite aggressive. Yeah, I mean, I've often felt this, that a lot of men are just disgusting. Analysing it, the only thing I can deduce is that it must work. So I think it's a numbers game for them. I feel like for all those hideous, grotesque men who just approach people in really aggressive, crude ways,

I imagine, you know, they do that 20 times, one woman might say yes. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it. Do you think there's a lot of vulnerable women, though, that are perhaps falling prey to these men's advances? I mean, yes, obviously. You know, you get someone who, who I don't know maybe they're fresh out of a divorce they're riddled with insecurity they're you know fresh out of the

dating scene and they're nervous and their self-esteem is rock bottom and a younger guy starts seducing them and maybe they've romanticized it and maybe they're there hoping and expecting something more than what's going to happen and then you know it turns out that the guy you know just wanted a very two-dimensional relationship and all of a sudden their their little fantasy crashes would you say that you have approached and slept with women that are as you have described quite vulnerable in hindsight yes in terms of the of the the morals of it i just try to treat everybody like adults there's a lot to be said about managing expectations so it's being honest yeah i've never ever intentionally misled anyone.

I will tell them, you know, my lifestyle. I'll tell them about my partner. And I'll be very candid with them about the style of relationship I want and the time that I can give. And that's all you can really do, you know. And if someone, regardless of that, goes off and starts expecting things that you can't deliver, then, you know, it's just a sad accident. How do your relationships end with the older women, usually?

Are either party hurt? Um, hurt? No, I wouldn't say so. I mean, for me, I... I always hope that there would be some sort of friendship or intimate intellectual relationship would blossom out of the physical one. And often it doesn't. And as a result of that, you just find yourself moving on. Well, that's a man we're calling

richard not his real name he's 28 look i'm only looking at twitter and it's fair to say that there he's not gone down terrifically well um at bbc woman's hour absolutely awful says one contributor so essentially this guy is saying being with an old woman is excellent because he wins with minimal effort because he's young, says Lucy. Give me a break, she goes on. OK, well, that's a flavour. I should say tomorrow we'll get you the story of a 48-year-old woman who recently dated a man 20 years younger than her and she met him online. Yeah, the conversation did turn quite sexual quite quickly which was quite exciting actually because

I really liked talking to him and he had a really sexy voice and he sent me a picture of his body and he's really hot I mean he didn't send anything like you know pornographic but sending pictures of his naked torso and you know he was a rugby player so it was pretty well received but we did really hit it off and we did I found him incredibly easy to talk to and I think there was not much small talk actually but I did find him attractive and I did I did kind of like what I think I thought I just yeah I've been ages why not we'll hear more from her on the program tomorrow. It's just a slice of life, this. If you have any views, we'd love to hear from you.

You can email the programme, of course, as well. So resilience is something I said we'd talk about today. And we're asking, I suppose, today whether you were born with it. Do your life experiences help to shape it? Can you develop it? Will failure help you to develop it? Elizabeth Day is the podcaster. How to Fail is your hit podcast, Elizabeth.

And also the author of Philosophy, a handbook for when things go wrong. Good morning. Nice to see you. Good morning. The psychologist Emma Kenny joins us too. And the Paralympian and motivational speaker, the brilliant Martine Wright, MBE, who survived the 7-7 bombings in 2005 but lost both her legs. Martine, I feel just in the foothills of any kind of conversation with someone like you because you've been through so much

and you've come through it. Resilience doesn't begin to sum it up. Can you try to tell us how you've kept on going? Well, thank you, Jane. Morning, everyone. Yeah, I mean, I can't quite believe it's 15 years ago actually that it happened and I suppose I liken the journey to what we're all going through now really with the with slightly different but what was Covid going on but yeah I one day I was a girl about town on the way to work as an international marketing manager and then um eight days later I came out of a coma to be well to look down

in the bed and see that my legs had been amputated um and yeah how did how did I get through that I suppose I'd be a millionaire if I could tell you that there was one thing, but there was many, many things. And I talk about this quite a lot now. I came up with something which I call my power of seven. People say, why seven? And I say, well, I nearly lost my life on seven seven. And people say, why would you ever want that as your lucky number? And it's all about belief. It's all about belief that things can get better and we can cope with things. And I've got something called my power of seven, which I have followed over the last 15 years.

But I think absolutely encapsulates what resilience is and how we can deal with this challenging world we live in. Would you have thought of yourself that way before 7-7? It's a funny thing, isn't it? That's quite a common question that people say, you know, were you resilient or could you deal with things before you lost your legs? And I think it actually comes from other people. So, for instance, when it happened to me and when I'd just woken up, really, and realized what I'd been through, I had people asking that question, you know, or telling me, really, that I could get through it that support and again this is part of my um power of seven and there's something that I think is so important for resilience obviously it does come from within and people very close to me said that I was um

a half glass full rather than a half glass empty girl. So that has definitely helped me. But do you know what is really, really important? And I realize this now over the past few years where I've been mentored to patients in hospitals when they've lost limbs and been through something traumatic. And it's something called team me. And I've completely made this up, but it's so important. And we all have a team me, and we're part of someone else's team me.

And we're actually part of many, many people's team me's. And without these people, you would never be able to get through life I mean my resilience came from my mum my dad my brother my sister my surgeon you know Liz Kenworthy the off-duty policewoman that saved my life all the NHS professionals the emergency services people these people the questions they ask and the support and their love they give you whether it's a shoulder to cry on or whether it's teaching me to walk to take that extra step that's where resilience comes from it comes from different people different experiences martine thank you thank you so much for that um i really appreciate it um emma you've been well everyone listening has been through something i I think we can acknowledge that.

But Emma Kenny, you've had a really trying couple of years. Your dad took his own life really very recently, and I'm so sorry about that. Thank you. You've also been nursing a really close friend through cancer. Yeah. What do you think about what Martine said? I mean, hers was an astonishingly specific and dreadful set of circumstances. But tell me what you think. Well, people like that just give me strength. And I

think for listeners listening, it gives them strength because we don't often believe that we can cope with trauma. You know, we don't often believe that we can face and confront those kind of situations and grow from them. I think we're always brought up, particularly in the Western model, to think that bad times almost permanently destroy us but actually as is given in your case you know martine in my case what you can do with that is you can see that usually the really good stuff it comes in the really bad times so it isn't nice going through any trauma and you wouldn't wish to have it but once you've kind of traveled that journey you just inevitably realize that it opens your eyes in totally unique ways. And you understand that the strength of character that you never thought you had, you never believed,

you might have considered yourself relatively resilient. But when you're suddenly confronted with your whole world systemically changing and falling apart, and then suddenly you realize that somewhere deep in your DNA is this desire to survive and not just to survive, to kind of thrive and to grow. I think it's a really life affirming in the most horrible way situation to go through. And I think that anybody can learn it. That's the key. Anybody can learn. Can they? Let's put that to Elizabeth. What do you think, Elizabeth? I'm so honoured to hear those stories. And I could not agree more that I think anytime we go through something that we didn't think we could withstand and we survive, we realise that we are so much stronger than we thought.

And we realise, as Emma was just saying, that sometimes our moments of extreme crisis and vulnerability bring out the best in other people, which fits into what our team was saying, was that we realise that we can forge connection when we admit that we are not perfect and that a lot of the time we aren't in control of the failure that surrounds us.

And I think the thing about failure and resilience is that some failures are ultimately totally beyond our control and cataclysmic. We're living through one right now in the time of the global pandemic and all we can control is our response to it. And that starts with acceptance. You have to accept the situation that you find yourself in as hard and devastating and grief-stricken as that might be.

And then you can teach yourself how to adapt. Because I do think that failure, if we let it, teaches us those lessons and we can learn to be more resilient as people. What Martine, I know, was brilliant at acknowledging was the support she had from other people, Elizabeth. And I'm really conscious that there'll be people listening to this programme now who will be thinking, well, you know what, I haven't spoken to anyone since I went into the co-op or Tesco's yesterday. I don't know whether I'll be speaking to anyone today. I'm desperately lonely. Don't talk to me about teamwork because I don't know anyone and I don't speak to anyone. And resilience is you've got to dig deep if you're on your own at the moment, haven't you? You really have.

I think that's one of the hardest things and it's such a pressing mental health issue for our times. And the first thing that I would say is that you're not alone and you don't have to start by talking. You can start by listening. There are so many resources out there and I don't just say that because I've got a podcast, but it is one of the things that I've noticed doing the podcast How to Fail and in philosophy I talk about how it's when we are brave enough to be at our most vulnerable that we find the source of greatest connection greatest strength because actually vulnerability feeling lonely feeling like a failure in your own life is the thing that connects us all because we all feel it at a certain point no matter what we look like on the outside and once you realise that there's

something quite liberating about it so if anyone's listening and they do feel in that really dark point of despair I urge you just to cling on that little bit longer and cling on to see what might happen next. Do you actually believe that you can harness failure to create a level of success as an individual? And if so, how? How do you do it? I do believe that. I'm aware that when I answer this question, there are different levels of failure. And it would be monstrous for me to sit here and say everything has a reason and you can quickly turn it around and distill it into success. I mean, I'm not a moron in that respect. But I do think that every single failure contains within it a

lesson if we choose to learn. That doesn't mean that there isn't a necessary period of acclimatisation and coming to terms with the thing that you've lost. But I choose to live my life in the firm belief that even if something meaningless occurs, you can choose to attach meaning to it in the fullness of time because you can learn something from it. Right. I absolutely get that. What Emma has just been through with her father, that's not, I mean, Emma, that's not failure, is it? That's just an appalling, tragic event in your life. Yeah, absolutely. And I hope you don't consider it any kind of failure. But how do you harness what you've

learned from that experience in order to move on more positively? I think that until I lost my dad, I'd always believed that I could go home. And I'd always had that fundamental sense of that's what gave me courage. And not having him anymore has been something that's meant I've had to kind of reform and recalibrate my understanding of my own self independence and resilience. And I suppose what it's really helped me do is understand that so often we're just taught to focus on the negative. So like if I focus on his end, there is just absolutely no beauty, no joy, nothing. It's just desolate and abandoning. But actually, I had him for so many years and he was just the most joyful, wonderful human. And he taught me

so much, such as he used to say, Emma, one day you'll say something and you get self-killed, which actually meant that he was proud of the fact that I'd speak out even when it was basically dangerous for me at times and I hear him now in everything I do and what he taught me more is life is a breath of consciousness it's a blink of an eye I feel like he's been gone forever when he was here for a second and that means that it's going to feel exactly the same for me and one day I'm going to take that last breath and I want to know that I took the collateral beauty even when damage was abundant and I see it everywhere I think no matter how painful things are I go outside and I see birds flying and I talk to somebody who's a stranger and find out about their life and

it's everywhere but sometimes we just get taught to look in the wrong places so I take legacy as my success. That was pretty remarkable, actually, wasn't it? From Emma Kenny. And you also heard from Elizabeth Day and from the fantastic Martine Wright. I've just realised I haven't attached an adjective to Elizabeth Day. So I should say she's superb. No, she is. Because she's a regular guest. And I think I've said before how much I love her writing. So there you go. I've done that now. Lots of you just wanted to say how insightful and thoughtful you found Emma in particular. A listener here says, wow, Emma, what an amazing woman. I want to capture what she just said and keep it to share with others.

Beautiful and inspirational. And from another listener, your last speaker, I need her words written on my wall what a wise person jb says my five-year-old son has got a brain tumor it's inoperable and incurable he's been fighting it for three years now life in limbo like this is so hard i'm living on high alert watching his every move i could not have got through the last couple of years without The Power of Now by Urquhart Toll. JB, thank you for that. And what a difficult situation you find yourself in. I'm so sorry about that. Barbara says, I moved to the UK from Europe at the age of 16 after losing a mother to join the male parent and his second wife. He soon left us again and my sister and I didn't have a family

home. We shared one together. I'm now 64 and I'm on my own. Is that a failure? Today I had an annual post-cancer checkup and it's okay. I lost out financially due to the crash and Covid. I don't think I have any resilience. I just take it as it comes and I'm adaptable. I'm not some kind of survivor. Compared to others, I consider myself privileged. Other people might see me as a loser. Oh, Barbara, I certainly don't see you as a loser. You're somebody who's had a rich life full of challenging experiences. I think that would be one way of putting it. But you're right. I suppose we do judge people, don't we? All of us do. I'm certainly not alone in judging others. I know that, but I certainly do judge others. Thank you for that, Barbara. I thought that was very interesting. and Martine for their insight and wisdom, you had other things to say about other contributors, notably Richard.

Scott, I have dated several older women in the past and I agree there's something special about intimacy with a mature lady. Then again, it's only a different something special than with any other partner. Everybody's got their own appeal. Well, that's Scott, so he's all right with Richard. Karen, on the other hand, that young guy this morning. Yuck. Disgraceful. How lazy and gratuitous.

How do people live like this? Maria, she's got another take. We do welcome all comers here. Maria says, am I possibly the only 56-year-old woman to find Richard emotionally intelligent? I'm single and I get quite a bit of attention from younger men. That could be because I look good for my age, perhaps also because I'm interesting and intelligent. Whatever the reasons, it feels good. I'm not looking for a

partner at present. However, if that man was the right one at the right time, then his age wouldn't particularly matter. Carly. I suspect I'm not the only woman who said ugh all the way through this interview. I think he's a bit creepy. By the way, I speak of somebody who had a year-long indoor relationship with a man 20 years my junior. He moved abroad, which was a neat ending, but he still texts me periodically. I'm not at all disapproving of the concept, just that particular individual you interviewed. Indoor relationship. Am I being naive or is that... I've got a... I mean, I know people have indoor cats.

I know I'm going to be told off because I'm straying into cat areas again. It's not good. But indoor... Is that just somewhere where you don't go... In a relationship where you don't go public? I'm looking to... You don't go out, I'm told.

Okay. Actually, Henrietta, who interviewed Richard, is in charge of the programme today. And she tells me that's a relationship where you just go straight to the bedroom. So naive. I mean, I'm leaving Women's Hour at the end of December. I need to cram as much knowledge as I can into my head before then. Philippa, where are all these sexually confident women that this rich had talked about? None of my friends have had a sexual relationship with a man for years and years,

as all of us are intimidated by the popular conception of beauty being for the young, and none of us have got any confidence in our bodies. Most of the women I know brush off any suggestion of a relationship with a man as unthinkable. And as far as I know, none of them are gay. Personally, I have not had a sexual relationship since I had a mastectomy and a reconstruction at the age of 57, 10 years ago, as my then partner left me on diagnosis. It doesn't matter that my children and friends tell me I'm gorgeous. I don't feel it. And I will never trust a man again, old or young. Oh, Philippa, that's terrible. But I'm glad you emailed us because I suspect you are not alone. And I actually think you make a good point when you

say where are all these body confident women in their 40s and 50s. So thank you for sharing that. And I'm sure I'm sure you are gorgeous, by the way. Let's try to own this stuff. But I'm a bit like you. I know it's not that easy. Anonymous says, my youngest son is 54. For 23 years, he's been in a very happy and loving relationship. And his partner is 16 years older, already 70. but it's worked out really well. Her children and now the grandchildren have accepted him totally. Busy himself, he is a constant support to his partner in her full-time working life. I'm very proud of the pair of them. Excellent. OK, well, that sounds good.

Let me just, because I have to be honest, on Twitter, certainly, the view of Richard was not a very positive one. This man is making me feel nauseous. Must find somebody, see there is another side, must find someone like this in my final flush before my body closes down, says another Jane. That's not me. And I should also say that I'm glad so many of you found the conversation about epilepsy helpful. This tweeter says, it's so many of you found the conversation about epilepsy helpful. This tweeter says, it's good to hear that you have something about epilepsy on the programme. I have it myself and continue to have regular seizures despite good treatment. Seizures can take very different forms with people, but the more open we are about it, the better other people will deal with it. Well, quite. And that was really one of the reasons I was so keen to do the subject. I think we probably ought to return to that subject and of course,

to so many others, because we never have the time. But thank you for engaging with us this morning. Tomorrow, I'm back again. I'm doing a full week. I'm utterly exhausted and so is everybody else having to put up with me. Thank you very much for engaging with everything we talked about today. Really appreciate it. And tomorrow, after Richard, we'll hear from Eva, who's 48 and recently got together with a man of 27. So there's the flip side of all that. We'll also look at identity politics in the company of, amongst others, Yasmin Alibi-Brown. That's tomorrow. Make sure you're there. Thanks for listening. questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.