Woman's Hour - Author Maggie O’Farrell. US Election result. How to build your confidence.

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Maggie O’Farrell’s first picture book for children is the story of a brave little girl who is visited by her snow angel in her time of need. The idea for the book grew out of a story Maggie told her own sick child in the back of an ambulance. Why are reassuring tales so crucial for children and adults in difficult times? This US election has been described as one of the most divisive US presidential elections in decades, pitting incumbent Republican Donald Trump against his Democratic challenger Joe Biden. We reflect on the results with USA Today columnist and CNN political & legal pundit, Sophia Nelson and Bronwen Maddox, Director of Institute for Government, previously foreign and US editor for the Times. How did North American women vote this time and with more women than ever standing for election, who are the winners and losers?How do you build your confidence when you’re at rock bottom? Whether you’ve had an illness, your partner has left you or you’re returning to work after having a baby, your sense of identity can suffer. Chloe Tilley is joined by confidence coach Jo Emerson and Frances Monaghan of Wise Women to explain how you can overcome low self-esteem. Presenter Chloe Tilley Producer Beverley Purcell Photo Credit; Murdo MacLeod

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. Hello, you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 4th of November with me, Chloe Tilley. Good morning, good to be with you. Now, in the next few minutes, we're going to bring you all of the latest twists and turns in the US presidential election. We're also this morning going to be hearing from Maggie O'Farrell, the novelist who won the Women's Prize for Fiction this year, who's written her first children's book. And as part of our How To series, we're looking at building your confidence when you're at rock bottom.

Now, that's whether you're coming out of an abusive relationship or returning to work after having a baby or being a carer. We're going to have some practical tips and, of course, advice. So do get in touch with us this morning with your experiences, your questions. We're at BBC Woman's Hour on social media or you can email from the Woman's Hour website. Now both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are predicting that they're going to win the US presidential election but of course we're probably not going to have an answer for days as millions of postal votes are still needed to be counted in the crucial states.

What we do know is it's a tight race, and that Donald Trump says that if Joe Biden is declared the winner, he will challenge through the US Supreme Court. He's claiming there's been voter fraud, but it's important to point out there is no evidence of that. Well, at a drive-in rally in Delaware, Joe Biden addressed his supporters. It ain't over till every vote is counted, every ballot is counted. You know, we could know the results as early as tomorrow morning, but it may take a little longer. As I've said all along, it's not my place or Donald Trump's place

to declare who's won this election. That's the decision of the American people. But I'm optimistic about this outcome. Keep the faith, guys. We're going to win this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, hours later, Donald Trump spoke to his supporters. The results tonight have been phenomenal. And we are getting ready.

I mean, literally, we were just all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good. Such a vote, such a success. The citizens of this country have come out in record numbers. This is a record. There's never been anything like it. To support our incredible movement. Well, with me now is Kelly Dittmar, who's Director of Research at the Centre for American Women and Politics. Also with us is Bronwyn Maddox, Director of Institute for Government. Great to have you both with us on what is, let's be honest, quite a confusing morning and a confusing picture. Kelly,

can you just give us a sense of where we are with the story so far? Sure. We're waiting on what are ultimately the states that could determine the outcome of this race. So we're waiting on what we would call battleground states. And there we're waiting for mail-in and absentee votes primarily to come in. And as you may know, there was a real partisan divide in folks who were casting their ballots in that way in the U.S. So it's expected that a lot of the votes that will come in will lean Democratic. But the question is, will they make up the margin enough for Donald Trump to, excuse me, for Joe Biden to gain the lead in some states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and others that will make the difference in this contest. I mean, I was reading earlier on today, there's a million postal votes to be counted in Pennsylvania

alone. So there's a lot of a lot more to come from this story. Bronwyn, I want to bring you in because one of the things Donald Trump talked about during the campaign was getting suburban women to vote for him. Do we have any sense of whether he succeeded in that? We don't yet, but I think the signs are whoever wins, and it could go either way, that this has been so far a disappointing night for the Democrats. They had been expecting much more of a surge for Joe Biden and relying a lot within that on the support of women. I mean, Joe Biden seemed to have even more of a gender gap in his favor than the kind of 20 points it's been in the past. People are talking about 25, 28 percent

of a gap between women supporting him and those supporting Donald Trump. And it doesn't seem to have come through as strongly as people in his camp were expecting. There's other factors as well going on. The Latino vote didn't break as much so far for him as people were expecting. But, you know, it's a tight night for him. And on your question about the women, Donald Trump made this extraordinary plea very recently

at a rally saying, suburban women, please like me. And it seems that some of them are indeed voting for him, perhaps in more numbers than pollsters thought. Let me bring in a couple more guests who are joining us.

Sophia A. Nelson is from USA Today. She's a columnist and CNN political and legal pundit. And also with us is Christina Norton, who's a Republican political operative. Christina, I want to bring you in and pick up on that point there that Bronwyn just made about Donald Trump's plea to suburban women to like him. Do you think that worked? You know, as someone mentioned earlier, we're going to see tomorrow and the days coming as the results continue to be counted. But yes, I do think that the average woman cares about security for her family. She cares about having a successful economy that we saw underneath President Trump.

So a lot of the things that Trump promised, he delivered on. And I think that women saw that. And again, I want to go back to, you know, we see all across the United States, there's been, you know, riots, especially prominent in Democrat-controlled states. And I think we see such a contrast with Trump, who's been endorsed by nearly every single police organization, law enforcement organization. He is the president of law and order. But to be fair, Christina, forgive me for jumping in, but many people will say that it wasn't linked to the fact that there was democratic control in areas where there was unrest. Many people, many of the areas of unrest, it's been linked to the number of police shootings, haven't there, of individuals and they feel that they have been aggrieved and their voices aren't being listened to. But let's put that to one side for a moment and let's concentrate on what is happening and the story that's unfolding overnight. I want to bring Sophia A. Nelson in.

What would you say to what Christina has said there? I mean, people can't disagree that Donald Trump obviously has done well on the economy, but do you think that women have possibly turned their back on him, some of the women who voted for him back in 2016? Well, I think that all we can do is go by what we know the exit data shows us, right? We knew going in that there was a huge gender gap for Joe Biden in his favor.

Men favored Trump more. Women favored Biden more. I think it also depends on where you're looking at those numbers, right? Where I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, that gender gap going back to 2017 has flipped a state that used to be red, then it was purple, now it's very blue. And we have a woman speaker, a woman majority leader, women revolutionized this state in a state where women had very few offices.

They now hold three congressional seats as well as, you know, the legislature in major roles. So I think it just depends on where you are. I think that there are women who like the president. Fifty three percent in the last election voted for him, white women over Hillary Clinton. And those demographics matter, right? Whether it is African American women, for example, vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as we know, right, in intensity. And in 2016, white women, who I think people assume would vote for Hillary, 53% of that demographic did not. They voted for President Trump. So I'm going to wait to see numbers to see how this shakes out. So I think right now we're flying a little bit blind. What we do know is the turnout is the highest in a century. Do we have a sense, Kelly,

who that is driven by? Who is coming out to vote who previously hasn't thought it was worth it? Well, this is another one of those difficult things where when we get good turnout data, it actually doesn't come for months when we're trying to look at the demographic breakdown. I mean, we do have a sense that there was greater energy based on public polling among, for example, young people. But certainly it was across the board. And actually leading into the election, the presumption was that the turnout was being pushed by Democrats. And I think what we're seeing in the results is a question about, was that true? And it could still be true because of the way we run our elections with the Electoral

College. It may be that it just wasn't enough to make up for Republican support for Donald Trump in some of these states. So we'll be, again, sort of finding out whether or not, which groups, but I do think it was fairly widespread in terms of, you know, we were seeing increased engagement. And to the previous point about women, you know, there was very heightened energy against Donald Trump. So yes, while we're seeing him win and women are going to be important to that because they'd be equally important to his win or loss, they're certainly moving farther and farther away from Donald Trump in every public poll that we've seen in the last four years. But we just have to be careful not to lump all women together, which I think everybody on this call has noted that there's real diversity among women. Of course. And Christina, I'm sure that you would agree that there's a real passion amongst Trump

supporters. I heard earlier today on the radio, someone saying they would walk over cut glass to cast their vote, whereas a democratic vote is often more an anti-Trump vote rather than a pro-Biden vote. I think you're absolutely right. There is no denying the amount of energy and passion that his supporters have for him. That's evident alone just in the crowd sizes that he draws and the tens of thousands,

which is, again, in contrast to not that much energy behind Biden. So I think that among, you know, any demographic, I know that they actually, in many polls that I've seen, and then I've seen some of the surveys that they've taken at these Trump rallies. A lot of these people are first time voters. And I think it's interesting that we have the right perspective when we look at the polls. We learned that in 2016, a lot of people said that they were not voting for Trump because, you know, they didn't want to admit to the pollster and in some way have them think that maybe they were a racist or something else, that Democrats like to label on Republicans. So it really skewed the polling. And I think that's what we saw this

time again. I mean, in so many of the states, Biden was up in the polls by double digits. And yet we're seeing here Trump is winning in Florida. He has the lead. Last I looked in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, I know those are yet to be called. There's a long way to go yet, though, isn't there? There's a long way to go yet, Christina. It could be several days before we actually know the full picture. I want to bring Bronwyn Maddox back in because what is clear from this election is there is real division here in the United States. There's no way of getting around that.

I think that's right. I mean, this is a very divided country. We said that four years ago, but even more, this has been a very, very bitterly fought election. And we've already had the president saying immensely controversial things, essentially that the counting of votes that can solve its own problems, its own divisions, whether the country can still keep running. And the world is looking to this not just to see whether it is Trump or Joe Biden, but whether America's democracy is going to continue working. And, you know, the world is looking to see whether or not it wants this system of government itself. And this is why it's not just whether it's four more years of Donald Trump or we get Joe Biden, but whether Americans are voting democratically for a president that has rewritten America's role in the world. And so, you know, it is the system that's being tested as well as just producing the answer to the president for the next four years. Before we look at where we go from here,

it is worth, of course, remembering this isn't just a presidential election. There's also a third of the Senate and all 435 seats in the House. Kelly, I wonder if you can tell us about some of the women who are standing, many of them not household names, we probably won't have heard of them. But tell us some of the interesting wins and indeed losses of the night. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, looking at the partisan dynamics going into this election, we had a record number of Democratic women who ran and won in 2018. So when you heard about the wave of women, it was really a Democratic story.

Republican women that year in the U.S. House declined representation. They went down to just 13 members out of 435. This year, the reverse is happening to a certain extent. So they're starting at a very low number with Republican women, but that's where we've seen some pretty notable gains tonight, that new Republican women getting elected, some of them actually winning against Democratic women who had won for the first time last year. So what we'll be watching for in the U.S. House is the partisan makeup of women. We will see more women most likely than ever before, but it will be more Republican women. And we'll see if the Republican women actually reach or

exceed their previous record, which is 25 Republican women to serve at one time. And then we're watching some key Senate races for our upper chamber for women, where again, it is, you know, on there's an all woman race in the state of Maine. And that can be one of a couple of races left where we're watching to see if incumbent Republican women can actually hold those seats. So there's a sort of party and gender story happening in both of our major chambers. Thank you for giving us a sense of that. I feel like we need to just sort of refocus back on the presidential election because lots of people will be thinking, you know, where do we go from here? Obviously, Donald Trump has said that he's prepared to go to the US Supreme Court

if Joe Biden is declared victorious. He's talking about voter fraud in mail votes, although there's no evidence of that. Sophia, where do you see us going over the next few days? Could we realistically be in a situation where Donald Trump is refusing to leave the White House, even if Joe Biden is declared a winner? And I appreciate we're way off that yet, but I'm just trying to get a sense of where the next few days could go. Well, let me just say this to your listeners. One, we all need to take a deep breath. We have to count all the votes. Right now, we know that Wisconsin is about to, or they just have put in a lot of votes. Biden has now overtaken the lead there in Wisconsin by about probably

300,000 votes. It looks like there are still other counties out. I haven't checked in on Michigan. Pennsylvania has a large number of the provisional or early votes and absentee votes that they have a certain amount of time that they have to count those by, which is really stuck in the crawl of the president, as you know, because he's talked about it quite a bit over the last few days of campaigning, that he really felt that the Supreme Court validating that, it really upset him. But let me just be clear. In America, we count our votes. The president can say anything he wants. He can declare a victory. He can do all that. But be clear, we have been at this for 243 years. We will do this the right way. Hopefully, we don't have to go back to the Supreme Court like in Bush v. Gore in 2000. That was, I think, unfortunate in that all the votes, the votes were not counted.

They were stopped. And I think that's problematic. So I don't know what's going to happen. I wish I could tell you that I did. But I do hope that in the next, you know, hours here, we might have a better sense of what happens and we may have a winner. Well, briefly, Bronwyn, Kelly and Christina, I'm interested to know what you think is likely to happen in the coming hours and days, Bronwyn. I don't think it's worth predicting at this point who's ahead and the votes have to be counted. I think America is going to have to take a deep breath after this because whoever wins, it's going to emerge as realizing that it is an even more divided country than perhaps it thought going into this and also have to work out what its place in the world is. And that really has been changed, I think, by this picture of division. Christina?

Yes, I would have to agree with the other women on the call. That being said, as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of the ballots that we are waiting on are Mallon ballots to be counted. And in Pennsylvania, we're not going to know the results until Friday, maybe Saturday. In Michigan, in Detroit right now, they are actually counting the ballots through the night. We should know those results out of Wayne County by tomorrow night. And in Wisconsin, they're counting in Milwaukee through the night as well. And so, you know, it could be several days before we really know the final tally. However, I think, you know, it could be several days before we really know the final tally. However, I think, you know, I'm certainly, of course, rooting for the president and I'm hopeful that he's going to come up on top.

And Kelly, what do you think the next few days have in store for us? There's obviously some people have concerns of potential protests on the streets of violence. Yeah, you know, I would echo Sophia. I, you know, we hope that folks will take a deeper look and also know that we have a president who's stoking the fear, right? So he came out tonight and instead of saying, like Joe Biden did, we need to wait till all the votes are counted, he said, this is fraudulent

and I won all of these states, which he didn't. And we know that, right? But because of the strong support he has, his supporters will believe him. And so we have to be very careful. And I think we have a struggle in terms of leadership in this moment to make sure that people are waiting and letting the process work. And I think it speaks to the conversation earlier about will our institutions be able to withhold this? And I think it speaks to the conversation earlier about will our institutions be able to withhold this? And I think it's beholden to the people as well, voters, to ensure that they allow this to happen, allow the votes to be counted and not claim fraudulency where there is none.

So big deep breath and lots of patience. Thank you all so much for your time. Kelly Dittmar, their Director of Research at the Centre for American Women and Politics. Also heard from Bronwyn Maddox, Director of Institute for Government. Sophia A. Nelson from USA Today. She's a columnist and also a CNN political and legal pundit. And we also heard from Christina Norton, who's a Republican political operative. Now, coming up a little bit later on on we're going to be looking at how you build your confidence when you're at rock bottom. We're going to be hearing from a life coach and

from a Glaswegian not-for-profit organisation which runs confidence courses and workshops for women who are often leaving abusive relationships. So we'll look at why we lose confidence, how you get it back or indeed find it if you've never had it in the first place and how the judgment of others or the way we compare ourselves to others feeds into that. Don't forget that if you miss the live programme, you can always catch up by downloading the BBC Sounds app. You can contact us on Twitter as well, also on Instagram. We're at BBC Women's Hour. Now, the award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell, best known as a novelist, has written her first book for children. It's called Where Snow Angels Go. It's a reassuring

story for children. It's all about building resilience. She actually made up the story in the back of an ambulance whilst comforting her own daughter who was ill and I'm pleased to say that she's with us now. Good morning Maggie. Good morning Chloe. So tell us a little bit more about the story. Well, as you say, it was something that I made up for my own children. Well, the character was something I made up in the back of an ambulance because my daughter suffers from anaphylactic shock. And one of the lesser known symptoms of that is that you suddenly get really, really cold, that your blood pressure drops and your teeth start chattering because you're so

cold. And so she was quite young and she was very frightened. And just to reassure her, I said, just totally out of the blue, it's OK, don't worry. You're cold because there's a snow angel behind you and he's wrapping his wings around you. And so the character kind of, he sort of took up residence inside our house. And my children wanted to know more about him. So I made up other stories surrounding him. And then I actually went on book tour and I wrote them a letter every day. And I was writing a longer story about him and when I got back

my youngest daughter said to me I really want to see pictures with this she said can you do and I said definitely not because I was shocking at doing it I've gotten to do it at all so at that point I thought well maybe I could make it into into a proper book with with the help of an illustrator. And it is beautifully illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka-Teresini. Really lovely, lovely images. But what's interesting about this book, and I read it actually with one of my daughters, is it's got a real magical element,

but it's also quite dark in places, isn't it? Yes, well, I think, you know, I do think that, but, you know, we all read books, because we need to, we need to sort of listen to the narratives of others to give us a roadmap for life. You know, we all need pointers or guidance in how we can react or cope with certain situations or problems or, you know, personalities of others that we might come up against. And fiction and stories give us that, you know, they give children a sort of reminder, because you can think to yourself, you know, I mean, I remember thinking to myself, what would Anne of Green Gables do in this scenario?

And I do think that children of all ages need books that don't shy away from difficult things. Yeah, I guess it's a sort of honesty, because kids like honesty, don't they? They don't want us to tell them nonsense. They like things to be clear. It makes them feel safe often, doesn't it? I think so. I mean, think about this book, you know, I wanted it to be reassuring, but I also wanted it to be challenging as well. You know, I mean, Sylvie is really brave, but she does, you know, she's so desperate to see her snow angel again. She puts herself in certain sort of in the way of danger in order to try and get him to reappear because she wants to see him again. But I think there is an argument that parents need to allow their children to take a certain amount of risk.

I'm not suggesting we let our children play in the traffic. But I do think teaching our children about assessing risks for themselves and not just telling them not to do things, but they've got to negotiate those ideas themselves. Because your children had challenges, didn't they? I mean, you mentioned about your daughter's anaphylactic shock. She had serious allergies. I know that your son, when he was very little, also had meningitis.

Do you think that a lot of what you've lived through and you've experienced with your children has sort of fed into this story here with Sylvie. Yes, absolutely. I mean, there are parts of my childhood and also parts of the childhood of all three of my children woven into the book. My youngest daughter particularly, when she reads the book, she likes to flip through the pages to find the chapter about her, which is about Sylvie falling in the sea.

And I completely understand that and I respect that. And so she just likes to be read those particular four pages. But that's quite difficult then. I mean, that must have been traumatic, your daughter falling into the sea. So to put that in a book, it must have been hard. Well, it wasn't. It wasn't, you know, I mean i think you know once you've once you know i think all fiction is a palimpsest of things that you completely make up or things that you

might draw from other people and also things that have happened to you or the people around you and i think i think all fiction is that kind of complicated patchwork of those things but you know once you've taken an event from your own life um and recast it in in the sort of lives or the mouths of somebody else and redrafted it and rewritten it and sort of pinned it down into punctuation and prose and grammar, it does place that event at arm's length for you. In the book, Sylvie does worry that she has a snow angel who protects her, but other people might not necessarily have a snow angel if they've never created one in the snow and I remember the points where her mother says nothing bad is going to happen but Sylvie kind of doesn't quite believe it she's not being fobbed off is she and was that

an important message that you wanted to get across? Yes absolutely I mean you know I think you know it's quite obvious in 2020 you know that life doesn't always go to plan and that life isn't all kittens and rainbows and roses. And I think children can't be fobbed off. I think children need to know the truth. I mean, obviously, you need to metabolize the truth and hand it to them in a form that they can understand. And you maybe don't need to tell them everything. But I think saying to a child, everything's fine, particularly at the moment, it isn't going to wash, even with a small child, you know, because everybody can see that the world is different at the moment. You know, so I think you need to be honest with children.

You may be sort of an edited version of honest, perhaps. I wonder whether you were worried about switching to a children's book after the success you've had as a novelist, because children can be quite brutal critics, can't they? Absolutely. Very, very honest critic. I mean, I was, you know, because there's no guarantee that even if you can write a full-length grown-up novel that you can suddenly sort of switch to writing stories for children. It's a very specific skill and not necessarily transferable at all. But I am lucky that I have three quite willing guinea pigs in the house

and I did read it to them in its various drafts and as you say children children are very they're excellent sort of instant they'll give you fantastic instant sort of editorial feedback you know because if you are reading something and maybe the narrative is sagging a little bit in the middle they will just get up and walk away you know so it's useful while a little bit heartbreaking at times but you know I think I mean that the main thing I found really interesting about writing for children is that you know the narrative needs to be simplified but you mustn't talk down to them because I think children always know that they have an absolute you know very sort of finely tuned antennae for anyone who's slowly patronizing them and I also I also read it aloud

to myself while I which I never do with my grown-up books. I found myself always in my office, you know, reading it aloud and sort of listening to the cadence of it. And I think the other real joy, actually, of writing this book was, you know, I realized that I had to carve out spaces in the narrative for Daniela

to take the reins of the story. You know, I wanted there to be a symbiosis between my words and her beautiful watercolours. And there are definitely places in the narrative where she is telling the story and there are things in the pictures that children can see which aren't necessarily in the words. I wonder, you talked, you were ill as a child.

Were stories important to you to kind of get you through that period? I would say more than important. They were absolutely crucial, as crucial as the oxygen in my hospital room, yes. So we had a friend who lent us, so this was in 1980, long before any kind of online story. So somebody lent me lots of different story takes. I'd never seen them before, and I had a tape player by my bed in the hospital.

And I listened to, I think it was Beatrix Potter and My Naughty Little Sister over and over and over again. And I still know those stories off by heart. It's extraordinary. You know, when I open them up to read them to my children, there's a part of my brain where that engine has obviously been running for, how long is it now? Forty years, actually, since that happened. So, no, that was the thing that absolutely kept me going all the way through my confinement. And kids do need stories. They do need escapism. And it's so important for kids to read. But many adults stop reading to children, don't they, when they can read themselves. I was thinking the other

day, I still read to my eight-year-old, but my 11-year-old, who's an absolute bookworm, actually, I kind of let her get on with it but you're an advocate for saying actually don't do that keep reading to your children even when they are proficient readers. I would say yeah I would say as much as you possibly can and for as long as you possibly can keep reading I mean obviously you know my I read to my 11-year-old every day and she reads a chapter to herself and then I will read a chapter to her and we'll talk about it together you know there is nothing that replaces that kind of bubble that you get into with a child when you're sharing a story or a narrative with them and you can talk about it and you're

both inhabiting this imaginative space. It's irreplaceable. So please, I would always urge people to carry on reading to your child as long as they want. I mean, I don't read to my 17-year-old anymore, but I read to him until he was probably about 11 or 12. We read a separate book to the one that he was reading to himself. And actually, earlier this year, he caught shingles, and he was very miserable, and he was so unhappy, and he had a fever.

And I read to him a Saki story. It was just one day. I sat down. I said, OK, I'm going to read to you. And it had an amazing effect on you. There's something very, very special about being read to and also a sort of carer sharing a story with a child. So please, please keep reading to your children if you can. I'm going to do it this evening. Thank you, Maggie.

Maggie O'Farrell there, the award winning author, her first children's book, Where Snow Angels Go, telling us all about that. Now, confidence, it can be one of these really difficult things to pin down, can't it? How do you get it? How do you lose it? Do we ever really have it? We're going to spend the next few minutes here on Women's Hour discussing how to build your confidence, whether you've lost your job, if you're returning to work after having a baby or illness or trying to move on after the breakdown of a relationship. Well, let's speak now to confidence coach Jo Emerson. Also with us is Frances Monaghan of Wise Women, which runs confidence courses and workshops in Glasgow. Morning to you both. Good morning. Jo, can you first of all just pin down for us

what is elusive for many people, but what is confidence? Yeah, well, for me me confidence is the knowledge that whatever comes in life you will find a way to cope you'll manage um i was just listening to your last um your last interview and um that that idea that saying to children nothing bad will ever happen actually the truth is bad things do happen but we can all find a way to cope so for me that's what confidence is. Frances I know that you run these courses for women in Glasgow and I'm quite interested by an introductory exercise that you do which is kind of revealing about how we we are with our own internal confidence. Yeah yeah we do some excuse me we do some exercises around how women internalise negativity. So the point of confidence and self-esteem is that we see confidence almost as an action and self-esteem is how you feel about

your ability to carry out those actions. So one of the exercises that we do is look at where does low self-esteem come from and for that exercise one of the things we use is called an iceberg exercise. So we're looking at the influences in women's lives, because the bottom line is you're not born with low self-esteem or low self-confidence. It's something that's created. And it's created through many, many influences from your family, teachers, school, religious leaders, the social media, you name it. Everything you have seen and heard and experienced in your entire life will shape how you feel about yourself. And

if some of that's negative, then we are addressing that because what tends to happen with women we find in the work that we do is that women will always blame themselves for low self-esteem. Women will always say, I come just being stupid or I come just a bit useless and a bit pathetic. And they're that kind of self-critical voice that they hear that's something that's been learned. So we focus on breaking that down and looking at the blame and the shame and the guilt culture

and trying to replace that with something else. Bear in mind that our courses are 20 hours. So it's something that you're working every week, two hours a week for 10 weeks. So it's quite an intense course in lots of ways. It's not easy and it really requires investment. But you get people to say something about themselves, don't you? Yes, yes.

That's one of our favourite ones. We always, basically where that came from was I was doing a session on working with complex needs for staff and we try to get the staff to do exercises that we do in the courses

so I started off by saying just out of the blue, tell me something about yourself and I pointed to someone. And the first thing everybody does is go, eh, hmm. So I write that up. Anything, anything, anything you like, say anything you like. So there was a woman in the room who said, she started and she says, well, I've got a fat backside and my roots need done. And everybody kind of laughed and I wrote that up.

And they were wondering why I did that. So then the next person said something negative, and the next person said something negative, and you could tell there was somebody in the back of the room who was itching to say something positive. And she said, I'm going to learn how to play the guitar. And everybody in the room went, oh. So the energy immediately changed.

And the point of that was that negativity is quite infectious, but so is positivity. So it's replacing the negative with the positive. It's not as simple as that, of course. It takes a lot of work. But the point of that was, what do you think happened when the woman who says she's got a fat backside and her roots need done, when she stood up at the tea break?

Everybody in the room looked at her backside and then they started looking at each other's backsides and their own backsides and being feeling very very self-conscious so it's all negative isn't it it's interesting how that kind you talk about that kind of infectious negativity i mean one of the problems for people living in the world in which we inhabit now is that we're constantly comparing ourselves to others whether it's at you know whether it's on social media whether it's at work whether it's socially joe i'm wondering if we can silence that that inner voice that inner critic that we we often hear don't we yeah yeah we can but it takes takes work. As Frances has just been saying, it's not simple,

but it's completely possible. I wrote a book about this a few years ago. That inner critic is absolutely a learned behaviour and it chirrups on all the time. If you actually stop and listen, you will hear a voice in your head narrating your entire minute by minute experience back to you. However, if you can catch some of the things it's saying, and I advocate writing them down, and then ask yourself, is that true? Is that absolutely true? For example, you know, is it true that the lady who said she had a fat backside has a fat backside? I mean, compared to what? You know, what metric are we using here? I mean, we could all say that compared to, you know, a tiny baby bum, for example. So I ask, I say to my clients, ask yourself, is that true? And then what's the opposite thought? What's the opposite? And if you can then try on the opposite belief, then so often that appears to

actually be more true than the negative one. But this is a daily practice. And as for comparing ourselves to other people, what we find ourselves doing is comparing how we feel on the inside to how we are assuming people are feeling, but we can only see their outsides. So we are comparing our internal narrative to what's being presented out there and making assumptions. And again, is it true? You know, so often we are assuming that everybody else has got their stuff together, you know, they're, they're all happening, and they've got it together. And inside, they're probably crumbling as well, and looking at you and thinking, gosh, you know, she looks like she's got her stuff together it's called self-objectification and it's um and it's one of the bad things we do for our self-esteem

francis many people will find men and women it's not exclusive to women by any means you know if you go back to work after a period off whether it's caring for somebody or illness obviously for women it could be maternity leave for men it could be paternity leave that can be a real time or if you've lost your job of course and then you get back in the job market it can be a real testing time for your confidence because there's a lot of self-doubt that comes in how do we how do we reverse that and turn it on its head? I think there is no simple answer to that I think it's process, it's not an event and we're always saying to women that there is no quick fix to confidence. It's about breaking down

the reasons why you're feeling the way you're feeling and again I would say we're evidence based. Where is the evidence that all these things that you keep saying about yourself and that you're criticising and there's a whole queue of people waiting to criticise you. You don't actually really need to help them so one of the things that we're saying to women is we're trying to look at what skills and qualities

they have, bearing in mind that we work with some women who have got very, very, very complex needs, who have very little self-esteem, who haven't even engaged well with education, let alone getting into work. There's a lot of women that we work with who deal with anxiety and stress and all that sort of stuff. So what we sometimes do in that is we look at skills and qualities evidence. So what we're saying to women is if you have survived domestic abuse you might not realise it but you have got masses and masses of skills that can be transferred into other things. So an

example would be a woman who didn't know why she had low self-esteem and throughout the course realised that she was constantly being belittled by people in her family. She was put all her heart and soul into caring for others and not looking after herself. So she didn't feel she had anything to offer. And when we sat down and pulled that together in a skills and qualities process it turned out she had masses and masses of management skills literacy skills and what she eventually did was she went on to become an adult literacy and support worker so it's about a change of focus isn't it essentially it's flipping it on its head I wonder forgive me for jumping in we don't have a lot of time and I'm keen to hear from Jo because, Jo,

we've got a couple of minutes left to speak about this, but you had a defining moment, didn't you, in your life where you took control. Would you share that with us? Yeah, of course. Yeah, it was ten years ago next spring. I lost a friend to suicide and I was told I had breast cancer within the same week.

And I was actually very lucky. It turned out after the surgery that it wasn't cancer. They took the lumps out and kind of changed their minds, I suppose. But facing my own mortality and losing a friend woke me up. And I suddenly realised that I'd been kind of sleepwalking through my life and I'd been sleepwalking on a drug of fear, fear of not doing what, living, I suppose, the life I wanted. And part of that fear was that I couldn't leave a marriage that I wasn't thriving in. And when I woke up, I thought, I'm going to have to go. And, you know, my husband, my exband is a is a very good man and we're still friends and we've raised our children together but the marriage wasn't happy and there was something

about facing into the most terrifying thing that I'd ever experienced which was dying and leaving my children that suddenly made me think what have I about? Like, I'm here and I'm still breathing and I just kind of knew it was going to be OK, but I also knew that life was saying to me, you're going to have to start making estimable decisions for yourself. Otherwise, it's just going to carry on the way it's been going. I guess it gave you a sense of perspective, didn't it, Jo? Such a shift in perspective.

I guess so many... Sorry, you go. No, no i was just going to say because so many of us i mean you don't wish a bad event on anybody do you but if we do have something like that it can suddenly give us that crystallizing moment which makes us say gosh things aren't so bad listen i'm so sorry we have to leave it here but thank you so much for your tips and for sharing your experiences we heard there from confidence coach joe emerson and also from francis monaghan of wise women which is in glasgow lots of you getting in touch with us about that conversation jane says can't you be confident but also crippled by low self-esteem i can fake it when i need to but i don't buy into it so when push comes to shove, low self-esteem wins

out and I feel like a fraud. Steph's also got in touch to say, heard it all before, but I need to keep hearing about those little voices and consciously choosing to believe the positive. Ina says that she lives alone. She says, I always have a calendar with room for notes each day. When going through deep depression, I instituted a gold star system, putting a star on my calendar for even the smallest achievement that day, going to the corner shop, walking around the block, taking a shower, etc. I couldn't think of anything deserving of a star, then I would just give myself one for not dying.

Looking at the calendar, I could see all the stars. It was evidence that I was good for something. And I got a dog. I trained him. I looked after him well. I'm a lifelong underachiever. But for 13 years, he was living testament that I did something of which I could be proud. And of course, he was always prepared to love me and boost my confidence.

Ina, listen to a positive inner voice there. It sounds like you're doing lots of positive things. Also, many of you getting in touch with my conversation about the new book by Maggie O'Farrell. She has produced a children's book and she was talking to us about how nice it is to sit down and read with children, even if they're proficient readers themselves. Lucy says, I'm a total advocate of carrying on reading to kids,

as Maggie O'Farrell says. I've recently started to read bedtime stories again to my teen and almost teen. I found it a really lovely way to get some time and space together. Rachel has got in touch as well. She says, my 15-year-old son was very ill over the summer with hepatitis and he actually asked me to read to him. We sat for hours whilst I read him some Michael Morpurgo books. It's a really special memory for me. He's now well again and the idea of me reading to him is quite frankly embarrassing. Well Rachel at least you can take comfort from that time you did have together. And Jenny says I'm privileged to still be invited to read with my 17 year old son most evenings. He's a more than

capable reader but this is a special time in our day when I'm fully invited by him to draw alongside him and enter a world of imagination and exploration that often leads to a really valuable conversation about real life situations. Soon he's going to leave for university, but we will both always remember our evenings of reading together, which is a really, really important message. Now, tomorrow on Woman's Hour, I'm going to be talking to Lizzie Collingham, who's author of The Biscuit, a history of a very British indulgence. How did they become so embedded in our culture? Also, we'll be talking about the benefits and challenges of outdoor learning. Can it re-engage children after the broken learning of the pandemic? So do join me then. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the pandemic. So do join me then. I'm Sarah Trelevan and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig the more 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.