Woman's Hour - DJ Lucy Edwards. Civil partnerships for all couples. Breaking or forming habits.

Episode Date: January 4, 2020

Last weekend Lucy Edwards made history when she became the first blind person to present on Radio 1. How did she begin her career in broadcasting?After a six year battle, Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld were finally able, as a heterosexual couple, to opt for a civil partnership. They talk about how their campaign began and their plans for their future.The power of the habit that’s become entrenched. How do habits form and how easy are they to break? Author Catherine Gray on her latest book – the Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary. Plus, as the Teenage Cancer Trust reveals that nearly thirty per cent of the young people who need to be treated don’t have any discussion about the impact it might have on their fertility we ask; What difference can such a discussion make? And we look at one of the big issues of the new decade, social care.Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Rosie Stopher Editor Beverley PurcellGuest; Catherine Gray Guest; Lucy Edwards Guest; Charles Keidan Guest; Rebecca Steinfeld Guest; Dr Heather McKee Guest; Kate Raworth. Guest; Angela Saini Guest; Dr Sarah Jarvis Guest; Bea Campbell. Guest; Professor Pamela Kearns Guest; Dr Louise Soanes Guest; Ellie Waters

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. Good afternoon. New Year has been and gone. Resolutions made and either pursued or already abandoned. What habits did you want to begin or break in the phone-in on Monday? And we looked ahead to the big issues of the coming decade. Social care is clearly a priority for the economist Kate Raworth. If we want to provision for our wants and needs and care for our well-being, let's recognise that every day we all start in the household. It's a space of unpaired caring labour. It's the place of the cooking, washing,

cleaning, sweeping, raising the children, caring for your parents, and that is fundamental to our wellbeing. Lucy Edwards became the first blind person to present her own programme on Radio 1. How did she cope? Catherine Gray has written about the unexpected joy of the ordinary. What are the ordinary things that so many of us miss? They don't talk about the little moments like a tasty sandwich they made or a nice conversation with a neighbour or, you know, having a little chat with a robin. And the children who find out they have cancer have brutal treatment but are not told about the threat to their fertility. What choices do they have that might enable them to have children in the future? Now, in 2014, we spoke to Charles Keedon and Rebecca Steinfeld

about the start of their campaign to make it possible for a heterosexual couple to opt for a civil partnership rather than a wedding to formalise their relationship. Their campaign was successful and now, like a same-sex couple, they and any others who want to be civilly partnered can go to the register office, as Charles and Rebecca did on Tuesday. Rebecca reminded us of why they had begun their campaign. Well, when Charlie and I decided to formalise our commitment to each other, we decided that we had to be able to express that commitment

in a way that really reflects our egalitarian values. And we already see ourselves as partners. So an official civil partnership seemed perfect for us. It would give us greater legal rights and responsibilities within a modern social institution that is free of the patriarchal history and lingering sexist trappings of marriage. We decided to announce our intention to become civil partners

in the Jewish Chronicle, which we think is the first announcement of a civil partnership that that newspaper has ever printed. So there were some funny conversations between me and the person on the social and personal desk about this. And now we're hoping that we can make good on our announcement. But we can only do this if the UK government opens up civil partnerships to opposite sex couples. Rebecca, that was nearly six years ago. What's it like listening to yourself at the start of

the campaign? Gosh, I feel really emotional listening to yourself at the start of the campaign? Gosh, I feel really emotional listening to that. You were holding hands. It was so sweet. I know. And it feels really lovely to sort of be coming full circle and to be coming back here to talk to you. Yeah, it's wonderful to be at this point now where we have gotten to the end of a legal battle and a political campaign and we have managed to successfully open up civil partnerships to everybody. So literally now any couple in the UK can form a civil partnership. It's a wonderful thing for us and it's a wonderful thing for so many other people. Charles, the 31st is the first day that heterosexual civil partnerships can be recognised. How worried were you that actually it might never happen? Well, we realised once we'd gone to court all that time ago, as you say, that we were past the point of no return when we realised that it wasn't just for us that we were making this

challenge, legal challenge. Yes, of course, there were moments of setbacks, doubts. We lost in court twice before the emphatic ruling in Lady Hale's Supreme Court when we won unanimously. And then we had the change of heart by the Conservative government. So I think there was moments of doubt, but ultimately we were really propelled forward by the broad-based cross-party, cross-section public support and the fact that there were so many people that wanted to be able to do what we wanted, which is to be able to form a civil partnership, many of whom for different reasons for their own reasons. But Rebecca, what toll has keeping going had on you? Because you've got children as well. We do. And we had two children during the five years of fighting the government in court and

campaigning. And it has taken its toll. I don't want this to be a pity party, though, because at the end of the day, we chose to do this. And in the course of doing it, I think we've had a really wonderful journey. We've met people that we wouldn't have otherwise met, and we've acquired skills that we wouldn't otherwise have. And I feel that, you know, we're now able to use those skills to campaign in our various respective jobs in other ways. But yeah, it has taken a toll. I had a sort of career shift midway through, partly as a result of having children, and sort of the realisation that it was just unsustainable for me to continue down an academic career track whilst campaigning for civil partnerships at the same time. And I think also it took its toll on

Charlie too. It did and I suffer from a degree of kind of burnout earlier this year where I just felt, you know, having succeeded legally and then politically and we'd also moved home several times and seeing our children grow up Eden is now four and Ariel I'm two everything was really in place so in that sense I had everything to be thankful for and grateful for and yet I was feeling this sense of kind of mental and physical exhaustion took a little bit of time off work my employers were understanding about it so it's been tough and I think you know even enacting social change which should have been quite straightforward in this case can take its toll but I think we kept going because we knew that it was important for each other it was the right way that we wanted to

express our relationship as a partnership of equals and there were so many people that also were alongside us in this effort. But when you say that other people who were supporting you and were coming behind you wanted civil partnerships for a range of reasons, what were those range of reasons? I mean, I think there are all sorts of reasons why people feel that marriage might not be right for them. Either that they have had a previous poor experience of their own marriage or their parents' marriage, or like us, they have deep reservations about some of the history, problematic history, patriarchal baggage of marriage.

They don't want to have to succumb to the really immense pressure to formalise their marriage in the form of a wedding with a lot of fanfare and expectation and wearing white dresses and being given away and enormous eye-watering cost they just don't want that and the beauty of civil partnerships is that they give you the legal status and recognition of marriage and all of the financial protections that come with that

but without any of this expectation without any of this fanfare they really are a blank slate there's no social script people can do whatever they want if they want to do things at scale and have a huge party, of course do that, people should do whatever feels right for them. But for Charlie and me, what we want is something very simple, very stripped back. We're just planning on going to the register office at Chelsea Town Hall to have a very simple registration at the statutory price of £46 in front of our two children, Eden and Ariel, and two of our close friends. That's what we're going to do. We know lots of other people who want to do something similar. And I think that's part of the attraction that really you can do what you want. We know that there are now 3.3 million cohabiting couples, the fastest growing family type in this country. Why have you

both worried that cohabitation really makes you vulnerable? Well, there's no such thing as common law marriage in the UK. Some people are under the erroneous assumption that there is, but in fact there is not. And cohabitees, therefore, are actually quite legally and financially vulnerable. We became keenly aware of that at the point at which we had our children. And in that sense, I suppose our own personal reason for wanting to form a civil partnership shifted slightly from the pure feminist principles through to a more pragmatic concern about our vulnerability, should the worst happen to one of us or if we should separate. And I think that civil partnerships go part of the way to addressing the vulnerability of cohabities, because for those like us who don't want to marry and are cohabiting as a result, they can now form a civil partnership. But it doesn't address the situation for everybody because at the end of the day, it's an opt-in situation for those who are unaware that they're vulnerable

or where they're in a relationship with someone who is refusing to formalise the relationship for some reason, perhaps because they're protecting their assets. They remain vulnerable. And I think what's really important about the conversation about civil partnerships from this point onwards is that it doesn't stop here, that we keep talking about the need that law and social policy keep up with the reality of family life in modern Britain today, and that we will broaden out actually into a much wider, more profound conversation about the kinds of relationships, caring relationships, personal

relationships that we give legal status to and financial protection to and those we don't. I think we need to be talking about things like adult caring relationships, people who are co-parenting, people who are in alternative sexual relationships, siblings who are taking care of each other. All of these relationships need to be considered. So off to the register office for the cheapest possible way of creating a union. But how excited are you about it? Really excited, super excited. Excited about the day itself. We wanted to do it in the way that we originally intended, very simple and stripped back, as I said, and it was important to us to show to people how accessible it is because £46, though some money is affordable, we're not talking about a £20,000 wedding or anything like that.

And really excited to wake up on the 1st of January 2020 to a new decade where we are civil partners in law as well as in life. Newly civil partnered Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keaton, and congratulations to them both. Now, the new year is four days old, and some of us will have kept the resolutions made on Tuesday night. Some of us will already have succumbed to the desire for a gin and tonic or a bacon sandwich, even though we've been so determined to quit drinking or give up

eating meat. In Monday's phone-in Jane discussed the power of the habit that's become entrenched. How do they start and how easy are they to break? Dr Heather McKee is a specialist in changing behaviour. The key question I kind of say to people is you know know, it's important to understand the difference between resolutions and habits. So even Jane yourself, you know, think about, you know, since last New Year, you know, how many of those changes are you still continuing? And I always say to people, you know, how many changes are continuing a month later? And often people, you know, most people fail to continue those changes beyond a month past their New Year's resolutions. And I say to them, you know, how many are failing, you know, people fail um to continue those changes beyond a month past

their new year's resolutions and i say to them you know how many are failing you know a week or two weeks later um and then i ask you know how many people this morning failed to brush their teeth um and you didn't because it was a habit and that's the magic of habits and the power of habits over resolutions and they're formed through context-dependent repetition. So you do the same thing in the same circumstance enough times it becomes a habit. So it's not like, you know, Jane, you woke up this morning and you were kind of debating the pros and cons of dental hygiene

or, you know, you were worrying about if you were in the right mood to brush your teeth or if you were the tooth-brushing kind of person. You just do it, don't you? You just did it and it's because it's a habit and that's the power of habits. Mary joins us from Kingston upon Thames now Mary I think it's fair to say that you thought of yourself as a procrastinator didn't you? Most definitely I'm a natural procrastinator and I could spend a lot of time delivering over whether

to make a decision right definitely. Definitely. But you have changed. You've made changes. I have made changes. Some of the changes that I've made were thrust upon me. I was a little bit poorly a couple of years ago whilst overseas. So I decided that it would be a good idea not to eat meat. So I managed to do that because I probably had no choice at that point. And when I came home, I decided that because that had become my habit it was something that I wanted to continue

so I still don't eat meat and it just suits me. Lots of others of my habits I've found it very interesting that Heather mentioned the repetition so habits that tend to suit my mind well because I will tend to dwell on things or my mind is very busy. I find that things that are very repetitive, physical repetitive actions are the habits that I tend to latch onto. So cleaning your teeth is very repetitive and it's the same action and we just do it. Another couple of habits that I have found that really benefit me are kayaking and swimming and trampolining. And when I break those things down, they're very repetitive things. My mind doesn't have to think about what it needs to do to achieve them. Can I just interrupt you? Because you don't just swim, you do outdoor swimming, don't you don't just swim you do outdoor swimming don't you

i do i do outdoor swimming yeah i think um i must be honest with you mary i'd find it a struggle to get into the habit of doing that i think i do um my natural default in the morning is to pop the duvet over my head and roll back over but i know that by swimming and the habit of the swimming will set me up for a completely different style of day and it will allow my mind to have those gaps to dwell and be creative on the things that I need to be creative around because my work is in music and with people and I want to have my mind to really procrastinate on the things that matter. You're focusing on the reward and that's a really interesting part of habit change. So habits are formed across a loop.

You have a cue or a trigger, the behavior and a reward. And if we can focus on the reward and you're focusing on, you know, how the habit sets you up for the day, it's much more likely that you're going to actually engage in that habit in the first place. And what's interesting is those kind of internal or intrinsic motivations those are much more sticky than those kind of extrinsic so like how many laps of a pool you did or how many minutes you were out swimming or anything else they're not as rewarding it's you've connected with the why you know what it gives you in your life and you're taking that kind of gain mindset into it you know what am I going to gain by engaging this behavior rather than you know, what it gives you in your life. And you're taking that kind of gain mindset into it.

You know, what am I going to gain by engaging this behaviour rather than, you know, what you're missing out on or what you might lose? Heather, we need to make clear, of course, that Mary, fortunately for her, is clearly physically able and active. And so these opportunities are available to her. And it's not, unfortunately, that isn't true of all of us, is it? No, absolutely not and again you know you've got to work within the constraints of your life and that's why i always say you know it's got to be relevant to your life as much as we can look at people you know

the media have an obsession at the moment with you know the perfect morning routine and everything else if you're not a morning routine or a morning person at all you know don't work on setting up a morning routine you know something I always say to people you know if you hate kale salads but that's something you think you have to do to be healthy you know don't eat kale it's not enjoyable for you it's not relevant to your lifestyle find the things within your lifestyle that are much more enjoyable and accessible for you and therefore they'll be easier to repeat and therefore they're more likely to become a habit now let's go this is more serious and I think it's important.

This is Valerie who's in London. Valerie, good morning to you. Hello. Now, unfortunately, I'm very sorry to say you lost your husband a couple of months ago, didn't you? I did indeed. So you want, well, we're not quite talking about advice because this is a colossal life change for you, isn't it? Well, it really is. And it's like my husband died at the end of October. And i'm in kind of a really difficult period just leading with christmas and all this

sort of stuff so i decided to go home to california for 10 days which is where i originally originally come from and i just got back on saturday and i thought you know this morning i've got to get up because my husband had been quite ill for a long time and most of my life routine my habits and everything has been around him and then i thought this, I'm going to get up and really think about this. And then all of a sudden this program came on and I just thought if Heather might have any thoughts, because the weirdest thing is it's bad enough losing your husband. But when you start to think about changing your routines and habits, it's because your habits have been around them and your routine, you feel like you're almost losing a bit of them again by changing everything because now I've just got to find a whole new way to live.

So these were habits formed out of necessity around your husband's illness? Absolutely, because it's just like, yeah, everything from what time you get up, if you're going to try and do exercises, no matter what it might be, everything kind of was there. And now I'm just thinking about, oh, my God, how do I do this to try and reformulate habits for me? But without, it's just this weird sense of you feel like you're losing a bit of them. So I guess it would be interesting to know, is it better to just do it tiny bit by bit so that you don't just feel even more depressed and horrible?

I don't know if that makes any sense at all. No, it does, and I think it's really interesting because you feel somehow you might be disloyal if you make changes. So Heather, what would you say to Valerie? Valerie, it's a really tough situation because of, you know, all of the loss and that you're emotionally quite tied up in it. One thing I would say to you is, again, coming back to this joyful thing, you know, what was it that you enjoyed before or any of those habits that actually helped feel joyful for you? Because it feels like there's a lot of guilt here, you know,

and I'm highly compassionate to your situation, but it's about you kind of rebuilding yourself and re-engaging with things that bring you joy in life and bringing back just tiny little things, even if it's, you you know sitting in the garden in the morning or having a cup of tea or even just getting some kind of fresh sunlight on your face in the morning the more you can build in just small little joyful things rather than punishing yourself about having to return to a previous routine because this might be about building a new phase or a new chapter or a new step in your life and so what I would give you is maybe homework for the day is to think about a joy list for yourself

what are those things that make you feel positive or uplifted and you know an experiment with that list and you know add a few new things maybe it's painting maybe it's meditation maybe it's watching you know a nice movie whatever it is for you. But the important thing for you at this time is to find your own kind of little joys day to day. Very, very simple things. Dr. Heather McKee and Jane also heard from Valerie and Mary who joined her on the phone. And Kathy emailed, I'm widowed. It's tough. One thing I do is to create habits or do things that involve my

husband in a tiny way. Even today, while clearing the kitchen and listening to the radio, I lit a candle in his favourite candle holder. That way I'm getting on with my life, but he's there in the background, sort of keeping me company. For some years years now social care has been at the forefront of political discussions about the really important things that need to be reformed and properly funded but what has actually been achieved and what needs to be done to reassure us all that we will be looked after by this society into which we've contributed so much and not have to depend on daughters, daughters-in-law, or maybe but less often, sons and sons-in-law. Well, my guests on New Year's Day were the feminist economist

and author of Donut Economics, Kate Raworth, Angela Saini, who's written Inferior, How Science Got Women Wrong, and the new research that's rewriting the story. Sarah Jarvis, who's a GP and clinical director of patientaccess.com. And the writer and activist Bea Campbell. How would we define what has been called the care crisis? Care crisis. You know, that's a very poignant question because in December, the woman that we've, me and my partner, been looking after for the last five years,

constantly, died. She died well, but the care and the experience of providing that care that she needed in the last five, six, seven years of her life was a shock to her and a shock to her entire family and community of loved ones. the emotional and economic catastrophe that that is. And there won't be a family in Britain, there won't be a street in Britain that doesn't know somebody who's living with what is really a tsunami of crisis around the labours of love. There's been ten years of political inertia about sorting this out.

If you were ill with cancer or leukaemia or motor neuron disease, then you would enter the health service and its systems across the left flank. If you've got Alzheimer's and you lose your identity and you can't move and you can't see, then you don't. And for many women of this woman's generation, what happens is that you command the care of those who love you and care about you, and you lose all the resources that you probably spent,

given the typical respectable working class middle class person who's now in their 80s and 90s you just lose it because that's what it costs. Sarah what do you observe of a care crisis in your working life as a GP? Unfortunately I see a huge amount we are getting older there's absolutely no question as a population and although the gap is closing women do still live for longer than men. Now the good news is that we are spending longer living we're not just spending longer dying but by the same token we're spending more of our lives as time goes on in poor health because the simple fact of the matter is we've done an amazing job particularly for men not quite so much for women we'll maybe come on to that in terms of reducing deaths from heart disease, which tends to be very much a premature killer.

But what we haven't done is prevent people from living with long-term conditions, whether it's osteoporosis, much more of a woman's problem than a man's problem. One in three women will break a bone and often be in terrible pain, stop living independently because of things like osteoporosis. So as you get older, it becomes more difficult. And unfortunately, the social care we've got means that my patients, there's often a block with them getting into hospital because people who are in hospital haven't got the social care to get them out at the other end. Kate, why has care been undervalued for so long?

Because, well, the simple answer I would say is because economic theory, which turns into the language of public policy, right, the way we talk about the economy and what's valued, it was written by men several hundred years ago and they were cared for by their mothers. Actually, Adam Smith was living at home with his mum when he wrote his famous book about how the market meets our wants and needs and when you miss out that fundamental what i mean i'm hearing b and sarah talk about this deep value that we put at the heart of our lives of health of care most people would say it's priceless to be healthy and to be cared for and yet it's so left out of the way mainstream economics values

the goods and service of the economy. So any student, and I hate to say it, but still going to university today, welcome to economics. Lecture number one, here's the market, supply and demand. It's all about price. And then if the market fails, well, we'll talk about when the state can step in. Actually, we should start somewhere completely different. If we want to provision for our wants and needs and care for our well-being, let's recognise that every day we all start in the household. It's a space of unpaid caring labour. It's the place of the cooking, washing, cleaning, sweeping, raising

the children, caring for your parents, and that is fundamental to our well-being. And the commons, where people come together and provide community services, community support. Now, we need to start economics again, putting those right side by side, the household and the commons together with the market and the state and say we meet our needs actually through the synergy, through the interaction of these different things. At the moment, because they're pushed to the side, it's called, oh, you can go and study that later. It's feminist economics if you're interested in that but it's left out and yet here we are talking right at the start of the 2020s about the fundamentals of well-being when a family has a really unwell member that is it as b's describing it it turns everybody's lives around it should be at the heart of well-being economies that we now need to create b what impact do you reckon it has on the generation that I suppose you could call the meat in the sandwich?

They're the children of elderly parents with children of their own and they need to be caring at both ends of their family. Well, almost everybody I know of my age who was born after the Second World War is connected in some way to people for whom they offer care. So I've been involved in childcare. All of the women in my family have been involved in childcare for grandchildren. Done with the greatest of enthusiasm, I have to say, for these little divine beings.

And at the same time, you hit the catastrophe of social care, which is not just because there are old people and old people are getting older, longer, and in more vulnerable conditions, but because the economic approach to care is to treat it simply as a cost and also as a burden that in the context of promoted austerity cannot be afforded so eight billion has just been lopped off the social care budget in the last 10

years so there is disrespect for the commitment to care that my generation of women now have vast experience of and great generosity in delivering, but so much of that great generosity is not reciprocated either at the level of politics or in our relationships with men generally. I don't mean some individual bloke who may be heroic in the care that he gives to his grandchildren or an aged parent. But men collectively have turned their face away from sharing the solidarity of care, whether through their taxes or the practice of wiping bums and tears. Angela, it is often assumed that women are the natural carers what does the science say about that well it's slightly open i have to say because we can't know a lot of this comes down to you know

how did we live in our distant past how you know what is the natural state of humans and i'm not sure there really is humans live in all different kind of ways and they always have there are societies hunter-gatherer societies, in which men are very hands-on with childcare. There are others in which they're not. So it's really up to us how we live, and we are very adaptable as a species in that sense. We can really live any way we want.

I would say that if we want the kind of society that Kate's talking about, we can have it. It's just about will, you know. I don't think everybody really wants it, and that's where we're at at the moment. And lots of you wanted to comment on the question of care too. Dinah emailed, what is generally avoided whenever childcare is discussed is that most people who are themselves from the professional classes don't encourage their own children to take a career in child care. Not glamorous, well paid, high status enough. But these same people expect someone else's children to look

after theirs while they channel their own offspring into the higher value professions. I went to Sweden a few years ago and discovered that in Scandinavia, caring for children is a profession highly regarded as much as being a health professional, lawyer or teacher. And Jacqueline emailed, After a 40-plus year career in the caring profession at the age of 65 and with arthritis, I'm caring for both grandchildren and a 91-year-old father. I'm a WASPI woman and don't receive any state pension until I'm 66, so I'm also working part-time, albeit in work which means I'm self-employed and work flexible hours. I'm constantly, completely stunned at the lack of economic understanding of our situation. Still to come on the programme, Lucy Edwards, the first blind presenter of her own show on Radio 1, and the unexpected joy of the ordinary.

What does Catherine Grey mean by the ordinary and where is the joy in it? And a reminder that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at two minutes past ten during the week. All you have to do is download the BBC Sounds app. We know that every year some 2,600 teenagers are told they have cancer. Treatment can be brutal and a recent report from the Teenage Cancer Trust revealed that 29% of the young people who need to be treated don't have any discussion about the impact it might have on their fertility. What difference can such a discussion make? Well, Professor Pamela Kearns is a consultant paediatric oncologist and joined us from Birmingham.

Dr Louise Soans works with the Teenage Cancer Trust and Ellie Waters is 18 and was diagnosed with a rare tissue cancer when she was 14. So essentially it was an accumulation of symptoms over time the biggest one being I had this lump in my left butt cheek that just kept growing but I never really thought anything of it and as I was quite a fiercely independent person I didn't want to tell anybody about it and I was under this naive impression that it'd just go away and all my problems would go away but it wasn't until you know I got constipation, trouble urinating, those kind of symptoms that I eventually went to the GPs and I had an emergency abscess removal operation but they discovered it wasn't an abscess, it was actually a tumour.

What treatment did you have to have? So together I had 18 months of treatment, I had nine cycles of intensive chemotherapy, I had 28 sessions of radiotherapy and one year of maintenance chemotherapy. Ah, horrible. Yeah, quite the ordeal. Yeah, a real ordeal. Now, how did you discover that there might be worries about your fertility? Did anybody raise it with you? No. your fertility did anybody raise it with you no um the doctors obviously knew from the onset that

this type of aggressive treatment would affect my fertility but i was never told about that not until i went for my first radiotherapy kind of induction appointment and they read out this huge list of possible side effects and infertility was one. So yeah it did take me by surprise and I was quite shocked but at that moment I was kind of in survival mode so I you know I just kind of accepted the fact and focused on surviving the treatment rather than the implications of the treatment. What about now that you're much older looking back on it? It is hard now because I realise how disadvantaged I am in that sense. It's kind of hit me that not only am I infertile but I will never be able to carry a child so my only real option

is adoption so I just think it is hard and it's an obstacle that you have to overcome and it just makes your life and future a lot more difficult but I believe you kind of have a choice in life you can either take it in your stride and embrace the fact or you can grieve the loss in a sense but I'm going to choose a former and just kind of take it in my stride and embrace it. Louise, what concerns does the Trust have about this fertility question? It's a big worry, isn't it? It is a big worry. And the Teenage Cancer Trust, as you said, have surveyed our young people and she said 29% of them said they didn't have a conversation

about their fertility preservation or the risk to their fertility from their cancer treatment. And from the same survey, 44% told us if they did have a conversation, that they weren't satisfied with what information was given to them or how the information was given to them. And we know there are places that do this extremely well and lots of people who do do it well. But for those young people who don't get that information,

then it's difficult for them, as Ellie sort of described really, to make decisions about their future as a parenthood. And lots of young people we know want to be parents and look forward to being parents. And if they aren't given the information that enables them to make the decisions that will enable them to do that as an adult, then what we're asking for is for more conversations, for providers of healthcare to follow the guidance that exists, and for those conversations to be tempered so that they meet the needs of the young person sitting in front of clinicians and nurses who are involved in those conversations. Pamela, what guidelines do cover treating teenagers for cancer as regards fertility? So there are guidelines. The Children's Cancer and Leukemia Group, which is the professional group

who most nurses and paediatric oncologists and related healthcare professionals are a part of, and they have published guidelines that were actually updated last year about what the risks to fertility of different types of treatment are part of and they they have published guidelines that were actually updated last year um about you know what the risks to fertility of different types of treatment are and what the options are are available but i think it's really important from what both ellie and louise says is that initial conversation you know when any young person or child is diagnosed with cancer they have an awful lot of information given to them at that at that point first of all the diagnosis and then all the details of treatment be it

chemotherapy radiotherapy surgery or combination of all three and part of that conversation has to be the side effects of treatment now for most of the time that initial conversation focuses on the acute side effects you know the things that are going to happen to somebody immediately, the risk of hair loss, the risk on the immune system, for example. But that conversation does need to also include the longer term side effects and the impact on fertility is one of those really important ones. It's all very well, Pamela, giving information and then expecting somebody to make a decision. What kind of decisions can a young person make? Here they are faced with treatment for cancer. They're worried about their life.

Are they really going to be able to make a decision about their fertility and what might be done to help them i think one of the the big questions is what are the what are the options available it is also you know you're quite right it most people are reeling with the fact that they've just been told they have cancer and then the treatment they have to go through um but if they're given the the options with regard to fertility, well, the types of treatment that impact on fertility, the radiotherapy, as Ellie described, or some of the intensive chemotherapies, they are required to cure the cancer. That's the aim of the treatment. And so the options at that stage are, is there anything we can do to mitigate the chance

of that treatment impacting fertility and that's where the choices come into play so sometimes there isn't really an option so for example if the radiotherapy is going to in order to treat the cancer is going to take in either the testes the ovaries or the uterus and that's a very direct impact that is hard to mitigate now sometimes what we can do is move the ovaries or the uterus, that's a very direct impact that is hard to mitigate. Now, sometimes what we can do is move the ovaries out of the way or put a shield in place that protects the ovary or the testes from the radiotherapy. But that can only be done if the effect of the radiotherapy can still impact on the tumour. So that kind of thing is perhaps a more straightforward choice.

The other choices, so for somebody as young as Ellie who is pre-puberty, are really quite limited. So for a young lady pre-puberty, it's not possible to collect the eggs, for example, which is something we offer to older young people and women where you can give hormone injections to induce the eggs and then collect them. Now that takes about three weeks. So first of all, you have to be at an age where you're cycling. And secondly, you have to be in a situation

with your cancer to delay the treatment for three weeks. What about helping parents? I mean, parents must be desperately worried about their child being so sick. And the fertility question, how do parents know what questions to ask? Again, I worked as a paediatric oncology nurse and obviously worked with parents of teenagers and young adults. Again, sometimes that conversation is with a young person. They might want to chip in here.

Or sometimes mums and dads want to ask questions or both parties want to ask questions without the other party being there, really. And it is a concern. Parents also express the loss that they may not be a grandparent or should I be putting my son or daughter through another set of treatment, another set of options when they're already, as Pam said,

facing cancer treatment and survival is of primary. Ellie, mums and dads, what's their role in all of this? Well, yeah, as Louise said, it's very hard for them as my mum is having to deal with the fact that she won't, one of her children won't be able to have biological grandchildren. But I think it's just involving the parents as much as the young person wants so if the young person doesn't feel comfortable to talk about fertility in front of their parents then the consultant should kind of facilitate that and lead the

consultation so that only the young person is involved if that's how they feel. I was talking to Professor Pamela Kearns, Dr Louise Soans and of course Ellie Waters. Some of you got in touch with your own experience. Someone who doesn't want us to use a name said we went through this with our son who was diagnosed with leukaemia when he was seven and underwent aggressive chemo and total body radiotherapy when he was only eight. We had the discussion with his consultant and oncology team about the loss of his fertility but to be honest at the time we just wanted our son to live. We couldn't think too much about the future as getting through every day supporting him, supporting each other and our other young son was our only way of coping.

Ten years down the line he's a healthy teenager with his first girlfriend and whilst we've had the conversation in the intervening years I'm never confident that he's actually absorbing the enormity of it. I guess until he seriously is considering having a serious relationship and family it's not uppermost, but I, as his mother, worry about relationships failing because of it and his own mental health being affected. Having a child with cancer never leaves you. I look at him every day and feel blessed, but always with the nagging worry about the long-term side effects. And Diana emailed, my daughter was diagnosed with osteosarcoma at the age of 14.

We brought up the question of fertility, which led to her having an ovary removed prior to starting the treatment. There was a very small window of time at John Ratcliffe Oxford Hospital. The tissue was preserved and can be replaced in her other ovary if she has fertility problems.

This is experimental, but it's an option. Now, it's often said there are no pictures in radio apart from the ones you make for yourselves. But for those who's behind the microphone, being able to see seems a pretty important sense to have. We write and read our scripts, see what's on the clock and sometimes have to operate the studio equipment without any help. It's why we're all so full of admiration for our colleague Peter White, who's never let being blind stand in his way. Well, last weekend, Lucy Edwards made history when she became the first blind person to present on BBC Radio 1. Jane asked her how she made it. um it was like a if you like a scheme just to get you into news and i worked on bbc out which is a podcast and then i was a freelance uh for radio 4 in touch uh with the lovely peter white uh for a time and yeah i just put my show reel in saw the ad if you like on uh twitter for radio one um wanting talent for christmas over christmas

and the rest is history now peter i knew his name would crop up um like all broadcasters like myself uh peter has an ego but we have to say the man is a legend he's an absolute broadcasting legend known and loved i know by millions of people who listen regularly to Radio 4. But can I just, I don't think this will offend him. He is of a certain vintage. You are at the other end. How old are you, Lucy? I'm 24. Right. Okay. So, and I was really surprised because I saw you tweeting that you were going to be Radio 1's first blind presenter. And I thought, what? Has that really not happened? Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I'm so, so lucky and happy to take on that history making right there. But yeah, I can't believe that I guess it happened at the latter part of the decade. It's crazy.

But I think there is definitely a move towards um disabled presenters um i know that there has been um offcom uh stating that they want a lot more presenters in 2020 to be just to represent the population yeah definitely and i think it's needed jane definitely and i'm just happy to to do it here you are on Radio 1. Good morning and welcome to BBC Radio 1 Anthems. It is Lucy Edwards and, of course, gorgeous guide dog Olga at 10am. We've got three hours of back-to-back 2008 tracks for you this morning. We are very, very happy to be here. 81119.

Fantastic, you didn't miss a beat. Were you concerned that you'd stumble or that something would go wrong? Yeah, I think so. I mean, hearing that back, got me the um the donut there the donut you'll have to explain yeah sort of you have to make sure you um get inside the the track bed if you like there you've got to be in the hole yeah you've got to be you've got to be making sure that you're on to on to time but yeah no uh i i i sort, the night before, I was definitely in bed like, what am I going to say? Listening to other presenters, sort of seeing how they started things.

I think naturally you're inquisitive about these different people, how they do things. And yeah, clicking the button, I definitely took a deep breath. And you mentioned Olga, the guide dog, your guide dog. Have to, have to mention her. I should say she is very much with us. She is. Being incredible, guide dogs are just the most fantastic creatures. I am in awe of what Olga can do for you and what other guide dogs do for the people they

work with and for. But let's talk about the business of broadcasting. I'm looking around the studio now and I don't have to do any of the technical stuff, thank goodness. But a lot of my cues are things I look at, visual cues. There are lights, there are all sorts of things, clocks. I'm surrounded by about 15 clocks here. How do you do it in simple terms? Yeah, so in simple terms, at the moment,

because there has never been a blind DJ on Radio 1 before, we went with the good old Blu-Tack. It was fantastic. And a lot of producer and Lucy interaction. Amy was absolutely fabulous. But there are probably still a long way to go in making the setup more audible, more tactile. Could there be a Braille mixing desk that you use? Oh, that would be absolutely fantastic.

No reason why not. No reason why not. And we could label the buttons a lot more. I mean, Amy did a little trick where she sort of blocked off some buttons just by putting complete Blu-Tack over all of it. Because obviously when you're talking and doing your thing on radio,

you are thinking about the sliders but you're predominantly making sure that you are interesting to the listener uh doing your thing thinking about what you're saying um and then as you get used to it more and you get used to the setup more um it sort of becomes muscle memory almost i don't know if you find that, Jane, but with what you click. I think also making the setup maybe more tactile with Braille would be an option. I think in the future, I would love for 2020

to maybe talk with a technician and make that so, because obviously the countdown clock, 20 seconds I had to fill most of my links i wasn't hearing anything in my headphones i was sort of counting as i was talking um and i was sliding the faders up and hearing the bed and doing all of that at once and and hearing my laptop with um all of the audience interaction on it i'll tell you what stuff like hearing beds is music to me. I've got my anorak firmly on here.

I'm absolutely loving this. Whether the audience is getting any of it, I'm not getting all of it, I'm not sure. What we need to make clear is actually the fact that you're blind is both relevant and utterly irrelevant because it's about making a connection to the listener and you are clearly able to do that. We should say the condition you have is incontinentia pigmenti that's correct

ip um and it doesn't i mean it's a it's an unusual condition isn't it and your mom has it yeah so um it runs down the female line of my genetics um my mom doesn't actually have any notable noticeable signs of the condition um she just has the gene, which is on the X chromosome, and it was passed down to me. It's recessive. So if you look on the internet, it says incontinence pigmenti affects skin and pigments and teeth, and oh, it may affect your eyes. So I am very unlucky in the fact that this gene mutated and affected my eyesight so severely. I think there's three or four other people in the whole of the UK who are women who have a little bit of sight loss. I'm not too sure because all of the doctors have told me all of my entire life that they don't really know what's going to happen. I have floaters,

I have detached retinas. It all happened at age 11 and age 17 for me, yeah. Lucy Edwards was talking to Jane. Now, six years ago, the writer, Catherine Gray, turned a corner. She'd been at rock bottom, feeling suicidal and drinking far too much. Then she wrote The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. A second book was to follow, The Unexpected Joy of Being Single. And now she's published a third, The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary. How did this one come about? Well, it's kind of the third point of the triangle because six years ago I was suicidal.

And when I quit drinking, that didn't cure everything. I was still very dissatisfied and low and disenchanted and so I started researching how to change that because I knew if I didn't change my thinking I would end up drinking again so I kept coming up against gratitude and sort of re-enchanting the everyday and finding beauty in the most workaday moments and even though my Britishness was like oh no that's way too cheesy and twee for me I gave it a go and joined a gratitude group and started writing gratitudes every day and it completely turned my mental health around what did you express gratitude for because the ordinary I

mean yeah what is the ordinary well an ordinary day so the way that I would define the extraordinary is the holiday the the new car. And when you look at social media, people tend to brag about those moments. They don't talk about the little moments like a tasty sandwich they made or a nice conversation with a neighbour or, you know, having a little chat with a robin. And that sounds so twee. But these moments are in every day if we look for them. But our brains don't because we have negatively biased brains, which reacts more passionately to the negative and remembers it more. And so it's neuroscience. Our brains look for negative things more than positive.

You write about something you call the hedonic treadmill. Yeah. What is that? OK, well, it's very inconvenient for a start. It's based on a theory called hedonic treadmill? Yeah. What is that? Okay, well, it's very inconvenient for a start. It's based on a theory called hedonic adaptation. It means that when something good happens to us, it wears off really, really quickly. So say, for instance, we get a promotion or we buy a house or we get married or have a baby, that will wear off quite quickly. And then we start chasing the next thing. And thus, it's like being stuck on a treadmill

that's stuck on an incline we're never quite satisfied we're looking for the next thing but one of the ways you can override the hedonic treadmill and this is proven is through gratitudes and random acts of kindness so you can undo it it's just a matter of thinking your way out of it and changing your perception you say that children are very badly affected sometimes by the hedonic treadmill how how did it affect children um it's not so much that but i i started thinking about when i the people the children in my life start feeling dissatisfied and i noticed and this is completely unscientific and based on a couple of dozen kids I know, but I noticed that it was around the age of four when they go to school and they start seeing other children's backpacks and other children's scooters and other children's

parents. And they're exposed to that sort of comparison society. And also they start doing things like watching YouTube and this cult for watching other kids' open presents. So they start doing things like watching YouTube and this cult for watching other kids open presents. So they become obsessed with consumerism. And consumerism lives and dies on us thinking we don't have enough. If we have enough, we don't buy anything. Two other terms you use are maximiser and satisficer. What are they? So a satisficer is someone who is very satisfied with their lot.

They are probably the happiest people you know, but they don't really want a promotion or a bigger house. I, unfortunately, am a maximiser, so I always want the next thing. And you can tell if you're a maximiser if you do things like spend a whole day researching a holiday because you want the best possible option. So Steve Jobs was a classic maximiser. He spent eight years choosing a sofa. And it's just where you want to see all the things before you make a decision. And it seems like a good thing, but it's actually something that can drive you a bit mad. So how have you resolved that? I tend to set myself time limits. So say, for instance,

if I'm looking for a new bike, I'll say, right, I'm just going to look for bikes within two miles on eBay. Or if I'm going to do a piece of work to stop myself maximising myself into a 2am finish, I just give myself five hours. So there's ways that I get around it now. Now that I know that I'm a maximiser, I can fix it. Now, you said that you learned to make yourself happier when you discovered gratitude. How did you stumble on that idea? I saw a shout out on a Facebook group that somebody was assembling a gratitude group based on the premise that a grateful heart never drinks. And at first I thought that's really corny, but then I thought about it and thought,

hang on, I'm really resentful, I'm unhappy. What have I got to lose? The only thing I've got to lose is my disenchantment. So I gave it a go. I found it really difficult at first, but now I can sit at home and rattle off 30 gratitudes from a normal day when nothing really amazing has happened. And you put those onto Facebook and share them with other people who are in the group?

Not anymore. I was in that group for about a year and then I had the practice down and now I just do it in my notebooks at home and I don't share it. But that, I've just got myself into the habit now and I've been doing it for six years. So now I'm literally looking for things to be grateful for which means that I find them it's confirmation bias it's just psychology so it works it really does. When you look back though on what got you into such a mess what had driven you to that state? I think it was a combination between I was a very anxious child. I discovered drinking very young at 12, latched onto it very quickly, thought that's the answer. And then the addiction drove things like relationship problems, career problems. It all just became this snafu of my life going downhill and the addiction tightening its grip. And that led to the rock bottom. But I had hundreds of tiny rock bottoms. And yeah, that was where I ended up.

You moved on after the unexpected joy of being sober to the unexpected joy of being single. Yeah. Is there still unexpected joy in being single? Well, I'm actually seeing someone now, but I took a long time off and it really reset the way I think about it. I'm not reliant on my relationship to make me happy. I know if it doesn't work out, I can be just as happy, which is such a refreshing change

for me because before I put everything on the relationship and that working out. What do you do if you wake up in a bad mood or you find yourself feeling envious of somebody else's success or somebody said something nasty to you? How do you deal with that? Well, if I wake up in a bad mood, I've got a list of 26 things that make me happy. And these are things like dancing around the kitchen, going and finding a dog to pet, writing anything, even a grocery list unpacks my brain. I was talking to Catherine Gray. Now, in May 2018, we asked, how does fat feel? Anna Miller interviewed three of the dozens of listeners who got in touch. They talked honestly and openly about their bodies and why they call themselves fat.

Well, next week, they'll be back to listen again to those interviews and tell us how they feel now. On Monday, Jane will meet a woman we're calling Jules. She felt her husband didn't fancy her and she didn't fancy herself. How about now? Join them Monday morning, two minutes past 10,

if you can, from me for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven 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 was 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.