Woman's Hour - Listener Week: Psychedelics, Strongwomen, Kleptomania, Living funerals, Being a refugee, Women in heavy metal

Episode Date: August 26, 2023

A Listener Week Weekend Woman’s Hour Special, where you – our listeners – decide what you want to hear on the programme.Our listener Rachel asked us to explore the potential of using psychedelic drugs in medicine, and whether these drugs might affect women differently to men. Anita Rani is joined by Professor David Nutt, Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London; and Catherine Bird, Senior Clinical Trials Manager at the Centre for Affective Disorders at Kings College London.Eric, a listener, suggested we find out more about Vulcana, the Victorian strongwoman known for her 'jaw-dropping feats of strength and her breath-taking beauty'. Author Rebecca F John and Sam Taylor, Britain’s Strongest Woman 2020, join Nuala McGovern to talk about strongwomen past and present. A listener who we’re calling Jane tells Nuala about her addiction to shoplifting. She wanted to highlight her experience and her struggle to cope with her compulsion - and explains her anxiety about regularly breaking the law. Listener Nelly has asked us to talk about living funerals. She was inspired by Kris Hallenga, the founder of the CoppaFeel breast cancer awareness charity, who has stage 4 breast cancer and who held a living funeral for herself. Nuala hears from Jenna, whose sister had a living funeral.Franceska Murati is a 27-year-old businesswoman and this year’s Miss Central London. At four years old, she arrived in the UK having escaped war-torn Kosovo, smuggled in the back of a lorry. She shares her story.And our listener Laura wanted us to look at heavy metal and the role women play in the scene. Nuala speaks to Lindsay Bishop, who conducted 10 years of field work for her PhD on the subject and Becky Baldwin, a bassist from the band Fury.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Lottie Garton

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. I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to a very special weekend, Woman's Hour, bringing you the highlights of Listener Week. This is the week where you've been the producers and every idea discussed on the programme has been brought to us by one of you, our treasured, valued listeners. And what a week it's been.

We've had everything from a woman who went through posthumous conception, having a baby after her husband had died, to the women fighting on the front line in Ukraine, to the discovery of a 200-year-old poem written by a duchess. So coming up this afternoon. So I remember being in the back of the lorry. There were people crying. It was really hot. And I remember the entire time my mum just, you know, kind of be quiet, don't make any noise. You're dealing with a four-year-old, you know, how do

you explain to a four-year-old that you're being smuggled in the back of the lorry, you know? We'll hear Francesca's story of being a refugee and how she thinks we've lost sense of what the word means. Plus the Victorian strongwoman who lifted a horse above her head and was in a thruple, a relationship with three people before we knew what one was. And there's also a beautiful story from Jenna. It was that moment when you pause to acknowledge a beautiful life. So it was really special to come together

and kind of close that sentence as a group and say this was her life. She lived it well, exclamation point. Hear why her sister Heidi opted for a living funeral. And we hear from someone who's been diagnosed with kleptomania, meaning she has the urge to shoplift. So grab yourself a drink, get comfy and let's begin. First this afternoon, an idea from our listener Rachel. She asked us to explore the

potential medical use of psychedelic drugs and whether they might impact women differently to men. This is something that seems to be in the zeitgeist right now and research has been going on in recent years with psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, and whether it could be used as a potential new treatment for conditions like depression, PTSD and anorexia when used in conjunction with therapy. Well, to find out more, I spoke to Professor David Nutt, Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and Catherine Bird, Senior Clinical Trials Manager for the Psychoactive Trials Group at King's College London. The first question I

asked David was what exactly are psychedelics? Well, you've already mentioned psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms. Other drugs in the similar class are drugs like LSD, DMT, which of course is usually taken in the form of ayahuasca. And it's been around for many tens of thousands of years, possibly in Latin America. And also a drug like mescaline, which, of course, was the drug that Aldous Huxley took when he had the experience, which really led to the opening of this whole new era of thinking about psychedelics in his book, The Doors of Perception. So they're powerful agents. It's work on the serotonin system in the brain, a particular subtype of serotonin receptors. It's very highly expressed in the very top level, most recently evolved parts of the human cortex and they essentially work on those parts of the brain

which encode our ongoing sense of self, our ongoing ego, where we encode and think through the past, the future and the present. And they change functioning in that circuit in the brain, we call the default mode network, and produce quite remarkable changes in attitude and often behavior as well. How do they work? How do they work on the brain? So they stimulate a receptor. The serotonin receptor is present in a particular cluster of neurons in the brain. The neurons which connect the brain, you're probably aware that your brain is the most complicated thing in the universe. Your brain is made up of maybe 100 billion neurons.

Each neuron is a little computer. In fact, the human brain has in the universe. Your brain is made up of maybe 100 billion neurons. Each neuron is a little computer. In fact, the human brain has more computing power. Every human brain has more computing power than all the computers on Earth put together. And that is because it's billions of computers all linked up. But the linking up is the critical thing. The reason humans are so clever and so inventive and so creative is because they connect all the vast number of neurons in the brain.

And the neurons which do that connecting have these serotonin receptors. And when you stimulate them, they change their function and they change the way you think. And that allows you to think differently. So, for instance, if you're locked into thought processes of depression, that you're a worthless person and that you don't deserve what you're getting, that you actually feel that you're probably a burden on life. You can disrupt those thoughts and people can come out and think, hang on, no, it's not my fault I'm depressed. Actually, I didn't abuse myself. I was abused by my parents or I've suffered other traumas. So it can help you recalibrate your thinking processes by disrupting its set maladaptive ways of thinking.

Catherine, what are the types of conditions then that it can potentially treat, particularly for women? So psilocybin has been researched for the treatment of depression, particularly treatment resistant depression. So people who have tried existing treatments and perhaps not responded or not gotten better. At the moment, there's a whole host of studies being conducted for different conditions that psilocybin therapy may be able to treat like anorexia and PTSD. So we would say that this research is still in earlier phases. Depression has been kind of the first one that's been researched the most. And you design clinical trials that work with psilocybin, which the government have classed as a Schedule 1 drug, which means it can't be lawfully possessed or prescribed and can only be used for the purposes of research with a home office license. So how do you make sure it's safe

to use in your clinical setting? Also, and explain what a Schedule 1 drug is as well. I think we need to understand that. Yeah, it's a very good question. I mean, people are more familiar with the sort of the Class A, the Class B classifications of drugs. Schedule 1 is the most restrictive classification for drugs that may be used in the medical sphere. There's, you know, there's other drugs that have potentially a lot of risk when used in certain contexts like heroin or morphine or ketamine, but they're in schedule two because when used in the correct setting, i.e. in certain medical settings, they can have benefits as well. So that's a useful way of thinking about it, that when psychedelics are given alongside

psychotherapy in a controlled setting with trained professionals, there is a potential for therapeutic improvement there. And what are the risks or the side effects that you make participants aware of? So quite common ones that people report can be initial feelings of anxiety, perhaps feeling a little bit nauseous, you might have a headache, but it's often found that these are transient, So they wear off as the drug wears off. And that's something that is very important to note that psilocybin and most classical psychedelics are pharmacologically safe. So on the body, they're not sort of toxic to the body. The risks are more to do with what might happen psychologically. And the steps that we take to mitigate that are making sure that people are adequately prepared.

They've had time to acquaint themselves with a therapist that they will be working with when they receive the psilocybin treatment. Educate them about what might come up. Also prepare them for the fact that they may not have a pleasant euphoric experience, which is what some people do have. Others, you know, difficult material comes up and that can be distressing, but also a potential to work through those difficult things. And, you know, they may not be able to approach those things in other spheres without support. And it's also about managing expectations. So at the moment, you know, there's a lot of discourse and a lot of excitement and hype. And sometimes people come to the trials thinking that these drugs might be a chemical switch and easy fix. And it's kind of breaking down those expectations and creating realistic kind of approaches that we can work with. David, you've recently completed research into the use of psilocybin for anorexia, patients with anorexia involving 21 participants. So tell us about your trial. What did it involve?

Well, it involved giving three doses of psilocybin, different doses to see whether there was a dose effect, and then monitoring changes in largely an attitude that the trial was rather different to most studies of anorexia. Up till now, people have tended to focus on body weight as their primary outcome, which, of course, is important because if you are very underweight, you are at much higher risk of dying. We decided to focus on attitudes to food and to body shape, etc., because we wondered if psychedelics could reframe the individual's, and they were women, attitude towards themselves,

to try to help them understand why they were denying themselves food, why they were trying to change their body shape, and get a different perspective on it. And I have to say, we were very pleasantly surprised by the impact it had. Very many of them said it changed significantly their perspective on what they were doing. It was, in a sense, they were able to stand aside, stand outside the historic attitude

that their brain had to themselves. Often they felt they were trapped in a behavioral thinking process, which they knew was damaging, but they couldn't escape from it. And the psychedelic trip, which they had at least one, allowed them to see things differently. So we're hoping that that alteration in attitude and perspective will persist. It certainly persisted for a month, and we are now doing the follow-up to six months

to see whether it can produce long-lasting alterations in the way they view themselves and therefore hopefully change their behavior. And you also carried out similar studies on depression. What are the long-term effects? Did the depression return after six months or more or were they? Yes, we've done two depression studies. The first was resistant depression and And there we had 20 subjects. And interestingly, four or five of them, you know, have done extremely well. It's almost like a cure. They've been well for up to 10 years.

For the vast majority, the depression crept back. But it was still, that first single trip was way the most effective treatment for resistant depression that there's ever been. Because half depression scores at six months, way the most effective treatment for resistant depression that there's ever been because half depression scores at six months which after one just one administration but depression creeps back because for many people it's it's become a way of thinking again emphasize childhood trauma does leave its scars and they may be very hard to shake fascinating conversation with professor david nut there and we also heard from k Bird. And I should state that the benefits spoken about in that interview

have come from taking hallucinogens only under strict medical supervision with carefully controlled doses. And recreational use of psychedelics does, of course, remain illegal and potentially harmful. If you want to hear more about that chat, head to BBC Sounds. It was on Thursday's episode. Now, the next topic was suggested to us by Eric. We often talk about strong women on this programme, often the assertive, resilient type,

but Eric asked us to focus on a different type of strong woman, the physically strong, and in particular, the story of Victorian strong woman Kate Williams, known under the stage name Vulcana. Author Rebecca F. John, whose historical novel Vulcana fictionalises her life, and modern-day strongwoman Sam Taylor joined Nuala to tell us more. Rebecca started by giving us a glimpse of Vulcana's extraordinary life. Vulcana's life was stranger than fiction, most definitely, I think. She was the daughter of a Baptist minister born in Abergavenny and growing up in Abergavenny, started to train and do weight training at the local gymnasium.

And she she was born in the 1870s. And by the 1890s, she has run away from home and has gone off to London. And she is performing on the music hall stages as a strong woman. And that's just the beginning, really, of a long career and quite a wild life for Vulcana or Kate Williams, as she was called. Tell me about a few more of the feats. And I know some of them you're wondering, are they completely true or not? I mean I suppose the first thing to say is the feat that she was sort of known for comparatively to what someone like Sam does are very very mild indeed you know she was lifting her partner Atlas over her head but it's documented you know that he was a 12 stone man so you know he wasn't an

enormous man but by the standards of the day she was extremely strong and she won many medals for her strong for her power lifting if you like but it was very performative as well so it was a music hall piece of entertainment so there would you know be challenges to the audience and she would lift a certain weight and then challenge people to come and lift that same weight and see if they could do that. And there would be a five pound reward, you know, things like that. But there are all sorts of accounts of having, you know, horses brought onto stage and they would be walked over a plank that was on top of Volcana and those sorts of things. Very performative. But her private life was unusual, perhaps for the times as well. So she lived with Atlas and his

wife. But his wife looked after all their children while they toured. And Atlas and Volcana pretended to be brother and sister on their tours while they were actually a couple or a throuple, if we want to include Atlas's original wife. Yes. Yes. I mean, it was a very modern setup. Atlas was about a decade older than Volcana. They did become lovers at some point and they had either four or six children together depending on different accounts he also had a number of children with his wife Alice and yet the family stories go that Alice was looking after all of the children while while Kate and William were touring and yet they they were advertised as a brother and sister strong woman act. And that was a ruse that was actually in place after both of their deaths, until after their deaths.

So they would live together. You know, they're listed on the censuses as brother and sister. And they had an invented past that they would give to the press, you know, about how he would train her when she was a small girl and those kinds of things. I have to turn to Sam. Sam do you feel a connection with Vulcanna? You're both Welsh both strong women. Yeah definitely and we're both from Abercavenny as well so I was born in Abercavenny which when I started researching the history of strong women I was quite excited about so yeah I definitely feel the connection and I see behind you uh the world's strongest couple because you compete with your wife Sue and I watched this wonderful documentary on both of you uh and you are seriously strong just to put it in context for our listeners I was watching as you pulled an A320 aircraft 20 metres, which weighed 48 tonnes.

And you did that with Sue. I mean, that's mind blowing. What do you love about being this strong? I think it just sort of goes against, I mean, I don't conform to anything that probably a woman should conform to. So I think it's just, you know, it's just that going against the grain. But also sort of showing that, you know, strength doesn't know gender.

We're just strong. It doesn't matter what gender we are. How did you get into the sport? Completely by accident. I'd had a bit of a breakdown um mental health wise and i was going to the gym um and somebody just sort of said to me i should you know i should try strength sports so i sort of gave it a go um and yeah sort of taking it to the extreme now not doing anything by half measures but let me turn back to you rebecca and with vulcana you know i was reading,

I didn't know this previously, that gyms were a big thing in Victorian England and that she was also a pioneer in the sense of getting women to ditch their corsets and try and work out, be strong. Yes, it was a surprise to me as well,

actually, that women were training in gymnasiums at that time in history. I think it's um it's not something that is commonly known and um yes she she was hugely vocal about the idea of taking off corsets um about the fact that you couldn't breathe fully if you were wearing them but they were making you weak and every time she was able really in magazine interviews or newspaper interviews she would talk about encouraging women to just to be physically active in any way, not necessarily to to lift the kind of weights that she was lifting that line. And it probably wasn't pleasant a lot of the time, but she remained vocal about that through her whole career, which was a long career. What about now, Sam? You know, I do see the hashtag Girls Who Lift. It has over 32 million

users on Instagram, 13 billion views on TikTok. Do you feel that the tide has turned and that it's something that is gaining in popularity from your years in it? Oh, definitely. Yeah. When I started, it felt like there was a handful of us doing it. And now there are literally hundreds of us around the world. Europe's Strongest Women was just held just over a week ago. There was about 50 sort of women athletes competing in that. So, yeah, it's massive. You know what I was wondering, though? When I watched your documentary, I was hearing that there's not huge prize money. And I wondered why, as a kid, it was one of my favourite things to watch.

It was Jeff Capes at that time, you know, and Strongest Man. I know I would have definitely been into Strongest Woman if I had seen it at the time is that going to change um yeah it's changing um we are a long way behind the men um but it is changing there is prize money available um we've got a long way to go but you know how i explain to people is you know things don't change overnight and there's got to be people you, at the forefront sort of pushing for that change. And when you say about the connection, you know, with Volcana, that's where I see myself. You know, no, I'm never going to win the same prize many as men, but I'm going to be one of those people who sort of, you know, pushing that tide of change. Rebecca F. John and Sam Taylor speaking to Nula about strong women.

Now, one of the many great things about Listener Week is that we hear from people who otherwise might not get a chance to tell their story. And someone wrote into us saying, I'm a middle-aged woman, a professional who would probably be classified as middle class. I've been hiding a terrible and shameful secret, which has plagued my life for as long as I can remember. It's a topic that's never discussed and shrouded in shame. She was talking about shoplifting. Fully aware that shoplifting is a criminal offence and not something that should be condoned,

she wanted to highlight her experience. Nuala's conversation with Jane, not her real name, has been voiced by an actor. I was diagnosed with kleptomania a couple of years ago. It's been something that's blighted me for the whole of my life. Do you remember when it started? I was about eight from a big family, not a lot of food, so we were hungry a lot. And so I went into a shop, saw a packet of crisps right in front of me and thought,

I'm having those. Took them and went out of the shop, got away with it and then continued doing it practically every day after school on the way home. And then I got caught when I was about eight or nine and that was a really frightening experience. What do you remember from that time? I'm just thinking of this little girl if she's eight or nine. This is the 70s, the children weren't treated in quite the same way as they are now. So I walked out the shop and there was a hand on my shoulder saying, you haven't paid for that. And I just said, no, I haven't. And she escorted me to the back of the shop and said, we're going to have to phone

your parents. And they locked me in the back cupboard so I couldn't come out. And I remember banging on the door and screaming to let me out, but they wouldn't. I phoned my mum and she was not best pleased with my behaviour at all. She was quite a ferocious lady. That's what I remember. The absolute fear and the shame when she told people that there was a thief in the house. I mean, that sounds like a traumatic memory, Jane. Yeah, you'd think that would be the end of it, wouldn't you? But unfortunately, I suppose I just got clever at it. I mean, it probably was different, you tell me,

but why you continued to shoplift, like a 10-year-old shoplifting is quite different to a 25-year-old. Was the feeling when you did it, Jane, the same? Yes, I'd be wrong to say I didn't get an illicit sort of thrill at doing it and getting away with it. But my overriding reason for doing it is because basically I was hungry and my friends would have nice packed lunches. I'm not trying to make excuses, but they'd have nice packed lunches and I wouldn't. And it was just one way of getting some food that was deemed acceptable by my peers, really. But that was when you were younger.

Do you try and stop? Yeah, yeah. And I think I was quite successful at it for a while. And then my mother died when I was in my teens and it sort of picked up again then. It's been times of crisis in my life that it has picked up. But for the last two or three years, I haven't been able to stop at all. So it's an impulse that you're not able to?

It's an impulse control disorder. Yes. But you know, is that fear there that you'll get caught? I mean, to tell our listeners, you're now in your early 50s, you have a job, but you continue to shoplift. I do. And my fear is that the only way it's going to stop is if I get caught, get arrested and lose my job and all the possible friendships that I've gathered over the years as well because I know this is something that is obviously wrong, is obviously illegal, but I can't see any way out of it. I would understand why people are so horrified by it.

Have you tried to speak to anyone? I mean, would you even be able to speak to your employer about this? Oh my gosh, no, no. I'd be out of a job straight away. I'm a secondary school teacher, have been for a number of years and fairly well respected within the profession. And when do you think now you shoplift? You alluded there that in times of stress, you seem to turn to it.

That's what it is at the moment or you tell me. I know that when the cost of living crisis began, trying to find food that was actually enjoyable got more and more complicated. And also my job, particularly at the moment, is pretty stressful. I mean, education is in a bit of a state at the moment and teachers bear the brunt of it. So I do feel that has got a lot to do with it. The actual taking of something gives you a psychological boost, for want of a better word, and for that short amount of time, you actually feel good. But then that's taken away pretty much immediately by shame and fear of being caught. The shame that you feel when you've done it is just horrendous. What about that shame? Let's talk about that a

little bit as well, because you've had two recent incidences as well that maybe illustrate as well your experience for our listeners. So the first instance instance I took a bottle of coke and I'd taken some other stuff because I was making a meal that night for some people and and as I walked out of the shop the security guard said you haven't paid for those items and he was a big guy and I said no I haven't I said what's going to happen now and he says uh I want you to pay for the items I said thank you that's really kind so he walked me over to the till and then said we won't take it any further but please don't come back again his kindness actually made it worse in a way because I thought I've just done something that's hideous so I came away feeling shame for nicking the stuff in the first place and then almost sorry

for the guy that he's having to confront people like this and I got home and I did bawl my eyes out after that and I've never been to that shop since and that was a couple of years ago now just walking home feeling that everyone's looking at you everyone knows that you're not who you say you are and then actually when you get home if you have got away with it not even being able to eat or prepare some of the stuff that you've brought because the guilt is so much and the second incident the second one was worse I just had this urge to take things off the shelves and put in my bag it was so obvious I was doing it. I went to the pet area to get dog food and I was literally stuffing it in my bag. I knew I wasn't going to get away with it. I just couldn't stop myself. And I walked to the counter, paid for some of the stuff

that I got. I went out of the shop, hand on the shoulder, could you come with me? We know you haven't paid for that stuff. Yes, of course. Followed the lady through the shop hand on the shoulder could you come with me we know you haven't paid for that stuff yes of course follow the lady through the shop past all the tills you're escorted to the back room which terrified me I knew they wouldn't lock me in but I don't like being locked in places they took my address the store detective was lovely the manager wasn't quite so obviously they decided they wouldn't call the police. Told me I was banned from the shop and I'd receive a letter saying that I'm banned. And then eventually escorted me out of the shop, past the tills where I'd previously just bought some stuff from the lady.

Oh, it was so utterly humiliating. And all the time I'm just apologising. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It was awful. Really, really bad. And I think I took the next day off work because I was still so shaken by it. And from those incidences, was there a turning point at all? Yeah, yeah. That was the turning point to get help from the GP. What happened there?

He put me in a list for the NHS talking therapies, but the list was very, very long. So I asked for What happened there? impulsive control disorder, kleptomania specifically, and very, very difficult to treat apparently. And that took three sessions actually to get a diagnosis. And then they recommend a therapist to do the work with you. By which time the NHS had said, right, we've got a space. So I went through the NHS for that one, had three sessions, really, really good. And then the therapist left. They gave you another therapist, that then the therapist left they gave you another therapist that therapist left and they gave me another therapist and and each time you get a new therapist you have to relive everything all over again right from birth up to where you are now and I just thought I can't do it I'm not doing it again so that was it I just left and cancelled

everything I tried to cope with it on my own. And how's that going? Not particularly well, to be honest. I try. And for those that say you have to get help, it's up to you to take control of that aspect? Well, yeah, I tried. And I completely, completely agree. I wouldn't have phoned up sitting here telling you all this and not had tried to make some sort of resolution. Jane, not her real name, who got in touch with us to share her experience of having kleptomania. And Nuala spoke to Dr Heather Sekira, consultant psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society, who's treated people with kleptomania. We really don't know how common it is because we haven't done enough research on

it. But the stats at the moment suggest it's about 0.3% of the population with about three times more women diagnosed with it than men. We could hear Jane's struggles there trying to get it under control. How do you understand the underlying reasons for it? It's complicated and certainly no one size fits all here. But what people typically describe, similar to Jane, is a childhood background of resource scarcity, frequently poverty, or events that they've experienced as a child where they feel powerless, or trauma events such as childhood sexual abuse.

Eating disorders is also very common in people's childhoods. It was interesting, food did come up a lot in our conversation related to the aspects or the particular products that she took. But this is different, right, to another person who is going in to shoplift for financial gain? Oh, absolutely. So you can think of this a bit more like being addicted to stealing, very different from shoplifting. Perhaps an example works here. So somebody who steals perfumes to sell on eBay, then that's clearly something for personal gain. Somebody's getting something out of it. But if a different person steals those same perfumes and feels this kind of instinctive urge to steal, can't think of anything else until they do it, and then it builds up, builds up, they steal the perfume, they may experience a brief sense of

thrill or excitement like Jane did, and then it quickly fades into this huge shame or guilt. And frequently people don't use the items that they've stolen. They may put them in a drawer where they've got a hundred other items exactly the same. I've met people who've left them on buses or given the items away. Dr. Sekira there speaking to Nuala about kleptomania. Still to come on the programme, a music genre that we don't discuss very often on Woman's Hour, as was pointed out to us by a listener, heavy metal.

And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, just head, you know by now, to BBC Sounds. Now, a topic that our listener Nellie contacted us about. In her email, she said, I thought I should let you know about a very inspirational lady who did something incredible recently. Chris Hallinger, the founder of Copperfield, recently had a living funeral with all the people who she loves.

She had stage four breast cancer and is on a mission to make people understand death a bit more and not see it as a scary process. This concept of a living funeral for people who have a terminal illness is a new one, but an option being chosen more and more. It was a choice made by Heidi Satterthwaite, who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2018. Heidi has since died. Well, Nuala spoke to her sister Jenna about Heidi's wish to have a living funeral. She said very early on in cancer, so she had a four-year journey between diagnosis and her death. And early on, we were talking about funerals because she was close to death many times.

And she was talking to me and our sister Erica and said, you know what I want? If I have to die, I want to call up my friends and have a party. Yeah. And that was in 2019. She didn't die until last year, 2022. And so when we were in the hospital and her fevers were out of control and we realized, oh, this is it. Now is actually the time to die. The very first thing we talked about was time to throw that party. So in under a week from, yeah, I think it was six days between that decision to start

the death process and the party, we threw together this massive event that I can only compare to a wedding, honestly. It had so many of the same components. It had speeches and toasts. It had dancing, an explosive playlist. We sweated so hard on the dance floor. We got it catered. We had an emcee. She and her husband closed out the party by dancing to the same song they danced at at their wedding. So it was just this magical and pain filled celebration of her life. And she was in Boston at the time, and they'd only been there for a year.

So we also had a moment where we're like, okay, we're gonna plan this big event, we're gonna get a hall, we're gonna make it happen. But we don't know who's going to show up. It might be 10 people. And to our utter surprise and delight, 200 people showed up at the last minute in the middle of the summer. People canceled vacation plans, hopped on planes, rented cars. They made it happen. and they showed up for her to say their goodbyes and be present at that party. And that is an interesting aspect about the goodbye, Jenna, because we think of funerals as closure in a way, right, traditionally. And I wonder what that living funeral did in that respect. Maybe it was closure for some of the people that came. I don't know. You tell me how you see it. That's such a good question.

I would describe it as an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, the sentence of her life. I guess you could call it closure. It was that moment when you pause to acknowledge a beautiful life. And we don't do that often, especially I feel like in America, we're bad at celebrating. We're always looking to the next thing and shifting goalposts. So it was really special to come together and kind of close that sentence as a group. This and say, this was her life. She lived it well, exclamation point.

What did Heidi tell you about that time afterwards, about the party, as we're calling it? Oh, she loved it. She had a blast. It was honestly fun. And we cried a lot. I think all of us, it dovetailed really well with the grief process and the death process in a way that traditional funerals don't always. You know, there was a bit of a surge of energy when we realized now it's time to die and we

have a lot to figure out. There was some adrenaline to that. And so kind of channeling that energy into a party really fit well with our processes, with Heidi's and with the rest of ours. And she wanted to do it for herself, but she also wanted to do it for the rest of us. And that was her heart. She researched throughout all of cancer, but especially there at the end, she really wanted to do things in a way that was best, not just for her, but for her family and for her four small children. So to her, the living

funeral, and then its counterpart, which was the at-home funeral after her death, she put a lot of thought into what is best for everyone, what fits best with the natural process of grief. And it was that surge of energy party celebrate, followed by a more slow, quiet time. So let me move then from the party to her death. And you chose as a family to keep the body at home for three days. That's unusual in some cultures, very common in others. Tell me a little about that as we think about the living funeral, this aspect and then her traditional funeral. Much in the same way that the living funeral had a natural follow-through

within that adrenaline state and wanting to have that closure. What we're calling the at-home funeral, that also dovetailed with the grief process. And again, she had researched this after she passed. We didn't want to talk to strangers. We didn't want to offer condolences to people that she had known, but we didn't know. We didn't want to plan an event. I remember thinking in those few days we had her body with us, I cannot imagine planning something now. That silent space where her body was in the bedroom, you could go in and visit, sit with her alone, cry, close the door, have some privacy. That allowed us to really listen to our grief because grief is not a straightforward path. I always think of it as a journey that you can only discover by walking it.

And having the at-home funeral allowed us to listen to ourselves. I can't call it healing because it doesn't fix the loss, but it was less traumatic than it would have been. Yes, that's a perfect word. Less traumatic than having strangers come in and wheel her out in a body bag. She belonged to us. And those three days really honored that. She was ours. She was our person. It was a privilege to be able to take care of her body. The word beautiful comes to mind, even though it was horrible. It was a nightmare. And it was lovely. And I'm finding the older I get, those two things come wrapped together. You did tweet a poem about the funeral, which went viral.

Would you be able to read us some of that? Absolutely. It's called Advice for the Dying. If you have the curse of advance notice from a party, don't have a funeral. It's not as fun. Get it catered, rent a hall, hire a DJ, have speeches. Live your fantasy of hearing all the nice things people have to say about you. Say your goodbyes, hug copiously, and when you're tired, raise a glass and wish everyone joy.

I remember reading it at the time, actually, before I knew you. Well, I don't know you, but before we've met, we've met today for the first time. But I remember coming across it online and being just so struck by it. And I wasn't the only one, Jenna. Tell me about the response you got. Oh, I had never gone viral before. So that was a new experience. And it was also beautiful.

I've used that word already, but it really was that a poem about my grief and a very intense experience of watching my best friend die resonated with people and encouraged them to open up with their own stories. May I ask you just to read the last verse as I let you go? And thank you so much, Jenna, for spending some time with us. I'll let the words be the last part of our interview. All right. I'll read the last few lines. When your breath runs shallow and squeezes you hollow, and it's finally safe to go because your kids are spending the day at Canobie Lake,

and your oldest sister is crying next to you on the bed while the other one strokes your hand. Walk towards the light. No. Run. How gorgeous is that? Jenna there with her wonderful poem. She was speaking to Nuala about the living funeral they had for her sister Heidi. And we also heard from Rebecca Peach, CEO of Legacy of Lives, about how the concept works and why it can be such an attractive choice. You can hear that conversation by heading to BBC Sounds, of course. It's the episode from Wednesday. Our next listener, Francesca Marati, wrote to us wanting to discuss her life story, which she thinks might give people a different perspective. Francesca is a successful entrepreneur, a businesswoman, as well as the recent winner of this year's Miss Central London.

But when she was just four years old, her family fled war-torn Kosovo by being smuggled in the back of a lorry. They then settled in London. Well, Francesca told Nuala what she can remember of that journey. So I remember being in the back of a lorry with, you know, other families, other children, and just thinking to myself, what's going on? There were people crying. It was really hot. And it just, yeah, I just remember it wasn't a very, very pleasant situation. And I remember the entire time my mum just, you know, be quiet, don't make any noise. You have to be quiet. And you're putting your finger to your lips there as I speak to you.

You're dealing with a four year old. You know, how do you explain to a four year old that you're being smuggled in the back of a lorry? You know, so they have to be quiet. So I think she almost made it a bit of a game. She's like, you've got to be quiet. Let's not make any noise. So, yeah, I have that distinct memory that I don't think I'll ever forget my mum just like trying really really hard to just kind of

calm a four-year-old and I was with my sister as well who was seven um so yeah I I really remember that and I I remember that there was um a part of the journey that we were on um a dinghy boat as well and I remember my mum kind of grabbing me one side, my sister other side, and then my dad kind of behind us and just thinking to myself, you know, what's going on? This is really scary. You know, I could fall in any moment. And of course, I didn't know how to swim. And your experiences when you first landed in the UK, do you remember that? So I remember the initial moment we landed in the UK was actually really positive. The kind of police officers and the people that greeted us when we arrived was amazing.

It was just, I remember it, you know, that the police officers trying to play with the kids and just being really understanding, really caring, you know, giving us blankets, making sure that we're OK. And it was it it was quite nice in that moment to kind of feel that, OK, I'm safe and I'm in a safe place. You were, as I mentioned, a refugee fleeing the war, which was in Kosovo at that time. But you will have seen the debate over migration at the moment in the UK, particularly over small boats crossing the Channel. Now, the Home Office figures, they say more than 100,000 migrants have made the journey in the past five years. The government says it has introduced the illegal migration bill

so that people arriving in the UK illegally are detained and removed to their country of origin or a safe third country. And there's still debate over whether that could be Rwanda. The government believes these measures will act as a deterrent. And they say the figures are too high and the asylum system is under extreme pressure. Given the intensity of this debate, how do you feel about saying you were a refugee? I mean, of course, I completely understand the political aspect. I think there's two different parts of it. I think there's the political side of it that, of course, we have to

understand that they're a government and they have obligation to their country and their people and to try and make the UK as great a place as possible and keep everybody safe, etc. But I think on the other side, a lot of people that hear this topic really misunderstand where it's coming from and really misunderstand that they're amongst the people that perhaps are coming to the UK because there is just this kind of like migration thing that they want to come to the UK because they think it's you know great and they come for a better life amongst that and I'd imagine it's quite a small minority of people that actually do that. You know, there's a huge amount of people that actually do it because they have to. And it's not that they sit there for years and years and plan that they want to go to the UK and the UK is their ideal place to go and that's their destination.

You know, in respects to my family, it was kind of leave in the middle of the night or die. And where you end up, nobody knew. It wasn't like the UK was the destination to go it was we need to leave now to get you out and be safe you know this family with small children wherever the lorry was going is where it was going. And but what do you say to people about being a refugee? Well actually this is probably the first time in my life I've ever spoken about it because growing up I was quite ashamed of it. I was I kind of felt that it was very un-British to be an immigrant and I needed to try as hard as possible to be British. So you can obviously fit in. Obviously, you're a teenager, you know, telling another 16 year old that you're a refugee that's come to the UK on a boat isn't exactly going to make you popular or make people like you.

You know, they're going to think you're weird. So I tried very, very hard not to tell people about that. So now is actually the first time in my life I've ever opened up and spoken about it. So a lot of people that know me, it's the first time they've ever realised that I'm actually a refugee, because when they meet me, I'm not the typical person that you would think is a refugee. So a lot of people assume I was born in the UK, I was born in London. And when they find out that think is a refugee so a lot of people assume I'm I was born in the UK I was born in London and when they find out that I'm a refugee they're almost taken aback by it and they're like what do you mean I'm like yeah yeah I came you know from a lorry to a dinghy boat on the UK and they just can't quite comprehend it because they're like well you know I've had

people telling me oh but you don't look like a refugee. What does a refugee look like? You don't sound like a refugee. What does a refugee sound like? I think we've had this conversation circulating for such a long time that people have really become detached from what a refugee actually is and they have forgotten that they're people that are suffering, people that are coming from war, people are coming from places where they're being killed, murdered, raped, you know, all kinds of terrible things

are happening in the countries where they're coming from. Famine, lack of medication, whatever it is that's causing them to leave. They are, you know, a lot of the cases, they're horrific circumstances that they're leaving from. And the only thing that they want to do when they come to the UK is to be safe.

That's literally all they want. And of course, that will be some of the people coming. There will be others that are economic migrants, a host of different reasons. And the government would put forward, Sweta Braverman perhaps in particular, of feeling that there were people entering the country that she felt should not. She talks about criminal elements as well. But that is your take. And I understand it. I want to get to your role as Miss Central London. I know you were bullied really badly in high school. What made you want to go to the Miss London pageant?

And I do want to let people know as well that you've just had a baby. Congratulations. But it might be an unusual time, some might think, to enter that pageant. It shouldn't be, but it's often for people before they've had children. We've talked about that debate,

of course, with pageants as well. To be honest, I've always really liked pageants. I've always seen women entering pageants as just being these beautiful, glamorous, empowered women um and I just always you know really looked up to them and thought how amazing that you know they're they're

showing off what it is to be a woman everything that it is you know the essence of a woman is what's embodied in these pageant women and you know you know after all this time of you know being really fascinated in this after I had my son I just thought you know I after all this time of, you know, being really fascinated in this, after I had my son, I just thought, you know, I sat down and I thought to myself, why am I not an empowered woman? Of course I am. I have been through this massive thing in my life, coming to the UK to refugee. I'm a mother. I'm a successful woman. I'm an entrepreneur. I have, you know, what do I not have that these women have? Absolutely nothing. So why shouldn't I? And I just thought, let's enter the competition it'll be you know at the end of the day it could just be a

little bit of a little bit of fun it'll be nice to meet some you know new friends new women um I was the only mother competing in Miss Central London I was a new mother my son was only a few months old so I wasn't feeling in my tip-top self. I was exhausted. My son hadn't slept all night, working all week. So I kind of thought, this will be fun. Let's go. That was Francesca Marati, former refugee and current Miss Central London. Now, a bit of music exploration to end on.

Listener Laura got in touch to say, although we cover various music genres, there's one in particular that we don't talk about very much, heavy metal and women's important place within the heavy metal scene. So we wanted to put that right. And we learned some interesting things in the process. For example, did you know that heavy metal culture for her PhD, and Becky Baldwin, a bassist from Birmingham who plays in the Midlands based band Fury. Becky told Nuala where her love for heavy metal began. I think for me, I was always a little bit, I'd never really found much of a community when I was a child and like my friendship groups were quite like they kept moving you know and but I was kind of interested in darker themes I became more

interested in like horror films and and this kind of thing like the Goosebumps books and things like this and so when I then came across heavy metal from getting like Sky TV and having like music channels on there and was kind of exposed to Kerrang and Skuzz and those channels that played alternative music and also getting the internet around the same time this was like the early 2000s it really opened my my eyes to different kinds of music and there is where I found my community of friends and yeah it just really the music spoke to me a lot more. And yeah, it just really, the music spoke to me a lot more. And what about you, Lindsay?

Where did your love begin and your in-depth research? Yeah, I come from a slightly older generation than Becky. So for me, it was vinyl album covers that really sort of drew me in. My mum's record collection and seeing like Black Sabbath and like Becky was saying, it's like that,

the darkness really drew me. I always preferred like the evil queens in Disney. And, you know, and then it was a rock and roll kind of music, but I was always craving something heavier and heavier. And that was like when I became a teenager and I had a bit more autonomy about what I was listening to and was looking at like the front cover of Kerrang and then you know it's just like I like the free CDs that was that was the thing that got me as well that was my only access because we didn't have the internet and we didn't have MTV and so yeah it was just looking for something like the

rock wasn't quite doing it. And it was just to like it was almost like seeking out a drug to get as heavy as possible. OK, Becky, tell us a bit more about this song, Rock Lives In My Soul, that is very much female focused. So the song, it was just an idea that we wanted to collaborate with someone, someone else in the music industry. And we were looking at some of the bands and who to work with. And like Kim was doing some great stuff and we thought, okay, it'd be great to work

with a female musician as the other vocalist. And then we were thinking about duets and how do duets work in a metal context? Cause you know, so often they're like love songs. And we were like, what about something that's like angry and like they're kind of shouting at each other about um stuff you know kind of like i guess meatloaf like have done that kind of thing back in the day but um we were like well what would they talk about and we thought well let's talk about uh sexism in in the music industry in general um and then actually uh our kind of new uhvocalist, Naya, she penned most of the lyrics for that from her own experiences.

And in the music video before we when we were getting together the music video, we asked women just in our circles in the music industry if they experienced any sexism during their work and, you know, ask them to share their experiences. And we use some of the quotes from what they said and put them in the video to just make it a bit more striking and just show like, this is real, this happens, this is what women working in the music industry are facing every day. So, for example, one of the lines that got me there is, I'm not here to be your girlfriend. Is that something that comes up that people are expecting the girl to be the girlfriend the woman that's around yes yeah absolutely like there's been so many times um at venues where i've

just not spoken to like the the men in the band will be spoken to and i'll be kind of ignored and assumed to be you know an extra like a groupie or like just not part of the band and there have been times where I've applied to a band is advertising for a bass player and I'll respond to it and they'll say oh uh no sorry we uh we all have uh wives and girlfriends we don't want you to play bass because I was like that's not what I was asking for and like you know I would have a boyfriend too. And like, I was just asking if you need a bass player and I'm just saying that I am one.

And I don't know, like, yeah, people don't really, they just feel very surprised, I suppose, when they see that there's women in the industry and it just makes it harder for us to establish ourselves. And Lindsay, what did you find? Because you were looking into heavy metal for 10 years. What's it like when it comes to inclusivity? Well, I think what Becky was talking about

is a really important distinction to me because it's the industry versus the everyday lives of the majority, the millions of people who are listening to heavy metal are not reflective of each other. I think in the industry certainly um so there's the thing to think about with heavy metal is that it's not its own culture there's no original kind of island of heavy metal and then it's spread out here so every um every heavy metal

community in all over the world is coming on top of a sort of parent culture a mainstream culture if you like and while that can allow some really interesting things like new musical instruments and the evolution of different metal sub-genres that also means it's vulnerable to some of the the problems of that you know that community and quite frankly it is it's just a global issue is it's harder to be a woman and therefore I think that's where a lot of the sexism comes from and my challenge has been is it coming from heavy metal?

Is it part of the culture? Is this sort of a gender biased part of the culture or is it something that's bled through? Lindsay Bishop and Becky Baldwin there. And with that we've come to the end of a brilliant Listener Week but of course, our interest in your ideas for the programme is definitely not limited to one week a year. We always love hearing from you. So if any of those topics have inspired you to get in touch with something you want us to talk about or tell us about, then head to our website for more details

on how to contact us. That's all from me. Nuala's back on Monday from 10 with a special programme exploring the role lists play in our lives, including the psychology behind the trusted to-do list, the place of lists in music, and a historical look at how being on good lists and bad lists have affected women's lives. That's Monday at 10. Until then, enjoy the rest of your bank holiday. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

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 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.