Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Lottie Tomlinson, Madwomen of the West, Infants and domestic abuse, Elles Bailey

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

Lottie Tomlinson rose to fame as the younger sister of One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson. At 16, she went on tour with the band as a makeup artist and a decade on, has become an entrepreneur. Lottie��s mother and sister died within a few years of each other, when she was just 20-years-old. She joins Anita to talk about her experience of grief, which she’s written about her new memoir, Lucky Girl.Madwomen of the West is currently on stage at the Riverside Studios in London. Set in a suburban mansion - a group of women gather for an eventful birthday brunch and discuss topics ranging from gender politics to professional expectations, shifting marital relationships, menopause and womanhood. With four leading women over the age of 70 it stars stage and screen luminaries Marilu Henner, Caroline Aaron, Brooke Adams, and Melanie Mayron. Caroline and Marilu join Nuala.New figures released today suggest that children under two are present at 13% of police call outs to domestic abuse incidents in England, amounting to around 185,000 babies and toddlers. So what can the effect be on children of witnessing domestic abuse? And what can be done to overcome the trauma they could experience? We hear from Lauren Seager-Smith, CEO of the For Baby's Sake Trust and Dr Sheila Redfern, consultant clinical child and adolescent psychologist and Head of Family Trauma at Anna Freud, a world-leading mental health charity for children and families.Food writer Meera Sodha’s new cookbook, Dinner: 120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes for the Most Important Meal of the Day, pays homage to the restorative power of cooking for the ones you love. Meera says it was written in the midst of ‘a difficult personal time and much reflection.’ She joins Nuala to talk about mental health and rediscovering her love for food.The British roots, blues and Americana rock sensation Elles Bailey is a real trailblazer: she's a mother, a label boss, an artist, a champion of women in music, and she has been inducted into the UK Blues Hall of Fame. She joins Anita to talk about her unique voice, her new album and to perform live in the studio.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Louise Corley

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Anita Rani. Today, the veteran actors Marilu Henner of Taxi Fame and Caroline Aron, who you may know as Shirley Maisel, the marvellous mother-in-law in The Marvellous Mrs Maisel. They're starring in Mad Women of the West, a rollicking play about the issues faced at a later stage of life.

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognised for the first time that children who witness or are present in households where there's domestic abuse are also victims. We'll be discussing the impact domestic abuse can have on children and how interventions are being made to attempt to prevent it. The cook and food writer Mira Soda on the restorative power of cooking. And we'll hear from Els Bailey, the multi-award winning British roots, blues and Americana rock sensation on her new album. You know the drill by now. No disruptions for the next hour, just you, the radio and a cup of what you fancy. But first, Lottie Tomlinson rose to fame as the younger sister of One Direction's Louis Tomlinson. At 16, she went on tour with the band, working as a makeup artist. And a decade on, at just 26, she's gone on to become an entrepreneur.

But when Lottie was 18, her mother, Johanna, died of leukaemia. And three years later, her sister, Felicity, died of an accidental overdose. Lottie has written about her experience of grief in her new book, Lucky Girl. Lottie joins me this week, and I started by asking her why she wanted to write her book. So when I was in the depth of my grief and tough times, a book like Lucky Girl would have been so helpful to me. So I wanted to write it as an encouraging story to people,

you know, going through dark times. And I wanted to just share a positive story of how you can come through that and still create a really nice life for yourself and not be defined by tragic things that happen in your life because I thought for a long time that you know my life would be defined by those tragic things and that I wouldn't be happy again. I said at the beginning of the program I described your life as both a fairy tale and a tragedy and I know you've got 4.3 million followers on

Instagram but some of our listeners may not know too much about you Lottie so I would want to just start by you telling us about your family because you've got seven brothers and sisters tell us a bit about growing up I'm the second oldest and I remember we've got two sets of twins so we call them the big twins and the little twins so yeah it was just like a house full of love and chaos. But I loved growing up with a big family. And then it was in 2016 that you found out the news that your mum had been diagnosed with leukemia. She was only 43. And eight months later, she passed away.

How did that impact the family? It must have just ruptured all of you. Yeah, I think it was so difficult because she was the centre of everything for us and she'd been, you know, everything to us growing up. So when that gets taken away, it becomes like a job of trying to keep everything together, you know, the way she did. So I think besides just the grief of losing your mum, it's also then you know figuring out how to keep the family together and how to make sure everyone is okay. And you were the eldest sister so how did your role change after that? I think when she died I went into a natural kind of

motherly mode with all the younger siblings and it was just an instinct really that I felt and I knew that now she was gone you know I was kind of the next best thing for them so I wanted to do everything I could to be there for them and I you know I love stepping into that role obviously I wish I'd never had to because obviously we would always want mum to still be here but it's given me a lot of purpose, having that role, you know, as my sister's carer and trying to just look after them and guide them through life since she passed away. A lot of responsibility for an 18-year-old.

Yeah, I think it definitely was. And I think looking back, that's probably set my path for a lot of things that I've done in my life, you know, having that early responsibility so young but I think also going on the tour so young taught me so much you know as a 16 I'd just turned 16 so I feel like I'd already kind of started maturing and gaining a few life skills that you probably wouldn't usually gain at that age I feel like it kind of moulded me into who I am. You mentioned going on tour.

We should remind people that you are Louis Tomlinson's little sister. He's seven years older than you. How did your life change? What was life like before he was the Louis Tomlinson of One Direction and what was it like after? We were just a normal family from up north and then all of a sudden he's like... Doncaster. Let's put it out there.

She's a Donny girl. I'm proud. Absolutely. So, yeah, it was crazy, but we were just so proud of him. We were just so happy to be on that journey with him. And people, girls, fans out in your front garden when you came home from school? Yeah, I mean, things changed pretty quickly.

It was like all of a sudden you know everyone at school wanted to know you wanted to know the situation always people outside the house wanted to you know catch a look at him but yeah I feel like because it's been so long that's kind of all I remember and then you were given the opportunity because you're very into makeup to go on tour for work experience but then ended up doing the whole tour the world tour and this changed your life yeah so when I was 16 I didn't get into sixth form I didn't quite get the grades so when I didn't get in I was quite disappointed and upset but my mum said to me look she knew I wanted to do beauty she was like the best work experience you can get is going on the tour to assist the hair and makeup artist for a week and you know putting that on your cv it will open so many doors for you so

I was adamant I was like no I can't do it I was really shy and I was like no no no I don't want to go it's basically forced me on that tour and then obviously I got on so well with the hair and makeup artist Lou and I ended up on that tour for the next two years and we toured around the whole world amazing crazy that I've had that experience well great advice from your mum yeah she set me up and you know I can't I'm so grateful to her for that and then after she passed away like you said you're only 18 and you were looking after your younger siblings and you sort of stepped into that maternal role and your sister sister Felicity, who you lovingly call Fiz, you've said in the book that she processed the grief really differently to you and your other siblings.

Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, so I think for us it was quite apparent that she was dealing with it differently to us, and that's okay, everyone deals with grief differently, so we never judged her for that. but I think as the years went on we kind of became concerned at how there was a lack of emotion there and it kind of looked like she was suppressing her emotions quite a lot which obviously worried us um and I think really that in the end is why she ended up in such a dark place because by the time she did let that in

it was just too painful for her. And then you sadly lost Felicity as well where were you when you found out? So I'd gone away actually to Bali I'd only been there three days and obviously we all know how far away that is so to get the call whilst I was there was just heartbreaking and and so scary being so far away you know obviously the first thing I wanted to do was come home so I had to sit on that 18-hour flight you know we're just hearing that news so yeah it was really really hard time for us and I think it was even harder knowing that you know we would we were a couple of years into the grief of my mum and I think we all knew how hard it had been to kind of get to the point we'd got to so it almost

felt like going back to square one and it was just like we were questioning how has this happened again I think it was a different kind of grief with my sister because it was more of a shock you know with my mum of course we'd always kept that hope that she was gonna recover but I think naturally when someone's got cancer and they're really quite ill your your brain will naturally prepare for the worst whereas with Fiz we knew obviously she wasn't in a great place but we never you know we my mind never really went there you know that that would happen so I feel like I was dealing with like a lot of shock and I guess a bit of PTSD. You also talk about how when you moved to London in the book, that you couldn't, you felt you couldn't really relate to a lot of other young

women because of what you'd gone through. But then you met your now fiance, Lewis Burton, and you said that you instantly related to each other as he'd recently experienced a tragic loss his former partner Caroline Flack sadly died of suicide did your shared experience of grief impact your relationship? I think it's a similar situation as I've had with the book you know I want to help people with my experience and you know that that place that I was in when I first found out about you know my mum wasn't going to make it and you know when you know, that place that I was in when I first found out about, you know, my mum wasn't going to make it. And, you know, when you're in that depth of grief and, you know, despair, that feeling that I had in that moment was that I was never going to be OK. You know, I was never going to get through it. I was never going to be happy again.

You know, I was just thinking about how I would, you know, survive that grief, let alone ever live a happy life. So I think anyone that I kind of come across that's in that situation, I always want to kind of share that that is possible. So yeah, it became, you know, me trying to just share that, you know, that is possible and you can be happy again. And obviously then, yeah, we ended up together, which we were friends for a long time and then we ended up together and now we've got almost two kids, so it's worked out amazing for us.

Yeah, I was going to say, you met Lewis and then more joy came your way because your son Lucky was born in 2022. How was that experience, becoming a mum but not having your mum around? It's bittersweet really because obviously I felt quite close to her in a way because she knew how much I wanted to be a mum and so being able to do that I felt like I was kind of and I

knew how much being a mum meant to her as well so being in that position made me feel close to her but then on the flip side I obviously had that feeling of every little question that I had obviously she wasn't there to answer. She was a midwife wasn't she? Yeah and that feeling of every little question that I had, obviously she wasn't there to answer. She was a midwife, wasn't she? Yeah, and that kind of made it worse because a lot of medical questions that I would have, you know, she always kind of used to say to me that she would always deliver my baby when I had one.

So it was really hard to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't there. I think it was like a new kind of level of the grief where you've got to kind of come to terms with it again that they're not there for those special moments and I guess that's probably one of the hardest parts about grief is that realisation that you know those big moments in your life you're not going to have certain people there to experience them with you. And you've named your son Lucky the title of the book is Lucky Girl. What does that word mean to you? I think it's just a representation of how I've tried to turn things around, you know, things that have happened in my life. You know, turning the negatives into

positives has been a big coping mechanism for me. And don't get me wrong, it's not an overnight thing. You know, if someone would have said to me at the start, look at the positives, I would have just thought that was crazy. There was no positives. And, you know, even if those positives are really small, that's what I've tried to hold on to. And it's kind of given me, you know, a reason to get through everything. And, you know, I've had my, I had an amazing mum for 18 years. Some people don't get that, you know, ever. That's, you know, that's just one example of a positive that I can take from, you know, that situation. So, yeah, it's just something that's kind of stuck through, you know, my life and, yeah, I just feel lucky.

Lucky Girl by Lottie Tomlinson is out now. And if you've been impacted by the things we've discussed, there's information and support on the bbc action line website now after successful runs in both los angeles and new york city mad women of the west is currently on stage at the riverside studios in london set in a suburban mansion a group of women gather for an eventful birthday brunch and discuss topics ranging from gender politics to professional expectations, shifting marital relationships, menopause and womanhood. With four leading women over the age of 70, it stars big screen and small screen actors of four decades, Marilu Henner, Caroline Aron,

Brooke Adams and Melanie Mayron. Nuala was joined by the actors Marilu Henner and Caroline Aron. Both of them have played many film and television roles over several decades, but you may remember Caroline more recently in her award-winning role as Shirley Maisel, the mother-in-law of the leading character Miriam, or Midge, in the popular series The Marvellous Mrs Maisel. And for English audiences, Marilu would probably be remembered for her role as single parent cabbie and aspiring artist Elaine O'Connor Nardo in the much-loved series Taxi. Nuala started by asking them how they're enjoying doing the show. It's so much fun to do it here because the audience is so different from the ones we had in Los Angeles and New York and they're so responsive and you just never know

what's going to get a laugh. It's so much fun. It's like, talk about a roller coaster for us too. Well, and also for people, just so I really underline it because this is radio,

Caroline, listeners may know maybe most recently as the award-winning role as Shirley Mays. I think once they hear your voice they'll be like, ah,

the mother-in-law of the leading character, Miriam or Midge, in the popular series, The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel. And Mary Lou, probably for our English audiences, maybe the single parent, cabbie and aspiring artist, Elaine O'Connor Nardoe.

Yes, of course, that was Taxi, which we were all watching in the 70s and 80s as well. Now, already you're kind of hopping in and finishing each other's sentences. And I understand, which I didn't know before I went to see the play, that you have been friends for a very long time. You met working. Yes. Social security on Broadway. Yeah. And we played sisters. Yes. And she was in the show and I would play somebody.

And so we like instantly hit it off because, and we're very different. And, you know, but that was 1986. Right. December 26th. I call us the Felix and Oscar of friendships. I love that. Well, listen, I think we need a TV show out of that. I'm just, I want the rights.

I want the commission. Exactly. Well, the author's in the green room if you want. Excellent. I want the rights, I want the commission. Exactly, I agree. Well, the author's in the green room if you want. Excellent, I have some work to do after the show. We have some more material to add other than the play because we're all living together. We've never done that before. Four of us.

We need a camera in the house. Exactly, you do. Big sister. Yeah, big sister and also it's like survivor. It's true. What day are we on at this stage? We're probably on about, we're into like our eighth day. Got day eight in the big sister household.

But you know what's really exciting about being able to do this in another country is also the universality of the experience of being a woman of a certain age. It doesn't change from city to country. And I think it's under addressed in the media and on our screens. And so I feel really honored to have the opportunity to do Sandra's play to bring that to the foreground because you can just tell these are issues that concern all women. You know, it's so exciting. As our playwright said, we don't have in America a woman's hour on the radio. So thank you for even doing that. OK, you're giving me more business ideas.

Sandra Singlow, of course, is the Sandra that you mentioned sometimes called Sandy as well. And we do talkbacks on our matinee days, Wednesday and Saturday. So when the audience, they just have to stick around for two seconds and we come out and we, you know, we have a dialogue with the audience about what they expected, what they liked, what they didn't like, what they, you know, what they related to. And I went in, you know, I had read a little before going in, but I was surprised at how surprised I was by seeing four older women on stage. I was like, I haven't seen this before. This is so refreshing. Yeah. I always say there's always one, like every TV show.

There's always one of my generation. The mother or the grandmother or whatever. Or the eccentric neighbor or whatever. But yeah, to have it. And we talked, you forgot to mention that we talk about sex too. You do. Well, you particularly talk about sex. Your Zoe character.

But yeah, but in the list of things. So we are full service about everything. And it's also the play is written for women over 50. So everybody can relate because I guess our characters are playing even a little bit younger than we are. And that's Mary Lou who's playing Zoe. Caroline, you're Marilyn. Brooke Adams is Jules. And then Melanie is Claudia.

Two of the women have children. Two of the women do not have children. In the play. In the play. And why was that important to do? Well, I think women in their 70s, it takes a lot of courage to not have children in a way. That women for a long time have had these preordained roles of being wives and mothers. And so when you decide to step outside of that expectation

and do something else, it takes a lot of courage. It really does. And so I mentioned Gloria Steinem in the play. We've had her on the program not that long ago when she was celebrating her 90th birthday. Oh, I'm so excited. So I know her a little bit. And Gloria said one time to me that she loves children.

She would have loved to have children, but she didn't have time to do both well. And she knew she wanted to create a movement for women. And so she could not get children into it. But in her generation, she's in her 90s. You can imagine how much of she would have been considered an outlier to be jobless. Absolutely. One U.S. reviewer called the play comedy as comfort food. Why is the humor so important in this play?

Mary Lou, maybe you start with you. I think because, first of all, I think people will recognize. We get a lot of laughter of recognition. I think that we are such strong characters and very different. And I think everybody in the audience relates to one of us or all of, you know, like, oh, I've got my friend. Oh, that's my mother. Oh, that's my daughter. Oh, that's my, you know what I'm saying?

So I think people are recognizing the characters that we're playing. And there's that strong laughter. And it's just so brilliantly written. How would you describe your character? Well, let's see. She's a little bit like me. She's an actress turned international wellness guru who's written books and has this incredible business and she has an unbelievable memory.

And so Sandra used a lot of what I've done in my life, although I'm still acting, so Zoe isn't, but yeah. I'm going to come back to your memory in a minute because we need to give that some time. Caroline, your character instead, Marilyn? Marilyn runs a girls' school. So she works with children, and she doesn't have personal children. That's her life's work.

Those are her children, and I think that that's true of some women, that their work is the thing that they've nurtured their whole life rather than other human beings. And she gets put out to pasture at a certain age. I think this is true for a lot of women is that they become more and more invisible as they get older. And so, you know, the idea of being confined just to her husband is not enough for her. There was a lot of aspects of it, just coming back to the humour, because some of it was, I suppose, the acceptance, with some sadness at times, of growing older and what that means. Because there is loss of people to be frank at the beginning, or it could be, I don't know, of youth or beauty. I was going to say, and there's the personal loss of, you know, if your currency or what we've been taught is our currency, is our looks. We know that as we age,

those evolve and change into something else. But when you talked about the play being so funny, this is the number one priority of our writer and our playwright, because the issues in the play and the issues for women are not necessarily a laughing matter, but, you know, a spoonful of sugar is helping the medicine go down. And I think Sandra really, really wants that as an opportunity for people to laugh at these things while they're listening. And laugh at themselves, you know, because I think we kind of bust people and we bust each other constantly on stage. So it's really kind of fun. Yeah. With Claudia's character, I think there was a line,

I'm probably going to mangle it a bit, so forgive me, but it's something like, as we grow older as women, we become the men. That's a Gloria Steinem's quote. Yeah. It's a literal quote of Gloria's.

We become the men we wanted to marry. Yeah. That is from Gloria. Came the men we wanted to marry. Yes. Let's talk about your memory for a moment. Sure. You explain it because it just blows my mind. Okay. It's called highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM. And it means basically that I remember almost every single day of my life. You can give me any date within my lifetime. I'll tell you what day of the

week it was, what I was doing on that day. They tested me. They wired me, put me through an MRI. They took 300 measurements of my brain. They found nine areas, 10 times larger than the normal brain. And, you know, people always say, is it a blessing or curse? I always say it's a blessing for me. It's a curse for my husband, which is why I'm on my third and final. And I drive my friends crazy because, you know, it's like... It's not all to do with dates. It's... No, it's a little bit of everything. So like if I asked you, I don't know, like when you were 13, I don't know, on your birthday, you'll remember that day? Oh my God. Absolutely. Absolutely. Exactly what I did on that birthday. Okay, so you're talking about when I was 13 years old, so that was 1965. It was a Tuesday, and I had a roaring 20s party with all the girls in my class, and it was like so much fun.

I could do every birthday in my life. I can do every Christmas in my life. Is it not exhausting? No, it's like having the best, most organized system. It's like having a computer in your brain that you can easily access. I am very, very envious. There's a lot of parts of my life I'd like to remember. What is it like to be around that?

Well, when Mary Lou and I first became friends and I would say, you remember when we did such and such? And she'd go, no, we didn't do that that day. We did it this day. And I went, so yes, it's very challenging because my memory is always being challenged because I'll remember things a little bit off date or off subject. And Mary Lou not only remembers the date, she also often remembers what she weighed on that day. Oh, yeah. I don't keep track of that, I'll tell you that. So I'm thinking because the Zoe character was very, what would I say, image

conscious. Physical. Yeah. Is that you? Yeah. I mean, I think I've worked hard. I used to weigh 55 pounds heavier than I was. I went through like after my father died, I was 17 years old. I ate my feelings. I was very unhealthy. I didn't even realize it. Then my mother took ill with arthritis and then I wanted to help her. But, you know, after she passed away, I decided I would not let their deaths be in vain. And I became this obsessed student of health. I could read something once and cross-connected because of my memory. So I just, I wanted, I started to see my life not through the filter of vanity and weight, but through the filter of health. And by getting healthy, everything else kind of fell into place for me.

That was Marilu Henner and Caroline Aron. And Mad Women of the West is on at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith in London until the 24th of August. Now, don't forget, we are still looking for more of your brilliant suggestions for Listener Week. Last year, we featured a woman, a schoolteacher who'd been struggling with the uncontrollable urge to shoplift throughout her life. She shared with us the impact this criminal activity had had on her and her attempts to get help for a recent diagnosis of kleptomania. We've covered many issues on the programme, from bullying in the countryside to the joy of book clubs to is it ever good to give up on your dreams? So get in touch with your ideas let them be fun quirky serious or a strong personal story whatever it is we would love to hear from you and of course love to get you on air imagine that talking to us on woman's hour get in touch in the usual way

on social media it's at bbc woman's hour you can text 84844 or contact us via our website still to come on the programme, Els Bailey, the multi-award winning British roots, blues and Americana rock sensation. 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 subscribe to the daily podcast for free via BBC Sounds. Now, two weeks ago, the National Police Chiefs Council and the College of Policing

reported that violence against women and girls had reached epidemic levels. Police chiefs say that domestic abuse remains one of the biggest demands on policing with arrests for domestic abuse related offences increasing by over 22 percent in the year ending March 23. New figures published this week by the charity the For Babies' Sake Trust suggest that babies aged 0 to 2 are present at 13% of police call-outs to domestic abuse incidents in England, amounting to 185,000 babies and toddlers annually. These figures are extrapolated from 15 responses to freedom of information requests sent to all 39 police forces in England. The Domestic Abuse Act of 2021

recognised for the first time that children who witness or are present in households where there is domestic abuse are also victims. To discuss the effects on babies and children of this and what can be and should be done to help them, I was joined by Lauren Seeger-Smith, CEO of For Babies' Sake, the charity behind the figures, and Dr Sheila Redfern, consultant clinical psychologist and head of family trauma services at Anna Freud. We'll hear from a dad and mum, we're keeping them anonymous, who have taken part in the therapeutic programme. They were speaking recently to Anna Foster from BBC Radio Newcastle but I began by asking Lauren about their research. We work with babies and families who are impacted by

domestic abuse and we were just really curious to understand better how many babies and young infants were present at police call-outs for domestic abuse, which is why this came from a place of curiosity. We put out those Freedom of Information requests to police forces. Fifteen of those forces were able to come back, and we could see from that data that with those police call-outs, around 13% of those call-outs, there were babies, and under two were present at those call-outs. Why do you focus on that age group?

So we began the work at the For Babies' Sake Trust really looking at what was missing when it came to breaking cycles of domestic abuse and what came up in those early days in that research in that work with survivors of domestic abuse was a lack of support within the first 1001 days of a child's life in pregnancy and we know that 30% of domestic abuse begins in pregnancy so it's a real time of risk for domestic abuse and so we began the project, we began the work to really provide that therapeutic support to parents where there is experience of domestic abuse within pregnancy

and in those critical early days of a baby's development. Why do you only offer support when both parents agree to take part? So we're quite unique in that we began the programme really in terms of looking at what was missing and what wasn't out there and what was missing was therapeutic support for co-parents where they both wanted to be involved in their baby's life but where there'd been experience of domestic abuse and we know from the work from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner that there's a really significant lack of support for families that do want help to change, and that includes those using abusive behaviour.

So our programme works with co-parents, works with them separately, with a very careful risk assessment to provide that support to bring lasting change. Well, we've got an example, because we're going to hear from a dad and a mum, we're keeping them anonymous, who've taken part in your therapeutic programme.

They're speaking recently to Anna Foster from BBC Radio Newcastle. I was raising my voice shouting and that was upsetting my partner a lot. It was bringing flashbacks of her past with me shouting. So with that happening, I didn't understand that from my side because I've never been in that kind of situation before. Like every time he would raise his voice at me, I'd get scared and I'd get really nervous. And that's all I wanted to do is leave the house so I can have like five minutes so I can breathe and just come back to normal, really. If normal is the right word. Yeah. And it can be scary. Those situations can be scary, can't they?

And on the reports here, Dad, I mean, in this information that I've got, it talks about you sort of reporting your own behaviour to authorities. Can you just talk me a little bit through that and you being aware of that behaviour? Yeah, I wasn't happy for my anger and shouting as such. Saying and eventually understanding how my partner was receiving it, really upset me. And I didn't know how to fix myself as such. I wondered what it was that made you feel that you could ask for help, Mum.

I'm not too sure, just... Had you kind of reached a point, do you think, where you just thought we've got to get help? Pretty much, yeah. So talk to me a little bit, if you would, Dad, about going to those sessions because I wonder what that's like when you're having to kind of face up to your own behaviour that's a bit, that is upsetting. It was really hard because I was getting put a label that I thought was a label that was too severe for arguments. Is that because you perceived that to just always be sort of physical when these things sort of can be mental and coercive and all of those things?

Yeah. Yeah, so you had to sort of get your head around those labels? Yeah, and it was pretty hard the first month or so to get through that. A lot of people just believe domestic abuse is violence and it's not necessarily exactly what you said. Physical violence, it's also mental behaviour, it's a lot of things. I didn't want to scare her. To me shouting made people take notice of me.

Now I make it a lot easier with an argument. She'll sit down, we'll talk through it before it even goes to a situation. How different do you feel now, Mum? Totally different. Like, I feel a lot safer.

Well, I felt safe with him. It was just when he would shout at me, I didn't feel safe. But now, I don't think he's raised well. We've had like little bitters, disagreements or things, which everyone does. I just feel a lot safer and I'm more loved.

And what about your family situation now? I believe you've had your baby, haven't you? Yeah, she's a year and a half. Does it feel like a much happier home then? Yeah, of course. Yeah, A lot. A lot happier. Me understanding that and seeing that problem and the effect of what it was having on my partner, it changed my thought process completely. I felt really guilty thinking of that and it changed me extremely.

And now when you're in your family unit, how does it feel for your baby knowing that, exactly it, for the baby's sake, there is a more stable and calmer environment for your little one? How does that feel? Brilliant. Great.

To know that she's safe, getting the lessons of us being good parents, I hope. Us as good parents, I hope. And her being able to understand that and mirror that in her future life. So giving therapy to both the adults in the situation obviously is going to make them in turn become better parents and have a better relationship. I think we'd like to sort of think about what the impact of babies, this age group that you're working with, zero to two, has on them. Because I think most people listening, Sheila, I'm going to bring you in here because you're a clinical psychologist and head of trauma at Anna Freud.

People might think, well, if they can't remember it, how is it impacting them? How does it affect babies? Yes what we know what we know from the research and the way that babies and young children present is that it has a huge impact on them. Some will be witness to the violence the majority might have been on the receiving end of some of that violence as well and so working either through parents if it's a young baby to help that parent regulate the child or working with very young children with the protective parent is part of what we're doing in our Family Stories project with Refuge. And what you see in young children is all sorts of disturbances in, say, their behaviour, in their play, in their sleep. So a child that might usually be able to separate quite easily at night and sleep through will suddenly not be able to separate.

Perhaps a child who was continent and was starting to be toilet trained might suddenly regress. So there's a really significant impact on children's just normal development. Not all children will develop full-blown PTSD but a lot will. So what we're doing and looking at with early intervention is how we can prevent those children from developing full-blown symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. How does that manifest? Well, it can manifest itself in all sorts of ways. So children might become very hypervigilant to sound or to smell.

There might be a sight that suddenly reminds them of the violence. It could be something really innocuous that other adults won't be aware of, like, say, a dress that a teacher is wearing that might remind them of something their mum was wearing when they were subject to violence or it could be a car backfiring in the street that will suddenly cause that child to explode and be really really upset and it's very hard to settle them but for some children they just freeze and they withdraw so some children don't show all those obvious signs but they become extremely quiet they stop playing so all the kind of normal developmental milestones that we'd see in babies and young children, suddenly there's a regression there and normal development doesn't take place. And that's

what really the interventions are about. And what happens as these children then grow up? Well, I mean, as they grow up, then the consequences for their mental health and their physical development are really severe. So anxiety is a really, really big problem for children who've witnessed violence, they become extremely anxious, chronic depression, and then in later life, if it's really bad, you often get young people who re-enact the violence themselves. They might enter into relationships that are unhealthy and unsafe for them, or they might start using substances to manage the distress that they feel.

So there are all sorts of consequences. And is that what you're finding, Lauren? Well, absolutely. I mean, we were set up to really look at how do you break those cycles of abuse. And for the families that we work with, 66% have complex mental health needs, 69% have six or more adverse childhood experiences. One in seven of those parents were care experienced. And so sometimes I think that's not necessarily understood the histories of our families. And one parent said to us that their baby had had the best start

in their family as far back as anyone they could remember. And so very often these patterns have been repeated throughout family histories. But the good news is you can intervene and change that. It was only recognised in 2021, really, that children are victims. I think there may be a few adults listening who will have been child victims of domestic abuse and they may be triggered listening to this. What advice could you give them?

Well I think the most important thing for them to know is that it's never too late to get help and that help can be just as effective as an adult as it could be with a young child. So our family stories project at Anna Freud is obviously working with mothers and young children to try and prevent later symptoms but the kind of interventions that we're using, which are mainly cognitive behaviour therapy with narrative therapy and bilateral stimulation, those things can be just as effective with adults who might be listening to this programme now who've been affected. Bilateral stimulation?

So that's where it's sort of left-right, left-right tapping. It's really a way of helping someone to process information that's too distressing for them to process normally so we you know we and you do that with children and you do it with children you do it with parents with very young children so a parent might have a child on their knee and they'll be tapping left right left right so people might have heard of emdr where it's rapid eye movement and what the research shows us is that if you combine that with cbt then it actually helps children to process those distressing memories in a much quicker way and in a way that they can integrate then and make sense of.

Because children are very confused when they witness these events and they often feel responsible. And Lauren, it's estimated that one in five children are affected by domestic abuse. There'll be lots of our listeners who are experiencing it now or in the past and are worried about themselves and their children. So what advice would you give them? Yeah, we know that significant numbers of people don't ask for help because of a sense of shame or a sense of stigma around domestic abuse.

For that advice is please do talk to somebody. Please talk to your GP, a health visitor, a midwife, somebody that you trust. Talk to your family and your friends. You don't have to remain in this situation. Also, you can contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline, but do reach out for help. That was Lauren Seeger-Smith and Dr. Sheila Redfern, and also Anna Foster from BBC Radio Newcastle. For more information and support about domestic violence, head to the BBC Actionline website. Now, the cook, food writer,

and author Mira Soda's new cookbook beautifully takes us on a journey of the restorative power of cooking for the ones you love. It's called Dinner, 120 vegan and vegetarian recipes for the most important meal of the day. And Mira said it was written in the midst of a difficult personal time and much reflection. In it, you can find recipes such as Persian stew, sprouts and chili peanut noodles and miso butter greens pasta. I'm hungry now. She joins Nuala who began by asking her about why she wrote the book. Well, yes, I wrote Dinner following a very difficult period in my life where I fell out of love with life and cooking. So in 2021, I had a breakdown. And by that, I mean, my brain and my body just stopped functioning properly. And I lost my love for life as well as food. But food had been, you know, it's part of my DNA, it had given me so much

joy and so much pleasure. And it was also my day job as a food writer. And I knew that I needed to find my way back and fast. And I was relying on my husband Hugh to do all of the family cooking. And he was looking after our newborn baby and my toddler. So one day when he was struggling, he said, I'd love you to cook me a meal. And it wasn't him asking me to cook for him it was him saying listen I'm struggling can you care for me love me and I woke up I ran into the kitchen I grabbed a pan some lentils some coconut milk and I made him this gorgeous Malaysian dal and and something just happened in that moment where I really felt like I'd been given the keys back to the kitchen I felt the energy fizzing in my fingertips again.

I just, I really wanted to cook for him. I was cooking out of joy and out of pleasure and it gave me some purpose. And so I started cooking again, but I stepped back from work and I needed to do that. And I asked myself, what is it that I want to eat? And that's, and I really needed to do that in order to bring myself back to the kitchen

and find my love for what I wanted to eat again. And then this is the book. It's all about dinner. Why dinner? So dinner, I was writing these recipes down in this little orange notebook that I have. And I noticed that there was just that one meal that I wanted to focus on. And I think it's partly because breakfast is eaten on the fly. Lunch can often be leftovers. Dinner, I found just planning it had the power to ground me and cooking it gave me a sense of achievement. I wasn't cooking every day, but when I did, you know, when everything else felt really turbulent, it felt like something I could do

step by step. Let's talk about The Little Orange Notebook. How was it then, considering that turbulent period you had been through, to try and collate these recipes, to try and create this book? I should say I started when my daughter was born, when Aria was born. And it's really a family cookbook. So it's just a place for us to write down the things that we all love. And that might be mac and cheese or Nigella's like birthday cake. And I just started writing a little note in there. And I found that that it filled up quite quickly. And at first, there were things like eggs over rice or omelettes, masala beans on toast. Delicious. And so it wasn't really much of a

collation as it was just things that I really loved eating. And I feel like the recipes previously when I've written cookbooks, it's been about traveling around India, you know, and I'll take a dogleg turn and find a dish that I must share with people. But it's for other people. Whereas this book is actually quite a selfish book in that these are recipes that I love. They're recipes that I wrote for me but it's still work no at the end of the day just coming yeah because I think people that might resonate with people this fact you were in a fortuitous position earlier in your career to be able to have a career doing something that you love your passion which was food but then that became like work yes now you're back working fully, shall we say, with food. But is it different now? It is different now because so I haven't written

a book in five years, I should say. So it was a really organic process. I wasn't I had to step back from deadlines. And I think you're right. Like, you know, how do you find your stamina for something that you might have lost your love for? And I think that's where I thought. And this is where I found, you know, cooking for joy actually gave me back my pleasure and the keys to the kitchen again. And this was, I think, the key to it is that's where I started when I first started writing about food was recording family recipes. And they meant so much to me. And I think in the process of just working to relentless deadlines, I'd lost that and I needed to come back to it. And so I am working now, but I'll try and integrate the recipes into family life. And so it's not work and then food. And so the recipes in this book, I think, take that into account.

So there's lots of bung it in the oven dishes that I love to do so I can still listen to my daughters telling me about who farted in maths that day when they come back from school. Or there's like lots of one pot dishes that I can just bung things into. But you know, you mentioned your family there. Let's talk about this. Because they were living in Uganda. They were business people there?

Yes, that's right. But like so many, and I think there'll be a lot of our listeners as well, that would have had Indian heritage living in one of the countries in East Africa, but were then expelled. Yes. So talk me through how that has informed your life and your cooking and your work. Yeah, it's been so integral to what I do.

So my mum's family was very wealthy in Uganda and they had to give up all of their businesses, all of their money. And they came over to Scunthorpe because there was a job at the steelworks there for my grandfather. And they went from being cooked for to my mum having to suddenly cook for the family. And she would cook all of the produce from Lincolnshire. I mean, it's amazing for produce. And then fashion it into very thrifty dishes and she'd cook pulses from scratch so she'd buy five kilogram bags

of those and so this you know I grew up with her sort of being incredibly thrifty not wasting um champ teaching me how to you know find beautiful produce always make sure that the hats of the aubergines are green she gave me me a love for cooking, but she gave me a love of, you know, using everything, you know, this with this and fashioning food and making magic out of food that is just very basic and very simple, like dusty lentils that might be sat in a packet in your store cupboard. But also she adapted to where she was living. And so she would make instead of a mango chutney, she made a fallen pear chutney or a fallen apple chutney because that's what she could get hold of.

Or she would curry pheasants because someone would sling a brace of pheasants over the door handle. And that's how I cook now. Your mother didn't write any of the recipes down. She didn't. So I learnt how to, that was terrifying, by the way, when she told me that it's like oh my goodness like these recipes have been handed down for generations and unless I record them they

could die out and so I went to go and learn to cook with her and the what was amazing about that is not only did I learn how to cook but I learned that behind every recipe there was a story and it might have been you know what grew by the roadside in Uganda or how she played with baby alligators in the Nile but it colored in what was so beautiful about that is that I can't visit Uganda my parents don't want to go back and so it colored in this part of my past and my history and also what was so beautiful about it was that you know know, food is a conversation starter. But that's not just with strangers.

Like with me and my mum, it gave me a vehicle with which to talk to her and to bond with her about her past and her childhood. And I love that. Let's talk about the wooden spoon. So my mum, when she came to this country, she bought a wooden spoon and she must have cooked thousands of meals with it because it has a big dent in one side and it has this beautiful pattern to it and she gave it to me and it was a bit like her handing over her recipes it was quite an emotional moment when she handed it to me um luckily she has a partner spoon or other spoon so I didn't feel like she was hanging up her boots all of a sudden and it's's just something, you know, I feel like recipes are kind of a bit like the wooden spoon. I feel connected to her when I cook with it. But also nobody's alone when they're cooking a recipe that's written by someone else. It's like a

friend in the kitchen. A lovely. Yeah, I like to think like that. And I like to write like that. So hopefully if you're in your kitchen cooking one of my recipes and feeling like I'm giving you what you need in order to succeed with what you're doing. Mira Soda there and her new book Dinner is out now. Now the multi-award winning British roots blues and Americana rock singer Els Bailey is a real trailblazer. She's a mother, a label boss, an artist, a champion of women in music and she's been inducted into the UK Blues Hall of Fame. Now hot on the heels of

winning this year's Live Act of the Year at the UK Americana Awards and Vocalist of the Year at the UK Blues Awards, Els has a new album, Beneath the Neon Glow, released this week. She joined me in the studio and I started by asking her about the new album. It's an album that is all the different kinds of love in my life and it really tore me apart, like, writing this album and then I also felt like I put myself back together so I feel like this album is just like an extension of my heart and all of the scars and the imperfections and I'm now sharing that with everybody.

Well, we're very grateful. It tore you apart. In what way? I just, I really was going just roller coasters in 2023. And it was just written with some really amazing career highs. And then just like bouts of like real lows as well you have such a gorgeous sexy smoky dusky voice what's the story behind it because there there's a really good one there is a story yeah when I was when I was very little um I got very very sick and I actually got the last

ventilator that was available in Southmead Hospital in Bristol. And I was in a coma for 17 days. Goodness. And then when I came out of it, I had to learn how to walk. I had to learn how to talk. My earliest memory is being in a hospital room with a nurse holding me up and then trying to see if I could stand and I couldn't and then it's me falling over so that is genuinely my first my first memory and then when I started to learn how to talk again uh in its place of my normal voice I'd had uh was this very dark husky uh tone

that is continued my whole life so you wouldn't have this voice had it not been for that terrifying experience in your childhood. Yeah. And you met a specialist in vocal chords, did you, at one of your concerts? Yeah, it was, I never tell this story live. And just, it turned around that I was on a show in Germany and I just decided to tell the story. And in the audience was a man who came up to me afterwards and said, I specialize in working with people who've had trauma on their vocal cords after they've been intubated. What are the chances? Yeah, what are the chances?

Like, I never tell that story I do hundreds of shows and then he sort of taught me through why I have the voice I have because I've never really understood it's just all been a part of this story and he sort of went through the science of it and uh and then he he turned around and said you're so lucky because so many people have real real trauma where they can't communicate anymore. And it's about teaching them how to communicate after this kind of trauma. And he's like, you've walked away with a story and a voice. And a gift. Yeah, absolutely. So where did your interest in blues and Americano come from?

It came from my dad's record collection. So growing up, listening to the band, the Eagles, the Nitty Gritty Dirt band. When did you decide that this is the style of music you wanted to sing? So I was in an indie band throughout my teens and into my early 20s and then I then went to uni to study psychology because I wanted to become a counsellor and then in my final year of, I started working on what is now the Ells Bailey project that you hear. And I heard Etta James' Something's Got a Hold on Me. And that song, I think, changed my life. And it just set me on this path that has led me here today and led me right back to the roots music that my dad used to play us.

And took you all the way to Nashville as well. What was that like? That is also to do with my dad as well. My dad turned around and said to my mum, hey, Lynn, do you want to do a road trip around the southern states of America? And she said, who's going to look after the dog? So he was like, fair point. Fair enough. Yeah. Fair point. Els, do you want to come and do a trip around the southern states of America? I was like, yes, mum can look after the dog. So me and my dad and my husband were planning to go to Memphis, New Orleans, Nashville, Atlanta. And unknown to me, my dad just started contacting people in Nashville. And at this point, I'd covered Taylor Swift's Shake It Off and it was that cover song

that got Brad Knoll interested and he invited me over to Nashville and within a week I'd met Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys and Bobby Wood I'd written with Bobby Wood and Roger Cook I would say Roger he's actually from Bristol which is where I'm from, but resides over in Nashville. And he wrote a little known song called I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing and played golf for the rest of his life. But yeah, I was writing with them and then we ended up making Wildfire, my debut album. And then I just have this whole relationship with Nashville that I never, never in my wildest dreams thought I'd ever have. Els Bailey, her new album, Beneath the Neon Glow, is out now.

That's all from me. But do join Nuala on Monday when she'll be speaking to Team GB's Jodie Grinham, already a silver medalist in archery and who's going to the Paris Paralympics whilst 28 weeks pregnant. The first British woman to do so. And singer Mary Bridget Davis, an interpreter of the music of Janis Joplin

in a new musical in London about the iconic singer. She'll be singing live for us. So much to look forward to. That's all from me. Enjoy the weekend. 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.