December 21, 2025 • 58 mins
This summer we're curating your 456 playlist listening to bring you some of our favourite interviews from MID and No Filter.
Welcome back, MIDs, and please send this episode to your best friend immediately. Because it's about the power of the most important relationships in many of our lives - the one we have with our great mates.
You know Amanda Keller from her many decades as an Australian television and radio presenter, comedian, writer, actress and journalist. You might be meeting her best friend forensic psychologist Anita McGregor for the first time, but once you have, you'll know exactly why these two have been inseparable since they first met, 17 years ago.
This conversation goes everywhere from the things your friends can hold your hand through and what they can't. When and if you should offer your best friend "feedback", and what happens to your relationships with everyone and everything - from your friends to your work and your grown-up kids, as you move more into Mid.
You can listen to Amanda and Anita on their podcast, Double A Chattery, here
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Follow us on Instagram @MidbyMamamia or sign up to the MID newsletter, dropping weekly here.
CREDITS:
Host: Holly Wainwright
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Grace Rouvray
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
Support the show: https://www.mamamia.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
You're listening to another Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges the
traditional owners of the land. We have recorded this podcast
on the Gadigul people of the Eura Nation. We pay
our respects to their elders past and present and extend
that respect to all Aboriginal and torrestrained islander cultures.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hi, it's hollywait right here.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm an author and a podcaster and I host the
show Mid. Maybe you listen, maybe you don't, but it's
a show full of the grown up conversations women crave
and deserve. And this summer we're curating your restart playlist
to bring you our admissible episodes. We're filling your playlist
full of our favorite MID episodes here into your restart
(01:04):
feed and they are full of frank wisdom from big
names who are all in their second acts and they're
sharing everything they've learned. It's the perfect listening to reflect
on twenty twenty five and get ready for the year ahead.
And if you're looking for more to listen to, every
MoMA Mere podcast is curating your summer listening right across
the network. From pop culture to beauty to powerful interviews,
(01:26):
there's something for everyone. There's a link in the show notes.
I met my soulmate when I was eleven. The way
I remember it is that our respective mothers banned us
from going to some party or other, and instead it
was suggested that we have a sleepover together.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
We were furious.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Forty two years later and any time I get to
have a sleepover with my best and oldest friend Lindsey,
I will take it. It doesn't happen often because we live
on opposite sides of the world. When I was twenty three,
Lindsay was at London's Heathrow Airport to wave me off
as I traveled to Australia for a year long traveling adventure.
(02:10):
We cried and we cried, and that year has turned
into thirty thirty years. And yet if we get the
opportunity to spend even a few days together anywhere in
the world, those days are worth years, and we still
cry at airports. I also, as a fifty three year
(02:32):
old woman, still have regular sleepovers with another great maid
of mine, Penny, my treasure weekends away with a pick
and mix bag of my closest friends. I have mates
I message daily and beloved ones I don't speak to
for months I have new friends I already can't imagine
life without, and friends I share professional passions with to
whom I owe a great deal. I'm bragging now, and
(02:54):
you know it. Because friendship, if you're lucky enough to
have it in your life, is the greatest privilege of
all and the thing that makes an enormous difference to
our happiness and our well being. And one of the
profound joys of getting older is getting to write new
pages into your friendship histories. The landmark birthdays, the losses,
(03:16):
and the struggles, and the splits and the bad days
all scroll out cross pages that bound together tell us
everything about ourselves and each other. I also have ex friends.
You probably do too, relationships that ended mid sentence, leaving
unsatisfying blank pages, and I've mourned them like old lovers,
(03:39):
and I've wrestled with how to heal rifts may be
left too long to revive because friends are the loves
of our lives. As the iconic, aspirational, sometimes toxic Carrie
Bradshaw's Girl Gang told us back when we were young,
and in the manner of loves of our lives, they
run the gammert of being the best and worst of us.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
They lift you higher, and.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
They break your fucking heart, and respect.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Must be paid.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Here's a raised, steaming tea mug to the friend you
can itch your hormone patch in front of.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Who will walk.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Beside you in your stupid weighted vest, who will congratulate
you for your teeny weeny tomato harvest and agree that
your partner is a dickhead today and a zero tomorrow.
Who sees you through your job, through your children, through
what your body's doing today. Who knows your mum's not
been well. Who knows when your next appointment is. Who
knows when to ask if you're okay and when to
(04:33):
shut the hell up? Who drops the meme of your
dreams in the group chat on a bad day, and
will sing in the car with you at the top
of your terrible voices when life feels right. The friends
who know the backstory, who indulge your tantrums just enough.
To the deep grown up friendships and the ones forged
over silly shared enthusiasms. To the ones who live next
(04:54):
door and the ones on the other side of the world,
and the ones who aren't here anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Soul mates. All Hello, I'm Holly.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Wainwright and I am Mid Midlife, mid Family, mid Midlife
Crisis number eight.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
We've been away for a while, and now we're back.
This is season four.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Of mid, the show for gen X women who are
anything but, And over the next eight episodes, I'm going
to be talking to grown up women, some of whom
you know, some you'll be meeting for the first time,
who have great stories and spot on insights into the
things that make a life. I always say we've got
no time or tolerance for small talk by the time
we get here, but that doesn't mean everything is heavy,
(05:39):
quite the opposite. I know that right now I'm searching
for conversations that cheer me, that soothe me, that make
me laugh, make me hopeful, distract me from the enormous
and tiny challenges that we're all wading through every day
in our real lives and out in the big scary world.
Some of the conversations we've got for you here are
about things like shamefree sex and falling in love again
(06:03):
after a big split, about reinvention after a massive career crash,
about caring for our aging parents, and about hair and
a lot more too. So I hope you're going to
Love season four. But today I'm having a conversation about
something I've been dying to talk about with people I've
been dying to talk to. I think you probably all
(06:25):
know who Amanda Keller is. I'll tell you really quickly
just in case, that she's an accomplished and experienced media everything.
She's a TV host and an award winning rating topping
breakfast radio legend. But I'm going to stop talking because
what I've got Amanda to come in and tell us
about was none of that, really, even though we obviously
go there a little bit. I invited her and her
(06:46):
best friend to come in and talk about friendship. The
person sitting beside Amanda in this conversation is her equally
accomplished and impressive best friend, Anita McGregor. The two make
their own podcasts together, which you'll hear about, obviously, but
I predict that five minutes into this you'll be as
obsessed with Anita as I am, and with their friendship.
(07:09):
And now I really am going to stop talking, because
the first thing I asked Amanda and Nita to do
was to introduce each other through a best friend's eyes.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
To you, Yes, Gregor, by profession, is a forensic psychologist.
I only mentioned the profession is because it gives her
an insight into society that many of us wouldn't normally have,
and you do it with such kindness. I'm always amazed
at the respect you give your clients. These are people
(07:39):
who are before the courts, people who have transgressed, people
who might be major sex offenders, people who are living
really tough lives.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
And the delicacy with.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Which you treat them and the respect you give them
and their place in society, I find is a very
refreshing take. So that's why you're a very interesting person
to have in the room to reflect on anyone talking
about society, life, rules, justice.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
You're a great calming voice.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
And she's a scragg.
Speaker 6 (08:12):
Favorite.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
The pressure is on them.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Something nice about.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
That wasn't what was in my.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
This is my friend Amanda Keller, who, gosh, I would
imagine everyone in Australia knows of you that you are
a radio broadcaster, you are a TV star. You are,
but you are also more than that. You are a wife,
you are a mother, You are a great friend, an
(08:42):
intrepid walker with me. You are all those things and
the thing that I think That is the most amazing
quality of you is that when people ask you know,
oh you know Amanda Keller, you know what she like?
And I think my response is generally, you know how
(09:02):
kind and generous she seems, you know, on the air,
on the TV. That's exactly what you get. She is
kind and she is generous and I love her.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Oh lovely.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
And she didn't use the wood, not even once. Beautiful
and Nada. You're from Canada, I am. And you met
Amanda quite early in your time in Australia, within about
a month.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Can you tell me how we met? Story?
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Oh, so we meet cute, I meet cute. Yes, so
we had moved here. It was supposed to be like
a two year adventure. My husband had been offered a
contract to work and I thought, oh, it's going to
be just such a fun thing. I didn't know a soul.
I'd never been here, and we had rented a place
(09:51):
in Coujie at the recommendation of one of my husband's workmates,
and we had just got all the shipment in. I
was exhausted and I went for a massage with a
friend of ours, Jackie Racist, and she said, oh, you're
new here. Why don't you come There's a Dancing with
the Stars on which I didn't know. I had no
(10:11):
idea what the show was. And my friend Amanda is
dancing in it. Why don't you come over and watch this?
And I thought this is where weird? But I went
and I watched.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Because you didn't know Jackie either.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
I don't know how Jackie you had to step over
the friendship divide with her to beginning.
Speaker 7 (10:27):
Yes, absolutely, And so saw you on Dancing with the Stars.
Had no idea, and then you invited us out to
it was a charity thing, and I went out and
met you there and all these people were pointing and going,
that's Amanda Keller.
Speaker 6 (10:42):
I had no idea.
Speaker 7 (10:44):
And then, you know, so we just kind of got
to know each other that way, with me just being
completely naive to you know, the world of Amanda Keller,
and which was really actually kind of a nice way
to do it, because I, you know, I think I
would have probably been intimidated or weirded out or something,
(11:04):
and I just wasn't.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
And so yeah, and then we started.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Started dating friendship. Dating friendship.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
When you're new in a new country, you have some
friendship vacancies that need filling.
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Oh, it's it's a scary thing. This is on the
one hand, there's just this I can be whoever I want.
But on the other hand, it's like nobody knows. Like
those friendships that you have with people that you've known
since you've been kids, or university or kids, you know,
when you've had kids, and there's this kind of shorthand
(11:38):
that you have as a friend. And I didn't have
any of that. So there it was a double edged
sword for for quite a while.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
It's like nobody knows me, and it's like nobody knows me,
but Amanda, you presumably didn't necessarily have very many vacancies.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
How did Anita get.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Question's got an enormous chick.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
I'm for assistance.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
I just think there was some hugely common ground in
our natures. Maybe because I don't actually know how to
answer that question. We would start to go for walks
as a group, but as a group we would socialized,
and then you and I kind of splinted off at
some point and we'd go for weekly walks and just talk.
(12:32):
And I don't know how to be more specific than that.
It kind of just evolved really that it wasn't like
we were starstruck with each other. When we saw each
other and fell in love. It just evolved. And often
in those big groups you form your little factions within them.
Factions is a harsh word, but your little friendship groups
within them. And we kind of splint it off and
made one of those a little satellite.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And was there a moment when you kind of went, oh,
we're definitely going to be friends or was it just
that slow burn? Oh I'm gonna I need to call Anita.
I want to tell Anita that like that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (13:04):
I really think it was a slow burn.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
I think so too.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
And it's interesting how much when people meet Anita as
a psychologist. Sure I'm speaking for you, but I reckon you.
Probably a seek of people saying, don't analyze me, thinking
that that's what she'll do. I laugh when I hear that,
But at the same time, I find it so interesting
that I blab about every single thing to you in
my life and you answer with friendship, never with I
(13:31):
never feel your sounds terrible, never being professional your.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
Sometimes I really am.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
There's never a you know what you should do, there's
never any of I never think, oh, that's right, you're
a psychologist. I never ever feel that we meet as friends,
and I don't know how you separate the two.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
I don't know how you do that.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
I you know, I think for the most part the
it well, because I've been a psychologist for over thirty years,
like half my life, more than half my life, that.
Speaker 6 (14:05):
It's you know, just the.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
That main idea about I'm going to listen is, you know,
that's kind of my life as a psychologist, but it's
also my life as a friend. And I, you know,
I don't give advice to my clients either really so
or it feels pretty comfortable in doing that.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I think some people would be really jealous that you're
best friends are psychologists, because you would imagine that you'd
be like, you know, we all go through things, particularly
midlife can get very rolling, chustry, and you're like free therapy.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
But it's interesting, it never feels like therapy.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
But though maybe subconsciously, and I don't know if it's
subconscious for you, but maybe you're like a border Collie
like my dog that kind of just subtly hurts me somewhere.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Yeah, and I'm not even aware of it.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I was listening to your show recently to double a chattery.
And I think, Amanda, you were talking about and I've
been doing this too, reframing I have to with I
get to gratitude. And I was listening to your conversation
and if I was in your shoes, Amanda would have
been looking for approval from Anita on that like that.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
She goes, that's very good.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
I know.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
I find myself saying to her, I did this incredible
thing magazine, like I must tell you the most basic
psychological things I've read and you and like, I've been
seeing this incredible person. She said, I should try this
and you must go God.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
But you were great, Anita, because you said something like
and how's it going for you? Like, which is a
therapistic thing to say in a way, but but exactly
what you need and you are like, it's helping, it's helping.
So I imagine that that is it's not a deliberate dynamic,
but it must be great.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
But I never feel self conscious saying to Anita the dumbest,
most basic way I cope with anything, And you never
make me feel judged, and sometimes like it's only now
talking to you, Holly, I think, yeah, actually, how embarrassing
that I've said to Anita, here's an interesting psychology you
probably haven't heard of.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Be grateful.
Speaker 7 (16:10):
Apparently, it's really let me introduce you to Anita for
an excellent concept.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
Let's try that.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Well, at the risk of doing the same thing to
it now. I was going to say that there's a
lot of studies out there that friendship is absolutely crucial
to our mental health, right and connection, And there's a
lot of sort of handringing about that. Maybe as a community,
as a world, we're getting less connected and we're finding
friendships harder because we fear the judgment that comes with it,
(16:38):
or we're not sure how to connect, or we're just
not in the same physical spaces to connect. I mean,
what do you inter One of the things that mid
listeners tell me all the time is it's their girlfriends
often I mean their friends, but their girlfriends often that
save them, that get them through the hard times. Do
you think that we're in a crisis of connection? And
are we right to think that our friendships are the
(16:59):
things that keep us saying.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
There's a big part of me that would just like
to answer, yes, it's a crisis. We need you know,
we've really disconnected and all that. But I was actually
just recently reading some research that really delighted me that
was talking about It was mostly about adolescent mental health,
but what they were talking about is that often we're
looking about like how many friends do we have? And
(17:21):
you know, but the research actually is much more supportive
of having one or two really good friends, and because
once you get into a bigger like any more than
three or four and we've all been there where you
get into a bigger friendship group and it does split
into like not I know you were saying factions, and
(17:42):
sometimes it.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
Is, but it's you know, it's like she likes.
Speaker 7 (17:45):
Me better, and you know, you've get all the way
I wasn't in on that wall. Yeah yeah, or you
know they've they've organized to do something and I'm not there,
And especially with social media, that can be so hurtful.
So I actually was really encouraged by the idea that, yes,
there is a disconnection, and yet the answer isn't I
(18:07):
need one hundred friends and I need to be out
and doing things every night. The idea, sometimes, I think,
is more about finding those those opportunities to get deeper
with somebody, to be a little bit vulnerable with some
and to see whether you can create that friendship you know,
like you know, sometimes it's not you know, just falling
in love in a friendship, but it's sometimes it is
(18:28):
that slow burn. And you know, there's there's also riches
that research that says you need to spend about one
thousand hours with somebody to actually create that depth, that
that history with each other.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
It's one thousand dollars a lot puts. What's that in
a context of a week or a year. I can't
do the mets on it.
Speaker 7 (18:45):
I don't know, And I mean I don't know how
they count that. I mean, it's it is it just
a text to each other?
Speaker 6 (18:49):
Does that count?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
But?
Speaker 7 (18:51):
I mean I think that we can connect in a
lot of different ways now.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Because people worry about their friendship connections faltering as life changes. Right,
so you two have been friends for the best part
of two decades. Right, busy people, big jobs, in different ways.
How practically do you stay connected to your friends? Is
like little kids to big kids, Career shifts, geographical moves
(19:14):
like are you schedule people?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Are you like it's every Wednesday? I mean, how do you.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Do It's interesting?
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Before I get to how we do it, I often
feel anxiety around the fact I'm not very good at
it with a lot of people and a text may
come up let's get together, and I have a panic
over it. I never do that with you, Anita, and
there are some friends where you go I'll get to
you and I can get to you, or let's put
in the diary for the future. I don't have time
(19:42):
right now that can fill me with anxiety, so I
can limit my work. But sometimes it's the social stuff
that I find I'm not very good at limiting, and
that makes me panic.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I feel the same way.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
And one of the reasons why we bought a place
on the South Coast was so that I could say
I'm not here this week because I will fill every
gap if people ask me to, whether I want to
or not.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Do you fill the gaps because you feel anxious to
have the space or do you feel gaps as a people?
Speaker 5 (20:11):
Please fill the ga people please? And not wanting to
let people down. And they're my friends and I haven't
seen them for a while. That's what friends do.
Speaker 7 (20:17):
But you have gotten much better, or at least with me,
i'd saying no of you know, kind of saying I
don't want to do this now or I can't do this,
or I don't have the energy, or those kinds of
which is you know, I think a lovely thing that
friends can do with each other. But we and we're
not exactly schedule people, but other than we have a
(20:40):
standing date at least once on the weekend to go
for a walk when we're in town.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
And now that you've moved further away, that now involves
a car. We used to just meet down at the
beach and go for a walk, so one of us
has to get up half an hour earlier and be
ready earlier. The first time I went to Anita's new
place with my dog.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I was very rude of her to move, and I
could feel it. An you moved like a few sos
you've moved across town.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Yeah, it's probably about half an hour away. Twenty minutes.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Twenty minutes.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Well, my dog must have taken it very personally, because
when you went to Anita's new place, she just had
the carpets. Claimed Minnie has never done this before. She
went in and did a giant wheel on their new car.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
Out it was.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
It was awful, awful.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
But I find also physically, as things get harder for me,
I've had two hit replacements and I've got a writis
in my back.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
We all do it some, We've all got stuff.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
But there's some days we'll say to Anita, I was
filming this week or whatever it is, and I stood
up all week. I'm just too sort of go for
a walk. So I'm being more diligent with myself in
protecting myself. But I know I can say that to you,
and with other people I may not. I know I
can say to you, sorry about that. I just feel
crap today.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Do you think it's the mark of good friendship? I
think I heard a conversation that you were where you
were talking about how a good friendship is someone can
come over to your house and you don't feel like
you have to tidy, you know, you have to feel
like you have to tidy the counters or whatever. I'm
not a natural hostess. It sends me into a panic
if somebody is coming to my house. But is it
also a sign of good friendship that when you do
(22:09):
say I just don't have the energy or there's just
too many other demands that they're not going to get
offended by that.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Absolutely, And I'm trying to push through worrying about that
that this is what I have, This is what I
have to do to survive today. Not survive that's overly dramatic,
but you know I work hard all week as many
of us do, stuff and stuff and stuff, and you
get to the weekend and think, I just don't have
anyemy to tack it up earlier this morning.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
And go for a walk.
Speaker 6 (22:34):
You're doing a very good job at ignoring my tears
that you know.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
What's she doing.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
She's put on the water works, hasn't she She's going
with the waterworks. But also what I love about our
friendship is that you mentioned before about being vulnerable and eata.
You can bitch and moan about your husband, about your parents,
about you, anything, and it's such a safe space that
you know that that isn't the mark of that relationship
(23:01):
that you're having. That's just how you're feeling Today's like
you could never tell your mum how you if you
had a fight with your boyfriend or your husband, because
they would never get over it, they'd mark them forever.
Whereas I feel quite safe sharing that stuff with you.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
Well, we have I love Early in our friendship. I
think that remember we had a conversation that one of
us was saying something about our husband, and you know,
and and we said, let's recognize that I might like
if it was me, I might be mad at Emmett
right now. And you get to hear this, but you
don't get to hear us make up. You don't get
(23:37):
to hear the conversation that happens after when we resolve things.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
You don't get to hear any of that.
Speaker 7 (23:42):
So you know, you need that cognitive process to kind
of say I get that, you know, I might be
mad at Emmet today, but you know we have a
long term marriage and so we're going to get through it.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
And that's the stuff you never see in popular culture.
You never see the boring bits in the middle where
things get resolved, because that's not interesting to anybody.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's true, I often wonder this. As we get older
and wiser, are lots of things happen. Do you think friends,
good friends call each other out when they're being unreasonable,
you know, maybe making choices that aren't good for them,
Or do you think that good friends are always the
supportive rock. That's what I'm always wrestling with is whether
(24:27):
you you know that where people say the people closer
to you should be the ones you say you need
to stop doing that thing, or whether they're the ones
who are the understanding ones.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
What do you think?
Speaker 5 (24:38):
I'm highly sensitive, and so I judge the messenger very harshly.
And even though in an ideal world you say yes,
you're you know, practically you want your friends to tell
you that, I don't think I want to hear it.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
How do you feel?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, like you know that friend And I'm not saying
any wanted this, but the friend who is always complaining
about their husband or their job or whatever it is,
or you know, something in their lifestyle. Always at what
point do good friends say?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Hey?
Speaker 6 (25:09):
I think it depends on the friendship.
Speaker 7 (25:11):
Like, like you and I have had that conversation that
you know, if I looked really terrible in an outfit,
you wouldn't.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
Tell me that.
Speaker 7 (25:19):
I would never tell you that, ever, even though I'd
want to hear it, Like I'm really big on feedback,
and so I I gubt that that would make you
feel uncomfortable, even though I'd like to hear it, and so,
and I recognize that you are sensitive, and so.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
All my outfits terrible. It's all I've heard in this
entire conversation.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
She's mean to talk to you about it.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
We've had this. We actually have had this conversation.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I wrote a book a number of years ago and
Anita wanted to read it, and I said, oh, here
it is, just thinking, I'm just passing it over. And
she said, how would you how do you take feedback feedback?
Speaker 7 (25:56):
Because I didn't know, Like, I was like, you're an
educatorn't me. I mean, that's my that's my life, you know,
teaching students and stuff and giving feedback. So I'm I'm
really like, I was like, do you do you? And
then and it was like hm, and so we just
that's a great book, Amanda.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I'm like, mate, your job is to tell me everything
I do is great, because there are plenty of other
people in my life.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
You're going to tell me that it's not.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
But I have friendships where I could say that too,
and I have colleagues that I you know, that's the
basis of our work relationship where we give each other
really strong feedback, and you know, certainly with my supervisors
and that kind of stuff. So there, I think it
depends on the friendship and it depends on the topic
(26:45):
because there may be topics where you know, I may
think that I don't know, like I mean, if I
thought that you were being really overreacting to something.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
Actually we had this conversation recently. Is that I was
overreacting to something. I was cranky about about ten things.
And you showed me a clip of a woman who
had a nail in a head and she was talking
to her husband and she was and she was saying,
I just don't feel right.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
You're not supporting me enough.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
And he's trying to say, we've got a nail in
your head and she said, no, no, no, it's this
and he said, no, you've got a nail in your
head and fine, and he says, oh, sweetheart, I hear
what you're saying. You're not feeling go just thank you.
And I've been thinking about that a lot, because you
probably observed me. My husband's done well, and so I'm
looking at the world through a filter, and you were saying,
(27:39):
you know, you're seeing all this with a nail.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
In your head.
Speaker 5 (27:43):
I didn't know what to do about the nail, but
I thought, yes, but I am seeing the world. I
do have a nail in my head. So I didn't
know how to process the fact that I do have a.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Nail in my head.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
But that's one of the only times where I thought
you're trying to tell me something here. I'm not sure
exactly what it is, because I know that I know
that I'm having a negative moment or a depressive moment
or an angry moment where I'm seeing everything through that
veil and I'm aware of it. But on the other hand,
I think, well, here's why, because some things.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Came pretty shit and your natural status to be optimistic
and see things, you know, very positively. I cannot remember
what was going through my head at the time I
showed it. You know that it was probably something that
I had showed a class or something. I probably was
thinking about how hard you were seeing the world.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
At the time.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It's interesting because also you would have heard the term
a million times about toxic positivity, where we're encouraged by
pop culture and you know, sort of leaking for one
of a better term, therapy speaking too everyday life to
put a positive spin on everything and to see everything
as a lesson. And you know what am I learning
from this today? And I'm sure this you know, whereas
(28:59):
sometimes things are just terrible shit and.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You need to sit in the shammer and oil into
your own head.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, absolutely, and just sit and feel the nail. Just
step field.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
But it did give me a really good perspective.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
I just thought, yes, I am being this today and
I probably won't be this tomorrow, but I'm seeing a
whole lot of good things. It was because I'm talking
about how people were trying to help and I was
getting cranky at everything.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I think that was it. I just needed a shift
in perspective.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
More of my conversation with best friends Amanda Keller and
Anita McGregor after this short break stay with us.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
We've touched on.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
A couple of these in this conversation, I think, but
in which ways are you similar?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
In which ways are you different?
Speaker 3 (29:39):
So we've acknowledged here that Amanda is the sensitive one,
and you would be more straight talking if she wasn't
such a snowflakes.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
Interestingly, I have a job where I get rated and
judged by ratings and constant I don't read a lot
of social media feedback because I just wouldn't be able
to handle it. So ironically, in my work life it's
constant judgment and constant feedback and constant feedback.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I think that's probably why in your personal life you're
also a bit like that.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Yeah, that's try to put the blinkers on. How are
we similar, Anita, let's ask for grown up?
Speaker 7 (30:20):
You know, it is interesting that that, you know, when
we go to your place on the South coast and
we spend a weekend together, we will spend.
Speaker 6 (30:29):
Days you know, what are we going to eat? What
are we going to do?
Speaker 7 (30:32):
And we generally end up eating you know, sardines on toast,
and we end up reading books together or playing dominoes
when we can, and you know, so it's the similarities
are that that. It's a funny thing to say because
I tend to get up at about you get up
at what four for work? Yeah, and I usually get
up at about four thirty just because that's when my
(30:54):
you know, my brain starts turning on. And so it's
I think that because we're both mourning people and we
both have very similar kind of rhythms about how our
lives and our work, you know, just go.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
I think that's right. And we do kitchen time very
well together. Yeah, which I think is a big part
of a great friendship is that we we plan what
are we going to eat when are doing this and
not being this? And we chop chop chop, and I'm
going to put this on and we pot very well
together and then we sit down and read very well
together comfortably.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
You can't do that with everybody, now.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You can't. You can't do that with that.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
You can't have that away time where you're not doing,
doing doing all the time. Is it hard to have
a friend who's in the public eye, Anita, a best
friend who's in the public eye, And do you feel
defensive of her? And when there's invasions of your privacy?
And do you not talk about work?
Speaker 6 (31:46):
I am protective of you in that I don't.
Speaker 7 (31:52):
I don't often like because you know, by my nature,
I'm quite private, you know, part of it's just who
I am, but it's part of it has been my
profession as well, and so I recognize the need for
some sense of privacy. So I'm protective of that. I
don't tell a lot of people that we're friends. I mean,
(32:12):
it's kind of hard not to.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Now now you've got public that we're going.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
To Esky podcast.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
It is, Yeah, So.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
It might manifest itself strangely. For example, when we went
to see Kat Stevens and this guy us Anita to
take a photo of me and him, and then he
came back after interval and said, well, I've been looking
for you.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
That was a terrible closure, and.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
I thought sorry for Anita, because I'm like, she hasn't
asked to be dragged into this.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
It was hilarious. So I took a picture on the
top of his head.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Like, you totally asked for.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Talking about the podcast, because your conversation, your chemistry on
that is so brilliant, and as you you're I'm sure
you had an instinct, Amanda, because you knew that Anita's,
as you said in her introduction, just such an interesting
thinker in terms of what you talk about. So you
must have been like, this is going to be good.
But was it also just an excuse to spend more
(33:13):
time together.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
Oh, it absolutely was. It was all of those things.
But we'd often talk about things on the walk. I
think other people might like to be part of this
conversation too, because I'd come from things from one perspective
and Anita would come from a completely different perspective. I
thought that would be an interesting thing for people to hear,
because you know, a million people have podcasts and have
(33:38):
opinions and have things to say. But I thought I
haven't heard somebody like Anita.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Do you disagree very much in terms of on issues
and things that are happening in the world, because so
on Mama, MI are out loud, which I obviously do
with two of my good friends. But we do disagree,
and people often say that must be really hard. And
I don't know if this is true or not. You
probably do know, Ana, and it's true or not. But
(34:05):
somebody said, if you can disagree on the details, but
if your values are shared, it's easier.
Speaker 7 (34:11):
I think our values are definitely shared. I don't think
that we've ever had any bigger disagreements. We tend to,
you know, what I find is really interesting is that
Amanda has been my educator in you know, political things,
Australian history that you know, the you know who's you know,
(34:33):
what's happened in.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
Ours history of Peter Andre, that kind of stuff, that
kind of stuff, the really important stuff.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
That culture yeah yeah, but yeah, pop culture, but also
kind of just historical things. And so we tend You're right,
we tend to come at things from different angles. But
but I think under the underlying now is that similarity
and values.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
We did a podcast the week of the terrible Bondo stabbings,
and I was so grateful to have somebody like Anita
to give a perspective on this in that the media
was filled with stories about we're not doing enough for
the victims, and it's so true, but you came at
it from a different perspective, which was you work every
day with the perpetrators, and we need to fix the
(35:18):
problem upstream. We need to invest in the betrayers. And
people didn't want to hear about They didn't want him
to be part of the conversation. They didn't want any
of that kind of discussed. And it's true that our
sympathies were downstream, but we were never going to fix
it until we looked upstream. You spoke with such sympathy
and clarity about the kind of people that are upstream
(35:40):
and why we need to help them.
Speaker 6 (35:42):
Hmmm.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
So yeah, but I think that that again your compassion
for you know, your broad audience, like it's you know,
you were asking before about is it tough to have
you know, somebody who's in the public eye as a friend.
Speaker 6 (35:56):
But you know, one of the things.
Speaker 7 (35:57):
That the toughest part is that when you know, we'll
be out at an event and people stop Amanda, you know,
and we'll sometimes be in the middle of a conversation,
but you are often always so kind and willing, and
you know, so you come from a position of compassion
as well, that you you recognize that it is you know,
(36:20):
the people who listen to you deserve some of your time.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Well, it's a privilege to be called somebody's friend, that
they feel they know you and worry about you and
think about you and care about you and want to
come up and say hello.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
I see.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
That is a privilege.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I want to ask you both because obviously you have
started the podcast, you both have big careers. Really, I
want to know how you're just in terms of general wisdom,
how your attitude to work and ambition is at this
point in your lives, because you've made a decision to
start this new project, which requires commitment, promotion, all of
(36:58):
those things.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
It's funny that I've just come back onto the radio
that were in the second week. Part of me goes,
oh god, that's right, I'm sixty three this year. Part
of me thinks this schedule is hard but I thought
that I I don't know what I pictured when I
(37:21):
was younger, but I thought the dailiness of radio would
have worn me down by now. But it's hard with
my shifting fortunes at home in terms of my husband
not being well.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Is that I need. I now know somewhere to go
every day.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
I need an alarm clock to go off in the
morning and for me to go somewhere where I'm fully
engaged for a chunk of hours of the day, where
I laugh, I cry, I listen to other people's stories.
You scratch the surface and everybody has a story. I
think I've spoken about this about the word sounder, which
means the gradual realization that everybody is going through something,
(37:56):
something good, something sad, and I'm aware of that. With
a radio audience, they're having their best and their worst
days and you're not even aware of it, but you're
on the ride with them. And so I find being
there is a great equalizer for me. If I think
if I was just sitting at home, I would wallow.
So by the time in my life I thought I'd
be wrapping this up, I actually realized how much.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
I need it at the moment.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
That's really interesting because a large part of, you know,
our shifting perspectives is dealing with things that you didn't
think were going to happen. So, I mean, I'm sure
that when you were working in breakfast radio every day
when the boys were small, you have two sons, that
was a different kind of challenge, and you probably thought, well,
when they're older, it's all going to be easier and whatever.
And then life throws you a curveball in the form
(38:38):
of a health, yeah crisis, and work takes a different form.
Speaker 5 (38:42):
Again interesting, it kind of saves me, I think. But
An here and I often talk about this about and
we've got friends who are at the point of wondering
what retirement looks like and how we feel about that.
And it's that old trope of and I don't agree
with it, of you put too much stock in your job.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
That's not who people are.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
But I think there's a lot of pride in the
jobs that we do, and it's okay to be defined
by that to a certain extent. You know, you don't
have to go and pash a dolphin every day and
work one day a year to be a true person.
That's not where you necessarily find yourself, and I know
a lot of people they've retired and few why don't
(39:22):
I do it easy?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Ago?
Speaker 5 (39:23):
Because you don't know yourself. I love what I get
from the work I do.
Speaker 7 (39:27):
I love the idea that at my age, I'm still contributing,
and and in fact I have I think I have
a lot to contribute, and and it's I don't feel
as though I'm done, and I don't know what done
would look like. But when I think about all the
people that you know, we've talked, you know to some
(39:48):
of who have gone to you know, you know, that
retirement place, and that they're you know, and they're enjoying life,
and and that's awesome. I'm happy that they are doing
that and that they're finding that that part of their lives.
I just can't see myself not doing what I'm doing
right now. I can see, you know, somewhere in the distance,
(40:11):
that there will be something else, but I'm not quite
there yet.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
It's interesting because I'm not changing perspectives things. Do you
think that when you were younger, you thought, you know
how you were saying, Amanda, I thought breakfast radio would
have wore me down? Did you when you're twenty and
you think about forty, you're like, oh, you know, I'll
definitely be wanting to put my feet up or whatever,
and or it'll look like this and it'll feel like that.
And then you get there and you're like spring chicken,
and then and like you're you're saying, I'm not done.
(40:39):
Is that's really resonates because that's what I feel. I'm
fifty three, so but I'm like, I don't feel and
I still feel like I've got so much to learn
and give and do. I'm getting started, but it feels
sometimes like the wider world is like slow down, calm down,
back off.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
Yeah, well, I get a lot of that, why are
you still doing this? I get quite blatantly people saying,
oh my god, don't you want to give it up?
Because to other people, that early alarm clock, that daily
thing might seem like a chore. It doesn't feel like
that to me. It's a gift that I get to
share my perspective on whatever I feel like every day.
So I don't see it that way. When I was younger,
(41:21):
I pictured being sixty like being like that painting of
Whistler's mother, just you know, in a rocking chair or
wearing black it's all over because I didn't have role
models who were working women, let alone women who work
this long. So all of this is new, I think
for all of us. But I can see why in
the media, I'm probably the last of a certain dinosaur,
(41:41):
and I have no interest in reinventing. I don't give
a rats about starting a new project integrated into a
blah blah.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
And a blah blah.
Speaker 5 (41:51):
I'm happy to ride this wave that I'm on and
then when it's time, hopefully I can do a delicate dismount.
You can never you never assume that, either in the
media or in life. We're talking about that in terms
of your home life, but your professional life too. You
assume that there's a delicate dismount when you hit the shore.
But maybe you've put in a wave and you've got
sand through a gust and you just don't know what's there.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
But also you're really really good at what you do
because you've been doing it. It's like there's a bit
of a dismissal of experience that I feel is and
maybe because the way we see women, particularly women in
the public eye, but not only certainly a lot in
other fields too, are like, oh, do you really still
have something to offer. It's like, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
There's the word that's kind of rolling around my head
right now, and it feels uncomfortable in some ways. Is
like being a role model for being older and successful
and still you know, being able to contribute. And it's
you know, it's interesting because the students that I teach
now are often in their early twenties, early mid twenties,
(42:56):
and they, you know, I'm the age of some of
their parents and even some of their could it be
possible their grandparents, and you know, you kind of think
they're probably they have a picture in their head of
what an old person, what they are, what they can do.
(43:17):
And I don't mind that the students me cycling to
UNI or you know, to the clinic and you know,
coming in and teaching, and I like that maybe there
is an aspect where we can kind of break some
ideas about you know, what an older woman can be.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
And there was I think it was the West Australian
Premier at one point said we've cracked down on racism, sexism.
He said agism is the last big one and he
was just suggesting that let's look at the potency of
language around it, not just that dismissive yeah boomer stuff,
but also how people in the older generation think younger
people are. But it seems that people trying to re
(43:58):
enter the workforce and be validated is really hard as
you get older. Maybe is that evolutionary that at some
point you'd need you should be moving away for others?
Is there something maybe bigger in there?
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah, and maybe there's a panic that our generation's never
going to go.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
Yes, that's right, you're going to own all the big houses,
will never go.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
We're going to figure out how to live forever, like
die in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Yes, right, and we're never going anywhere.
Speaker 5 (44:28):
So maybe the younger generations have a right to be
anxious that the old we're still hanging around. When are
we going to move over and let someone else have
a crack at it.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
The rest of my conversation with Amanda Kella and Anita
McGregor best Friends, Colleagues, truth Tellers After the Break? Did
you have strong female friendship role modeled to you by
your own mothers?
Speaker 7 (44:56):
Do you think, oh, my mother's bridge Club, Absolutely, that
was you know, every I think it was every Tuesday
and they yeah, there was an and she had my
mom had a friend Eileen, who she talked to every morning.
You know, there was just that connection that it was
just checking in, how are you doing that kind of thing,
(45:19):
So yeah, I think it was. It was an important part,
especially since my mom, you know, after she got married,
didn't work after a while.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
So connection my mom had that with her sisters. She
was very close to her sisters.
Speaker 5 (45:33):
They all lived in different places around Australia, spoke constantly,
a very very tight unit, a very big clan of
a gaggle of them, and I felt we were the
only offshoot in Sydney. And there's just my brother and
I and very close to all our cousins for a
number of years, and since Mom passed away twenty years ago.
Now it's a shock for me to say that to
(45:54):
you them. I lost Mom twenty years ago. But the
women are the keepers of those sort of connections and
I've kind of lost track with cousins and things like
that because it was Mum that held all that together.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I'd love to hear you tell me a little bit
about what life's like with your adult children now. I
was listening to Double a Chattery the other day and
you were both talking about the summer hot well, not
summer holidays for you, Anita, because you went to Canada
where it sounded so never need to go there.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
In winter.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
I grew up in Manchester, eng when that was plenty
of coldenough for me and Amanda. You went away with
your boys who were not boys anymore but men.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
My children are teenagers.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
I'm seeing the pull away, the closed bedroom door, the
next phase of parenting. Me and Brent talk about it
all the time. Tell me the good things about the
kids being grown up.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
You're a grandma and needed.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
Well, I'm not yet because when I have you, when
you have your children at one hundred and fifty, y
does take a little bit longer. That I dreaded the
boys leaving home. But the dread was harder than the reality.
That's yes, because you live with the dread from the
minute they're born, and then when it actually happens, it's
almost like you've kind of cauterized the wound a little
(47:14):
bit and I found, actually I'm surviving.
Speaker 4 (47:16):
This is okay.
Speaker 5 (47:18):
I remember when both boys got and I'd be in
a restaurant and I turn behind me think it was
the way I think, Oh my God, that's liam so
that the physicality surprised me. And the way you express
your love for them is different. You don't hug them
as much, you know, when they're little and you hold
their hands. And suddenly, as a mom with a teenage boy,
how do you express that love?
Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's harder that I want you to touch them all
the time. It's so selfish of that, I know.
Speaker 5 (47:45):
And the grace with which you have to read the
mood and not grope them around the neck.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
And my daughter walks past me, now, just try to
get a whiff of her like ye, yes, because you.
Speaker 5 (47:57):
Don't want to be that needy parent. But I'm finding
now neither of my sons live at home. They've been
on various campuses and things. And because I get up
so early in the morning, them coming to live at
home again sort of, my younger son would get home
at two and I have to get up at four.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Was all getting bit hard.
Speaker 5 (48:11):
But a valuable lesson I learned was with my younger
son that when he went moved on on campus, every
conversation I had with him was telling him, don't forget
to do this, You don't forget to do that. You
stuffed this up, you've got a blah blah blah. There
was an agenda for every conversation. I could tell because
my mum used to do that to me and it
was so hard to get hold of him. I've chosen
(48:33):
to have agender free conversations with him, and now he
calls me every day, as does my oldest son. They
both we all speak every day. But it's only when
I stopped telling Jack what to do and nagging him
about have you done it?
Speaker 4 (48:46):
Have you done it?
Speaker 3 (48:47):
That's interesting. So it was a very deliberate choice for
your part. I'm not going to be doing have you done?
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Have you thought about it?
Speaker 5 (48:54):
And sometimes I got to the end of the conversation
and I almost had to physically stitch my lips closed.
And then what I might do is just a quick
follow up text, don't forget to blah blah blah. But
after we'd had a nice conversation, you did.
Speaker 6 (49:06):
Such a good job, and that that.
Speaker 5 (49:07):
Was was It was very hard for me, But that's
a really good piece of advice. I've told the psychologist
all about it.
Speaker 4 (49:20):
I got a gold start.
Speaker 7 (49:21):
You did.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
That's hard, it's really but I can entirely see how
that because when I think about when we think about
our own relationships with our parents, perhaps and how freeing
it felt to not have that constant surveillance. Yeah, you want,
if you want to be letting out the rope and
for them to come back. It can't feel like they're
constantly just going to be going.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
You haven't got your hair? Yes, what when was the
last time you watched?
Speaker 4 (49:46):
Had you paid that parking five?
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Exactly?
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Tell me, Anita, how you're finding family life.
Speaker 7 (49:52):
My sons are both in their early thirties. One is
in Sydney here, the older one, and the younger one
is in Vancouver.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Did they both come with you when you okay?
Speaker 7 (50:01):
So they were they were fourteen fifteen, Yeah, there were
teenagers when we came over. And my older son has
stayed in Sydney, but my younger son moved to Barthurst
to go and do a degree at the same time.
Speaker 6 (50:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 5 (50:17):
He was he became sort of an emergency the paramedic
who now works in all kinds of tricky places.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
I took rather different rooks.
Speaker 5 (50:27):
Both very important life, an emergency with a time call
if anyone needs one.
Speaker 7 (50:35):
So yeah, so so, so my son went and my
younger one moved when he was eighteen to Bathurst and
then immediately after his degree moved to London and was
a paramedic there right through the pandemic, right through everything,
and then has just recently moved to Vancouver. And so
it's you know, he went away early, and we had
(50:59):
to kind of negotiate what that looked like. And I
was thinking about what we were, you know, talking about
them going away and wanting.
Speaker 6 (51:06):
That whiff of them. And he gets me.
Speaker 7 (51:09):
Now when we were leaving to come back to Sydney,
you know, we were at the airport and you know,
I look at him and you know, give the great
big hug, and I'm like trying to hold it together.
And then you know, he hugs my husband and then
he looks me at me and he goes, you get
one more and gives me another one, and it just,
you know, it's it's everything I need. And and so
(51:31):
it's it's they do come back, and they come back
as these amazing human beings that you've raised, and it's
it is a different relationship. It is a I love
I love my sons, and I love that they are
very different from each other, just kind of like Liam
and Jack are, and that they are creating these very different,
(51:52):
very amazing lives for themselves. And yeah, it's it's pretty cool.
And and and as you said, I'm now a grandma
and I get to go and is the grand is
that your Sydney son or my Sydney son? So I yeah,
so he's he's local. So I get to go and
and take care of him. And and you know a
little Logan and he's like a year and a half now,
and he's just a bundle of joy.
Speaker 6 (52:13):
He just is is.
Speaker 7 (52:15):
I did not think I could lose my mind again
like this, and I.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Have everybody, says Mia, who obviously we're exactly the same age.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
But I had my kids late in burn of Commons, and.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
So she's granny now my kids are still kids, and
she's just besotted.
Speaker 6 (52:33):
That's exactly the word a lot of us used.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
To talk about.
Speaker 5 (52:37):
I think it's when you become a grandparent when your
kids are older, you think, was I present enough? Because
when you're in the midst of it, and you're raising
a child and you're trying to keep them alive and
stop them putting a cigarette butt in their mouths that
they found at the beach, and all of that stuff.
You don't have time to just look at them and breathe.
And as grand and as a parent of teenage, you think,
(52:59):
why didn't I.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
Make more of those years when I held their hands?
Speaker 5 (53:01):
And when I go to the South Coast, I think, oh,
we couldn't have afforded to buy a holiday house then,
and they had weekend football. But I thought, well, I
wish I could. I wish I had one day where
there were toddlers again and I hold their lands. It
makes you want to cry. But it's only when you
get older and become like a grandparent you can actually
give the time to just seeing and being and smelling
(53:24):
without the anxiety of it. So we judge ourselves, I think,
for not being present enough, but how could we be?
Speaker 6 (53:32):
But it's the I was going.
Speaker 7 (53:35):
I was building forts the other day with with little Logan,
and you know, he was giggling, I was giggling and
I and I just stopped in the middle of it
and just kind of recognized this is this is that
moment where I get to just spend it and and
I don't have to worry about, you know, washing his
clothes or doing anything. I just get to go and
(53:56):
spend some time with him.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Recognizing those moments is one of the gifts of being
a bit older and wiser, I think, don't you. I
heard you say this, Amanda on your show when you're
talking about the holiday I've just taken with your boys.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
You're getting drunk with them in a bar and.
Speaker 4 (54:11):
Dreadful thing to do.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
And he was, and he said it was like this
bubble you knew, you knew in the moment, like this
is one of those times.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
Yes, And I think that's really what life is, and
that's all we're entitled to, that whole. Anita and I
talk a lot about this of the nature of happiness
and putting up signs saying happiness in your house and
all of that, and putting out manifestations. It's not the
human condition to be happy all the time, but to
(54:41):
recognize them when they come along is the gift.
Speaker 7 (54:43):
I think, and enjoy you just you can. You can
try to grasp it, but it's so ephemeral. It's just
it comes and it goes whenever it wants.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
So I'm sure that look, I'm going to try and
land the plane really neatly here regard looking at the dismountain,
because I'm going to say that I'm sure that the
two of you get a lot of those happiness bubble
moments together, right Like you a very good friend, someone
who will figuratively and literally hold your hand through all
(55:12):
the shit and all the happy moments is a very
special thing to have, right So I'm sure you too
sometimes are in that bubble too.
Speaker 7 (55:20):
Absolutely, And I think that's why we have the glimmers
instead of the triggers.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
I need to talk to you about the glimmers because
I love that part of your show.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
You end it with a glimmer.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
And I have a very good friend who has been
going through some very difficult health stuff, and we don't
live in the same place, and every day we send
each other a photograph glimmer of the one thing in
our day that made us I love like happy. So
it might be a particularly good cup of tea, or
it might be an amazing thing that happened at work,
or it might be a flower.
Speaker 6 (55:50):
Or the kid I had a good hair day.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
A glimmer a day, I believe keeps.
Speaker 4 (55:56):
It's funny how hard I find it to find them.
Speaker 5 (55:59):
My natural humor goes to not sarcasm, but finding something
like if something terrible happens to turn it into a joke.
But I find it hard to look for the natural
happiness in things, even though I think, as you said,
a needier. I think I'm an optimistic person, but I
sometimes have to turn to a caustic joke into something uplifting,
(56:23):
which isn't my nature.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
Well that's but also the humor is a survival I
mean if you can't laugh, and also that's something you
can also do with someone you're really intimate with, is
laugh about the difficult health things or the things that
don't on your house that you couldn't joke with.
Speaker 1 (56:39):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (56:39):
Absolutely absolutely, that is my complete survival mechanism. And I've
talked that to my children, particularly my younger son when
things are going skew with because he wants to do
a bit of stand up. I said, just store it up,
to turn it into a joke before anyone else can.
That's kind of save yourself. Is kind of the lesson
I've told him along the way, is make you make
(57:01):
the joke about yourself before anyone else can.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
Well, thank you so much for what my pleasure sharing,
letting me be the third wheel in this please.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
I've kind of enjoyed Algogo mobile.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Okay, so I didn't quite make myself the third wheel
in that glorious friendship duo, but you can tell how
hard I tried. I was really angling from an invite
to dinner. It was a bit embarrassing for everyone, really,
but I just loved that conversation. And if you have
a friendship like Amanda and Anita's, send this episode to
your best friend. Tell them that you love them, and
tell them that they're a scrag. And if you want
(57:46):
to hear more from these two together, go and check
out Double a Chattery. That's their podcast and there's a
link to it in the show notes. And Amandra is
hosting a new TV show on the ABC about families.
It's called the Role of a Lifetime and you can
have a nose.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
At that too.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
And if you're just discovering mid thanks to Amanda and Anita, welcome.
If you want to hear more conversations that will lift
you up rather than push you down, may I recommend
you scroll back in our feed to hear Casey Chambers
talking about keeping her dickhead list, Bruna Papenrea on ambition,
Gina Chick on truth and one of my all time
(58:20):
favorites Virginia Trioli on Small Joys, which we all need lots.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Of right now.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
A massive thanks to our mid team, our executive producer
I am A Brown, our senior producer Grace ruverre our
producer Charlie Blackman, and we've had audio production from Jacob Round.
They are all such talented people who help us bring
you your show. And if you haven't had enough of
me yet, I can't imagine that. Follow me on Instagram,
(58:48):
or sign up for my newsletter, or listen to me
and my great mates Mia Friedman and Jesse Stevens talk
about fifteen thousand times a week on Mom and Me
Are Out Loud. Is that an exaggeration maybe? But links
to all that are in our show notes and I'll
see you back here next week.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Bye,
You're listening to another Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges the
traditional owners of the land. We have recorded this podcast
on the Gadigul people of the Eura Nation. We pay
our respects to their elders past and present and extend
that respect to all Aboriginal and torrestrained islander cultures.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hi, it's hollywait right here.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm an author and a podcaster and I host the
show Mid. Maybe you listen, maybe you don't, but it's
a show full of the grown up conversations women crave
and deserve. And this summer we're curating your restart playlist
to bring you our admissible episodes. We're filling your playlist
full of our favorite MID episodes here into your restart
(01:04):
feed and they are full of frank wisdom from big
names who are all in their second acts and they're
sharing everything they've learned. It's the perfect listening to reflect
on twenty twenty five and get ready for the year ahead.
And if you're looking for more to listen to, every
MoMA Mere podcast is curating your summer listening right across
the network. From pop culture to beauty to powerful interviews,
(01:26):
there's something for everyone. There's a link in the show notes.
I met my soulmate when I was eleven. The way
I remember it is that our respective mothers banned us
from going to some party or other, and instead it
was suggested that we have a sleepover together.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
We were furious.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Forty two years later and any time I get to
have a sleepover with my best and oldest friend Lindsey,
I will take it. It doesn't happen often because we live
on opposite sides of the world. When I was twenty three,
Lindsay was at London's Heathrow Airport to wave me off
as I traveled to Australia for a year long traveling adventure.
(02:10):
We cried and we cried, and that year has turned
into thirty thirty years. And yet if we get the
opportunity to spend even a few days together anywhere in
the world, those days are worth years, and we still
cry at airports. I also, as a fifty three year
(02:32):
old woman, still have regular sleepovers with another great maid
of mine, Penny, my treasure weekends away with a pick
and mix bag of my closest friends. I have mates
I message daily and beloved ones I don't speak to
for months I have new friends I already can't imagine
life without, and friends I share professional passions with to
whom I owe a great deal. I'm bragging now, and
(02:54):
you know it. Because friendship, if you're lucky enough to
have it in your life, is the greatest privilege of
all and the thing that makes an enormous difference to
our happiness and our well being. And one of the
profound joys of getting older is getting to write new
pages into your friendship histories. The landmark birthdays, the losses,
(03:16):
and the struggles, and the splits and the bad days
all scroll out cross pages that bound together tell us
everything about ourselves and each other. I also have ex friends.
You probably do too, relationships that ended mid sentence, leaving
unsatisfying blank pages, and I've mourned them like old lovers,
(03:39):
and I've wrestled with how to heal rifts may be
left too long to revive because friends are the loves
of our lives. As the iconic, aspirational, sometimes toxic Carrie
Bradshaw's Girl Gang told us back when we were young,
and in the manner of loves of our lives, they
run the gammert of being the best and worst of us.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
They lift you higher, and.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
They break your fucking heart, and respect.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Must be paid.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Here's a raised, steaming tea mug to the friend you
can itch your hormone patch in front of.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Who will walk.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Beside you in your stupid weighted vest, who will congratulate
you for your teeny weeny tomato harvest and agree that
your partner is a dickhead today and a zero tomorrow.
Who sees you through your job, through your children, through
what your body's doing today. Who knows your mum's not
been well. Who knows when your next appointment is. Who
knows when to ask if you're okay and when to
(04:33):
shut the hell up? Who drops the meme of your
dreams in the group chat on a bad day, and
will sing in the car with you at the top
of your terrible voices when life feels right. The friends
who know the backstory, who indulge your tantrums just enough.
To the deep grown up friendships and the ones forged
over silly shared enthusiasms. To the ones who live next
(04:54):
door and the ones on the other side of the world,
and the ones who aren't here anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Soul mates. All Hello, I'm Holly.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Wainwright and I am Mid Midlife, mid Family, mid Midlife
Crisis number eight.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
We've been away for a while, and now we're back.
This is season four.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Of mid, the show for gen X women who are
anything but, And over the next eight episodes, I'm going
to be talking to grown up women, some of whom
you know, some you'll be meeting for the first time,
who have great stories and spot on insights into the
things that make a life. I always say we've got
no time or tolerance for small talk by the time
we get here, but that doesn't mean everything is heavy,
(05:39):
quite the opposite. I know that right now I'm searching
for conversations that cheer me, that soothe me, that make
me laugh, make me hopeful, distract me from the enormous
and tiny challenges that we're all wading through every day
in our real lives and out in the big scary world.
Some of the conversations we've got for you here are
about things like shamefree sex and falling in love again
(06:03):
after a big split, about reinvention after a massive career crash,
about caring for our aging parents, and about hair and
a lot more too. So I hope you're going to
Love season four. But today I'm having a conversation about
something I've been dying to talk about with people I've
been dying to talk to. I think you probably all
(06:25):
know who Amanda Keller is. I'll tell you really quickly
just in case, that she's an accomplished and experienced media everything.
She's a TV host and an award winning rating topping
breakfast radio legend. But I'm going to stop talking because
what I've got Amanda to come in and tell us
about was none of that, really, even though we obviously
go there a little bit. I invited her and her
(06:46):
best friend to come in and talk about friendship. The
person sitting beside Amanda in this conversation is her equally
accomplished and impressive best friend, Anita McGregor. The two make
their own podcasts together, which you'll hear about, obviously, but
I predict that five minutes into this you'll be as
obsessed with Anita as I am, and with their friendship.
(07:09):
And now I really am going to stop talking, because
the first thing I asked Amanda and Nita to do
was to introduce each other through a best friend's eyes.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
To you, Yes, Gregor, by profession, is a forensic psychologist.
I only mentioned the profession is because it gives her
an insight into society that many of us wouldn't normally have,
and you do it with such kindness. I'm always amazed
at the respect you give your clients. These are people
(07:39):
who are before the courts, people who have transgressed, people
who might be major sex offenders, people who are living
really tough lives.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
And the delicacy with.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Which you treat them and the respect you give them
and their place in society, I find is a very
refreshing take. So that's why you're a very interesting person
to have in the room to reflect on anyone talking
about society, life, rules, justice.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
You're a great calming voice.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
And she's a scragg.
Speaker 6 (08:12):
Favorite.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
The pressure is on them.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Something nice about.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
That wasn't what was in my.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
This is my friend Amanda Keller, who, gosh, I would
imagine everyone in Australia knows of you that you are
a radio broadcaster, you are a TV star. You are,
but you are also more than that. You are a wife,
you are a mother, You are a great friend, an
(08:42):
intrepid walker with me. You are all those things and
the thing that I think That is the most amazing
quality of you is that when people ask you know,
oh you know Amanda Keller, you know what she like?
And I think my response is generally, you know how
(09:02):
kind and generous she seems, you know, on the air,
on the TV. That's exactly what you get. She is
kind and she is generous and I love her.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Oh lovely.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
And she didn't use the wood, not even once. Beautiful
and Nada. You're from Canada, I am. And you met
Amanda quite early in your time in Australia, within about
a month.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Can you tell me how we met? Story?
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Oh, so we meet cute, I meet cute. Yes, so
we had moved here. It was supposed to be like
a two year adventure. My husband had been offered a
contract to work and I thought, oh, it's going to
be just such a fun thing. I didn't know a soul.
I'd never been here, and we had rented a place
(09:51):
in Coujie at the recommendation of one of my husband's workmates,
and we had just got all the shipment in. I
was exhausted and I went for a massage with a
friend of ours, Jackie Racist, and she said, oh, you're
new here. Why don't you come There's a Dancing with
the Stars on which I didn't know. I had no
(10:11):
idea what the show was. And my friend Amanda is
dancing in it. Why don't you come over and watch this?
And I thought this is where weird? But I went
and I watched.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Because you didn't know Jackie either.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
I don't know how Jackie you had to step over
the friendship divide with her to beginning.
Speaker 7 (10:27):
Yes, absolutely, And so saw you on Dancing with the Stars.
Had no idea, and then you invited us out to
it was a charity thing, and I went out and
met you there and all these people were pointing and going,
that's Amanda Keller.
Speaker 6 (10:42):
I had no idea.
Speaker 7 (10:44):
And then, you know, so we just kind of got
to know each other that way, with me just being
completely naive to you know, the world of Amanda Keller,
and which was really actually kind of a nice way
to do it, because I, you know, I think I
would have probably been intimidated or weirded out or something,
(11:04):
and I just wasn't.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
And so yeah, and then we started.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Started dating friendship. Dating friendship.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
When you're new in a new country, you have some
friendship vacancies that need filling.
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Oh, it's it's a scary thing. This is on the
one hand, there's just this I can be whoever I want.
But on the other hand, it's like nobody knows. Like
those friendships that you have with people that you've known
since you've been kids, or university or kids, you know,
when you've had kids, and there's this kind of shorthand
(11:38):
that you have as a friend. And I didn't have
any of that. So there it was a double edged
sword for for quite a while.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
It's like nobody knows me, and it's like nobody knows me,
but Amanda, you presumably didn't necessarily have very many vacancies.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
How did Anita get.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Question's got an enormous chick.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
I'm for assistance.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
I just think there was some hugely common ground in
our natures. Maybe because I don't actually know how to
answer that question. We would start to go for walks
as a group, but as a group we would socialized,
and then you and I kind of splinted off at
some point and we'd go for weekly walks and just talk.
(12:32):
And I don't know how to be more specific than that.
It kind of just evolved really that it wasn't like
we were starstruck with each other. When we saw each
other and fell in love. It just evolved. And often
in those big groups you form your little factions within them.
Factions is a harsh word, but your little friendship groups
within them. And we kind of splint it off and
made one of those a little satellite.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And was there a moment when you kind of went, oh,
we're definitely going to be friends or was it just
that slow burn? Oh I'm gonna I need to call Anita.
I want to tell Anita that like that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (13:04):
I really think it was a slow burn.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
I think so too.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
And it's interesting how much when people meet Anita as
a psychologist. Sure I'm speaking for you, but I reckon you.
Probably a seek of people saying, don't analyze me, thinking
that that's what she'll do. I laugh when I hear that,
But at the same time, I find it so interesting
that I blab about every single thing to you in
my life and you answer with friendship, never with I
(13:31):
never feel your sounds terrible, never being professional your.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
Sometimes I really am.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
There's never a you know what you should do, there's
never any of I never think, oh, that's right, you're
a psychologist. I never ever feel that we meet as friends,
and I don't know how you separate the two.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
I don't know how you do that.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
I you know, I think for the most part the
it well, because I've been a psychologist for over thirty years,
like half my life, more than half my life, that.
Speaker 6 (14:05):
It's you know, just the.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
That main idea about I'm going to listen is, you know,
that's kind of my life as a psychologist, but it's
also my life as a friend. And I, you know,
I don't give advice to my clients either really so
or it feels pretty comfortable in doing that.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I think some people would be really jealous that you're
best friends are psychologists, because you would imagine that you'd
be like, you know, we all go through things, particularly
midlife can get very rolling, chustry, and you're like free therapy.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
But it's interesting, it never feels like therapy.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
But though maybe subconsciously, and I don't know if it's
subconscious for you, but maybe you're like a border Collie
like my dog that kind of just subtly hurts me somewhere.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Yeah, and I'm not even aware of it.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I was listening to your show recently to double a chattery.
And I think, Amanda, you were talking about and I've
been doing this too, reframing I have to with I
get to gratitude. And I was listening to your conversation
and if I was in your shoes, Amanda would have
been looking for approval from Anita on that like that.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
She goes, that's very good.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
I know.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
I find myself saying to her, I did this incredible
thing magazine, like I must tell you the most basic
psychological things I've read and you and like, I've been
seeing this incredible person. She said, I should try this
and you must go God.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
But you were great, Anita, because you said something like
and how's it going for you? Like, which is a
therapistic thing to say in a way, but but exactly
what you need and you are like, it's helping, it's helping.
So I imagine that that is it's not a deliberate dynamic,
but it must be great.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
But I never feel self conscious saying to Anita the dumbest,
most basic way I cope with anything, And you never
make me feel judged, and sometimes like it's only now
talking to you, Holly, I think, yeah, actually, how embarrassing
that I've said to Anita, here's an interesting psychology you
probably haven't heard of.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Be grateful.
Speaker 7 (16:10):
Apparently, it's really let me introduce you to Anita for
an excellent concept.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
Let's try that.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Well, at the risk of doing the same thing to
it now. I was going to say that there's a
lot of studies out there that friendship is absolutely crucial
to our mental health, right and connection, And there's a
lot of sort of handringing about that. Maybe as a community,
as a world, we're getting less connected and we're finding
friendships harder because we fear the judgment that comes with it,
(16:38):
or we're not sure how to connect, or we're just
not in the same physical spaces to connect. I mean,
what do you inter One of the things that mid
listeners tell me all the time is it's their girlfriends
often I mean their friends, but their girlfriends often that
save them, that get them through the hard times. Do
you think that we're in a crisis of connection? And
are we right to think that our friendships are the
(16:59):
things that keep us saying.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
There's a big part of me that would just like
to answer, yes, it's a crisis. We need you know,
we've really disconnected and all that. But I was actually
just recently reading some research that really delighted me that
was talking about It was mostly about adolescent mental health,
but what they were talking about is that often we're
looking about like how many friends do we have? And
(17:21):
you know, but the research actually is much more supportive
of having one or two really good friends, and because
once you get into a bigger like any more than
three or four and we've all been there where you
get into a bigger friendship group and it does split
into like not I know you were saying factions, and
(17:42):
sometimes it.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
Is, but it's you know, it's like she likes.
Speaker 7 (17:45):
Me better, and you know, you've get all the way
I wasn't in on that wall. Yeah yeah, or you
know they've they've organized to do something and I'm not there,
And especially with social media, that can be so hurtful.
So I actually was really encouraged by the idea that, yes,
there is a disconnection, and yet the answer isn't I
(18:07):
need one hundred friends and I need to be out
and doing things every night. The idea, sometimes, I think,
is more about finding those those opportunities to get deeper
with somebody, to be a little bit vulnerable with some
and to see whether you can create that friendship you know,
like you know, sometimes it's not you know, just falling
in love in a friendship, but it's sometimes it is
(18:28):
that slow burn. And you know, there's there's also riches
that research that says you need to spend about one
thousand hours with somebody to actually create that depth, that
that history with each other.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
It's one thousand dollars a lot puts. What's that in
a context of a week or a year. I can't
do the mets on it.
Speaker 7 (18:45):
I don't know, And I mean I don't know how
they count that. I mean, it's it is it just
a text to each other?
Speaker 6 (18:49):
Does that count?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
But?
Speaker 7 (18:51):
I mean I think that we can connect in a
lot of different ways now.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Because people worry about their friendship connections faltering as life changes. Right,
so you two have been friends for the best part
of two decades. Right, busy people, big jobs, in different ways.
How practically do you stay connected to your friends? Is
like little kids to big kids, Career shifts, geographical moves
(19:14):
like are you schedule people?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Are you like it's every Wednesday? I mean, how do you.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Do It's interesting?
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Before I get to how we do it, I often
feel anxiety around the fact I'm not very good at
it with a lot of people and a text may
come up let's get together, and I have a panic
over it. I never do that with you, Anita, and
there are some friends where you go I'll get to
you and I can get to you, or let's put
in the diary for the future. I don't have time
(19:42):
right now that can fill me with anxiety, so I
can limit my work. But sometimes it's the social stuff
that I find I'm not very good at limiting, and
that makes me panic.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I feel the same way.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
And one of the reasons why we bought a place
on the South Coast was so that I could say
I'm not here this week because I will fill every
gap if people ask me to, whether I want to
or not.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Do you fill the gaps because you feel anxious to
have the space or do you feel gaps as a people?
Speaker 5 (20:11):
Please fill the ga people please? And not wanting to
let people down. And they're my friends and I haven't
seen them for a while. That's what friends do.
Speaker 7 (20:17):
But you have gotten much better, or at least with me,
i'd saying no of you know, kind of saying I
don't want to do this now or I can't do this,
or I don't have the energy, or those kinds of
which is you know, I think a lovely thing that
friends can do with each other. But we and we're
not exactly schedule people, but other than we have a
(20:40):
standing date at least once on the weekend to go
for a walk when we're in town.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
And now that you've moved further away, that now involves
a car. We used to just meet down at the
beach and go for a walk, so one of us
has to get up half an hour earlier and be
ready earlier. The first time I went to Anita's new
place with my dog.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I was very rude of her to move, and I
could feel it. An you moved like a few sos
you've moved across town.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Yeah, it's probably about half an hour away. Twenty minutes.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Twenty minutes.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Well, my dog must have taken it very personally, because
when you went to Anita's new place, she just had
the carpets. Claimed Minnie has never done this before. She
went in and did a giant wheel on their new car.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
Out it was.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
It was awful, awful.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
But I find also physically, as things get harder for me,
I've had two hit replacements and I've got a writis
in my back.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
We all do it some, We've all got stuff.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
But there's some days we'll say to Anita, I was
filming this week or whatever it is, and I stood
up all week. I'm just too sort of go for
a walk. So I'm being more diligent with myself in
protecting myself. But I know I can say that to you,
and with other people I may not. I know I
can say to you, sorry about that. I just feel
crap today.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Do you think it's the mark of good friendship? I
think I heard a conversation that you were where you
were talking about how a good friendship is someone can
come over to your house and you don't feel like
you have to tidy, you know, you have to feel
like you have to tidy the counters or whatever. I'm
not a natural hostess. It sends me into a panic
if somebody is coming to my house. But is it
also a sign of good friendship that when you do
(22:09):
say I just don't have the energy or there's just
too many other demands that they're not going to get
offended by that.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Absolutely, And I'm trying to push through worrying about that
that this is what I have, This is what I
have to do to survive today. Not survive that's overly dramatic,
but you know I work hard all week as many
of us do, stuff and stuff and stuff, and you
get to the weekend and think, I just don't have
anyemy to tack it up earlier this morning.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
And go for a walk.
Speaker 6 (22:34):
You're doing a very good job at ignoring my tears
that you know.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
What's she doing.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
She's put on the water works, hasn't she She's going
with the waterworks. But also what I love about our
friendship is that you mentioned before about being vulnerable and eata.
You can bitch and moan about your husband, about your parents,
about you, anything, and it's such a safe space that
you know that that isn't the mark of that relationship
(23:01):
that you're having. That's just how you're feeling Today's like
you could never tell your mum how you if you
had a fight with your boyfriend or your husband, because
they would never get over it, they'd mark them forever.
Whereas I feel quite safe sharing that stuff with you.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
Well, we have I love Early in our friendship. I
think that remember we had a conversation that one of
us was saying something about our husband, and you know,
and and we said, let's recognize that I might like
if it was me, I might be mad at Emmett
right now. And you get to hear this, but you
don't get to hear us make up. You don't get
(23:37):
to hear the conversation that happens after when we resolve things.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
You don't get to hear any of that.
Speaker 7 (23:42):
So you know, you need that cognitive process to kind
of say I get that, you know, I might be
mad at Emmet today, but you know we have a
long term marriage and so we're going to get through it.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
And that's the stuff you never see in popular culture.
You never see the boring bits in the middle where
things get resolved, because that's not interesting to anybody.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's true, I often wonder this. As we get older
and wiser, are lots of things happen. Do you think friends,
good friends call each other out when they're being unreasonable,
you know, maybe making choices that aren't good for them,
Or do you think that good friends are always the
supportive rock. That's what I'm always wrestling with is whether
(24:27):
you you know that where people say the people closer
to you should be the ones you say you need
to stop doing that thing, or whether they're the ones
who are the understanding ones.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
What do you think?
Speaker 5 (24:38):
I'm highly sensitive, and so I judge the messenger very harshly.
And even though in an ideal world you say yes,
you're you know, practically you want your friends to tell
you that, I don't think I want to hear it.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
How do you feel?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, like you know that friend And I'm not saying
any wanted this, but the friend who is always complaining
about their husband or their job or whatever it is,
or you know, something in their lifestyle. Always at what
point do good friends say?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Hey?
Speaker 6 (25:09):
I think it depends on the friendship.
Speaker 7 (25:11):
Like, like you and I have had that conversation that
you know, if I looked really terrible in an outfit,
you wouldn't.
Speaker 6 (25:18):
Tell me that.
Speaker 7 (25:19):
I would never tell you that, ever, even though I'd
want to hear it, Like I'm really big on feedback,
and so I I gubt that that would make you
feel uncomfortable, even though I'd like to hear it, and so,
and I recognize that you are sensitive, and so.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
All my outfits terrible. It's all I've heard in this
entire conversation.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
She's mean to talk to you about it.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
We've had this. We actually have had this conversation.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I wrote a book a number of years ago and
Anita wanted to read it, and I said, oh, here
it is, just thinking, I'm just passing it over. And
she said, how would you how do you take feedback feedback?
Speaker 7 (25:56):
Because I didn't know, Like, I was like, you're an
educatorn't me. I mean, that's my that's my life, you know,
teaching students and stuff and giving feedback. So I'm I'm
really like, I was like, do you do you? And
then and it was like hm, and so we just
that's a great book, Amanda.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I'm like, mate, your job is to tell me everything
I do is great, because there are plenty of other
people in my life.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
You're going to tell me that it's not.
Speaker 7 (26:25):
But I have friendships where I could say that too,
and I have colleagues that I you know, that's the
basis of our work relationship where we give each other
really strong feedback, and you know, certainly with my supervisors
and that kind of stuff. So there, I think it
depends on the friendship and it depends on the topic
(26:45):
because there may be topics where you know, I may
think that I don't know, like I mean, if I
thought that you were being really overreacting to something.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
Actually we had this conversation recently. Is that I was
overreacting to something. I was cranky about about ten things.
And you showed me a clip of a woman who
had a nail in a head and she was talking
to her husband and she was and she was saying,
I just don't feel right.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
You're not supporting me enough.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
And he's trying to say, we've got a nail in
your head and she said, no, no, no, it's this
and he said, no, you've got a nail in your
head and fine, and he says, oh, sweetheart, I hear
what you're saying. You're not feeling go just thank you.
And I've been thinking about that a lot, because you
probably observed me. My husband's done well, and so I'm
looking at the world through a filter, and you were saying,
(27:39):
you know, you're seeing all this with a nail.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
In your head.
Speaker 5 (27:43):
I didn't know what to do about the nail, but
I thought, yes, but I am seeing the world. I
do have a nail in my head. So I didn't
know how to process the fact that I do have a.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Nail in my head.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
But that's one of the only times where I thought
you're trying to tell me something here. I'm not sure
exactly what it is, because I know that I know
that I'm having a negative moment or a depressive moment
or an angry moment where I'm seeing everything through that
veil and I'm aware of it. But on the other hand,
I think, well, here's why, because some things.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Came pretty shit and your natural status to be optimistic
and see things, you know, very positively. I cannot remember
what was going through my head at the time I
showed it. You know that it was probably something that
I had showed a class or something. I probably was
thinking about how hard you were seeing the world.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
At the time.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It's interesting because also you would have heard the term
a million times about toxic positivity, where we're encouraged by
pop culture and you know, sort of leaking for one
of a better term, therapy speaking too everyday life to
put a positive spin on everything and to see everything
as a lesson. And you know what am I learning
from this today? And I'm sure this you know, whereas
(28:59):
sometimes things are just terrible shit and.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You need to sit in the shammer and oil into
your own head.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, absolutely, and just sit and feel the nail. Just
step field.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
But it did give me a really good perspective.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
I just thought, yes, I am being this today and
I probably won't be this tomorrow, but I'm seeing a
whole lot of good things. It was because I'm talking
about how people were trying to help and I was
getting cranky at everything.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I think that was it. I just needed a shift
in perspective.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
More of my conversation with best friends Amanda Keller and
Anita McGregor after this short break stay with us.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
We've touched on.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
A couple of these in this conversation, I think, but
in which ways are you similar?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
In which ways are you different?
Speaker 3 (29:39):
So we've acknowledged here that Amanda is the sensitive one,
and you would be more straight talking if she wasn't
such a snowflakes.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
Interestingly, I have a job where I get rated and
judged by ratings and constant I don't read a lot
of social media feedback because I just wouldn't be able
to handle it. So ironically, in my work life it's
constant judgment and constant feedback and constant feedback.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I think that's probably why in your personal life you're
also a bit like that.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Yeah, that's try to put the blinkers on. How are
we similar, Anita, let's ask for grown up?
Speaker 7 (30:20):
You know, it is interesting that that, you know, when
we go to your place on the South coast and
we spend a weekend together, we will spend.
Speaker 6 (30:29):
Days you know, what are we going to eat? What
are we going to do?
Speaker 7 (30:32):
And we generally end up eating you know, sardines on toast,
and we end up reading books together or playing dominoes
when we can, and you know, so it's the similarities
are that that. It's a funny thing to say because
I tend to get up at about you get up
at what four for work? Yeah, and I usually get
up at about four thirty just because that's when my
(30:54):
you know, my brain starts turning on. And so it's
I think that because we're both mourning people and we
both have very similar kind of rhythms about how our
lives and our work, you know, just go.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
I think that's right. And we do kitchen time very
well together. Yeah, which I think is a big part
of a great friendship is that we we plan what
are we going to eat when are doing this and
not being this? And we chop chop chop, and I'm
going to put this on and we pot very well
together and then we sit down and read very well
together comfortably.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
You can't do that with everybody, now.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You can't. You can't do that with that.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
You can't have that away time where you're not doing,
doing doing all the time. Is it hard to have
a friend who's in the public eye, Anita, a best
friend who's in the public eye, And do you feel
defensive of her? And when there's invasions of your privacy?
And do you not talk about work?
Speaker 6 (31:46):
I am protective of you in that I don't.
Speaker 7 (31:52):
I don't often like because you know, by my nature,
I'm quite private, you know, part of it's just who
I am, but it's part of it has been my
profession as well, and so I recognize the need for
some sense of privacy. So I'm protective of that. I
don't tell a lot of people that we're friends. I mean,
(32:12):
it's kind of hard not to.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Now now you've got public that we're going.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
To Esky podcast.
Speaker 6 (32:18):
It is, Yeah, So.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
It might manifest itself strangely. For example, when we went
to see Kat Stevens and this guy us Anita to
take a photo of me and him, and then he
came back after interval and said, well, I've been looking
for you.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
That was a terrible closure, and.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
I thought sorry for Anita, because I'm like, she hasn't
asked to be dragged into this.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
It was hilarious. So I took a picture on the
top of his head.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Like, you totally asked for.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Talking about the podcast, because your conversation, your chemistry on
that is so brilliant, and as you you're I'm sure
you had an instinct, Amanda, because you knew that Anita's,
as you said in her introduction, just such an interesting
thinker in terms of what you talk about. So you
must have been like, this is going to be good.
But was it also just an excuse to spend more
(33:13):
time together.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
Oh, it absolutely was. It was all of those things.
But we'd often talk about things on the walk. I
think other people might like to be part of this
conversation too, because I'd come from things from one perspective
and Anita would come from a completely different perspective. I
thought that would be an interesting thing for people to hear,
because you know, a million people have podcasts and have
(33:38):
opinions and have things to say. But I thought I
haven't heard somebody like Anita.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Do you disagree very much in terms of on issues
and things that are happening in the world, because so
on Mama, MI are out loud, which I obviously do
with two of my good friends. But we do disagree,
and people often say that must be really hard. And
I don't know if this is true or not. You
probably do know, Ana, and it's true or not. But
(34:05):
somebody said, if you can disagree on the details, but
if your values are shared, it's easier.
Speaker 7 (34:11):
I think our values are definitely shared. I don't think
that we've ever had any bigger disagreements. We tend to,
you know, what I find is really interesting is that
Amanda has been my educator in you know, political things,
Australian history that you know, the you know who's you know,
(34:33):
what's happened in.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
Ours history of Peter Andre, that kind of stuff, that
kind of stuff, the really important stuff.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
That culture yeah yeah, but yeah, pop culture, but also
kind of just historical things. And so we tend You're right,
we tend to come at things from different angles. But
but I think under the underlying now is that similarity
and values.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
We did a podcast the week of the terrible Bondo stabbings,
and I was so grateful to have somebody like Anita
to give a perspective on this in that the media
was filled with stories about we're not doing enough for
the victims, and it's so true, but you came at
it from a different perspective, which was you work every
day with the perpetrators, and we need to fix the
(35:18):
problem upstream. We need to invest in the betrayers. And
people didn't want to hear about They didn't want him
to be part of the conversation. They didn't want any
of that kind of discussed. And it's true that our
sympathies were downstream, but we were never going to fix
it until we looked upstream. You spoke with such sympathy
and clarity about the kind of people that are upstream
(35:40):
and why we need to help them.
Speaker 6 (35:42):
Hmmm.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
So yeah, but I think that that again your compassion
for you know, your broad audience, like it's you know,
you were asking before about is it tough to have
you know, somebody who's in the public eye as a friend.
Speaker 6 (35:56):
But you know, one of the things.
Speaker 7 (35:57):
That the toughest part is that when you know, we'll
be out at an event and people stop Amanda, you know,
and we'll sometimes be in the middle of a conversation,
but you are often always so kind and willing, and
you know, so you come from a position of compassion
as well, that you you recognize that it is you know,
(36:20):
the people who listen to you deserve some of your time.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Well, it's a privilege to be called somebody's friend, that
they feel they know you and worry about you and
think about you and care about you and want to
come up and say hello.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
I see.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
That is a privilege.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I want to ask you both because obviously you have
started the podcast, you both have big careers. Really, I
want to know how you're just in terms of general wisdom,
how your attitude to work and ambition is at this
point in your lives, because you've made a decision to
start this new project, which requires commitment, promotion, all of
(36:58):
those things.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
It's funny that I've just come back onto the radio
that were in the second week. Part of me goes,
oh god, that's right, I'm sixty three this year. Part
of me thinks this schedule is hard but I thought
that I I don't know what I pictured when I
(37:21):
was younger, but I thought the dailiness of radio would
have worn me down by now. But it's hard with
my shifting fortunes at home in terms of my husband
not being well.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Is that I need. I now know somewhere to go
every day.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
I need an alarm clock to go off in the
morning and for me to go somewhere where I'm fully
engaged for a chunk of hours of the day, where
I laugh, I cry, I listen to other people's stories.
You scratch the surface and everybody has a story. I
think I've spoken about this about the word sounder, which
means the gradual realization that everybody is going through something,
(37:56):
something good, something sad, and I'm aware of that. With
a radio audience, they're having their best and their worst
days and you're not even aware of it, but you're
on the ride with them. And so I find being
there is a great equalizer for me. If I think
if I was just sitting at home, I would wallow.
So by the time in my life I thought I'd
be wrapping this up, I actually realized how much.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
I need it at the moment.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
That's really interesting because a large part of, you know,
our shifting perspectives is dealing with things that you didn't
think were going to happen. So, I mean, I'm sure
that when you were working in breakfast radio every day
when the boys were small, you have two sons, that
was a different kind of challenge, and you probably thought, well,
when they're older, it's all going to be easier and whatever.
And then life throws you a curveball in the form
(38:38):
of a health, yeah crisis, and work takes a different form.
Speaker 5 (38:42):
Again interesting, it kind of saves me, I think. But
An here and I often talk about this about and
we've got friends who are at the point of wondering
what retirement looks like and how we feel about that.
And it's that old trope of and I don't agree
with it, of you put too much stock in your job.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
That's not who people are.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
But I think there's a lot of pride in the
jobs that we do, and it's okay to be defined
by that to a certain extent. You know, you don't
have to go and pash a dolphin every day and
work one day a year to be a true person.
That's not where you necessarily find yourself, and I know
a lot of people they've retired and few why don't
(39:22):
I do it easy?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Ago?
Speaker 5 (39:23):
Because you don't know yourself. I love what I get
from the work I do.
Speaker 7 (39:27):
I love the idea that at my age, I'm still contributing,
and and in fact I have I think I have
a lot to contribute, and and it's I don't feel
as though I'm done, and I don't know what done
would look like. But when I think about all the
people that you know, we've talked, you know to some
(39:48):
of who have gone to you know, you know, that
retirement place, and that they're you know, and they're enjoying life,
and and that's awesome. I'm happy that they are doing
that and that they're finding that that part of their lives.
I just can't see myself not doing what I'm doing
right now. I can see, you know, somewhere in the distance,
(40:11):
that there will be something else, but I'm not quite
there yet.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
It's interesting because I'm not changing perspectives things. Do you
think that when you were younger, you thought, you know
how you were saying, Amanda, I thought breakfast radio would
have wore me down? Did you when you're twenty and
you think about forty, you're like, oh, you know, I'll
definitely be wanting to put my feet up or whatever,
and or it'll look like this and it'll feel like that.
And then you get there and you're like spring chicken,
and then and like you're you're saying, I'm not done.
(40:39):
Is that's really resonates because that's what I feel. I'm
fifty three, so but I'm like, I don't feel and
I still feel like I've got so much to learn
and give and do. I'm getting started, but it feels
sometimes like the wider world is like slow down, calm down,
back off.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
Yeah, well, I get a lot of that, why are
you still doing this? I get quite blatantly people saying,
oh my god, don't you want to give it up?
Because to other people, that early alarm clock, that daily
thing might seem like a chore. It doesn't feel like
that to me. It's a gift that I get to
share my perspective on whatever I feel like every day.
So I don't see it that way. When I was younger,
(41:21):
I pictured being sixty like being like that painting of
Whistler's mother, just you know, in a rocking chair or
wearing black it's all over because I didn't have role
models who were working women, let alone women who work
this long. So all of this is new, I think
for all of us. But I can see why in
the media, I'm probably the last of a certain dinosaur,
(41:41):
and I have no interest in reinventing. I don't give
a rats about starting a new project integrated into a
blah blah.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
And a blah blah.
Speaker 5 (41:51):
I'm happy to ride this wave that I'm on and
then when it's time, hopefully I can do a delicate dismount.
You can never you never assume that, either in the
media or in life. We're talking about that in terms
of your home life, but your professional life too. You
assume that there's a delicate dismount when you hit the shore.
But maybe you've put in a wave and you've got
sand through a gust and you just don't know what's there.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
But also you're really really good at what you do
because you've been doing it. It's like there's a bit
of a dismissal of experience that I feel is and
maybe because the way we see women, particularly women in
the public eye, but not only certainly a lot in
other fields too, are like, oh, do you really still
have something to offer. It's like, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
There's the word that's kind of rolling around my head
right now, and it feels uncomfortable in some ways. Is
like being a role model for being older and successful
and still you know, being able to contribute. And it's
you know, it's interesting because the students that I teach
now are often in their early twenties, early mid twenties,
(42:56):
and they, you know, I'm the age of some of
their parents and even some of their could it be
possible their grandparents, and you know, you kind of think
they're probably they have a picture in their head of
what an old person, what they are, what they can do.
(43:17):
And I don't mind that the students me cycling to
UNI or you know, to the clinic and you know,
coming in and teaching, and I like that maybe there
is an aspect where we can kind of break some
ideas about you know, what an older woman can be.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
And there was I think it was the West Australian
Premier at one point said we've cracked down on racism, sexism.
He said agism is the last big one and he
was just suggesting that let's look at the potency of
language around it, not just that dismissive yeah boomer stuff,
but also how people in the older generation think younger
people are. But it seems that people trying to re
(43:58):
enter the workforce and be validated is really hard as
you get older. Maybe is that evolutionary that at some
point you'd need you should be moving away for others?
Is there something maybe bigger in there?
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah, and maybe there's a panic that our generation's never
going to go.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
Yes, that's right, you're going to own all the big houses,
will never go.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
We're going to figure out how to live forever, like
die in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Yes, right, and we're never going anywhere.
Speaker 5 (44:28):
So maybe the younger generations have a right to be
anxious that the old we're still hanging around. When are
we going to move over and let someone else have
a crack at it.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
The rest of my conversation with Amanda Kella and Anita
McGregor best Friends, Colleagues, truth Tellers After the Break? Did
you have strong female friendship role modeled to you by
your own mothers?
Speaker 7 (44:56):
Do you think, oh, my mother's bridge Club, Absolutely, that
was you know, every I think it was every Tuesday
and they yeah, there was an and she had my
mom had a friend Eileen, who she talked to every morning.
You know, there was just that connection that it was
just checking in, how are you doing that kind of thing,
(45:19):
So yeah, I think it was. It was an important part,
especially since my mom, you know, after she got married,
didn't work after a while.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
So connection my mom had that with her sisters. She
was very close to her sisters.
Speaker 5 (45:33):
They all lived in different places around Australia, spoke constantly,
a very very tight unit, a very big clan of
a gaggle of them, and I felt we were the
only offshoot in Sydney. And there's just my brother and
I and very close to all our cousins for a
number of years, and since Mom passed away twenty years ago.
Now it's a shock for me to say that to
(45:54):
you them. I lost Mom twenty years ago. But the
women are the keepers of those sort of connections and
I've kind of lost track with cousins and things like
that because it was Mum that held all that together.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I'd love to hear you tell me a little bit
about what life's like with your adult children now. I
was listening to Double a Chattery the other day and
you were both talking about the summer hot well, not
summer holidays for you, Anita, because you went to Canada
where it sounded so never need to go there.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
In winter.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
I grew up in Manchester, eng when that was plenty
of coldenough for me and Amanda. You went away with
your boys who were not boys anymore but men.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
My children are teenagers.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
I'm seeing the pull away, the closed bedroom door, the
next phase of parenting. Me and Brent talk about it
all the time. Tell me the good things about the
kids being grown up.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
You're a grandma and needed.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
Well, I'm not yet because when I have you, when
you have your children at one hundred and fifty, y
does take a little bit longer. That I dreaded the
boys leaving home. But the dread was harder than the reality.
That's yes, because you live with the dread from the
minute they're born, and then when it actually happens, it's
almost like you've kind of cauterized the wound a little
(47:14):
bit and I found, actually I'm surviving.
Speaker 4 (47:16):
This is okay.
Speaker 5 (47:18):
I remember when both boys got and I'd be in
a restaurant and I turn behind me think it was
the way I think, Oh my God, that's liam so
that the physicality surprised me. And the way you express
your love for them is different. You don't hug them
as much, you know, when they're little and you hold
their hands. And suddenly, as a mom with a teenage boy,
how do you express that love?
Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's harder that I want you to touch them all
the time. It's so selfish of that, I know.
Speaker 5 (47:45):
And the grace with which you have to read the
mood and not grope them around the neck.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
And my daughter walks past me, now, just try to
get a whiff of her like ye, yes, because you.
Speaker 5 (47:57):
Don't want to be that needy parent. But I'm finding
now neither of my sons live at home. They've been
on various campuses and things. And because I get up
so early in the morning, them coming to live at
home again sort of, my younger son would get home
at two and I have to get up at four.
Speaker 4 (48:09):
Was all getting bit hard.
Speaker 5 (48:11):
But a valuable lesson I learned was with my younger
son that when he went moved on on campus, every
conversation I had with him was telling him, don't forget
to do this, You don't forget to do that. You
stuffed this up, you've got a blah blah blah. There
was an agenda for every conversation. I could tell because
my mum used to do that to me and it
was so hard to get hold of him. I've chosen
(48:33):
to have agender free conversations with him, and now he
calls me every day, as does my oldest son. They
both we all speak every day. But it's only when
I stopped telling Jack what to do and nagging him
about have you done it?
Speaker 4 (48:46):
Have you done it?
Speaker 3 (48:47):
That's interesting. So it was a very deliberate choice for
your part. I'm not going to be doing have you done?
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Have you thought about it?
Speaker 5 (48:54):
And sometimes I got to the end of the conversation
and I almost had to physically stitch my lips closed.
And then what I might do is just a quick
follow up text, don't forget to blah blah blah. But
after we'd had a nice conversation, you did.
Speaker 6 (49:06):
Such a good job, and that that.
Speaker 5 (49:07):
Was was It was very hard for me, But that's
a really good piece of advice. I've told the psychologist
all about it.
Speaker 4 (49:20):
I got a gold start.
Speaker 7 (49:21):
You did.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
That's hard, it's really but I can entirely see how
that because when I think about when we think about
our own relationships with our parents, perhaps and how freeing
it felt to not have that constant surveillance. Yeah, you want,
if you want to be letting out the rope and
for them to come back. It can't feel like they're
constantly just going to be going.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
You haven't got your hair? Yes, what when was the
last time you watched?
Speaker 4 (49:46):
Had you paid that parking five?
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Exactly?
Speaker 3 (49:48):
Tell me, Anita, how you're finding family life.
Speaker 7 (49:52):
My sons are both in their early thirties. One is
in Sydney here, the older one, and the younger one
is in Vancouver.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Did they both come with you when you okay?
Speaker 7 (50:01):
So they were they were fourteen fifteen, Yeah, there were
teenagers when we came over. And my older son has
stayed in Sydney, but my younger son moved to Barthurst
to go and do a degree at the same time.
Speaker 6 (50:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 5 (50:17):
He was he became sort of an emergency the paramedic
who now works in all kinds of tricky places.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
I took rather different rooks.
Speaker 5 (50:27):
Both very important life, an emergency with a time call
if anyone needs one.
Speaker 7 (50:35):
So yeah, so so, so my son went and my
younger one moved when he was eighteen to Bathurst and
then immediately after his degree moved to London and was
a paramedic there right through the pandemic, right through everything,
and then has just recently moved to Vancouver. And so
it's you know, he went away early, and we had
(50:59):
to kind of negotiate what that looked like. And I
was thinking about what we were, you know, talking about
them going away and wanting.
Speaker 6 (51:06):
That whiff of them. And he gets me.
Speaker 7 (51:09):
Now when we were leaving to come back to Sydney,
you know, we were at the airport and you know,
I look at him and you know, give the great
big hug, and I'm like trying to hold it together.
And then you know, he hugs my husband and then
he looks me at me and he goes, you get
one more and gives me another one, and it just,
you know, it's it's everything I need. And and so
(51:31):
it's it's they do come back, and they come back
as these amazing human beings that you've raised, and it's
it is a different relationship. It is a I love
I love my sons, and I love that they are
very different from each other, just kind of like Liam
and Jack are, and that they are creating these very different,
(51:52):
very amazing lives for themselves. And yeah, it's it's pretty cool.
And and and as you said, I'm now a grandma
and I get to go and is the grand is
that your Sydney son or my Sydney son? So I yeah,
so he's he's local. So I get to go and
and take care of him. And and you know a
little Logan and he's like a year and a half now,
and he's just a bundle of joy.
Speaker 6 (52:13):
He just is is.
Speaker 7 (52:15):
I did not think I could lose my mind again
like this, and I.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Have everybody, says Mia, who obviously we're exactly the same age.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
But I had my kids late in burn of Commons, and.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
So she's granny now my kids are still kids, and
she's just besotted.
Speaker 6 (52:33):
That's exactly the word a lot of us used.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
To talk about.
Speaker 5 (52:37):
I think it's when you become a grandparent when your
kids are older, you think, was I present enough? Because
when you're in the midst of it, and you're raising
a child and you're trying to keep them alive and
stop them putting a cigarette butt in their mouths that
they found at the beach, and all of that stuff.
You don't have time to just look at them and breathe.
And as grand and as a parent of teenage, you think,
(52:59):
why didn't I.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
Make more of those years when I held their hands?
Speaker 5 (53:01):
And when I go to the South Coast, I think, oh,
we couldn't have afforded to buy a holiday house then,
and they had weekend football. But I thought, well, I
wish I could. I wish I had one day where
there were toddlers again and I hold their lands. It
makes you want to cry. But it's only when you
get older and become like a grandparent you can actually
give the time to just seeing and being and smelling
(53:24):
without the anxiety of it. So we judge ourselves, I think,
for not being present enough, but how could we be?
Speaker 6 (53:32):
But it's the I was going.
Speaker 7 (53:35):
I was building forts the other day with with little Logan,
and you know, he was giggling, I was giggling and
I and I just stopped in the middle of it
and just kind of recognized this is this is that
moment where I get to just spend it and and
I don't have to worry about, you know, washing his
clothes or doing anything. I just get to go and
(53:56):
spend some time with him.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Recognizing those moments is one of the gifts of being
a bit older and wiser, I think, don't you. I
heard you say this, Amanda on your show when you're
talking about the holiday I've just taken with your boys.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
You're getting drunk with them in a bar and.
Speaker 4 (54:11):
Dreadful thing to do.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
And he was, and he said it was like this
bubble you knew, you knew in the moment, like this
is one of those times.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
Yes, And I think that's really what life is, and
that's all we're entitled to, that whole. Anita and I
talk a lot about this of the nature of happiness
and putting up signs saying happiness in your house and
all of that, and putting out manifestations. It's not the
human condition to be happy all the time, but to
(54:41):
recognize them when they come along is the gift.
Speaker 7 (54:43):
I think, and enjoy you just you can. You can
try to grasp it, but it's so ephemeral. It's just
it comes and it goes whenever it wants.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
So I'm sure that look, I'm going to try and
land the plane really neatly here regard looking at the dismountain,
because I'm going to say that I'm sure that the
two of you get a lot of those happiness bubble
moments together, right Like you a very good friend, someone
who will figuratively and literally hold your hand through all
(55:12):
the shit and all the happy moments is a very
special thing to have, right So I'm sure you too
sometimes are in that bubble too.
Speaker 7 (55:20):
Absolutely, And I think that's why we have the glimmers
instead of the triggers.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
I need to talk to you about the glimmers because
I love that part of your show.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
You end it with a glimmer.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
And I have a very good friend who has been
going through some very difficult health stuff, and we don't
live in the same place, and every day we send
each other a photograph glimmer of the one thing in
our day that made us I love like happy. So
it might be a particularly good cup of tea, or
it might be an amazing thing that happened at work,
or it might be a flower.
Speaker 6 (55:50):
Or the kid I had a good hair day.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
A glimmer a day, I believe keeps.
Speaker 4 (55:56):
It's funny how hard I find it to find them.
Speaker 5 (55:59):
My natural humor goes to not sarcasm, but finding something
like if something terrible happens to turn it into a joke.
But I find it hard to look for the natural
happiness in things, even though I think, as you said,
a needier. I think I'm an optimistic person, but I
sometimes have to turn to a caustic joke into something uplifting,
(56:23):
which isn't my nature.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
Well that's but also the humor is a survival I
mean if you can't laugh, and also that's something you
can also do with someone you're really intimate with, is
laugh about the difficult health things or the things that
don't on your house that you couldn't joke with.
Speaker 1 (56:39):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (56:39):
Absolutely absolutely, that is my complete survival mechanism. And I've
talked that to my children, particularly my younger son when
things are going skew with because he wants to do
a bit of stand up. I said, just store it up,
to turn it into a joke before anyone else can.
That's kind of save yourself. Is kind of the lesson
I've told him along the way, is make you make
(57:01):
the joke about yourself before anyone else can.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
Well, thank you so much for what my pleasure sharing,
letting me be the third wheel in this please.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
I've kind of enjoyed Algogo mobile.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Okay, so I didn't quite make myself the third wheel
in that glorious friendship duo, but you can tell how
hard I tried. I was really angling from an invite
to dinner. It was a bit embarrassing for everyone, really,
but I just loved that conversation. And if you have
a friendship like Amanda and Anita's, send this episode to
your best friend. Tell them that you love them, and
tell them that they're a scrag. And if you want
(57:46):
to hear more from these two together, go and check
out Double a Chattery. That's their podcast and there's a
link to it in the show notes. And Amandra is
hosting a new TV show on the ABC about families.
It's called the Role of a Lifetime and you can
have a nose.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
At that too.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
And if you're just discovering mid thanks to Amanda and Anita, welcome.
If you want to hear more conversations that will lift
you up rather than push you down, may I recommend
you scroll back in our feed to hear Casey Chambers
talking about keeping her dickhead list, Bruna Papenrea on ambition,
Gina Chick on truth and one of my all time
(58:20):
favorites Virginia Trioli on Small Joys, which we all need lots.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Of right now.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
A massive thanks to our mid team, our executive producer
I am A Brown, our senior producer Grace ruverre our
producer Charlie Blackman, and we've had audio production from Jacob Round.
They are all such talented people who help us bring
you your show. And if you haven't had enough of
me yet, I can't imagine that. Follow me on Instagram,
(58:48):
or sign up for my newsletter, or listen to me
and my great mates Mia Friedman and Jesse Stevens talk
about fifteen thousand times a week on Mom and Me
Are Out Loud. Is that an exaggeration maybe? But links
to all that are in our show notes and I'll
see you back here next week.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Bye,
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