How Sally Hepworth Survived Her Divorce

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on. I have the scars,
and I do feel like I lost a layer of skin.
You know, everything was raw, everything I felt things is
more beautiful and sadder. You know, is marriage good for women?
I've thought about that a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
You know, when someone seems like they've got it all
together hmmm. For instance, best selling author Gorgeous, Family, thriving career,
beautiful to boot, and then you find out they've been
quietly rebuilding their life from scratch. Well, that is Sally Hepworth.

(01:04):
She sold millions of books around the world. She's written
a best seller every year since twenty fifteen. But what
you might not know is that over the last couple
of years, Sally Hepworth's life completely imploded. Today we talk
about that, divorce, grief, the shit box. Yes, he'll find

(01:26):
out what that is. We talk about female friendship and
falling in love again when you swore you wouldn't. This
is a conversation about what it means to let go
of the life you thought you wanted and build a
new life that actually fits. Sally hepworth you of the

(01:48):
lemon water, the cleansing lemon water. Welcome to no filter,
thank you, and here we are both early in the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
After thinking that it was ten am instead of nine.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Both of us thought that, what a miracle that we made.
And here we are. But what okay, you have shared
so much of yourself, but kind of in disguise. I
think through your characters, which have resonated with millions, literally

(02:21):
millions of people, and you have had this is so remarkable,
a best seller every year since twenty fifteen. So that's
a lot. It's a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, it sounds like a lot when it's going to
be the tenth this year. In a couple of months,
my book will be care right, and yeah, it it
feels amazing to think back to when I started writing
in two thousand and nine, when I was pregnant with.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
My first child.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, all I wanted was to get a novel published and.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Then oh, that's a dream.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, and then the gold post kept moving. Then I
wanted to make a career out of being an author,
and then I wanted to become a best seller. You know,
some people say they didn't dream of that, but I did.
I had big dreams.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
And when like, how long had you had those dreams?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Well, I suppose as soon as I got my foot
in the door and I started to get published.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
You know what, might not dream big.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I mean, I didn't know that I was going to
make it, But you have to kind of aim for something.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
I do always. I do like to say to friends,
miracles happen. There's no reason that it can't be the
miracle for you. But the miracle is often hard work. Yeah,
that's the miracle.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, And I guess to write a novel, you're doing
the hard work, right, like everyone who's written one. To
get in the game, you have to do the hard work.
And then there's the magic of you know, are your
books going to resonate? Are people going to buy them?
Are they going to in some cases hit at the
right time that that's going to become popular. Sometimes that
retroactively happens these days, and books take off years after

(04:02):
they've come out. I don't know why, but I really
do feel so fortunate to be while also allowing that,
you know, I've done the work, and I do think
that I'm past imposter syndrome. I think I'm good at
it now. I really enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Oh, what a good feeling. Yeah, when did that come?
Was it as a result of outside affirmation or is
it something that comes from inside? Great question.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
I suspect probably started to come after a little bit
of outside affirmation.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
That does help.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I would like to say it was internal. I
think by the time I wrote my fifth book, I
remember that was The Mother in Law was the book
that you know, broke out, as they say, and then
each book since then has kind of built on it.
And sometime between then and now, I just started to
think to myself, when you know, I've written a couple

(05:03):
of short stories recently, and I've never written a short story.
I mean, before I wrote the first one, I remember
Amazon approaching me to write it and I said, yeah, okay,
I'll do it. And then I hung up and I
immediately googled how to write a short story because I thought, yeah,
I can do it.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Well, of course I can do it.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
And that snuck up on me because I didn't always
feel that way.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Of Course, The Mother in Law was a really interesting
one because it showed that you have a capacity, which
I think you always have to do as a writer.
It showed you have a real capacity to see the
other side of someone, and you do that with all
of your characters obviously, but that was a really seminal

(05:49):
one because I think it's so hot, Yeah, isn't it sticky?
A mother in law? And yet you always were you're
handling of the concept, and even in your conversations around it,
were very understanding of what it means to be a
mother in law.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
I hope so that It's always been the interesting part
of writing for me is there are books, I assume
that have been written about awful mothers in law, and
movies and monsters in law and jokes and jokes, and
so what was interesting to me about tackling it was to,

(06:28):
you know, to reverse engineer or to look at the
other side and what if you know mothers in law
aren't awful because they're not. I mean, my mum is
a mother in law and she's beautiful. I adore her.
I also know that she irritates my sisters a lot sometimes.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well, yes, there's always that that kind of tension, there's
that rab A point that you've made is that a
mother in law is in a unique position because she
loves the same man more woman, daughter or son, but
has no say in it the people that are trust together.

(07:06):
But I'm curious, particularly about your understanding of human nature,
which I believe to be immense well, just partly through
your research on every character and situation, and you have
had your characters often have confronted every type of rupture.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
And now this is what I'm curious about, because you've
encountered that own rupture yourself, and you've changed your life
drastically since the last time you were on no filter
with me, the last two times you're on. How has
that been. You're now divorced.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, I mean, look, all of these experiences, they become
a part of you, and so they leak out onto
the page, I think. But I will say that every
you know, my books in a way have followed the
trajectory of things that I've gone through, motherhood, you know,
even not being able to get pregnant and all of

(08:08):
those things. Now with the divorce, I think that's been
the most significant thing that's happened to me. I mean,
and I say this acknowledging that this makes me very lucky,
but it's the most significant thing that's happened to me
in my life. The most difficult thing yeah, and it's
just coming up to two years ago. Sorry, it's just

(08:31):
gone over two years since we separated, and I was
thinking about it, knowing that we were going to talk
about it today, and I was thinking, am I, How am.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
I about that?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Like?

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Am I over it? Am I? And I'm not.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
I mean, it's I wonder if it'll be one of
those things like the grief of death, that it changes
but it's always with you. Yeah, I wonder.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
And as you say, I'm so curious about people. I'm
curious about you know, the last two years marriage, you know,
I've been looking around at marriages and thinking what makes
a marriage work, what makes them fail? What makes people
so angry after they get divorced, what makes people nasty?
What makes a good divorce?

Speaker 1 (09:23):
And how is your divorce? By the way, look a
little bit of everything, I guess along the way, but
if overall, yeah, look what you know.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
The thing that I have learned from this is that
whenever someone would get divorced in my life, prior to
it being me, I used to want to know what happened.
And when I asked that question, I expected the answer
to be a sentence or two sentences and something that

(09:55):
attributed blame to one person. There was a victim and
a perpetrator. You know, I wanted to hear he had
an affair or she was crazy, which is cut. Yes,
and so you immediately know that's what happened, and and
what I've discovered since then, and in my own case
this is true. I mean, you might be able to,
for the sake of conversation, boil it down to one

(10:17):
or two things, but ultimately you could write a book.
It's not one or two sentences.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
There's nothing. You could write a book, and maybe I will.
Well it is. It is fascinating, and because it's such
a common experience and for it to be so traumatic, yes,
and so common, and yet not really, I don't think
it's really given the full weight that it deserves, the

(10:47):
significance in a person's life.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
I agree strongly, and in fact, look, I don't know
if my experience is true of everyone, and of course
it's not. Everyone has a different experiences.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
But I was so.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Knocked to my ass from it, and even my if
I heard someone was divorced before it happened to me,
I would have said, oh, that's a shame. It certainly
wasn't on par with you know, other terrible things that
happened to people, like a disease, like an it's.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
A terrible thing, and it is kind of a death. Yeah,
it's a death of I mean all those things that
lead you to get married in the first place. Yes,
the hope, the love, the starry eyed whatever it was,
it's the antithesis of that. So it is in some
ways that it is.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
And on top of all that, I mean, that is
the big part. And then on top of that there's
the the life up people. You know that there's worries
about financial worries, there's emotional concerns for the children, children,
there's you know, I mean that part is so hard
that you're going through something so difficult, and yet you

(12:00):
have to do the best parenting of your life, you know,
in order to hopefully get your children.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Well, how do you do that because like you've got
three children, you've got two teenagers and an eight year old?
I do I mean people like to say that children
are resilient. I think that underestimates often the impact of
major emotional shifts for children. I think we like to
say they're resilient because it makes it easier for us
to kind of push through what we have to push

(12:29):
through with. I don't even think that they're resilient. What
they are is adaptable and good at hiding stuff that
they might be feeling because they're all antena, yes.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Or showing it in different way. I mean my daughter,
my youngest was six at the time, and so I
saw her dealing with it in ways that were not
you know, she wasn't expressing it directly, but she was
having a lot of trouble with you, nightmares and just
behavioral stuff, whereas my old to and have my older too,

(13:01):
when you're a divergent and so that had its own
host of things.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Did they process it differently? Yea, yeah, how could you like?
In what way?

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, even between the two of them, my son and
my daughter, they prosed it, sessed it differently. My son
didn't talk about it at all. In fact, it's funny
when we told him, we said, have you got any questions?
And we told him alone just because of the world,
and we told the girls separately, and we went through
it and he said, if you got any questions, and

(13:34):
he said, where will the dog be living?

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Actually a very good question, yes, And so where does
the dog we live.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
We have a divorced dog who shared We share custody,
so the dog goes with the kids, which was something
that they wanted and it has worked really well. The
other thing that worked well in the early days is
that we did birds nest parenting.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
The Swedish is that the Swedish model Danish something everything
good comes from me.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
So because we had the family home, as a lot
of people do, it was going to take time to sell.
So we got a little apartment not far away, and
we would do week on and week off. One of
us would would leave and go to the apartment and
the other one would stay in.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
The house with So the idea is that children are
not they stay routed.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah, right, and that you know, looking back, that was
horrible for us or horrible for me. It was amazing
for the kids and I would do it again for
the kids.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
And what why was that horrible for you?

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Like just the the packing up of your life every Friday.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Which is normally what the kids have to do. Yes,
and that's what I was going to say.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
It really gave me such and that's one of the
best things from it, such an understanding of what they
have to go through and we delayed that by a year.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
By by us.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Doing it, it's made me so much more sympathetic, so
much more likely to you know, if they've forgotten their something,
I will be in the car, you know, driving it.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Off to school, which you know how it feels. Yeah, Hey,
who was it harder for? Do you think in that
nesting bird nesting time? Who was more adaptable with that?
Obviously it was hard for you. How was Christian your
husband with it?

Speaker 2 (15:26):
I also also I think not great. It's a strange
thing as well, because the apartment that we had was
very much like an airbnb. It didn't feel like home.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
No, and because it didn't really belong to either of
you no, yes.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
And it's also I have to say, it's a privilege
to be able to afford to have it, and it
was a small apartment, but not everyone has the ability.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
To know that's right to do. That's the other thing
about divorce. Divorce is expenses.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Expensive, and there's an uncertain period which is just really difficult,
and sharing space with that person is so difficult and
I found that really really hard.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
It's almost like in a way that when you navigate
the divorce with someone and there are children involved, so
you have to be very mindful of that that in
a way, you have to work together so intensely. Do
you at some point think why are we getting divorced
if we can actually manage a divorce.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Look, I think the thing that happened with us, which
I see happening with so many people, is that you start.
I started off with a desire to do everything perfectly.
You know, this thing of okay, this our life's going
to change, the children's life is going to change. I
read all the books you know on children, and I

(16:52):
quickly realized that that wasn't going to work. That we
weren't going to be working together like that Christian and
I and that took some adjusting. And it's actually the
thing that when I look back, I wish I had
realized earlier that we're not married anymore, and so we
don't necessarily we're not going to be on the same

(17:13):
page always in an ideal world, co parenting is wonderful.
I now have a lot of divorced friend I've sought
out divorced people because I'm so traumatized.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
I've got a.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Divorced group of women that we call ourselves the golden girls, and.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
We share information.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
And in every case, even when they've come to the
other side and now can co parent, there's a part
in the middle that we call the mean part. And
it helped me to call it that because it was
a part and something that had a beginning and an
end and it wasn't personal, and it wasn't you know.
And I think every divorce has.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
A mean part. I agree, and with girlfriends in mine
even I ended a relationship after nine years and we
weren't married, but we were embedded. And particularly in my experience,
the mean part often comes around money, yep. And it
does matter if you're breaking up with the nicest guy
in the world. There's something about money suddenly that really

(18:16):
brings out that.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
But it's not even this is my thing because I
think about these things a lot. I think it is security,
you know, at which money represents a lot of security.
I think it's freedom, yeah, and fear you know, you
don't know, and you go from being even if you
have plenty of money, you're suddenly half You've got half
as much or whatever that looks like. And that's scary.

(18:41):
And if you're you know, I'm in my mid forties,
Christians fifty and so that is a very real fear
all of a sudden, you know, Am I prepared for
retirement or am I?

Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (18:53):
You know, And I was in the really lucky position
that I've never stepped out of work. I earn a
good income.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Best seller every year since twenty fifteen, which you know,
I mean that sounds wonderful.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
It's still you know, you look at the numbers and
I've got three kid course, and you go. But I definitely,
I definitely was happy to you know, to keep things nice.
I was like, yep, you know, I wasn't fighting. But
I also think that you can do everything right and

(19:26):
it can still be hard.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Of course, and maybe it has to be. Maybe it
does maybe to you know, cleave apart what God put together,
do you know what I mean? Or whatever the saying is,
maybe it has to have that component to it.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Look, I mean, I'm sure there are people who've got
some whimsical, wonderful divorce, but then you know, why are
they getting divorced?

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Are there any in your extended group of girlfriends?

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Now there's a few, you know, sort of five years
plus down the track that now are working well together.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
I had to and look, I actually this was the
best thing I ever did. I had to accept that
I was in charge of what happened in my house
and Christian was in charge of what happened in his house.
And it's the most unnatural thing when you are a parent,
even to you know, not have your kids with you
half the time, but to let go of things that

(20:27):
are really important in your life, like this is what
time they go to bed. Things you're used to having
control over this, This is what they eat, this is
they shower. There are so many things that you have
to that kind of stuff, bedtime, showering, whatever. I felt
so much better when I stopped, and you know, you
keep it to the important things, and there weren't any

(20:49):
of those, you know, like they were alive and looked
after well by their dad.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
And suddenly I unclenched, you know.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
And that too, is a really important thing to sort
of letting go of the marriage that you do kind
of have to understand that when you're married you work
together as a team. Of course you should, and now
I think we're much better at teamwork. But that was
a bit of a process too, of just going well,

(21:19):
you know, when not controlling, you know, we can't control
each other anymore. Maybe I look a lot too it
my part. You know, I don't like that idea that
you know, he's a narcissist, She's crazy. Everyone thinks their
X is crazy or a narcissist. I don't think that.

(21:40):
I see he does. He thinks I'm crazy. I think
that I think that both of us made mistakes, and
especially in the early days, I was much more interested
in finding out what I what my part was, because
that's the only part I comes back to control. I
can't control why he's doing stuff that I don't agree

(22:03):
with or why, and it's not my business anymore, only
in so far as it affects my children. My role
is to look at me, to heal and to hopefully
not bring that kind of those difficulties into my life
with my children.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
After the break Sally unpacks the part she played in
the breakdown of her marriage. What do you think the
role was that you played.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
I think that the let me step back. I always
wanted to be married, you know, I remember that from
a youngish age.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Oh that's interesting that.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah. I liked the idea of having a partner my
brother's twins. I wonder if that had something to do with.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
It, younger or older.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Older older brothers, and Mum said, when we were little,
I used to say, where's my other one? You know,
like there was something missing. And I don't know, like
maybe I'm reading too deeply into it, but I loved
the idea of having a partner for life. I mean,
come back to it, but I have so many partners

(23:24):
for life in my girlfriends, and that's the sort of
full circle that I've come to. But I was looking
for that, and I had an idea of what my
life was going to look like, and it was going
to be a partner. It was going to be kids,
you know, maybe some travel, career for me, career, you know.
I had those kind of fairly maybe normalish, you know,

(23:45):
traditional ideas. And I do wonder now if I was
really holding on to something idyllic that maybe couldn't match
up to what real life looked like. And when things
did get tough, which they did, you know, several times
through the marriage, as they always do, I found that

(24:05):
really difficult. I found the I just didn't understand why
it wasn't looking like the picture in my mind of
what it should be like. And disagreements I found really hard.
I wouldn't think, oh, we're disagreeing about this. I would think,
oh my god, a relationship. I've married the wrong person.

(24:27):
This is terrible. I really see that now and I'm
in another relationship now and that's something that I've really changed,
and I see how communication clear communication. And also I
think keeping the peace was something that was really important
to me because I wanted I wanted harmony and happiness.

(24:48):
And I think my mum was also a real peacekeeper
in our family.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Which is an interesting thing because a peacekeeper's beautiful thing,
but a peacekeeper.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Can also be you can breed resentment.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, that's right, because you're subjugating every natural instinct to
just preserve this piece on behalf of who.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah, and it was it was often, you know, I
was holding things in that should have come out. I
think my career played a role. And again I don't
think it's as simplistic as saying. And a lot of
people will say, do you think that men can't handle
a woman's success or versions of that, and I always think,

(25:33):
I don't know if it's that simple, as simple as that,
I know Christian was quite supportive of me doing well
and wanted that. It's maybe to do with purpose and drive.
I think that then, you know, I was at home

(25:54):
with the kids early in our relationship, and I was
writing as.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well, and then you swapped and he was he was
the state home parent, right, which my husband also was
for a long time. Right, So I'm very curious about
this dynamic. It's an interesting one. Firstly, there's the external
to us. It made sense and at the time I
was doing breakfast radio and it made sense for us

(26:20):
rather than outsourcing to someone. But there is something about
it externally the world is look do you do do other?

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Mean?

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Even? Yeah, Yeah, it's weird, isn't it. It is, so
it's a strange thing. It takes an exceptional man to
take on that role. Yeah. In my case, my husband,
at some point we could tell he was done with it. Yeah,
he was just done with it, I mean fair enough. Yes,

(26:52):
And we had four under six, and that was a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
I mean, look, I and we both because I was
not home, I was working. We went from Christian had
the main job as the earner when we were first together, right.
What was his career an accountant, right, you know? And
he was very good at that successful. We went moved
over to Canada together because he was sent over there,

(27:18):
and then we had the babies, and then I was
at home with them, and then I was also writing,
and then then we were both working and we had
the kids in a combination of childcare. I had some flexibility.
I found it difficult. I still felt like I was
carrying the mental load though, and together with working, I
was burnt out. So also not my best.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
You know you were No, No, you don't know at
the time, do you.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Well, though I knew something. I've got this memory of
being on tour in America and.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Which book was this? Which give me an era? I
think it worth the era.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
I think it was the Soul Mage right, okay, because
it was right after Mum and Mia came out with
their podcast but are you Happy that Claire Stevens was hosting?
And I saw it and I thought I looked at
it on my because I would listen to all the
Australian podcasts while I was there, just to keep on top.
And I thought no. When it said but are you happy,
I thought nuh, and it just dropped in yeah. And

(28:20):
again it wasn't that moment. There was a series of
moments and things that happened that led to it. But
that was the first time I thought, huh, because objectively
everything was going so well, you know, and my career
was was, you know, wonderful, and my kid and the

(28:40):
interesting thing to jump forward a little bit is that
once my marriage ended and I got through, you know,
the kind of early part of the pain of that,
one thing that I guess I felt quite good about
was that my life was actually everything in my life
was wonderful. I've got this beautiful group of girlfriends that

(29:02):
we've been friends since we were ten.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
This is separate to the Golden Girls. This is the
gold some crossover.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
There is some crossover in fact, because as soon as
I became divorced, I didn't really know anyone who was divorced,
and so I sought out, Yeah it is, isn't it.
And that's I guess maybe part of what was it
a part of what made it hard for me. I
don't know one element. One of the Golden Girls was
my friend's older sister, and so I nabbed her, and

(29:31):
then a friend of hers, and then one friend of mine,
and then there was a girl I went to school
with who has heard she got to and I hadn't
spoken to her for years and years and years, and
as soon as I heard she got divorced, I messaged
her and said, I just wanted to say that if
you're not okay, I know we haven't spoken and this
might be really presumptuous, I'm happy to come and talk

(29:52):
to you. We can have a coffee. I just felt
like I I wanted to acknowledge since I'd gone through it,
how awful it was. And so together we westarted The
Golden Girl, which is mostly now memes about being a single,
which is so funny, and sometimes it's a how do

(30:13):
I deal with this? To do with the children, or
how do I deal with We developed something which we
call the ship Box from The Golden Girls, and the
ship box is an actual box, physical box that the
kids put their shit in, not their like their stuff
that goes to their dad's house. I was like, how

(30:34):
do you and someone said, we have a ship box,
and so they put it just a box that goes
inside the door. And the day that they're going to
their dad's, how do you say to the kids, put
your stuff.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
In the ship box?

Speaker 4 (30:46):
And they put it in and then that gets taken
to their dumb, We've forgotten the ship and.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
They'll say, I'll say, where's your shoes? They're in the
ship box. How big is the ship box? Like a
laundry basket.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
It's so those kind of wondrous things come out of
the golden girls that to link back, I guess I realized, Okay,
my marriage is but I've got these girlfriends who really
had stepped up for me in a way that you know,
my first night in the apartment after we broke up,
they all came and slept over. You know. One of

(31:20):
them arrived with a box of tools. Tool. You know,
they just use the tools a.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Girlfriends of mine have got drilled. And then there comes
a certain sort of pride in I can fix a
c and rody, I know, and it is very satisfying.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
But it's extraordinary the things that you can do that
you just didn't do if.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
You clicked in a traditional sort of compartmentalization of what
needs to be done in it. In the family life, I.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Can clean I have a pool at the house that
I'm renting at the moment, I can clean the pool.
I always thought that pools were some like foreign thing
that only men could understand. And you know, because they've
got chemicals, and.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
It's always a pool ball the poor boy. It's always
a poor boy sought.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
A poor boy. Maybe one day fingers crossed, you've got one.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I think you said
that marriage is maybe not good for women. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh, look, this has been a two year deep dive into.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
My two years is not long, though you've really and
compressed it or had experienced a lot in that two years. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
And like I say, I don't think I'm over it
and over it's a funny thing. I am in a
new relationship and I'm very happy. It's not that I'm
not over him. I'm I'm happy. I feel like I
you know, I have a great life. I have my career,
I have my girlfriends, I have my family, I have
my children. Life is so wonderful. I have the scars,

(33:06):
and I do feel like I lost a layer of skin.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
You know, every thing was.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Raw.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Everything I felt things is more beautiful and sadder and
so my you know, is marriage good for women? I've
thought about that a lot. And I also looked around
in the early days at relationships and thought whose marriage
would I want, you know, looking at my friends, looking

(33:34):
at my parents looking at and I did find some
there were some relationships that I thought I wanted, they
weren't the majority, Like I had to seek them out.
Acknowledging that you never know what truly is going on
in someone else's real you know.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
That reminds me of a girlfriend of mine who had
a brutal divorce. She said one of the worst things
that she experienced was that when friends would hear she
was getting divorced, they were like, they started talking about
how much they hated their husbands. And she said it
was just like suddenly they felt like they had an

(34:09):
outleadish to say, yeah, permission. And she said, at that
period it was the worst thing because what she actually
needed was to believe in romantic love, yeah, not to
have everyone go I wish I was you. And as
she said, also she hadn't done anything magical. She was

(34:30):
going through something really difficult. Yeah, And so they also
had the capacity too, She's like, why are you telling
me this and not addressing it with the person that
you're so happy to slag off to me?

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, Well, that's the thing. I think I see that
a lot. I see a lot of unhappy women in
relationships and presumably unhappy men. It's just that I spend
more time with women, and I do wonder if this
whole idea of marriage like it makes me think, what

(35:04):
in an ideal world, if you're unhappy, you could move
on without this whole But you look at it and think, oh,
I can't. I mean in that time where I was
burnt out and everything and I knew and there were
a few things that made me go, Okay, this, this
is it. This is the end for you or yeah,
for the for the relationship that I couldn't look away anymore.

(35:29):
But I think I really understand why if you're not
pushed to that point, why you might go, oh, it's
too I can't go through that because it's so hard.
There is happiness on the other side, but there's also
there's also you are changed.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
I'm changed in the nature of a relationship though a
lot a long term How long were you married? Sixteen
sixteen years to get to I'm twenty one, twenty marriage congratulations?

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Sometimes you know, well sometimes for everyone, yeah, correct.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
So part of what I inagen is one of the
things that you have to work out for yourself is
in any long term relationship, it will have peaks and
it will have ebbs, and so you know that you've
worked through ebbs before, how do you know that it's
not an ebb and that it's something that you can't

(36:30):
that you're not going to then be able to surf
the next wave onto the beach with.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
It's when they are not interested in working with you.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
To fix it right for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Whatever reason, And when you feel like you have tried
everything in your power and it's except this the way
that it is, or try something else and it's your
last alternative. That's what it was for me. Every relationship
is different and they have different reasons. It might be

(37:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
But the feelings are the same. The circumstances might be.
Whoever said some writer, one of those one of those
who was it that said every happy family resembles each other,
but every unhappy family is uniquely unhappy? Who was that? Someone? Someone? Clear?

(37:29):
But I do often think about that, because there's there's
just a pataina of happiness that you know, you might
live in different circumstances or whatever, but happy is happy. Yeah,
but unhappiness has so many flavors and textures, each more
gruesome than the last.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, they do and yeah, look, it's funny because I
came out of that experience that the divorce and I
and maybe this makes me very basic, and maybe everyone
does this, but I certainly wasn't thinking that I was
going to repartner.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
I you were like, I'm I'm not doing that again.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
And even without not from a bitter place, it was
almost the opposite. It was from a place of I'm
so content. And I heard I've heard a lot of
women say that they have been lonely after they've got
divorced or they've had these certain difficulties. I didn't feel
that I was never lonely. I was surrounded by love,

(38:32):
I mean, which is just so bet And it's funny.
I would say I was lucky. And I remember one
of my friends saying, because I said, I've got an
army of support, and my friends said to me, You're
not lucky. You've got an army because you fought in
the battalion.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
You know, you fought for us, and where are you
for you?

Speaker 2 (38:51):
And I thought that's nice.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Next, Sally rethinks what love really looks like thanks to
the women who carried her through heartbreak. I think that
when a relationship is failing, and it's one that you're
really committed to, you tend to try and put resources
into it to the exclusion of other relationships. So I

(39:20):
think sometimes people pop out like a meerkat to a
very bleak savannah. Yep.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yes, And I did have that difficulty, which was to
do with all of the horrible stuff about ending a relationship.
But my life outside of that, I thought, well, this
is good. I actually have got quite a good landscape.
And I was thinking more and more that why is
romantic love the pinnacle? I have got these women in

(39:51):
my life, I mean so many, but particularly the ones
that I've been friends with since I was ten. They're
my life partners. They're the ones who have been with
me before any of us met our partners. They are
with me after partners. They've been through me with me,
you know, through birth, and we've all been together. Recently,
one of those friends, her father died, and I remember

(40:15):
I went up with her when she did the eulogy
and we looked back and I saw all of our
girlfriends were in the front row, and I thought, it's
something moved me about it. I thought, usually, you know,
you see the family and the parents and whatever, and
no that was us, that was and that made complete
sense to me.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Your significant ones.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
They were We've always been a family. And even if
there was an is and there now is a romantic
love again, my life partner partners are those women.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
And are there any men in that number? Not in
that I have got male friends, Yeah, have those relationships change.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Well, one of my best male friends has been divorced twice.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Okay, he was in the.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Golden Girls for a little while, but then he couldn't
handle it because there were all these memes about how
we didn't like men. He okay, was like I Also,
my brothers were incredibly close and they were huge supports
to me throughout that. I'm not a hater of men
in any way.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
I love men. No, I'm just always it seems, you know,
maybe it's our times or maybe it's been ever thus
really I don't know. But there's such a gold mine
the female friends. Yeah, and it doesn't seem to be
the same crossover with me. Yeah, I mean, I mean

(41:41):
they're nourishing in a different way.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
They are, and it's good.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
I do believe very much in Yin and yang, and
I'm not fully on board with women. We're fantastic. We're
fantastic and men are fact, which seems to be some
kind of very reviling, very much, very much. And I'm like,
when did we start to think we were so perfect?
That's true, it's not helpful. And I, by the way,

(42:07):
I do think that about myself. That's how I recognize it.
What you think you have to pull yourself up and
go hang on a minute. Yeah, why am I always
trying to knock the top off this scab as though? Yeah,
I'm the dermatologist. I'm not the dermato.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
We're the dermatologists of our own lives.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Well we are, and it's good for someone healing.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Someone's got to be healed. The ointment, Yeah, the made
me write My thoughts on men are separate from my
thoughts about romantic love. I think that is what has
changed for me, as romantic love being the relationship to
end all relationships, the one who you know you fill

(42:53):
out on your paperwork, the one who you know.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
When you die.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
They're the chief mourner, you know, all of those things
that notebook yep, the crying in the rain.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Romantic love.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Think you can have that right, Like I've got the
most beautiful, beautiful man. That that came out of thinking
I was never going to meet anyone. I wasn't looking
for anyone. I was you know, my friends were all
pressuring me to go on Tinder or bumble or whatever.
It was. No, I don't want, you know, I'm happy.
And then I met this in real life.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
How in real life because that does not happen now,
not even in novels. Yeah, I know, Well, so this
is a good story.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
So I actually did have one date before I met Dan,
who's my partner. I had one date that was from
whatever the app was. That was when i'd been away
on with all my girlfriends. We go away to Nusah
every year and we have a girls trip, and they
were it was for them, you know how you married

(43:59):
friends are just desperate for you know, there's a single
go on there and they.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Know more of the.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Up and I've been swiping the wrong way and I'm
looking at some guy called Shane with no teeth that
I've just you know, And I had one date and
it actually it went quite well. I mean it was
not I wasn't looking for a relationship, but it was.
He was a gentleman. It was you know, we had
a nice did you do it in No, they set
it up for winter. So I came back from NUSA
the next night went out a night date. It was

(44:29):
like six o'clock for a drink. It's all changed since
our days. Yes, so nervous. He also didn't live in Melbourne,
which I thought was better because I didn't you know,
I just wanted to have a nice time and I
don't know what I don't think I wanted. Okay, great question.

(44:50):
I wore jeans and a like nice sparkly ballet flat
and a black I was wearing a white chop and
all the girls are like, no, you've got to.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Wear it's been a very heavily workshop.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
And a I think I had on a leather jacket
or something like that. I felt very unlike me.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
It wasn't the kind of thing, almost like you'd put
on a costume, yes, which is the Sally goes on
a first day costures.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
In her forties.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah. Look, and it was. He was so lovely.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
He was really handsome and made me feel great and
I went away from it thinking that was really nice.
I don't know if I'd do it again. So then
I was in getting my Boatox and it was in
there and my lady was doing her botox and I
was telling her about it, and you know, they're like hairdresses.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
She's like, tell me more.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
And then she said, you know what, I've got a
friend who's been separated recently and he's gorgeous and you
should meet him. And I was like, oh, I don't know.
And then she said can I give him your number?
And I said all right? And then he messaged me, oh,
I know. And you know what was funny is that

(46:02):
he he said, so he lived away, lived in on
the Gold Coast, but he was from Melbourne originally, and
he said, I'm going to be in Melbourne this week.
Do you want to have dinner? And I said yes?
And I was thinking, I don't know if I will
or not, Like I was very on the fence. And
on the day I thought, oh, I don't know if

(46:22):
I'm going to go, and but I just at the
last night I thought, yeah, I'll go. And it's funny
I found out later that he'd just flown down for
the day, Like imagine.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
And look at what he flew down just for the day.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
God love him.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Oh that's amazing. What was his hunch?

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Well, he said that he had heard about me from
this friend and he'd cyberstalked me and thought that I
looked nice.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah right, that's amazing. And it wasn't you know, it
wasn't sparks.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
It was just you seem like a really nice person,
and I really I'd like to get to know you
more like that, really kind of mature and and then
it grew over. I think by date three, I was thinking, yeah,
this is I'm getting a bit swept off.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
How was the geography?

Speaker 2 (47:17):
He's moved back to Melbourne?

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Oh okay after how many dates?

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Well, no, it was about nine months, and so there
was a nice period of us going back and forth.
But he worked, he had work in Melbourne, so he'd
becoming anyway, and and it was lovely and I I'm
so happy. I'm so different in this relationship.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
It's amazing him what way I.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Am the poor thing? Because you know, I now I
do not let one thing go that annoys me.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Ah right, okay, so the peacekeepers, I just now to
have a chat all the time.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Now you know, the thing that you did, I don't
like that, right, And I encourage him to do that too,
and he's so good about like what I love I
think the most masculine trait that exists is for you
to give them feedback and for them to say, oh, okay, ah,
thank you for telling me that you know, and not

(48:20):
being threatened at all or defensive or you know. I
just think that's so so you're so sure of yourself
and secure to be able to to take that on
board and not feel emasculated, or just.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
To actually have a curiosity.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yes, And I realized that's all I need. I don't
even need them to immediately change. It's not that they
won't do it again. It's that they've said, you're giving
you know, you're telling me what you want, and I
want to know that you know.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
I'm not.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
I want to know what makes you happy. I want
to I hear you, I see you.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
I want to work that kind of softens you. Yes.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
All you need, I think, is to know that someone
wants that for you, that are in it for you
as well.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
And it's not just that.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
That's been really healing for me, because I am like that,
like I will I have. I have a lot of faults,
but I I really if someone says something or if
I do the wrong thing, I will say I'm so sorry.
You know, mea culpa and I don't feel threatened by that.
And so when people do get defensive, and that was
one of the problems in my marriage is that you

(49:35):
don't get anywhere. You know, you you know, I'm trying
to tell you that I feel this way. Well, I
don't do that. And by the way, it's you know,
then it goes nowhere and you just park it and
it continues to simmer. Whereas I feel like we have
really in the new relationship, we've really got to know
each other and find our stride and our own rhythm

(49:56):
together because we do listen and you know, and work together.
We want it.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
But you don't live together, no, and you won't I
don't think so.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Look I always say I'll never do something, and then
you know, five minutes later, I think. What's really important
to me now is that I have my three kids.
I've got my own house. I want them to have
their house that is just Mum's, you know, not even house,
it's their house. I don't want Mum and Dan's house
or you know, I don't know what's going to happen

(50:30):
at Christian's house, but I want them to have a
space that's theirs, and they don't need any more people.
They don't need to be blending families or to I
just don't want that to.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Take on some other emotional load.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Yeah, I don't want that for them, And so maybe
there's a time in the future where they've gone and
who knows. You know, I'm really happy in this.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
How do you think your writings changed now?

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Some writers said once, I don't know who it is.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Obviously we know.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
The sayings, we don't know the writer. But they said,
these characters are a third someone you know, a third
made up and a third yourself. And while I don't necessarily,
what I think is myself is the narrative that comes
on the page. It's not necessarily a character or a thing,

(51:24):
but it's the wisdom that I'm searching for in that book. Yes,
and I have a new book coming out later this year.
It's called Mad Maybe.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Yes, i've read Mad Maybe part way through with Madbe,
which is so different than anything that you've done, I think. So.
I love having a character who's in her eighties. I
find that, yeah, just amazing, but also that we get
to see her in her youth. It's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Yeah, I haven't had a lot of people read it yet,
so it's been I love hearing in.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
The Yeah, in the early it's a like a binder.
Oh they sent your bound, Yeah, I've got Yeah. I
don't know what.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
That's that's even different from advanced reader copy se.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Yeah, because I've seen the cover online and I'm like, ah,
that's what that's how it's going to look.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Well, I think so the big thing that's come out
of my life experience is that book in its essence,
And it's funny because you read the blurb and it's
about an eighty one year old curmudgeonly you know, I
had so much joy writing that character who finds her
neighbor dead and no one suspects anything until they find

(52:37):
out that she, in fact was not a serial killer,
like was convicted of murders when she was fifteen years old, and.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
We go back in time to find that out.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
But the book, unlikely as it seems, is about friendship,
and that comes, of course off the heels of my
These last two years have been about friendship for me,
so much hurt and everything, but the way that friends
can save you. And this book what I wanted to
explore was can one friend save you? Is that enough?

(53:13):
And what if you don't have one friend? What happens
to you then?

Speaker 1 (53:18):
And so I don't know. It's funny because she's been
the sort of because she's so prickly and combative, it's
almost like she's wanted to keep the world at bay.
But she's also you can't help but love her good.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Well, she's vulnerable, Like even the people that want to
keep the world at bay, they're probably.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
The most vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
There's a reason that you do that. As humans, we
want to connect. And yeah, like there is a kind
of hope, a layered story about that, and all of
that comes from my experience over the last couple of
years and the importance that friendship has. And it's dedicated

(53:57):
to my best friend Sash, who has just been diagnosed
for the second time with triple negative breast cancer. She's
going through treatment at the moment again you know, it's
it's it's it's been so difficult. But the thing, and
she talks about it all the time, is I've got
my girls, you know, I've got and we just know

(54:21):
what to do and we just rally and we support
and we'll get her through it. And there is the
it's so horrible and it's so difficult for her, you know,
it's so difficult to watch her go through that. But
at the same time, and this is what I felt
about my divorce, there's this beautifulness of it, of the

(54:42):
way that we just move around each other at these
difficult times, and that's the stuff that it just moves
me in a way that I don't think any I
don't know, Like, I don't know why that love doesn't
have that same company.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
My girlfriend of mine had breast catcer last year before last.
And it does. What it makes you do is you
can't hold anything back, no, because it's a currency you've
just got to spend. Yeah, and sometimes the watching everyone

(55:26):
bring it is, like you said, just beautiful, cruel but beautiful. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
I always think, look to the helpers, you know. Another
one I don't know who said that.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Someone did say that look to the helper? Was it?
It was someone that was not a writer. I think
that was like a Michelle O. But like that, she
always says the good things. But yeah, oh I don't
have it.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
No, I'm fine. That's what friendship is. It's the hard
and it's the beautiful. And I don't know anyone who's
you know, I'm forty five and I don't know any
forty five year olds that haven't been through something really difficult.
And we know more difficult stuff is going to come,

(56:14):
you know, hopefully, because that means we're alive, and that's
more difficult things.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
I always said that in yoga class. I'm always like, yeah,
because there are is. If you're about discomfort, yes, yes,
it's about discomfort. And so they'll often say the temporary
discomfort in the in this class or in the practice
of yoga helps you take on the discomforts that are

(56:40):
coming for you in life. And I can't wait, but
it is true.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Well, yeah, I heard a similar saying, which was, you know,
it was something to do with waves. So it's you know,
you stand in the water in the ocean and the
waves come. You know, hopefully you get a gap between them.
But your role is to learn how to swim because
you know the next one is coming. You know, you
can't just get bold, you know, if you do, just
get bold over But if you learn to swim, then

(57:09):
that each time you learn a bit more than you're
going to be ready for the ones that are coming.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Okay, that's very interesting because that is. I like that.
Sometimes I think that we don't allow ourselves or we
don't emphasize enough how much agency we play in our
own lives, or how much opportunity there is given. As
you said earlier, like it's a privilege to be able
to even think like that, really, because some people are

(57:34):
just bowled over by waves and can't even get back
on their knees. But you've got to teach yourself to swim,
you do, and really probably teach yourself, as you have
done with your girlfriends, to not only save yourself, but
try and save someone else while you're at it. That

(57:56):
is almost.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
I think it's the key to getting through something is
to focus on someone else, right, And I you know,
as terrible as as you know my friend's illness is,
I do think that it pulled me out of a depression.
I think I've been in a mild depression for a
couple of years, and as soon as I knew that

(58:20):
she needed me, Yeah, it does. Yeah, you know, then
you you're out of it and there's something more important
than you. And I think that is the key to
you know, you steal yourself and you heal, but then
look out to the world again because it's not you know,
you can spend so much time looking inward and there's

(58:41):
self love and everything, but actually sometimes the most loving
thing is to look outwards and go and help someone.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Else because also then that reminds you once again of
what you're capable of. Yeah, it's a strange gift to
be given.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
Exactly, and it's almost you know, having friendship is such
a blessing, but it's even better to be a friend,
you know. That actually is a better feeling in a way.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Oh my god, someone said it's better to give than receipt.
That would have been someone smart.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Just attribute them to like random people people that is,
so let us know who said them all.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
Hey, what's Sally Hepworth's future?

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Well, on the tenth of August, my first book to TV.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Oh yes, serious coming so many at once because it's
the Family next Door. Also Darling Girls.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
So Darling Girls has been optioned and that is currently
a writer has been attached and she's working on the script.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Was that that Amy Pohler thing.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Who Amy Polar optioned the mother in law, The mother
in law and the soulmate has also been optioned.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
I saw that with Asher.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Yes Asha Kitty is attached, which is amazing, and she's
going to produce. And also so my short story Uncharted
Waters has been.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
Short stories that you googled how to write a short story,
and Blossom, which is Nicole Kidman's production company has optioned that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
The thing about the options is that they come in
that's so exciting, and then it goes quiet. Yeah, yeah,
and sometimes nothing happens, or sometimes a lot of things
are happening behind the scenes and I'm getting on with
my life.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
So optioning is when people a production company will say
we love this, we want to do something with it.
You enter into an arrangement. But as we know, it
could take years for things to get produced.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Ore and nothing can happen. What they do is they
buy the rights to have no one else look at
it for a period of time, so it's theirs to
try and get it off the ground, to.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Try also landing all at once, these little ships that
you sent out to see.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
It does feel like over the last and finally the
last two years, as my personal life's been imploding, a
lot of a lot of things have been hitting. Do
you think it's I do think that sometimes when you've
gone through a period where you've set yourself free, that
it's you entered this kind of flow state and suddenly

(01:01:30):
things change.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Do you think that's happened? I do, I do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
I believe in that. I've also a woman of my forties.
I also do yoga, I have crystals. I've become very
much into the universe and you know, putting my feet
in the grass and doing all of that. And I
do believe so much in signs, in energy, in things
falling into your lap.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
At all mad for it. I'm thinking about buying an
earthing sheet. I've got one. Have you done with the core?
Have you got one with you? Is it a plug
in one or one where you run I've been looking
at a real bonkers one from Canada or whatever. You
have to run a copper cable outside your window into.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
The ground, Yes, no, mind's not mine. It has the copper,
but it plugs.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
In, plugs in. Does it work with electricity for grounding?

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Like, how would you know if it works?

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
That's a beautiful thing about it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
You look really healthy that I'm going off.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
I oh everything like that I've done. Yeah, I love
that stut can't get enough of it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
And I'm mad on supplements this could go all day.
This could go all day, Sally, hepworth. What an absolute
duel you are in the crown of artists.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
I love this. That is that some something someone said?
Is that a writer? We don't Lainbrook.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
She wrote this book called chow Bella. It says it's
not on that, but it's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
It's wonderful I've read.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Oh, I brought a gift for you because I've got
your soul package I loved.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
I can have a signed copy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
I have it at home. Oh, I wanted to give
you that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
We still take it, but look and sign.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
You to sign the soul mate. But when I bought it,
I already bought a signed one. Well I can personalize. Yeah, okay, good,
we're going to do that. I'll see you in five months.
We'll have our chat about AI is now doing everything
for you. Look forward and may your ship box always
be full in the best way.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yes, thank you. This has been lovely.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Sally and I could have talked all day, and in
fact we very nearly did, and it just struck me
how generous and open she is. Even sometimes in the
parts of your life that are kind of shadowy and
your inclination is to try and cover them up. She's
just spreading sunshine through herself and to those around her.

(01:04:03):
It's always fascinating when the storyteller becomes the story. Sally's
life has in ways she never saw coming, and she's
done what so many women do. She's carried on. But
what stayed with me was this When everything falls apart,
Sally doesn't pretend to have the answers, She just keeps

(01:04:26):
showing up. The executive producer of No Filter is Nama
Brown and the senior producer is Bree Player. Audio production
is by Jacob Brown and I am your host, Kate
lane Brook. Thank you so much for sharing No Filter
with me.

Speaker 5 (01:04:50):
Hello, it's Naima here, the executive producer of No Filter
bringing you a sample of Mamma MIA's women's health podcast Well,
hosted by doctor Merriam and Claire Murphy. This week's episode
is about pregnancy, but that's not all. They'll also take
you to mad school to talk about why you might
get a pair in your butt when you have your period,

(01:05:11):
and do a quick consult about testosterone during Perry.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
If you want to.

Speaker 5 (01:05:17):
Hear the full episode, Well is your Full Body Health
Check and drops every week on a Thursday.

Speaker 6 (01:05:23):
This episode of Well is brought to you in partnership
with Clear Blue Australian Women.

Speaker 7 (01:05:34):
Welcome to your full body health check. I'm Claire Murphy
and for the sake of today's episode, because we are
talking about pregnancy, I'll let you know that I have
been pregnant twice in my life. Once when I was
a very young teenager, which is a pregnancy I chose
to terminate and have zero regrets about. And then I
got pregnant again at thirty five, where I was wonderfully

(01:05:54):
called a geriatric pregnancy, and that resulted in my small human.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
And I'm doctor Mariam a GP, a mother and someone
who has lived the full spectrum of the fertility journey,
from the heartbreak of my firstborn, Samuel was still birth,
to three miscarriages and two years of infertility. My path
has been anything but easy, but it led me to
my greatest blessings, my beautiful rainbow two boys, Zak and Jagin.

Speaker 7 (01:06:27):
Thank you so much for sharing that. I know that
sometimes with your self and with friends of mine who've
really struggled to get pregnant and to have babies, it's
it's a really emotional thing to talk about especially all
the losses too. So but I think it's interesting to
note that, like our pregnancy journeys could not be more different,
Like it's such a vast array of experiences involved in

(01:06:51):
getting pregnant, being pregnant, and having babies. Because I was
the discussion with my husband worders went, should I just
stop taking the pill? And like if it happens, it happens,
and if it doesn't, it doesn't, and he's like, yeah, cool,
and then it did and it was just like and
then we're like, cool, do you it? I want to
do it again? And we're like not really, it's one
and done. We could yeah, very very different perspectives. And
in case you haven't worked it out, we are talking
about being up the Duff today with child prego bun

(01:07:14):
in the oven however you would like to refer to it.

Speaker 8 (01:07:17):
We will find out what's.

Speaker 7 (01:07:18):
Happening to your internals and it is a lot. And
we have a quick consult for Tony who's been seeing
a bunch of people on her feed talking about a
hormone that she thinks that maybe she might need to
but her understanding is is that it's something that is
exclusively for men now Mariam, I have found out something
very interesting about women's buttholes.

Speaker 8 (01:07:41):
Go for it. I've said this before, I will say
this again.

Speaker 7 (01:07:44):
I am a deeply immature human being, and I will
laugh every time I see butoles.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
But here we go.

Speaker 7 (01:07:50):
Something happens to some of our buttholes during our period.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Yep, we need answers.

Speaker 7 (01:07:55):
This is very serious medicine, Mariam.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
I want to know where this conversation is going.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Let's go to med school. Welcome to med school, Mariam.

Speaker 7 (01:08:03):
We've discussed all types of pain that women might experience
from various things, but have you you ever experienced a
proctalgia fugax?

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 8 (01:08:13):
Now, this is something that.

Speaker 7 (01:08:14):
Happens to a lot of women when they have their periods.
So you might just be, you know, walking along, minding
your own damn business when you're hit with a really short,
sharp pain in your buttthole that feels like someone shoved
a hop knife up there for a second. Yep, it
is like butt lightning. It's reportedly super normal, quite harmless.

(01:08:34):
It's a spasm in the anal sphincter or pelvic floor muscles.
The pain can last somewhere between a few seconds, which
I think is what the majority of us have probably experienced.
Two Way recorded ninety minutes, which sounds like the worst
day ever. Marriam, do you get butt lightning on your period?

Speaker 8 (01:08:51):
Butt lightning?

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Yes, so proctalgia four gucks. It sounds like a Harry
Potter spell. It steels more like a curse. Yes, I've
had that surprise up and it's usually.

Speaker 8 (01:09:01):
Like surprise that it's exactly what that is.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
It's usually in the Coles freezer ales I've gotten us.

Speaker 8 (01:09:08):
That's where your butt decides to betray you to the
bat or a butt triggered by the cold. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Yes.

Speaker 7 (01:09:19):
So if you are just randomly sitting there and it's
like Harry Potter ZAPPEDI with his wand in your buttthole,
it's totally fine. Don't stress. From spiky buttholes to actually
being up the dove.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Today's check up is.

Speaker 7 (01:09:33):
All things pregnancy.

Speaker 6 (01:09:38):
When you're trying to get pregnant, timing is everything. With
only a few precious days each cycle, it's not surprising
that one in two couples may be trying to conceive
at the wrong time. That's where clear Blue Advanced Digital
Ovulation test comes in. You can double your chances of
getting pregnant in your first cycle of use versus not

(01:10:00):
using ovulation tests. Plus, you can download the free clear
Blue Period and Cycle Tracking app to keep a diary.
Double your chances of getting pregnant with the clear Blue
Advanced Digital Ovulation Test. Always read the label and follow
the directions for use.

Speaker 7 (01:10:21):
It's time for the checkup, okay, Maeric, can we talk
about the first trimester? What is actually happening in your
body when you conceive and why a first Trimestermum'm so tired.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
So when you conceive, your body immediately kicks into pregnancy gear, right.
It wants to support that tiny new life. The fertilized
egging plants itself into the lining of your uterus, which
starts releasing hormones like hCG and progesterone. And those womens
do a bunch of jobs. They keep the pregnancy going,
they stop your periods, and they start preparing your body

(01:10:53):
for the months ahead. So why are we all so
exhausted during that first trimester? It's always the hormones, same hormones.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
The progesterone, which we call the pregnancy hormone, relaxes your muscles,
including your digestive tracks, so that can make you feel
a little bit sluggish. Your metabolism is revving up, so
your heart is working harder to pump that extra blood,
and your body's busy building the placenta, which is like
a new organ and other essentials, so your blood sugar

(01:11:22):
and your blood pressure can dip as well, and that
leaves you feeling wiped out. So you're adding that emotional
rollercoaster as well. Sometimes you might get the nausea, the
morning sickness, and it's no wonders that the first trimester
is relentless. The good news is that it starts to
ease up when you get to the second trimester, when
your body starts to adjust. So if you're feeling wiped

(01:11:43):
listen to your body. Rest when you can eat good foods,
stay hydrated, and don't beat yourself up if you need
that extra downtime. Your body's doing incredible. It's growing a human.
But in saying that, I just wanted to have a
conversation and want to see what your thoughts are. A
lot of people don't like telling people about their pregnancies
until they pass that twelve weeks because they feel like

(01:12:04):
they're in the safe zone. But then this is when
they need a lot of extra help and support, be
because they're tired and they're wiped out. They're like, oh,
how am I going to tell my employer that I'm
pregnant and I might miscarried? I want to tell my family?

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Well, that's it.

Speaker 7 (01:12:16):
It's the most common window for miscarriage, right, So, and
if something happens to you and you haven't told anybody,
it makes it hard.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
It does, But I kind of want to break that cycle.
As females, when we see that positive pregnancy stick, there
shouldn't be that stigma where we shouldn't be allowed to
announce it. Unfortunately, one in four pregnancies do end in miscarriage,
and that's when we need support. And if we haven't
spoken about it, then how do we get that support?
So I think, you know, acknowledging I'm pregnant, and if

(01:12:43):
a miscarriage does happen, then acknowledging I need support and
people knew about it.

Speaker 7 (01:12:48):
Can you answer me this question? Riddle me this, yes, Mariam,
but can you please tell me how we predict a
baby's due date and how accurate it is? Because there's
some math going on here, but realistically, forty weeks, which
is our normal gestation period, doesn't add up to nine
months already. The math is not math for me. So
how do we predict the day that baby's supposed to come?

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Okay, the magic date, it's the date we all obsess
over as parents. It's a bit of a legend, to
be honest. Okay, So the standard way we work it
out here in OZ is you take the first day
of your last menstrual period and you add two hundred
and eighty days or forty weeks to that date. Sounds straightforward,
but pregnancy isn't always a neat nine month package like

(01:13:30):
the calendars.

Speaker 7 (01:13:31):
And a no, they're our cycle, ye exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:13:33):
So the forty weeks is based on an average twenty
eight day menstrual cycle, assuming ovulation happens on day fourteen,
But not everyone's cycle plays by those rules. Some females
ovulate earlier, some later, and the date can shift. Plus
months aren't all the same length, so you've got thirty
day months, thirty day ones, and then you've got February
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
But here's the kicker.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
Only one in twenty babies will actually only arrive on
their due date. Most babies will come either two weeks
before or two weeks after, so the Jew date is
more of a rough window, not a ticking clock. So
early ultrasounds in pregnancy can help us estimate gesstational age
if we're not really sure when our last mental period

(01:14:14):
was or if this cycle regularity, and if things start
to stretch beyond the Jude date, then you know you've
got your treating team that will help you guide you
through that. So don't stress about the Jude date. Baby
is not likely to come at that date.

Speaker 7 (01:14:29):
Just be aware if your baby does come after the
Jude date, like mine did, it might come out a
lot hairer than you expected, just a little shock surprise
that you might not be aware of. Mariam, What should
very early pregnant mums be doing from the get go?
I know there's a lot of talk about what you
should have already done in the lead up to conception,
like not drinking alcohol and taking FOL eight supplements, for example,

(01:14:51):
But what are the first things you tell a newly
pregnant woman to do.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
I love these consults, like I'm a GP shared antiinatal
care provider, so I would start if you think you're pregnant,
finding a GP with antiinatal experience and don't just wait
to kind of book that consultation in early. And there's
a lot what we can do to support a healthy
pregnancy physically, emotionally, and logistically as well. So when you

(01:15:14):
see your doctor, we will confirm the pregnancy with like
a urinal blood test based on what I've said before,
and if we're unsure, we'll do that dating scan for you.
And then this is the most important part of the conversation.
It's never always congratulations on your pregnancy. I always start
the conversation with is this a congratulation? And it's important

(01:15:34):
because you know, for some people it's a surprise. It's
not at the right time. There are a reason.

Speaker 7 (01:15:39):
And when Ilse told when I was a teenager, I
had a major breakdown. So yeah, it's not always.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
A welcome Yeah, that's right. And so your GP will
walk beside you without judgment. They'll have that conversation and
if termination is something that you're considering, will guide you
through that process and make sure that you have the
right supports. If you are thinking of continuing the pregnancy,
it's ensuring that you're on the right supplement. So we
spoke about folic acid and iodine, but then there are

(01:16:04):
other things. So if you're at risk of preclamsy you've
had preclamcy here before, you might need to be on
ASP or calcium, so it's important we go through your
medical surgical history, go through any medications you're on that
might be teratogenic so they might harm the baby, or
we might need to change dosages of some medications as well.
Then we check whether your cervical cancer screening is up
to date. So I'm going to break a myth, it

(01:16:26):
is safe during pregnancy. There's also the self collection if
you're really worried about anything touching the cervix, that self
collection just touches the side walls of the vagina, so
that's completely safe. We also might offer an STI screen
for some people if that's relevant as well. We'll check
if your immunizations are up to date, and we'll tell
you about the schedule of immunizations during pregnancy, which are

(01:16:46):
really really important. I know there's a lot of misinformation online.
If you have any concerns regarding immunizations during pregnancy, please
please speak with a trusted healthcare professional. Do not get
your information from untrusted sources online. Then we'll talk about
lifestyle and nutrition. So obviously no smoking, no vaping, alcohol,

(01:17:06):
lisa drugs, and that includes passive smoking. Sometimes being around
people that smoke can also harm the baby. And then
there's the food safety. That's a big one. There are
certain foods to avoid, soft cheeses, deli meats, or all seafoods.
There's a whole bunch of foods. And it's not about
instilling fear, you know. I still want people to go
out and be able to eat healthy foods. I usually

(01:17:27):
refer people to the New South World Food Authority Guide.
It's a great resource, has a lot of information about
it's got like a red light, green light, orange light
system or things to just be cautious with. I usually
print that out for them. And important conversation I also
have is about domestic safety and emotional health. So this
part is so important. We will ask gently and privately

(01:17:48):
about your safety at home. Unfortunately, pregnancy increases the risk
of DV. The questions aren't just routine, they're protective. We
also talk about mental health. So peronatal anxiety is very
very common and it's a risk factor for postnatal depressions.
So we catch it early. We can put in those
supports early and if anything's flagged, will help you access
the right care. I I'm a bit of a Debbie

(01:18:11):
down us. I've been through the miscarriage journey, and even
as a health professional, I was also a bit annoyed
that we don't have this conversation that one inful pregnancies
unfortunately do anti miscarriage. So I think having that conversation
at that first concert with the doctor saying this may
not be your story, but I want you to be prepared.

(01:18:32):
These are the signs and symptoms to look out for
ectopic pregnancy. Education of the signs and symptoms to look
out for. And it's not about, you know, kind of
ruining the mood and the celebrations, but it's about providing
them with that information that you know will be really,
really helpful if it.

Speaker 7 (01:18:48):
Was to end that way, because we often find ourselves
when we do experience those things asking why didn't anyone
tell me about exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Yeah, you'll have some antenatal bloods and potentially genetic screening
if you haven't had that offered, and then we'll plan
the antenatal journey. We'll talk to you about the options,
whether you want to go privately or publicly through a
midwife system or whatever that might look like, and we'll
put those referrals in place and then we follow you up.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
My gosh, that's.

Speaker 8 (01:19:12):
A lot, it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
One.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
Yeah, I love those consoles and then obviously the physical
examination as well, but no, it's a great, great console.
I love those consultations.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
Well, I wanted to ask.

Speaker 7 (01:19:24):
You too, because it's something that I did not know
how to face when I was pregnant, is how do
you find a good ogbyn or midwife? Like, do you
need a referral? Can you go and hunt one down
for yourself?

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
So you do need a referral from your GP, which
is why the GPS your best starting point, and they
can recommend someone based on your health needs, your location,
or your birthing preferences. Most mid referee care is available
through the public systems unless you wanted to go privately
as well. I find the Facebook Moms group really great
in terms of recommendations and experiences of obstetricians that they've

(01:19:58):
had as well, so that's always a good place to start.
You can look online, you know, if you've got specific issues,
like your high risk We've got a twin pregnancy. There
are also obstetricians that kind of look after those. It's
all doing a bit of research on your part or
speaking to your doctor about any preferences that they might have. Yeah,
so your first port of call and they'll match you
to the right team for you through your pregnancy journey.

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Amazing.

Speaker 7 (01:20:21):
Okay, on the way, we're going to answer a quick
consult for Tony who's on HRT but she thinks maybe
it's missing something that most of us think only belongs
to men. But next we're catching up with Associate Professor
Kirsten Palmer to talk through all the basics of pregnancy,
from like bigger feat to blood pressure, the food rules,
and why medications may not work as well when you're expecting.

Speaker 5 (01:20:45):
If you want to hear the full episode, Well is
your full Body Health Check and drops every week on
a Thursday. We've popped a link in our show notes
for you to like and follow.

Speaker 6 (01:20:55):
This episode of Well was brought to you in partnership
with Clear Blue

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