Saturn Returns with Caggie - 1.1 Elizabeth Day on Authenticity, Vulnerability and a Sense of Self

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Elizabeth Day on how failure can reveal your authentic self. Caggie talks to the author, journalist and host of the How to Fail podcast about society's expectations of women and the pressures we put on ourselves, fertility, self abandonment in romantic relationships and how all our failures and experiences ultimately lead to a stronger sense of self.  --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

This podcast was pre-recorded before the pandemic. Please check out the message from Kagi for some of my thoughts on the current situation, which should pop up just before this episode. Otherwise, I really hope you enjoy listening. Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a new podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. My experience over the last two years has been that it is when I am most fully myself and most open about my vulnerabilities that I have had the greatest connection with other people. That has been such a revelation to me because I

realized that people like me for who I am. And when people don't like me, that's so much easier to deal with when I've just been who I am. At the top of the episode, you would have heard a clip from guest Elizabeth Day. A lot of you will be familiar with Elizabeth from her podcast, How to Fail. She's a journalist, author and broadcaster. And she is my first guest on this podcast, which is incredibly exciting. And actually, as I'm recording this, she hasn't arrived yet. So I'm just waiting for her in my flat. But before she arrives, I want to explain to you a little bit more about this project of mine and why I'm doing it.

So I'm going to make a cup of tea. So come with me. Come along into my kitchen and I'll tell you a little bit about it. So I guess most of you would be familiar with me from appearing on reality show made in Chelsea which is something I still find very odd to talk about because it was quite a small chapter in my life yet it has remained the thing that I'm most known for and I guess in so many ways that version of me represented the person that I sort of aspired to be when I was when I was I guess a teenager and then throughout my 20s a little bit the beginning but it was a very it was like a very watered-down version I don't really think I was authentically myself so I guess this is going to be quite interesting for those of you who haven't heard that much about me over the last couple of

years because I have been a lot more quiet but this is going to be me sharing who I am today and what I'm really about and and a more authentic and truthful version of me. So when I hit 27 I'd say there was like a massive massive shift in my life and I'd moved to LA and I suddenly found that the person I had spent my entire 20s becoming or trying to be was uh was not really authentic to who I truly was and I discovered through being there that certain people came into my life that introduced me to to I guess astrology and to spirituality and I discovered that something actually happens in your late 20s to early 30s which is called your Saturn return and it's something it's this experience that we go through where we're sort of being forced into adulthood and it can be quite a rude awakening but no one really knows about it so

even though this is rooted in astrology its themes are applicable to anyone who is going through a transition and everything that goes with that so we're going to be covering all the themes that are really key during this time and can be quite difficult to talk about i'm going to be completely open and honest about them and i'm bringing on guests that I found during this time that really, really, really helped me. So some of the things we're going to be covering are relationships, which will be obviously a huge subject and in depth, love, family, career, money, finances, identity, self-worth, and so much more. So I really hope you're going to take something away from this and share it with your friends and anyone you think might benefit from

this podcast. In a few minutes, my guest Elizabeth Day will be here. But first, I just wanted to explain a bit more about the astrological concept behind this podcast. I'm very aware that some of you might never have heard of the term Saturn Returns before, and I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any means, so I've invited my friend and astrologer Flo Devereux to be our astrological guide for this series. Each episode she's going to be dropping in to explain a little bit more about what's going on on a planetary scale during this transitional time. Today she's going to take us through the basics of what Saturn return actually is and how it affects you in your life. So you've got your birth chart which you know it's a frozen snapshot of the position of the planets when you were born. That's just a snapshot

of time and what really happens is that Saturn carries on moving and all the other planets carry on moving on their different cycles, on their different flight paths. And Saturn is the last planet that we can see with the naked eye. So until telescopes were invented, we thought that Saturn was the final planet in our system. So Saturn was always this kind of the holder of our system because it was the slowest because it's the furthest away from the earth it takes the longest

to move around and do one complete cycle. So it takes 29.4 years it does depend on the chart but roughly 29 years to go from the position of where it was when you were born and travel all the way around the zodiacal belt back there and come back to that same position so with the return what happens is it comes back around and you get this really big Saturnian moment where it is Saturn's kind of explored all the different points of the chart and said and it's got back to the position of its way where it was when you were born and it's this moment of being like okay this is what I'm going to commit to as an adult it's a moment of reflecting like what did I grow in a way that has brought flourishing and what did I not attend

to in with these kind of Saturnian principles of like patience and rigor and attention and discipline that has failed. What I felt was that my 20s were very much about fitting in and molding myself to different people and versions of myself that I felt gave me a validation. And that I probably had created from like even my teenage years and then suddenly those coping mechanisms and those behaviors that I had become accustomed to suddenly I was in conflict with myself about operating in that way and it was like the authenticity in me and the deep knowing of how I should be living my life was coming up and it was getting more and more painful, actually, the more I was denying that and fighting with it. And then it caused me to have, there's a sort of, I think,

a death of self in a way that happens because you do have to shed certain parts of yourself and make space for what is going to come in. Yeah, there's a tarot card, which is the Grim Reaper, which has someone cutting crops away and like the dead crops but then all these flowers growing out of it so yeah you need to cut away what is holding you back and what hasn't grown well and it is a really sad process and also I think in you know society and everything that we can be so attached to the narrative that we play in

something of relationships of job and this is why I'm interested about this sort of stuff and how you can implement it into your life because if you are in a job that you don't like but you've been there for ages and it's there's sort of a bit more of a certainty in it and therefore you stay or a relationship that's toxic but you've been in it for a long time and you you have a knowing that it's not right but you just don't have the courage to leave I feel like this is the time yeah when you have to make those tough decisions because I mean I don't think it's as black and white as like if you don't then you're stuck in it for another 30 years but it is it does bring an opportunity with it doesn't it that you like have to have the courage to let go of that which is no longer serving you

totally and step up to like the version of yourself you want to be yep 100 we'll be hearing from flow again in future episodes and you can find out more about her on Instagram at Astrology for the Curious or from her website astrologyforthecurious.com Hello! Hi! So nice to meet you finally. So nice to meet you too. Come on in. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Pleasure, this is so lovely and light. Elizabeth, welcome. It's a delight to be here. Yeah, because your podcast has just done so incredibly well. So it's quite an honour to have you here. Thank you. Well, I have to say the podcast doing so well has been one of the greatest gifts of my life in the sense that it was quite unexpected for me because I did this thing that I felt very strongly about so it was a really personal thing and then to put it out there and to see it have the resonance

that it had with lots of people who subsequently messaged me was really beautiful and it made me realize actually that it was the time of my life when I decided to be honest about my own vulnerability everything basically yeah and that was when I I got the most connection with others so it was a time in my life when I decided to be honest about my own vulnerability everything basically yeah and that was when I I got the most connection with others so it was a really amazing thing I think it's always that way when the magic happens when you have to step into that fear and that unknown space did you have any idea that it was going to take off the way it has I didn't expect it to take off in the way that it did I was really surprised and I continue to be extremely grateful for how many people have listened to it and I'm also deeply aware of the irony that a podcast about failure

and the subsequent book I wrote about failure have become the most successful things I've ever done professionally but I think it's all about stepping into your vulnerability and that's exactly what you did was there a point where suddenly you're like, I have to do this? Or was it just over time that suddenly this thing was bubbling in you and you were like, okay, now's the time? Yes, there was something that suddenly happened, which I'll tell you about. But I do also think it has subconsciously been bubbling away in me for ages, that idea of vulnerability and stepping into your authentic self. Because I, like many other people, had spent most of my 20s and definitely my early 30s being a people pleaser. And outsourcing my sense of self to the opinions of others, most notably in romantic relationships, which is actually not a great way, turns out, to have a romantic relationship.

Yeah, but I think so many people are going to connect. I mean, I do. And this, obviously, this podcast is about stepping into your worth and I think things happen in your life that make you have to confront that yeah situations will continuously happen that force you to face up to the truth of like what you're not wanting to deal with which for you obviously was about authenticity vulnerability and a sense of self totally I mean you've nailed it it was that thing of feeling good enough with my flaws and therefore being able to be open about them and I think you're completely right that the universe keeps sending you the lesson until you learn it and it's brutal it is brutal and I often say people will sometimes ask me do you regret something and I don't have

any regrets sometimes I wish I'd learned the lesson more quickly and to answer your initial question there was something specific that happened that led to my doing the podcast and it was related to that groundswell where I ended up getting married and it turned out to be to the wrong person and so then I got divorced and in the aftermath of that divorce I really thought I've hit rock bottom now. I'm really reassessing who I am, my people-pleasing tendencies, and I'm really looking at myself as things actually are. And the next relationship I get into will be as a result of different choices. And I got into a relationship that was very different and I had made different choices and it was with a very different person and then in October 2017 that relationship ended out of the blue for me it was a really shattering blow and that was at the point actually that I

think I was at my lowest because all of the emotional scaffolding that I'd built up subsequent to the divorce came tumbling down. Yeah. And I was faced with the reality that as much as I thought I had been making different decisions, as much as I thought I was being honest about myself, I'd actually been weaving another kind of narrative. And I'd been telling myself something about the person I was with that didn't stand up to scrutiny. And I just realised I'd been telling myself a different story. And that was then my most vulnerable point. And that was when I started having really honest conversations with friends. I started looking back at the decade of my 30s thinking, actually, I've withstood a lot of the stuff I didn't think I was strong enough to withstand. What has that taught me? And that was the genesis of the podcast. So now I'm very

grateful that he broke up with me. But it that thing of um relinquishing control and actually being because you are weaving without realizing I think we're all guilty of it another narrative all the time we meet someone and we've attached so many expectations within the first meeting and actually what I found from reading your book was this thing of it's our marriage to expectation rather than the actual person yes so when they let us down even though they may have told us exactly who they are and what they want and what they can give we've been like yeah I'm just going to shoehorn you into what I actually want you to be and you you will become it hopefully so it's that hope and expectation and that's the real disappointment.

And when you're confronted with that, when the person has left, it's like, yes, you're angry at them and the betrayal or whatever that might be. But you're then having to face yourself and what you've put on yourself, really. And that's really tough. I completely agree with everything you just said. And there's a phrase that I use in the book, which is that I was the willing collaborator in the execution of my own heartbreak. Yeah, it's a tough one because I think we so often are ready to project onto other people

because looking at ourselves is so much tougher. Yeah, exactly. He had been giving me the available information all along and I wasn't noticing those signs. And part of it was, I think, a bit deliberate. I didn't want to notice them because I was really into you were you were going along your path of the narrative that you had weaved and you were like would you would you say that your body knew such a good question and you posted something on Instagram the other day that really affected me I was thinking about it earlier about

how your body sometimes gives you signals but we have been socially conditioned kind of to ignore that I feel it's taking me a long time to be back in tune with my body and I'm still not entirely sure that I am but yes so during that whole time I got pneumonia for the first time ever and and I thought I was just sort of tired and I remember going for a run like going for a jog when I actually was just like not feeling well but I didn't have sufficient symptoms in my head not to exercise that was the first time I got pneumonia and then I went through a period of like getting it every year. Really? And it was horrible. All kind of really bad chest infections.

And just before that relationship breakup, I had another bout of pneumonia. And yeah, I think that was like... Your body talking to you. Yeah. And I haven't had pneumonia since the end of that relationship. And since I got a pneumonia vaccination. But also, I do genuinely believe that my life shifted and I felt less grief because I think there's a school of thought that when your lungs are ill it's when

you're holding on to grief and I just want to be clear as well because I had a similar experience but that it's not to say that this is reactionary to the other person no as in it's like it wasn't an allergic reaction because I had something and it's what my post was about that happened to me last year where I was physically responding to something but I was completely unaware in in the sense that my mind had no idea. And our minds run so much of the show. We don't give enough credit to our body and its instincts. And what happened with me was I was getting periods of depression. And it's very personal for me to talk about this

because it's also quite raw, but I described it to my partner at the time of, I feel like my heart's being broken and I don't know why. And now looking back, it was being broken on some physical level I knew. And it sort of put me on this path of trying to really become one with my body and actually entrust it. Because I think as women, we're taught and conditioned not to. and trust it because I think as women we're taught and conditioned not to so it's interesting because in your book you talk a lot about instincts and gut and how it took you a while to suddenly get to that point yeah I think I have always had very strong gut and instinctive feelings but I haven't

historically listened to them because I've fallen into the trap of believing that things need to be logical. And actually, I think logic is a massive conspiracy theory in that obviously it exists. And you know, if you stick your hand in the fire, then you'll burn it. But not everything in this universe is guided by logic. It can't be, not by human logic anyway. We are imperfect beings. We can't possibly hope to have the sophisticated enough level of intelligence to understand everything. And now I have to remind myself when I have a strong instinctive feeling that it is okay to listen to it and to act on it without there being a logical reason behind it. if I'm in a sad space or I want to express to my partner something that I feel I will sometimes say you know my feeling is a fact so I can put together a logical case and defend my opinion on something but ultimately how I feel is this and that is a factual expression yeah that's really powerful yeah because do you think also

that women we've sort of been conditioned to push that down because also something you talk about a lot is anger and women and things like that and how that's not it's not really been acceptable and I think we've always tried to fit in so we haven't perhaps honored our female intuition definitely there's a whole chapter in the book about how to fail at anger, which I never intended to write because I didn't think I was angry. And then I suddenly started writing this thing and I was filled with a kind of righteous and focused fury that made that chapter actually the easiest one to write in a way

because there was so much I wanted to say. And I realised that for a lot of my life I had felt sad but I'd been using sadness to mask my anger because anger felt very confronting to me and very uncomfortable and bad so yes I think that women historically when they've been angry they've either been dismissed as shrewish and shrill and slightly stupid, hysterical, so out of their minds, or dangerous. So obviously that it takes a conscious effort, I think, for certain women to be in touch with what they've been culturally conditioned to ignore for so long. Well, women get sort of labelled psycho when they demonstrate those sort of emotions. And also because of hormones and cycles, that's still something that a lot of shame is wrapped around. Whereas actually I'm trying to practice honouring that a lot more. I actually just got a calendar that you're supposed to mark your cycles so you can actually start working with it. Because if you're not paying attention to it and you're told that it's something that's shameful of course it's going to feel like irrational all over the

place but if you actually start working with it I think it's incredibly insightful and there's so much and similarly I only recently started doing that what why have I only recently thought isn't it a good idea to like put into a diary or an iCal when I'm bleeding heavily four days a month, when I know that in the days before that I will feel so sad, I'll forget that I'm getting my period and I'll think I'm depressed. And then every time it comes, you're like, huh. But before you're like, it can't be why. It's madness. And I have a very good friend of mine who is an acupuncturist and that's how I met him is this the person that you went to see for

your fertility yes I started seeing him when I was trying and failing to conceive in my early to mid 30s but one of the things that he says is you know you are bleeding heavily during your period so cut yourself some slack like go and lie under a duvet rather than thinking you've got to do a spin class we're conditioned to sort of completely deny it not even acknowledge that it's happening yeah and heaven forbid show any emotion that might be connected to it. You're right and so many female experiences are marginalised like that and it makes me increasingly angry. Because I want to talk to you about your own fertility journey because obviously you've been so outspoken about it which is amazing and it's very touching to read about it with so much openness and vulnerability. A lot of my closest girlfriends

who are not necessarily trying for children but suddenly got to an age where they realize okay the biological clock is still ticking and what they're experiencing is they might be like past 35 and they're suddenly going in and checking on their fertility which they never have done before but the difficult thing about it which i found really upsetting to hear is how much shame there is around it because we're sold the stories we're growing up about the knight in shining armor you know we're going to be saved we're going to have this fairy tale wedding and you know when we're young and at school about you look at a penis and you're pregnant basically all my lessons were about like putting condoms on and not getting pregnant. You made this amazing descriptive thing of going through a field of like touching and then just, oh, I'm pregnant.

Whereas the reality is somewhat very different and also a very difficult journey. But when you're sold that story and then your reality is so different from that, it can feel shameful and isolating. Totally. And I do think that failure is what you feel when something doesn't go according to plan. So it's that idea that in your mind, somehow you have a plan of how things will turn out. So I always thought I would have children. And therefore, when I didn't, that felt like a failure.

But in many ways, it was a self-imposed failure. And actually what's come out of that failure, I'm extremely sad about it. But if it does enable me to speak out for those women who don't feel able to and if it does enable me to have a tiny part to play in changing the language and the culture around it then I'm actually incredibly grateful for the plan not turning out the way I thought it was going to but I also think by the way that it's fine to feel ambivalent about children which I think I did for a really long time I wasn't sure one way or the other because if I'm completely honest I don't know whether it's something

that's in I don't have this maternal thing when I see a baby and my ovaries start like I don't either I always had it with like cats I do love cats but all my friends speak very differently about it and I've always sort of felt a bit of an anomaly in that sense and and it does on some level make you feel like oh am I not less a woman but am I missing something whereas actually from spending a lot of time on my own and like traveling bits on my own I realize how much that's to do with society telling you to do something a certain way at a certain time and if you're constantly in that environment you don't give yourself space to think well perhaps I could do things differently

exactly and also we are lucky that we live in a time where there are loads of options so say you get to 45 and you think I really wish I'd had a child there are options available you could adopt you could potentially get an egg donor there are there are things out there now that it's it's an exciting time in that respect but I also think it's a time that offers a lot of false promises because none of it is utterly certain. It's guaranteed. But that's okay too, because that's life is a kind of journey of uncertainty. And that's where a lot of the good stuff lies is sort of working out how you feel. I understand from parents that you feel very differently about your own baby.

And so you also spoke about freezing your eggs, because that was something that was part of your journey as well as the IVF. Yes. And a lot of my friends now are going through that experience. But what are your thoughts on that? Because obviously it's very expensive and it's not got any guarantee. In fact, its percentage is like, what, 15%? Oh, much less.

Much less. Well, for a woman my age and my advanced age of 852, I have really mixed feelings about egg freezing. It's a big risk. And you're right when you say it's very expensive. And so for me, it was more about the fact that I wanted to have done it. I didn't want to have this big question mark over whether I should have done it when I got to my 40s.

And also because at the time I was doing it I was in a relationship and that felt kind of sad that the relationship wasn't in a position where I could do this naturally because you weren't ready in the relationship yes basically I was with a younger man and he wasn't ready you know this it's a very people will often say this like there's Mr. Right and there's like ready. You know, this is, it's a very, people will often say this, like there's Mr. Right and there's like Mr. Right now. And there's, and part of being Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Right is actually timing. As unromantic as that sounds, it's a really big factor. And actually I now believe I'm with a wonderful man now who he will laugh if he listens to this because he always

says he's a big believer in pacing and when we first got together I still believed that the true expression of romance was we must be together right now and run away to the desert me too yes just as extreme as you could possibly get and diving in head first because otherwise they're not that into you surely and I now realize that I could not have been more wrong that actually when someone says that they love you like that that's more about them and their narcissism than it is about you and why would you want to be with someone who's going to throw away their livelihood and go to the desert with you it's madness it's a form of madness I get that because I'm that person that will well I used to be would abandon myself as soon as someone came along that gave me that feeling and I would like honestly say I love you so quickly yeah and even though I meant it at the

time I couldn't possibly know what that meant because I didn't really know that person although I think there's something very beautiful about that because you believe in love and you carry on believing in love no matter how many knocks you take true but I think and it's something you talked about in your book that how we look for a partner that's going to like rescue us yeah and I think with me it stemmed from a lack of feeling complete within myself. Whereas now I'm really practicing that my romantic relationship is obviously a huge part of my life, but it's not the be all and end all. Yeah. And I don't need to abandon myself when I meet someone that I like. It's about pace.

Yes. And I never, ever thought that I would approach a relationship slowly. I'm exactly the same. But now I realize how much wisdom there is in that. How much wisdom and how much beauty. I now realise that that is the most romantic thing of all. That actually for me, I thought I wanted fireworks. And don't get me wrong, when I first met Justin, who is my partner,

I hate the word partner, but also boyfriend sounds trivializing because I'm 41 so anyway so partner when I met him there were fireworks in the sense I was like he's arrestingly handsome and I really am enjoying his company an awful lot but it wasn't let's abandon everything and go to the desert it was we were both considered about it because we had both been through divorces we were both a bit older we were both so much clearer about what we wanted and who we were and honoring your needs exactly and he he just taught me the beauty of pacing as much as that phrase frustrates me did you try and dive in yes yes kagi so you're talking about it oh I was very disciplined with it no no I tried and he made me resist it was a real struggle and I have to give almost all of

the credit to Justin actually because he made me work out what I wanted rather than being overwhelmed by what the other person desired and it just makes for a much better relationship my approach to relationships and everything had always been to mold myself to the person that I met and then after a long however long together I suddenly would be like I'm not actually being myself but I've never taken the time to honor what my needs were who I was as a person and what I actually wanted from a partnership whereas now through this transition I'm suddenly like okay I actually have enough just enough self-worth to know when something's actually just not right for me but then on the flip side it means that you're not going to be for everybody and as a people pleaser that's a bit of a strange one to digest because I've always wanted everybody to like me and everybody to love

me if I if I feel like I want them to I had struggled with exactly what you've identified that sense that you can try your best and be yourself and still someone won't want to go on a second date with you and that's okay and it's okay but it feels crushing but my experience over the last two years has been that it is when I am most fully myself and most open about my vulnerabilities that I have had the greatest connection with other people. And that has been such a revelation to me because I realised that people like me for who I am. And when people don't like me, that's so much easier to deal with

when I've just been who I am. Rather than being someone else for someone else and then feeling abandoned at the end of that journey. Because I always look at it like we're all on our own unique paths, but I often would meet someone and go off on theirs. And then when that didn't work out, you feel this sort of resentment and betrayal. Whereas if you just stay on yours, of course it stings when a relationship doesn't pan out the way you hoped it would, but it doesn't have the same feeling of like, I don't know who I am anymore.

Exactly. And you also don't feel like, oh, I'm really cheapened myself for that person. I really betrayed who I actually am for that person. You won't have that, which is a whole other layer of horrible heartbreak that you don't have to deal with when you're being as full of yourself as you can be. And talking about the sort of failing, I guess, because the 20s for me were a decade of like lots of different failures and we just touched on it within the dating sphere but just to apply to life failing and getting things wrong or being in the wrong relationship or whatever it's just a way of your internal compass navigating you towards what is right for you and I think that's how we need to approach it.

Because for so long, I was in a state of like paralysis analysis of like, I don't want to feel pain. I don't want to fail. And therefore, I'm not going to move. And that is like remaining stagnant and not moving is the worst thing of all. And I think we just, what you've managed to create is this way of people being a bit more fluid about it and moving through these transitional times with a bit more ease because it doesn't mean you're hopeless as a

person if you get things wrong exactly just because you fail does not make you a failure and I think the whole notion of Saturn's return is absolutely one of transition. And actually, if you're not transitioning, you're not growing. And you can choose to regard failure as a lesson of some description. And the lesson might not immediately be obvious, and it might take you a while to process whatever sadness or pain you feel post that failure. But my personal belief is that the lesson always reveals itself 100% and and that is a choice like I realize it doesn't work for everyone and that a lot of people might think well how dare you tell me how to fail I just want to wallow in like how miserable I am with the difficulties going on in my life and I understand that pain I do and if that's how you

want to live your life, that's completely fine. It's just that for me, this is the way that I found that works better. And we are obviously two immensely privileged white women. So I'm aware that when we're talking about this, we can't possibly cover the range and the gamut of human experience. We don't know what it's like to be a marginalised person, a person of colour, someone who's homeless, someone who's living with a chronic illness. There are so many different gradations of suffering and pain and failure. And some of them will feel completely unfair and unjust and uncopable with. There are some things that as humans, we won't be able to explain. And it will feel like

we can't possibly learn from them because they're just so tragic. So I acknowledge that I speak from a position of privilege is really what I wanted to say there. But with the failures that I can choose to learn from, I choose to do that. Would you say there was a point during your late 20s to early 30s that did you notice a massive shift in your life? Or do you think that it's sort of, that you were denying it? I think I was denying it.

And yet there was a massive shift happening underneath the surface. So I realised that when I was 27 was when I first went into therapy. And I suppose it would be mild depression. And it felt as if there was no reason for it. I had a job that I'd always wanted. I was working on a Sunday newspaper, but it wasn't quite the job that I wanted. I wasn't getting enough of an opportunity to write. I hadn't started writing my books then, which is actually

one of the greatest joys of my life. I was in a relationship that it turned out wasn't going anywhere. But I was still in it because I loved his family so much. And I liked him tremendously. I feel bad saying that, but it wasn't going to have a future. So it felt like a real period of transition. And therapy was immensely helpful because it made me realise that. therapy was immensely helpful because it made me realize that and I did get a different job and when I was 29 I started writing my first novel and that was extremely helpful to me in terms of working out where my fulfillment lay and then I met the man who would later become my husband so they were very busy years but they felt extremely uncertain and quite knotty and I wasn't really sure where I was headed and that in

shorthand is I think some of the cause of the then implosion that I had when I was 35 34 35 which was when I was trying to get pregnant and failing and then subsequently my marriage broke down I needed something in a way outside of myself to happen to make me realize how unhappy I was and it did feel like hitting a wall and I was suddenly like oh I can't go on doing this and it was slow motion I think again there's this sense that when you're in crisis it happens incredibly suddenly and it's very dramatic and it's very obvious and it wasn't for me I felt very numb for a really long time and it was my best friend Emma who said to me I feel like I'm knocking on a perspex screen and trying to get your attention but I can't see you

anymore and that was the moment that I knew something had to change I think what you said is so hard when something isn't a dramatic sudden change because it's hard for you to to see a way out of it because you're something like how did I get to this point and where do I go from here definitely and also me, there was an enormous amount of shame wrapped up in saying that my marriage wasn't working. I felt so foolish and so guilty and as if I were letting everyone down. So I really struggled with that. That took a long time. Well, this is something that I heard on, oh yeah, it was Brene Brown. He talks about, talks about who is your everybody. Something that I'm trying to practice at the moment is making that a smaller number

and having people that you really value and respect. And when you make any decision, it's about, you know, what do these people think? You don't have to know them. It's just like having a smaller select group because you actually realise that when you're saying, oh, I was scared of letting everybody down, it's this idea that we're kind of going up a mountain

we don't want to on our own with everybody behind us. And you look back and it's like, it's just you behind you shouting at you. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Like everybody's too busy going up their own mountain most of the time, but it has this feeling and this weight around it.

And you end up going down a tunnel that you don't want to. I hadn't heard that before and it makes such sense to me and the other thing that I do is that again I try and tune into my gut feeling and that honestly is one of my guiding principles pay attention to how your body feels when someone walks into the room and you meet them for the first time because often your body is telling you not to trust this person or that it's making you feel a certain way it's bringing up stuff for yourself and actually that's it's helpful to kind of monitor and analyze that not actually just about the other person it's more about what it brings up for you like why is this person bringing up this emotional baggage that

makes me feel this way if you start by observing that is the root of true enlightenment. I mean, that is the foundation of Buddhist philosophy and meditation is that you are not your thoughts, that you exist separately from your anxious brain. And so if you can try and observe first before attaching any feeling, any negative or positive emotion to it, that's very helpful. I mean, and that is very hard. Very hard. So what would your advice be to your younger self going through the transition of Saturn Return? My advice would be to have faith in the process and also to spend more time really working out

what it is I actually want. And that doing that is not, as I feared, selfish or self-indulgent. It's actually the opposite because it enables you to be a fuller, richer, more authentic person to everyone else. And therefore you won't get into the wrong relationships. You won't trap yourself in toxic friendships or toxic employment patterns because you will have spent time actually listening to what it is you need and who you are as a person so oh and boundaries oh my god get better at boundaries um because again i think i thought that was often selfish and now i'm realizing that but we're never taught to exercise we're never taught to exercise them and I listened to Brené Brown just to mention her the second time on this podcast being interviewed by Russell Brand and she had spent years researching the

habits of highly compassionate people I mean these are people like monks who live in the Himalayas highly compassionate that was their entire life and she discovered that the one thing that connected all of these disparate groups of people was a very strong sense of boundaries because it enabled them to conserve their energy for the things that really counted because they weren't frittering away with other stuff and wanting everyone to like them and that for me was a real revelation I was like oh I can be compassionate and have very strong boundaries. And actually the two go hand in hand, really. And it stems from having your sense of self developed enough that you know what you want and who you are. And you can be like, I love you, I see you, but this doesn't work with me.

Exactly. And you can grow. You can grow and a friend or a lover can be in your life for a certain period of time and you can teach each other the lesson that you both needed to learn and then you can move on and that is not a failure that relationship was not a failure it has taught you what you needed to know 100 well thank you so much i think that's a perfect thing to wrap up on and this has been such a great conversation i'm so happy that you're here today i've loved it so much thank you so much I think that's a perfect thing to wrap up on and this has been such a great conversation I'm so happy that you're here today I've loved it so much thank you so much for having me thank you Elizabeth so Elizabeth has just left my flat and I think from the second she arrived I definitely

felt this familiarity with her like I'd known her my whole life which some people I don't know sometimes you just have that connection with someone but she's definitely got a very warm open personality and there is also this vulnerability that comes across with her but but the strength with it too and I think that that came across in our conversation that it's a really beautiful combination I think that's why so many people connect to her. I think the way that she speaks so openly about her struggles allows other women to be more open about theirs. And I think that's a really powerful thing to be doing today. I think a lot of the stuff she talked about that is, you know,

we experienced during this transition, it felt like she got a calling to do it and she started practicing some of it but then there was also this resistance in her and and that manifested itself in her being this marriage and denying these aspects of herself for a while which I found really fascinating and I think how hard it must have been for her to make those decisions at that point. And it seems that she's got to a stage now where she's really embodying self-worth and knows who she is and has made it into this fantastic career. So we're all very thankful that it took her along the journey that it did.

But it was interesting to hear how, you know, if she was looking back, she would be more considered and take that time so I think that's something that we can all reflect on is it's not a selfish act to be listening to yourself and taking things slowly and really listening to what your needs are and exercising your boundaries it actually makes you a better person in friendships and relationships. So I hope you enjoyed listening to that episode. And if you want to know more about Elizabeth, you can find her on Eliza B. Day on Instagram and listen to her podcast, How to Fail,

or read her book, How to Fail. And you can find me on Instagram at kaggysworld. Saturn Returns is a Feast Collective production. The producer is Hannah Varel and executive producer is Kate Taylor. I really hope you enjoyed listening to this podcast. My aim with it is to really help unify us during a time that can feel quite isolating and lonely. So if you did enjoy it, I'd love it if you could tell someone about it who you think it might help. So until next time, thank you so much for listening and remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.