Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 3: Candice Brathwaite

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Welcome to week 3 and Sophie's guest is the brilliant writer and blogger, Candice Brathwaite. Candice has two young children with her husband Bode and has just published her first book, I am Not Your baby Mother, all about being a black mother in the UK. Sophie and Candice talk social politics, the legacy you leave your ancestors and the importance of putting Chanel on your cosmic wishlist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello, how you doing? Welcome to week three. I tried to record an intro in a more professional setting and it just doesn't work for me. I find that I always want to talk to you while there's other stuff going on. So I've got

Jessie playing next door. I've got Kit doing something in another. Oh, that was Jessie slamming the door. Mickey's eating something. You all right there, Mickey? Anywho, I hope you're doing well. We're three weeks in, you and me. It's becoming a long-term thing. I miss you when you're away. How have you been? How was your week? Everything's been all right here, just been a bit manic, to be honest. I've been doing some work things, quite big stuff for next year, and it's all very exciting, but it's just made me feel, if we use the spinning plate metaphor, I feel like they are maybe about to topple, maybe about to crash. Oh, more slamming, you girls.

Mom, why did my wife name me? Don't worry, darling. Just do better spying. Go in the sitting room and have a look through the window there. Did you hear that? Jessie was trying to spy on Ray, but she saw him. It went wrong. Anyway, you don't want to hear about this stuff. This week, my guest is Candice Braithwaite. way but she saw him it went wrong anyway you don't want to hear about this stuff um this week my guest is candice break right candice has got um two kids a little boy's two and a little guy's six um she um she's been instagramming like a mummy blogger i think you'd call it um for a few years

now but not because she thought oh i've got an amazing wife and I want to share it but because she could see a gap for a black young black family showing that they were thriving not just surviving in the UK and um she's got a lot to say for herself she set up something brilliant called make motherhood diverse a few years back which is an initiative to show the many different faces of motherhood um in the UK for people that maybe don't always feel represented. And she released her first book this year. It's called I Am Not Your Baby Mother. It's in the bestseller list. It's absolutely brilliant. It's been swept up in the Black Lives Matter movement, although obviously she wrote it beforehand. But it's rightly a bestseller.

I whipped through it. I loved it. It's informative. It's smart. It's got humour and it's got it's rightly a bestseller it's i really i whipped through i loved it it's informative it's smart um it's got humor and it's got sadness but it's also got urgency and agency mickey it's going to be hard people to hear me if you're doing that but you're going to love candice i thought she's brilliant i actually genuinely felt very very lucky to have time with her because i think she's only going to get bigger, bolder, better. She's just, I just love it when I meet women that are just driven and feel like they've got a purpose like that. I'm so, I find it really inspiring. She has such wisdom for me. I don't think I'm giving out much wisdom here. I love you all. Thanks for tuning in. Don't worry, the interview's really quiet. Enjoy. Bye-bye. It's quite funny being here with you because I feel like I've had a mini Candice sat by my bedside table for a little while.

Because I've been reading your book and your voice in it is so clear I sort of had a sense of you before I met you and thank you I've really enjoyed reading it as a very superficial thing it's the only book I've managed to finish in the last three months and it was so lovely to properly indulge myself in a book and think no it's really important I read this and then I get through it

but I'm just, my brain is like got asteroids off it for where to start with you really because I think the achievement of what you've written is wonderful you've obviously been doing this during an extraordinary time in our lives in so many ways um why don't we start with here now so what's happening maybe you're doing a book tour but from from your home yeah I'm doing a book tour from the spare room um everyone now desperately wants to talk about book two three four which is really interesting because I am the girl that I think everyone took a chance on and this um this was my sixth book proposal. I had five turned down, five. Oh, okay.

And none of them, what's really interesting is none of the conversation was, oh, you're not a good writer. It was the superficial, you don't have a big enough following. Like, grow your social media following, then come back to us, all of that. And with this book, I think I called everyone's bluff including my own I put the proposal up on Instagram and I was like I'm gonna self-publish because this is just driving me mad see you bye and in two weeks we had a deal so I think that shows sometimes the universe is just waiting for you to take a risk on yourself um but to my admission I'm so glad that other

proposals got thrown out because it wouldn't have been this. And I didn't want to write about motherhood because I thought, God, I come from the motherhood parenting influencer space. I see these books written every single day. And to be honest with you, 80 percent of them end up as coasters for your coffee because they're throwaway material. I'm not left thinking about them in a year's time and what I neglected to look at is how in the UK we'd never had an author a black woman write about motherhood ever so it's the first motherhood parenting book written by a black author in 2020 that's actually pretty it's kind of it's insane and gross yeah it's

really gross I mean I was when you're saying I was thinking that can't be true but I'm sure that must be true yeah um I'm sure you know your stuff about it but I'm thinking how how is that the case in 2020 it's sort of jaw-dropping yeah um so the other proposals you had were they sort of similar things or were they more born out of a kind of hey you've got your instagram thing follow you know building and you should write a book just sort of more like yeah motherhood yeah it was all of that it was very um it was very broad and perhaps that was the problem and what this book has taught me is have one reader in mind i wrote this specifically for 16 year old black girls growing up in South London

and everyone else ceased to exist and the minute I just thought of one reader it just allowed the work to flow better. It's been amazing. I had a message from a white guy 55 living in Kenya, don't ask me how the book got to him, but he's read it and he was like, I'm so overwhelmed. I've learned so much, but that was never my intention. I was like, I'm solely focused on this young black girl who is in so many ways just going to see all of these potholes and fall into most of them. But I want her to have that little voice in the back, like, try not to do that, do this.

That is sexual abuse. That is assault that I needed all of that and so to see all these different people read it it's really overwhelming yeah because it's definitely not um a sort of parenting manual no no no and you say a couple of times during as well that it's not an autobiography either um and actually I was sort of trying to work out not that it needs to fit into a genre but I was trying if I was trying to describe it to someone I was thinking how would I sort of term it and when I was talking to my mum about the other day I said it's really for someone like me so I'm like 41 white middle-class mum raising my five kids, I thought, for me,

what's happened with the book is it kind of brings home and sort of politicises the lack of diversity, what happens if you're a different race, growing up in contemporary modern Britain, specifically London as well, I'm a Londoner born and bred, and how the role of the dice of where you're born and the color of your skin can affect you but very much like i recognize the streets you're talking about and my london too yeah although obviously not my experience of

london so i don't know what that means the book is but i loved it because it really made me think and it also for a lot of people out there who have been watching all the Black Lives Matter and this massive movement, but they don't really know necessarily where they can start in their own lives. There's almost a point of where systematic issues are in the UK that need to be addressed right here, right now. It's alarming. There's so many statistics in it that are alarming. I really want you to restart the petition for getting them to discuss about black mothers in pregnancy again because he was saying in the book that there was a petition you tried to yeah and what's been interesting is since the release of the book someone else has pushed that petition and i

think we're well over the signatures now okay and i and that's so you you touched on like the term political and that's so funny when my best friend finally read it she was like mate did you write this to be liked and i was like oh i was very offended i was like what do you mean she was like no it's really political she was like she was like this just feels like dog whistle politics and i just feel i'm a she's a black woman and she was like i'm just sitting here with my mouth on the floor like I don't think Candice understands what she's done and I didn't I just I wrote it if I'm honest quite flippantly yes there were some bits that were hard to write but it was just very like because this is my life this is the lived experience of me and all the black women i know so i'm not stopping to think

how shocked people are going to be or disgusted or annoyed i'm just like oh this is what we know she was like yeah but the world doesn't know this and the world has never seen motherhood discussed this way she was like i don't think you understand what you've done and she was right i was very ignorant i was like yeah we'll see and but now all the feedback is i've pulled this data i'm going to start this petition i'm doing this in my workplace i've asked my lecturer at uni to add it to the reading list and i'm just like oh my gosh mate i didn't expect any of that no but that's what's brilliant because i think there are a lot of people watching everything's happening in the news and thinking okay how do i actually make this part of what i'm actually doing how do we make this movement mean something so it's not just a moment and things actually properly change your book kind of puts everything in a list almost

just like this is this is the result this is where the problem led from and this everything seems quite fixable but also so systemic it's so part of the infrastructure of yeah and it is it is political because they're things that are coming from the government and where where the attention's being placed and where the focus is yeah and if you're a voice that i mean the fact that it's the first black mother book about mother, that just shows you how quiet that voice has been. And obviously there's just been a kind of putting up with it. It's probably a little bit akin to something like the Me Too movement. And so far as people just want, it's kind of how things are.

So we don't question. And suddenly everybody goes, what are you talking about? We've got to flip the table and say this is definitely not okay yeah um so were you writing all of that with your kids sort of running when did you finish you finished earlier this year I finished back end of last year so I think just before Christmas I turned it in and so I've been they've been around the whole writing process. And then I want to say stupidly, but it's a blessing. We bought this house bang in the middle of like the week I was meant to turn in. So it was very late.

I'm only laughing because that's so much to take on at once. And the thing is, we called like the mortgage broker as like a joke. It was my joke. I was like okay let's see what needs to happen for us to buy in 2022 and they were like oh send us this this and they were like no you're good to go now and I was like what now and then I was like okay okay okay and so from calling the mortgage broker to closing on this house it was six weeks which is wow unheard of yeah but that meant our lives were like this and then because it was a new

building empty we moved in a month and I'm trying to write and my my kid um because of the racist incident that I describe in the book that happened to Esme, Esme is also changing schools at that time right um I'm trying to settle my son and with his new child it was insane looking back I'm like what were you thinking um but maybe that's again why I have a bit of a fly away tone in the book because I just I did not have the time yeah to be light-hearted or waste words I was like actually I've only got two hours right now to do this and then I've got to go pick up a kid or whatever so yeah and is that something you've sort of noticed has sort of changed in the way you approach your work since since you've been a parent if you've got that kind of concentrated

amount of time to do things do you think you'd be capable of writing in that way if your life hadn't been so busy no no way I think I'd be really um what's the word a bit lazy a bit and when you're younger and childless you're just afforded the liberty of taking time there's no one waiting to be fed or waiting to be put to bed so I didn't even have structure in my youth I was like oh yeah it will get done when it gets done esme especially just came into my life and just really upped the ante and i was like oh okay life moves better with this clean workflow where she helps me get up at this time and i know i've got to do i wouldn't even dream of having the career i have if i didn't have those kids first because they're really just making me buck up my ideas. And I'm like, they show me how, and I know it sounds cliche, how every moment is precious.

Because you blink and they're two and four and six. And I'm like, you were just born yesterday. So seeing them is like just having insight into how actually if you live to 100, that's just a blink. And I don't have time to waste. So I'm really like about there's kind of an urgency in a way isn't there yeah yeah because actually even your eldest is still only six that's actually a very short amount of time really I know to have done all these I mean it must be kind of crazy to you to think that every aspect of what you now do all

the time is so so I often speak to women where their work is influenced by motherhood but yours is not your work and your motherhood are like completely inextricably linked yeah so you must feel i mean in your book you say you didn't want to be a mother so do you ever have time when you have a rare moment to catch your breath just to think about the extraordinary sort of twist your life has all the time that my kids will be sitting here body my partner will be sitting here I'll be sitting there and I'll just have this out-of-body experience where I'm like this is not the life you planned for yourself but it's kind of cool I dig it but I was meant to be on a yacht in Dubai with my mates drinking champagne and I'm just here in Milton Keynes

doing this suburban thing I'm like oh wow okay but like you said um my entire career was born out of having children and so I just look at them and I think we even that the material aspect of their lives now wouldn't exist without them coming in and it's been a very quick change like Esme's only seven um later on this year and when she was born we were just so undescribably broke like there was one night we had to choose between topping up the gas meter and nappies of course we chose nappies but the the time she was born was freezing and I just think that was only yesterday six years ago is yesterday yeah and to see how much our lives have transformed I do sometimes just get really panicky and anxious I'm like this is so fast this is really even I have and I'm into the woo-woo the crystals the sage all of that

I'm like wow universe you're responding really quickly can I have a moment um so yeah it's just yeah it's just a roller coaster to be fair that that really that really is that's a really big change in a very short amount of time I guess the fact that you've also moved house really recently as well it must feel like everything's sort of every every landscape is kind of changing and then being part of that new chapter of your life and I I can't imagine how crazy it must have felt to you to have that sort of fire in you to to write your book and get out of yourself all those things all those messages to that 16 year old girl

in south London and then as your book gets near to release date this sort of cataclysmic global event happens and I I feel like the pandemic and people being on lockdown was almost like drying out all the straw so that when the events happened in America with George Floyd, it's like the match goes and everything's so dry, it could just go, whoomph. It's actually making me feel a bit goosebumps as a phenomenon. You know, it's a crazy thing to be living through.

But for your book as well, that's got so much of this as there's actually a lot of your phrasing that's now commonplace in news newspaper reporting yeah of how we're talking about racism um but it was there from last year yeah so i how does that feel to be going through it as your when it's your baby your book really it's confirmation to me and again I know it it sounds so um maybe out of touch with a lot of people but it's confirmation to me that I'm just like a vehicle and a vessel for whatever I'm supposed to be doing because we cannot ignore the timing literally the book comes out one week the very next week the murder of George Floyd just makes the world come alive and everyone finally stand in agreement like no we really do treat black people like rubbish and we need to like globally fix this and then my book's in the

world and then my phone keeps pinging and I'm like what's going on and it's just tag after tag mention after mention and even using social media as an example my platform grew by a hundred thousand in three days whoa and I'm just like hey guys how can I help you but I've been consistently tagged as a black British voice of activism which was so outside of whatever I thought I'd do because yeah I do film random stop and searches when I see young black boys being searched and I put them on the internet with their permission and I've always been vocal about the injustice towards me or my kid but because it was just part of my day-to-day life, I never viewed it as activism. But someone online did, and they were like, in the UK, this is a voice you need to listen to.

The book had been out a week, and it was like watching your newborn go to uni. And I'm like, no, no, she can't walk. Where are you going? And they just put a cap and gown on a baby, and they're like, yeah, it's graduation. And I'm just like, ah! Please don't do this and to see it

listed with like the work of a Carla and Leila so I'm just like are you guys being for real this that I wrote just like in my dingy spare room with very little spare time are you sure and the universe people are like no we're sure and I'm just, I'm just plodding along because I didn't have that kind of expectation. None of us knew we were going to see a black man be murdered on our screens for eight, nine minutes. So I just have to be down to ride it out. Yeah, I suppose this is a little bit semantics,

but I don't know if all you're putting on your stream is what you see and what people don't always talk about in a way it's calling activism in a way almost sort of what's the one i'm looking for it's like everybody should feel they can talk about their experiences and put that out there and that doesn't have to be a really big bold dramatic thing it can just be how we all learn about all the different complexities of life yeah and start to fix it yeah do you know what I mean yeah it's you shouldn't feel like you're doing something crazy or bold if all you're doing is talking about reality this is it this is it and I was like I just I felt so uncomfortable it just so happened um my friend Leila Saad is the author of a book called Me and White Supremacy so it's a workbook

they're selling really well and we share the same UK publisher and I just kept texting her like Leila I just don't know what's going on and she was like you're in it now and I know that wasn't your expectation but also remind this new audience that you are layered and you're not going to come onto the internet every day to do this back-breaking work some days it's just lipstick I love clothes I love getting dressed I love that lightness of life it just so happens that the the color and tone of my skin means I have this extra layer so I do sometimes have to discuss the harder injustices but that's not all there is to me and I hope that people who have gone on to follow Leila or Munro Bergdorf or any of the people listed aren't just always expecting hard talk because these women these people that like they have a

whole life like everyone else does yeah but i actually think that's all all more positive and actually makes it more accessible because you don't want um if it's the equivalent of like what you eat in the day or something you don't want your your voice to be sort of the equivalent of like eating something like muesli or you know you know it's good for you but you know you want it to be that full plate of all the color because that's that's the richness and then people go oh well actually um i i i love that dress and i love that handbag and oh what a brilliant picture on the wall and oh my god our kid's beautiful oh but also i'm learning all this other stuff yeah I think that's actually a much more like

rounded way to get people to listen to you full start that's why you were building a following in the first place it's that back to that horrible much used word but like the authenticity of a voice really and if it doesn't resonate then you're only really doing it because you feel like it's good for you and it probably won't sit because I think it's really important that people do feel like I recognize all these bits of my life and then because it made me think I mean and I had my first baby I felt quite isolated I think the experience of your first child is quite an isolating experience but it really made me think when I was reading a book because I thought well I would look at you know

the cover of like I don't know a baby Bjorn thing and think I don't recognize that woman that's not me but what if it's really not you what if it's not anywhere near you in terms of your upbringing the kind of yours and nothing I thought that must be I can't even imagine how far away you'd feel from what role model of parenting is supposed to be or how how recognized how seen you are um when you talk about the 16 year old girl you're writing like do you think it's probably a bit trite but do you think it's you is it like a young version of you yeah completely yeah yeah and then I I only wish I could have read a book like the one I've now written at that age there was this wickedly salacious book that came out when I was about 14 15 it's called the coldest winter ever it's American fiction um and it was it was such a juicy story about a teenager growing up in Brooklyn our headmistress bandit she was

like I see that book in here you're going to the chapel but um I was like I need my book to give someone that feeling because I read the coldest winter ever and although it was set in New York I was like I know that I've seen that situation I've lived that and I wanted my book to be held in that esteem so I wasn't even thinking Sunday Times bestseller a win for me was if schools were open that girls would purposefully put the book in the front of their art folder so as they're walking down the street it's like yeah I am reading this hot new book because that's what we did with the coldest winter ever once you got a copy of it you put in your art folder because you wanted people to see that you were down so I was like

so many times I said I don't care about that like what are the kids reading Gen Z help me and so it was definitely me talking to myself because I'm adamant that if I read that kind of material 16 17 18 I've it's not to say life would have been better but I definitely would have avoided really bad guys I would have been able to ascertain what was sexual abuse what was not me like pretending to be destiny child independent woman but answering to this really unusual illegal call of especially young black girls being um forced to grow up far too quickly and um i just wish that someone held my hand through that and so there was none of that and i think that book is me trying to do that for me yeah I actually think there's it could be even more for the teenage girls to talk about how they feel about themselves

when it comes to yeah becoming a sexual young girl and I mean my whole attitude to the opposite sex and sexuality and everything as a teenager was so it was picked up from things like more magazine which isn't even around anymore but it was this comic that used to have like position of the fortnight and stuff and i just look back and i think i wish i could just take myself and say like that is not that is not the goal here unless that's what you really want to do in which case go for it but there's not i don't think i really knew where to it's something that wasn't really spoken about actually how to assert yourself or how to make sure that what you're doing wasn't just I think I just wanted

to be a people pleaser I thought yes if I was doing what blokes thought was great then like then 10 out of 10 yeah that was the aim like how it's weird isn't it when it takes getting older to learn what you shouldn't have done and you just want to hug yourself. And I think that's why the book has landed with women specifically, because regardless of race, there are so many moments where women are like, oh my God, that happened to me. And I've never used the word rape. I've never, I've always gone and said, oh, well, you were too drunk and you should have known better.

You have those quiet conversations with yourself when it's like no the person knew that and they took advantage so you have to be able to label it like it is yeah and I think um yeah the the cover says black British mother but the what is inside the book is like universal problems no no I'm doing lots of uh big nodding and agreement with that I think that made me reflect a lot on some of my early experiences and I would definitely, I recognised a lot of myself in those things and yeah, it's that thing of thinking, but I was there, that happened to me, I must have invited it and then looking back you think, absolutely not,

that was just a total imbalance. Am I annoying you Claire by playing with my coffee cup? Is that what's annoying you? Yes, I'm going to have a bit of coffee and then i'll put it down again sorry i've been doing that a lot i think um so now you find yourself a mother of two and so obviously your first one is a little girl so do you think there's a lot of uh things you felt determined to be kind of a role model to her in that way yeah completely i think when we talk about people pleasing um black women are like

at the top of that leaderboard and because society is so well i use the the idea of um a diagram in the book about a pyramid and black women not being anywhere on the pyramid. They are in the soil. They are the pillars that keeps the pyramid upright. And so when you think about that, we never have a voice. We're never listened to. There was an interaction between her and her grandfather from her dad's side that happened in this living room where she, he was like, Esme, come and take my plate to the kitchen he just finished eating and this is very common in especially Nigerian settings and Esme was like no and like you could have heard a pin drop he was like what what and he called her dad Bode he was like come and talk to your daughter she won't take my plate like I'm her granddad I feel so disrespected and she was like granddad your legs aren't broken and I just don't feel like doing it

and I was in the kitchen like yes yes and I was ready like a mama bear to come ripping in here yeah if body didn't come down and side with her I was like right I was counting I was like I need him to show her that he is on board with her having an opinion even in the face of his very stern West African dad he came down he was like yeah we don't do that in here dad like she has an opinion and he's done I think his dad actually took a nap after it was just such like but um I'm really firm about that my granddad I was raised by my granddad my maternal grandfather and I'm really lucky because even though he's 80 he's always encouraged me to have a voice always and I know for sure that it's that voice that has perhaps and I and I'm not being dramatic,

definitely kept me alive in a lot of situations, being able to say things or shout literally. And so I've taken that from the way he raised me and my daughter, especially. I'm like, no, speak up, speak louder, say it again. Mum and dad, we will always back you don't you know don't shy away from a situation and so yeah I think I'm I'm really intent on her feeling like she can speak yeah I can well that's an amazing moment your daughter said no I'm not going to take your play granddad but um also your granddad um seems like the loveliest man i mean the way you speak about him on your post but it was in your book did you give him a haircut the other day yeah i did

that's a very tender thing to do for someone i think actually my kids would not describe this tender but theoretically the thing is he kept asking um my partner to do it he kept saying oh boday come and cut my hair and i saw body just kept dragging his feet i was like oh gosh i'll bloody do it then but then when we were in bed that night body was like i did it on purpose he was like i didn't want to say but he was like i i'm always aware of the things you miss about your dad because my dad died when i was 20 and he was like i was not going to steal that moment he was like when your granddad dies oh sorry oh Candice he was like when your granddad dies like you'll just remember that moment

and I thought even in the middle of it when I was just like oh he's annoying me because he's being lazy I thought oh actually yeah you've got a point there yeah yeah that is really precious and it's a very intimate thing to do as well having someone sat there and you know I think sometimes the conversations you might have or even the silence actually when you're both involved in a task and you're not making direct eye contact yeah it's like there's a there's a dialogue that can go on even when there's no sound yeah um and I think it's really special that you had that time but also special that he's been in your life in that way um we're not always uh we don't always talk as much about the role of grandparents in our in our raising I mean obviously yours is a lot more close to hand because he was

the one there a lot of the time but for everybody that you know your relationship with grandpa it can be much more it's got the same love as a parent but the judgment is sort of once removed so it can actually be somewhere where they do go I'm just rooting for you here actually I just want you to excel and be celebrated because you haven't got that inbuilt thing of going this is my yeah next one down and you've got to be like a mini me but better or whatever it is you're doing no that's it and that is my granddad's vibe. And now I said to him when he was here, because prior to us inviting him into this bubble thing we're doing, I hadn't seen him since Christmas last year. Oh, wow.

I know. And life has changed so much, even in that short space of time. And he was staying here and he stayed for five days and he cried because he didn't want to go home. But he lives in sheltered accommodation for older people so he was like if I don't go home tonight they're going to kick my door off in the morning thinking I've died so I need to go home um but I was like actually granddad I make you a promise we are going to buy a bigger house and you're not going to die alone like I I see that as my duty and I think I feel like that because when my dad died it was my granddad who took me to see dad in the chapel of rest and I'm 20 and I've never seen anyone die or a dead body and even though it was my own dad I was a bit like oh god I'm scared this is too much

and my if my granddad could have jumped in the coffin he would have and he was just like rubbing his head and was like my dad's name was Richard he He was like, Richie, it's fine. I'm here. And like, I'm not going to die until I know she's fine. And I just, it's so extraordinary to see that kind of love from people who weren't family, like him and my dad weren't kin, but my granddad was just so possessive of him in that moment. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm not going to let you die in some sheltered accommodation unit. I would never forgive myself. And so I'm now obsessed with just getting a bigger place where my granddad can have his space.

And we can check on him all the time and he can smoke his pipe. And I can know that I get the privilege of seeing him off this earth like that to me is a privilege but well that's also a gift of it's a big you know love in its sort of most profound ways and if you can actually spend that time and look after him and it's funny I don't know if you've you probably have thought about this a lot because I you know obviously you got thinking about your granddad when you were cutting his hair but I think I've weighed up so much during this time the the fact that we've had this lockdown where you can't see your loved ones and your parents and grandparents but weighing up the value of time when you know that you haven't got endless years to spend with people anyway I've thought so much about it like

how what's the the value of keeping people safe on a lockdown when they might possibly get an illness that could make it so they die really very soon versus not having loads and loads of time left to spend time together at all it's I think it's been so hard for people psychologically all of that yeah um and we had the first time when my mum came around the other day and first time she could like hold my youngest who's only one and I just thought it's it's crazy you know the way you have to value weigh up these things and it's like you were saying as well with um with children being such an amazing marker of chronology because during this time my little one went from being a crawling only baby to now he's you know walking around and got a few words and

it's like oh you can really see like he's gone from that to that not quite at university like your book baby but you know in his own little way these milestones um with so we've talked a lot about the book and I know you're saying that it's really important that people don't think that's all you and obviously a massive part of what you do is your Instagram life and now your husband has stopped work to work with you which is amazing actually do you know what though he took a chance on me and I'll never forget it I work to work with you. Yeah, I know. Which is amazing, actually. Do you know what, though? He took a chance on me, and I'll never forget it. I used to work in publishing when Esme was about two. I won a job to work for a major UK publisher.

So I got back on that wheel, and it was really hard because my mum was looking after Esme, and my mum's not very well. And so I was in the marketing marketing department and back then they were called bloggers and I was spending the whole day on the phone to bloggers asking them what it would cost for them to feature a title on their blog and the price they were telling me I would go on my lunch break and be like oh you're really in the wrong job gal but how on earth do you make this crossover and you know I'd be like in the corner

making little notes right so you build this online platform and you make yourself look appealing to advertisers and so I'm always very clear when it comes to my business it's exactly that I never came online and I know a lot of people have this privilege of just being like oh I just got so lucky and I don't know how to no no this was planned to a tee I saw I'm so sorry it's my granddad's oh do you want to um I saw this gap in the market and I was like you have to be all in on filling that and I quit my job I quit my job and and me having that job which was not greatly paid at all but it kept our heads above water like we could have a date night once a month you know our shopping what we could spend on the food shop was still really

small but it just brought our heads above water and me quitting that job sent us right back like under the seabed and um he begrudgingly supported me he was begrudging for years um and but I did say to him I said one day I said I'm going to make enough money that I can float everything and give you the chance to work out what you want to do that That was always the promise. And I've been saying it now since last year, but he'd been in the same job steadily rising for 10 years. You get used to that income every month and he knows what he knows and he likes it. But lockdown, I think, really showed him what he's missing with the kids and being able to be the boss of your own time of sorts.

And he'd actually got a new job during lockdown and he was going to leave the company he'd worked for and go to another one. And last week, I just looked at him like, dude, are you really are you really going to do me like this? Like, I've come as far as I can by myself. Work is going so well that I'm struggling I'm having to turn things down because you're on a course or you're working away and now I've got to like get the kids here and do that and he was like actually okay okay and I had to like print off all the bank statements and show him how I in my head because I'm a good bluffer but I don't like like talking the financials and spreadsheets.

But I laid it all out. I was like, this is what we have. This is how long we will float. And, you know, I had to show that to him. And he was like, oh, we're good. He was like, okay, I'll quit. And I was like, what? And it's only day two of us working together.

And he's changed my life like that. My workflow is so, it's only day two of us working together and he's changed my life like that my workflow is so it's become so smooth um and so yeah but uh he did me a solid yeah yeah but also being able to share the workload is a massive help just be able to because I would imagine when you first start out with something like blogging or content creating you you the line between home life and work life is really blurred and if someone is begrudgingly supportive but still maybe doesn't quite understand that well really well so if you're saying I really need to finish this post or I really need to do this or can you just take one more picture it's not quite right because you know in your mind what you want it's sometimes quite hard if you're working at home as you've been doing at the beginning from

that with that to actually differentiate like no no this is it is actually still work it is still a business and then not just think you're yeah gonna get crazy with it so I suppose what's the big significant well the first time you get something it becomes monetized I suppose is yeah the first time he saw me work with a brand and get paid he was like oh oh you did okay and so that meant though I hadn't worked for say four years so it took four years to get to that point took four four years wow four years it's quite a long time this is the thing no wonder the support was a bit begrudging this is the thing so people like I and I want to be honest about it I'm like yeah I think people don't realize this whole platform

building thing and and and then like to to just bring it home even though I had a book come out a month ago or however long um my Instagram platform only grew by an extra 100k last week right right last week so um you have to be deeply committed to whatever you're trying to do yeah and um yeah we he just looked at me like i was completely insane he was like you are making no money you're up till midnight learning how to edit like what is going on now it makes sense it makes all the sense in the world and i'm so happy i just followed my gut but um that i think there are so many people specifically women who know they could succeed at something but are too easily swayed or or give up just a little too early yeah you've you you've got to get to that

place where you're in mad discomfort like you know it's not even a bit like oh I you know I'm not really feeling good or this is really hard it's tears it's frustration it's crying out in the dark at night thinking how am I possibly going to see myself to the end of next week? I feel like that is the point. A bit like childbirth, even though I had C-sections, I think you need to feel that burn of the head coming down and then the successes like the child being born. But I think so many women are sometimes even forced to just like quit when you're five centimetres dilated.

People are like, oh, you've been at this for too long this dream's a waste of time all of that you just have to be committed to seeing that kid being born yeah I think um it's also really nice to hear that you worked for it for a long time because there'll probably be a lot of people that look at the success you have and think oh I'd quite like to do that and it's actually i think it's okay that it's there's a proper hard graph behind it because it's it's it's you know that's the journey that it takes and it can't be something you can just sort of pick up off a peg you know it's got to that the solid foundations are what helps it helps it grow as well yeah but um what was i gonna ask you um i've lost my train of thread that

i'm trying to thought i had a quite really good question and it's gone well i'll ask a different one what what do you think the the sort of pre-baby you would would think of you now what do you if you kind of spent time together or just thinking about yourself as a mother do you know i think this was a line in the book but we left it on the cutting room floor and I think I said something along the lines of a pre-baby me would walk past me now in the street and not recognize her we'd have the same face the same name be the same person essentially but our eyes wouldn't even meet she would just just be I'd be so out of whatever she's thinking or dreaming about for herself seemingly so out of reach she wouldn't see me just be in her own world just looking ahead at

whatever um and that's really it's powerful but it's also really scary because I'm I try not to be um vocal especially around Esme my eldest about how much having them has impacted my life or made me grow because I'm also very aware of how even if you have the privilege of living to be an old person if you have kids your world's at some point must part and I don't ever want them to feel like they're so um they have to be so deeply committed to me or their life entrenched with mine that when I do die they're just so like turned over with grief or thinking oh but mummy was part of our world now we have separate worlds so and I'm really I love my children but I'm i hate that line oh my kids are my world i had a world before them and they've come along now and they're part of my universe but they're a completely

different planet and we orbit and we do all of that but that means that when i can bust they're not affected and so i'm very um careful about the way i speak about what they've done for me. And I'll say it in private, but I don't ever want them to think, oh, you know, we do this and mummies this way because of, you know, I want them to feel. And that your happiness is so dependent on what they do. Yeah. I actually use the same analogy about the planets for my kids as well, actually. I think as well because I've got a few of them now

and I feel like I have to visit each planet and check the atmosphere and see what's growing and go that plant's flourishing but this one really needs more water and more light and I feel like they've all got a slightly different vibe going on you have to keep spending time going around these different planets um I actually remembered my other question now I was going to say when you were building your your Instagram platform it started out as a kind of you were working publishing and you could see hang on a minute these people are getting paid really well for doing something that I firstly I think I could do but secondly I think there's a gap for someone like me I haven't I haven't really seen that there yeah but how easy was it because your book is it's the same voice as your platform but it's still it isn't the clothing and the

lipstick yeah so did you feel like there was a chance that they might not be comfortable bedfellows having your book be quite so sort of I suppose having such a fire to it no that was really purposeful it was really important to me I think far too often online influencers are offered book deals purely because of numbers and publishing is a business and if you've got a million followers they know at least 10% are going to buy that book Sunday Times bestseller the numbers look great and on and on that wheel turns it was really important to me that when people spoke about my book one of the first things they would say is oh yeah but this isn't your usual influencer book that this is not a blogger book that that was like

I told my publishers off the top like that is a major goal this cannot be another Instagram throwaway book that no one's speaking about in three months yeah um and I wanted I felt like I had a point to prove because I fought so hard to get a deal and I'd watched so many women specifically white women who had started their platforms after me but had been offered book deals before me yeah and couldn't write they can't write they've had ghost writers like that's a known thing and I just felt so dejected I was like it was essentially 16 year old me having a point to prove yeah I think so well also I was thinking a bit about when you were saying about the urgency you felt of getting these things done yeah and I suppose if you've

you know had the tragic experience of your own father you're only 20 and he's only 42 he's a very young man that's that's gonna definitely instill in you a sense of everything can change in a heartbeat and you don't know how long you've got yeah to get things out there and I'd actually go further with the influencer thing and say I I wish the internet was better at having more boldness in it because I find a lot there's there's loads of people I found on Instagram that i adore and they really i love they actually help my day go better and i've learned things and been introduced to things and i found things inspiring but there's also swathes and swathes that i think is very

very vanilla it doesn't want to put his head above the parapet doesn't want to challenge everything yeah and i don't like the idea of like i sometimes get so hot and when something i care about is doing well and then i'll look at something like the big ones and they've got these millions of followers and they're not saying anything about anything and I'm like why are people looking at this it's like looking at wallpaper or something I don't that's the side of Instagram I don't actually get I completely agree you are you are you are preaching to the choir and it's so um and then I have people who have followed me since Esme was a baby and um you know the the common thing is oh you should have way more followers and I often go back to them I'm like this kind of truth doesn't get more followers sweetheart

this is this level level of being yourself the overused word authenticity is not popular because it makes people um have to confront things about themselves that can be really uncomfortable yeah and I think certain content creators influencers have millions of followers because they allow people to feel nothing I would totally agree with that and that's still a that's still a thing like being able to come online outside of your day and just see great clothes just see interiors yeah and and for them not to be talking about injustice or the pandemic or anything yeah it allows them to check out agreed but it also means and I believe this deeply deeply, that there's no longevity in a content creator's career like that. It's very, people will turn off slowly but surely.

And I've seen those kind of content creators eat themselves alive. Because there is also, there are things beneath the skin, they're raging and dying to say. But now they've built this community of millions who is just so used to farrow and ball paint yeah i know that it's like oh i can't possibly now talk about black lives matter like you're only here for this well not even anything but they can't even talk about the argument they had yesterday or their kids you know doing something like none of it's mentioned and i mean i won't go into any names or anything because it's not about that but the whole thing that happened last year with the sort of uh the forum where it turned out that

a high profile blogger was actually sort of trolling herself and others was a bit it's an amazing story because it's a bit like the thing that for me always made me feel like I can't follow that because it doesn't speak to me about my life like my life is so far from perfect yeah and my motherhood is i love it but it's also it's quite chaotic at times and i i don't really tend to follow things that make me feel like a bit crappy about you know the mess in my home whatever but it was like turning over the the picture and underneath it's like there's loads of maggots or something yeah if we're if we're all better at being open about reality it's actually healthy for everyone I think yeah and I suppose as well that you're talking about the followers but I have to say when you've got

a best-selling book that's actually got a proper thing it's saying I don't think you need to worry about that because you're sort of at that's part just part of the thing you do and there's all these other things you do yeah and you can be on breakfast telly showing fashion and also talking about this how cool is that you know what though that whole incident with that blogger what's so interesting is that at the beginning of that year she was hosting an event that I and my mother went to and there were various other blogging friends there and one of them I'm still friends with in our conversation she was just talking about the stresses of being online and I and I always do this I seem my mouth seems to write checks that I do end up cashing in the

long run but as I'm saying things I'm like that was really crazy why did you say that but I said to her oh by 2020 I was like sweetheart we're not all going to be in the same room and she was like what do you mean by that I was like no I've got really big plans and I just don't see myself being so dependent on these squares that Kevin or whoever owns it can unplug at whatever time and then I feel like all my work has gone down this digital drain. I was like, yeah, I'm not going to be in this space. And it's so funny that, you know, that blogger was hosting that event. And then it turned out that because I knew about what she had been up to, say, a week before it broke publicly. But I was in the middle of like trying to wrap up the book.

So I was like, oh gosh, sucks to be her. Yeah. Bye. Like to people who wanted to gossip, it grew and grew though, because I was getting a lot of messages and a lot of DMS. And as the days were going on, it was like, have you seen what she said about you? And I was like, oh God, did we have to do this? And it's like going to the cinema to watch a movie and then seeing your name in the starring role. And you're just like, I was just here with my popcorn to like watch an action movie. Like and it's like going to the cinema to watch a movie and then seeing your name in the starring role and you're just like I was just here with my popcorn to like watch an action movie like what's going on and then when it turned out to see what she said about me I just felt so I was gutted I was angry

I was horrified um I'd been on her podcast to like advocate for black women dying in childbirth and like on timings like that night you'd gone home to speak about me in a racist manner like it's so but now I'm here and actually like this is gonna make like a sick Netflix or dispatches thing because what she did just shows how it's almost being online it's like an alternate reality and you can present yourself to just have this picture perfect life and yet you go to bed and you're so upset or hard done by or whatever or threatened that you go into this space that is known for making people even want to commit suicide pretending to be someone else and like it's so

if I take my name out and I just view it I'm like actually that is a really great documentary and we need to make it to show kids about how this can have a detrimental effect on who they think they are on actual reality on mental health on real life but don't get me wrong it's taken me a long time to see it from that perspective well i was gonna say it's it's tricky i would imagine because you set out your stall at the beginning of saying i see a lot of i think you put in the book um a sort of bob haircut showing you you know white women mothers with their breasts on tops and i want to represent a really happy colorful black family thriving in the UK but does that come with a pressure to to not show when things are tricky because you don't want to do anything that might dilute the importance of

that message oh yeah it did for a bit I was like oh you know they say black dads are missing or all of that stuff and so I was really like oh I don't ever want to talk about when we have an argument or whatever and then that just got really boring because I was like actually if I'm just going to show this normal nuclear family of course we argue of course there are times I'm like go sleep in the car and that is just part and parcel of our life and once I like cracked that open even more my audience responded in an even more positive way because I think especially for black women watching at some point I can see how I perhaps look I looked unattainable it's like right she's

so successful now and so far removed from where she was born and what we as black women know that i think i'm losing touch and then i just start talking about the jamaican food we eat and how we argue and how there's a massive culture clash because he's west african and i'm from the caribbean and then it was like oh sigh of relief she's still normal these things i said yeah you know and i think it makes for better content i just think like you said i don't if ever someone feels rubbish about following me i'm failing i'm saying i know i can't keep everyone happy but if like the percentage gets high on people coming to my online space or engaging with my material,

and they leave feeling like, oh, I should be richer, slimmer, anything-er. That's an F in my book. Yeah. No, no, no. Because I don't like following people who make me feel like that. So I try to be really careful about doing that to other people. I've realised as well well we haven't spoken

at all about another amazing thing you did in 2017 I think was when you established um co-founded make motherhood diverse yeah that's like actually a really big deal we've never even spoken about that yeah so at the time I co-founded it with two other women who have since left to go and do their own thing so it's just me and my best mate actually and another friend I have so it's still three of us and in 2017 the idea was let's just replicate humans of New York this massive Instagram page yeah um but for motherhood and parenting let's welcome all kind of voices to come and have their say and share their story. And that's how it began. Make a Motherhood Diverse Now, though, and this was never the plan,

is now essentially a consultancy, an agency of sorts. Huge brands come to me or come to that space and are like, we're doing a Mother's Day campaign and we don't want to screw up. Please connect us with various women and people so that we can be sure that our advertising represents as many women and people as possible and i who plans that even in barbados i'm on this great beach but i'm shouting because the wi-fi is bad and i'm trying to pay women and people for an advert they've done through make motherhood diverse which the brand ended up not showing but still honoring the contracts because i was like that's what you guys have to do um but to be in a position now it's so weird there are a lot of women and people

i get jobs through through that platform who remind me of myself six years ago gas meter nappies what's it going to be and then an opportunity comes through and like we're talking three zeros four zeros for them and they're just like oh like that's going to cover my rent for dot dot dot and I'm I'm still I get very emotional about being in a place where I'm afforded the opportunity and privilege of seeing people through that moment because I think so many of us like to gloss over financial hardship and not talk money no so many women people are in abusive relationships just because of lack of money yeah and make motherhood diverse has helped many women leave relationships where men are beating them we've been able to link them up with solicitors pro bono who help them like move their kids and get them into safe houses

and so I know some people may just go in that feed and be like yeah lots of different mums cool that platform keeps me on my toes and it's just like my way of giving back I think no but that's brilliant and actually probably shows the intent of of wanting to outgrow the just the influencer role like okay let's actually make this bigger and bolder and take it further um and I'm actually really heartened to hear that advertising companies are coming and using it as a consultancy because it's really vital that everybody doesn't uh skirt over the awkwardness of the conversation and just have the conversation about that. I was thinking on the way here about, I don't know if you'd have an answer for this and you don't have to fill your spokesperson for it at all. But I wondered how they should teach in schools the difference between not just being not a racist but being anti-racist because I was trying to

explain it to one of my kids the other day and I was really struggling with the terms I mean I think this is quite a fascinating time like you know with your your friend's book than me and white supremacy and working through the steps that someone like me would need to do with the learning I was thinking a lot about the fact that for my generation when i went to school we were very much taught don't don't see color of skin don't don't even really refer to it at all it was all like we're all the same we're all the same you know the heart was in the right place yeah but it means that now when the conversation is no no see see the difference acknowledge it and actually question when you don't see it it's it's quite a big shift in uh in thinking um i'm really really excited for the

changes that will come and i feel i feel actually very optimistic maybe it's a bit giddy of me but i do feel there's a genuine desire for things to shift but i did wonder how it works with kids because obviously every child is has got a very innate sense of what's right and wrong but then there's the fact that they can learn things that aren't healthy outside of school but I don't know how to make that difference about about being what it means to be anti-racist even when you're in schools I know and I struggle with that but I do think so much of it begins with teaching the correct history so Romans and Vikings yes they have their place but the fact that teaching key stage three about Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade is optional that's a problem that's a problem

we need to be honest about where our sugar came from and and and how we were involved in the moving of black bodies and trading people um a carla oh my gosh every time i hear that man speak i just shrivel in in silliness i'm just like you are so whippet smart yeah he really is he's phenomenal when he talks you really listen i'm just like i wanted to be in a car in every school basically that would be amazing so i'm like so can we get a junior version of natives please akala yeah because i'd never heard british history discussed in that way and i my my i'm black and my mind was blown it's through him that i learned we've only just in 2015 finished paying um money back to slave owners in this country who were annoyed that we that britain were going to say okay we're not dealing with

slaves anymore that money was being taken through um british people's taxes and they only finished paying that in 2015 oh my god that's embarrassing what's going on so it's like actually let's start there and let's not do that in key stage three let's like pull that in with actually i give credit to them horrible histories have a great song about um i like horrible yeah they have a great song my daughter found it about things that britain were doing and she was like mommy do you know where sugar came from oh my i'm like let's let's pick that up a little bit earlier so that we can start to frame up young people's minds about the history of this country.

And if we're going to call it great, how so many different races played a role in that. It's not just a white man's land. It's not this whole, you know, a place where people feel like um the murder of Stephen Lawrence is righteous because you know we need to start there the other stuff I'm not sure but I am really I'm pinning a lot in us just being honest about the history of this country and I would I would hope that with the the promotion the highlighting of the Black Lives Matter movement, publishers are really doing their homework and starting to reach out and commissioning certain books.

Because again, a bit like I had that moment six years ago where I'm like, gap in the market, gap in... huge gaps are here. Huge, there are books we need that these schools really need. And so I hope they're doing their work too no i think that's a brilliant answer i think that's the thing that people as well sort of willfully totally missed when they're talking about statues so much it's like it's not the statue at the end of the trail it's that's the result of how the history is being taught yeah what you need is a more 360 version of what really happened yeah and people are capable of dealing with you know Churchill as someone who is capable of helping on one hand and being horrific another

we're not we're more we're capable of more complexity than that yeah yeah you don't have to dumb everything down like he's a goody and he's a baddie yeah it's actually really when I think of it it's like it's extraordinary that that is how things are taught, you know, sort of good guy camp and a bad guy camp. And it's just, we're capable of looking at everything and, and contextualizing it because everybody's, things are shifting all the time. The sounds move, people move on, they learn more, they're educated, you know, you can, you can put everything in a context and you're able to cope with, with all that information, I um so um when when you're doing your your book tours and talking to people about the books I know that you've got that like black teenage girl in South London at your forefront but there are probably two people that come up to you to say it's really

made a difference there'll be the people that feel they've been really you know seen with make motherhood diverse and with your book and then there'll be people who feel like it's really changed their way of thinking which which one of those do you find is the more powerful conversation or does it not really work like that it doesn't work like that it doesn't because i've got i've got great friends who are white i've got best friends who are white. I've got best friends who are white. I know some people will be shocked to hear that. And so just to feel that energy as an author to be part of a train of positive change or that click in someone's brain or that message when someone's like,

your book has finally made me sit down with my dad and confront him on his racism. I'm like, all of it is legitimate and and it's all on the same level none of it is like up here or down here um and it just makes me just feel a bit just so happy because I do genuinely feel um uh you could have picked any black girl from Brixton during that time to write this and it wouldn't have been exactly the same but a lot of the material would have lined up so I appreciate how a lot of people feel seen but what's also important to note is that even though I was writing for that person that

person knows what's happening it's just about having it confirmed through me writing this book for any change to happen I don't need to preach to the choir it has to be those now committing to work of anti-racism it has to be the white people who are like I never knew that and now I know that data if I see a certain situation I'm going to advocate or change my ways I think um so I would say even though I don't feel any different it is important that those who aren't black engage with that material and try and find ways to do the work well I have to I haven't said yet but you're a brilliant writer oh I really like how you write and you I it came across as effortless but you actually dart around sort of as I've been putting in data and talking about your

personal experiences and all keeping a really true thread and you make it look really easy but that that isn't and it's it was a very um i wouldn't say an easy read because there's lots you're consuming but i mean it it was very fluid as a reader i wasn't ever thinking oh golly I just need to go back or and that's and again that was purposeful I love Akala but I found his book so smart that I felt overwhelmed at times and I had to like I listened to it pause and go and research and I just wanted to I I genuinely know that I can write better than that book I know that I could be more poetic but I spoke to a friend during the writing process and she was like yeah now's not the time for that she was like we need the most direct concise clear English and you can be James Baldwin four books

down the line but now it's data and she was like you get two cute metaphors per chapter and I was like, okay. And I'm so glad I took her advice because people are reading this book in three, four hours. And that's not saying that it's any less important, but it just means that those who are often put off because of dyslexia or not having the time to read, they're like, I can do this.

I can understand, I can engage. And I think um I think I made the right choice there yeah but I have to say you do do some lovely metaphors I think my favorite was the one about um some men are like a bag of spinach wearing them in the hot water and they were away to nearly nothing I really love that one sorry I like the cute metaphors they're good um how did you find the process of working from home With the kids around? Were you writing when they were asleep?

Were you writing during the day when they were out? Usually when they were Out, so when Esme was at school When RJ was at his child mind I always went to music I've struggled always Even with lyrics? Yeah, and my dad used to

Comment on that when I was a kid I'd always do my homework with really loud music he's like how are you able to do that and do that um I even have a playlist on Spotify called I'm Not Your Baby Mother with like all the tracks I would listen to um and I think an album that came out around the time I was writing was uh MC I Love called Kano and he it's a very political album hoodies all summer in this in perhaps the same way that people say I'm not your baby mother is and I remember listening to his album and calling my partner and I was like this is what the book has to sound like people need if this if this book were a cd this is this is the vibe we're going for um and so i'm really grateful for

him for that album because it helped me tremendously but yeah it was usually just me i'm trying to squish it between 10 and 2 so just as you drop them off just if you got to go and get one not at all and then some sometimes late nights but it would be after a few gnts and all the words would just start merging together so I just stopped that but it was usually between 10 and 2 and when you're doing your work with the blogging do the kids, do they kind of do they understand what's going on with the kind of like

okay we're doing a picture a little too much to the point that they get kept knowing don't they last night I just edited Esme's first YouTube video apparently she's going to be a professional gamer and so I had to film the screen with one camera as she filmed herself with the iPad and then she hovered over my shoulder and this bit I loved and I was slowly starting to teach her how to edit video and so I'm in those moments I'm still trying to educate her and I jokingly said to Boda yes I

said we can employ her by the time she's 10 like if we really like lock down on this and these are skills you know she might not be a professional gamer but what job are you going to do where you need to be a professional video editor like that's the way the world is going yeah I'm with you on that so yeah she she really gets it and she any advert she is included in the money goes into a pot for her as it does for like i'm really strict about that because i want to be like you know remember those times i was trying to like give you a cornetto for you to smile here you are go buy a house like that's how i want that to go and then some people are like oh my gosh you did i'm like yeah like it's work it's work i know people see a pretty image or video that oh that's so lovely I'm like do you know

what it's like wrangling two under tens to get them in frame and clean like mate this is this is a job but I love that because I think some people like you said before don't talk about money and they're quite squeamish about it and there's always supposed to be this thing of going like a sort of uncomfortable effect of like oh well I did get paid but it was really you know not about that or I don't want to talk about it but actually it's so refreshing it's refreshing the book when you talk about all the times when you were adding out how much things would cost and how things but I think for kids I don't think there's any shame and understanding that work and money like I don't want my kids to be squeamish about money

and I think I don't think I've handled it that well I think um I need to have better more frank conversations about how much things cost because I think I was raised to not really no one really spoke to me about it they thought I wouldn't understand and obviously you don't initially but then you start to and then you're not don't turn into an adult like me doesn't really want to attend the counter meetings and don't want to talk about money because it's so cringy and i hate it and i don't really have a clue what's going on half the time which is i'm not proud of actually yeah it's not a healthy way to be with with cash i don't think and with your kids learning that i totally agree i think youtube and all that is uh that to them is the like watching telly and yes they're so used to accessing the information that way

and you know they have my kids have all got things where they film little little videos and hi guys what's up and i don't even mind if they i probably shouldn't say this but i will well even when they put it online i'm like who's gonna watch that most of it's so boring it's so boring like if you want to get through half an hour of one of my kids playing minecraft knock yourselves out it's dull that's how i feel but she's just so excited she's like mum i need a gaming mic then only the gaming chair but she was like i'm prepared to work for the gaming chair i'll check the prices yeah you better be because yeah i'm just but it's like it's it that is their version of us being allowed to go out and play. Yeah.

And that doesn't happen anymore. So if all she wants to do is film herself doing Roblox or Minecraft or whatever, I would just let her have a bash at it. Yeah. I'm the same way as really. And it can turn into other things. My 11-year-old has started making films now and writing a script and editing himself and uses Final Cut Pro.

And, you know, he's getting into it. So it's like, let's water it and uses final cut pro and you know he's getting into it so it's like let's water it and see where it goes this is this is that i'm exactly the same with my kids i'm like okay you've shown the interest i'll support that like what's that gamer's guy name ksi like isn't he like the richest gamer in the world and like i think he posted his first video when he was like 10. Blimey i mean that's the thing because I've had conversations with other parents who are a bit more wary about it. And then when I start talking about the success these people are actually having, they're like, oh.

They start to reconsider their feelings. This is actually some people's jobs. So seeing as the podcast is called Spinning Play, I came up the reason I wanted to call it that is because that's how I feel quite a lot of times with trying to keep lots of things going in lots of different ways. In your life, does it feel like that to you?

Like you're sometimes trying to keep a lot of plates going and do you feel like sometimes it gets a bit close for comfort with work and home life? All the time. And one of the first things I tell any mum specifically who's like oh I'm going to be a content creator or start my own business I'm like get ready for some of them plates to smash because that's the only way you're going to pull this off like sometimes my kids uniforms not ironed sometimes I forget the PE kit or she forgets her lunch and they've got to give her a school lunch and send me a stern letter and I'm like oh well she was fed you know and it's about not feeling guilty about that especially I think my privilege though was being raised by my granddad and seeing my nan

go and out and pay for the mortgage and seeing my mum work full time I've never seen women heavily involved in domestic labour and so I don't feel guilt and all the things that are considered women's work my other half loves to do he does all of the cooking he's the one that just like walks around it's like oh yeah that bath's a little bit dirty isn't it I guess I'll do it like that that's all him and so I'm really lucky in that way but outside of that I understand that um you can't keep all the plates up all the time and I will I will happily let some of them crash to the floor and yeah and deal with the mess afterwards it's about in that moment and it's only in that moment trying to make the best choice with the judgment you have now it may be a month down the line you're like oh I shouldn't have

prioritized that but you've got to go with your gut in the moment I suppose the fact that your your work is so sort of intrinsic to wanting to create uh I suppose a sort of better life for your kids really that must do you find that helps alleviate the sort of guilt because it feels more like it's got such a purpose to it yes I I won't even say I think I know I am the person who has been tasked with the duty of changing the trajectory of my entire blood lineage I know that as I feel that as a matter of fact and um I know I'm going to be the really old image then um that a kid sees in their like 3d glasses and someone's like yeah that's your great great great great grandma candies breath weight who did this which means you do this and so I am very aware that my task um is has a long line long after I die. My friend Layla, who I mentioned,

she did ask me a question. She was like, you know, oh, what makes you a good ancestor? That's one of her questions. And I'm like, actually, I don't get to know I'm a good ancestor until I'm wherever you go, when you know you're an ancestor and someone either calls on me or they're reading about me in a book and they're feeling that spark they're like I can push through this moment because grandma Candice changed like our whole lives and so yeah when I'm feeling really tired and really exhausted I'm like actually Candice this isn't about you get up wow that's amazing and i'm just thinking about my poor ancestors like is that is that crazy one in the sequence oh she's saying some disco anything else not really but we need the disco we need it and that's the thing i didn't even invent it we need it and i you know i don't

want people to feel to then feel like oh my i'm i'm my all the roles we've been tasked with here are important yeah i think though we get so as you would you just get so bogged down with day-to-day life yeah how often do you even really have the time to think about it on that scale like you don't you don't you don't but it's an it's actually an amazing way to clarify your thoughts and if more people took the time to think of that i wonder how much it would change what how they do spend their time yeah because a lot of us are sort of sleepwalking through things a bit and it's uncomfortable to pick up something heavy and try and make a difference actually it's it's not it's it's much easier just to to pretend it's not happening or just pretend it's just happening over there or to other people

it's it's definitely something that takes something to even even become part of a conversation sometimes yeah um so I think it's a good way to think and actually you're not the first person I've spoken to as well that said about talking to the universe how does that manifest with you is that literally just a sort of inner voice in your head or is it like meditating or yeah it's meditation I use uh this workbook that you can just print off in your own home at the top of every year it's called the yearly compass and it makes you write down and reflect on the year just gone and write about your hopes and all of that for the year ahead and I've only been actively using the year ahead since 2017 but it's changed my life tremendously as does buying a very expensive

jazzy diary and I remember having this argument with my sister one time because like she bought her diary from Poundland and I was like was that you going to the limit of your budget for your diary and she was like well no of course not but it's just a diary I was like so that you going to the limit of your budget for your diary and she was like well no of course not but it's just a diary I was like so you mean to tell me the dates and the things you want to achieve in the year is only worth a quid talk to me about that and she was like you're joking I was like no I think all those things are linked like you I'm not saying you know take out a loan to buy a diary but spend a tenner like feel a little stretch stretch and know that every time you pick that up like you want to have a great

year you want to achieve those things so every time you pick that diary up you're going to feel like it's worth something a poundland diary is just not going to do that for you and so I use crystals like yeah I'm very involved in that space but the thing that's helped the most is this you said the yearly compass the yearly compass it's been right down yes you write and the best part about it is how it makes you physically write um because they've made it in a pdf way so you can't even type it up on like you have to print it you have to write you have to be present at the beginning of the book they're like this section will take four hours and you're a bit like oh come on but you just you're looking

back on 365 days what's four hours and you just light some candles and you really get to see you even get to see where perhaps you haven't bigged yourself up enough because life has moved so fast you've not had yourself on the back yeah you get to be really honest about what you want to achieve one of a big thing on my yearly compass this year was being a sunday times bestseller the truth was my fear was oh no one's isn't the book's not that great you're not you're just not going to sell enough units so i'll write it down but and then it happened and i only picked up the yearly compass last week to read it i was like you actually wrote that this is so funny yeah and um you don't and it's important to understand that uh sometimes your gift is in really bad wrapping paper

another thing that was in my yearly compass was me desperately asking the universe for more time with my kids because at the top of 2020 my diary was so full I was like right I'm not going to see you guys till Christmas great how am I going to manage this mum guilt and there was just repetition in that booklet of me going I need to make more time to spend with the kids I need to see my kids grow up and boom yeah global pandemic so like I said the wrapping paper is really powerful yeah the wrapping paper is really rubbish but the present within it is exactly what I asked for and so and do you ever feel like you're asking for things that I suppose it's quite a good way of you allowed to be really indulgent in your yeah yeah yeah

and it doesn't matter if it's like quite kind of no like chanel jazzy yeah yeah yeah all the time i think the boat on boat was it a boat in dubai with the cocktail like all the time 2021 i reckon yeah um i have to invest in this yeah yeah and, and it's free. And it just clears your mind and allows, again, busy working mums, you just get to be clear about what your goals are. Not the kids' goals, not your man or your lady's, yours. And I think, especially at the end of 2020, we all need to spend a bit more time with ourselves. Yeah. Well, I think we should probably get at your house. I can't believe you've only been there a few months. at the end of 2020 we all need to spend a bit more time with ourselves yeah well um i think

we should probably get at your house i can't believe you've only been there a few months yeah yeah it's beautiful oh thank you thank i'm i'm trying really hard really hard um we've got a way to go but i do love it no it's lovely and you've managed to make it feel really like home in what must be actually quite a short amount of time dead short yes dead short and surreal as well with book tours and and lockdown I noticed when I used your bathroom just before there's a big sign on the wall that says makes it happen I hope that was one of the first things you put up oh okay so what's so funny is I bought that from a charity shop maybe a week before we heard we were going to get this place. And it was in our old rental property.

It was just put up in the corner. And I used to say to Bode, I was like, when we buy that house, that is the first thing going up in the loo. And here we are. Yay! Well, I noticed. Perfect.

Oh, that's very satisfying. I was right. I was like, I hope that's the first thing. It was. Hurrah. Oh, it's so nice hearing all those words of wisdom again. I've really got to work on it, haven't I? What I tell my ancestors. And maybe this whole thing of the cosmic ordering chart.'s funny i still don't quite get that do you have to do something specific when you're asking the universe for stuff i mean how do you stop it from just sounding like you're being really greedy or maybe being greedy is the point i don't know i have so much to learn with this um well thank you for listening and uh follow candice on on instagram if you don't already it's uh she's someone that's a real joy to follow because um she's smiley and happy and in a gorgeous loving family but she's also got that brilliant sort of unapologetic nature of just someone who

knows exactly who they are and what they should be doing i need a bit more of that i overthink things way too much i'm too sort of apologetic about myself sometimes it's not good enough i'm old enough to know better i'm gonna work on that anyway lots of love to you have a brilliant week ahead uh let's meet here shall we same place same time next week uh when i will be chatting with my mum uh yeah i thought i'd go back to where it all began but in the meantime lots of love have a great week speak to you soon good luck with those plagues on the spinning Thank you.