Bonus: Stories we tell ourselves with Clare Bowditch

0:02 A listener production. Hey guys, you're listening to Crappy to Happy. I'm cass Done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy to Happy books. In this series, we look at all of the factors that might be making you feel crappy and give you the tools and the techniques that will help you to overcome them. In each episode, I introduce you to interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field, and my hope is that they will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Today. I am so excited to be bringing you a very special bonus episode of Crappy to Happy. Claire Boditch is well known in Australia for her singing, songwriting, her radio and television career, and she has just released her memoir Your Own Kind of Girl. She's an absolutely incredible, delightful, amazing woman and we covered so much in this interview here she is Botitch. What a pleasure it is to have you in the studio for this super special bonus episode of Crappy They're Happy.

1:09 I feel very very honored, deeply honored. Thank you so much for having me. You're so welcome. We couldn't let the opportunity go by to have you come in and talk about primarily the new book. But we should mention, obviously the fact that you're a very accomplished singer songwriter. You have had a career in radio. You appeared an Offspring very briefly, but yes, gosh, that was fun. Yes, and you do a whole lot of other things as well as well as being wife, mother to three. Of course, your latest gift to the world is your brand new book, Your Own kind of Girl, which. I finally finished. It only took twenty one or so years, maybe even longer. So yes, my book is your Own kind of Girl, and it's named after a song that I wrote in two thousand and eight of the same title, thank God It's over, my friend. Oh my gosh.

2:00 Then eight you wrote the song Claire in the Can we just launch straight into the book because I've been reading it and I absolutely love it. Thank you so much. Means a lot. Thank you. First of all, you did say that you decided at twenty one you were going to write this book. Yes, that's right, and can you just explain sort of what well, I guess basically like, what took so long? What the heck a very busy lady? What was my three demanding children and my big career. Look, here's the truth of it. When I was twenty one years old, I had what many of your listeners and one in four Australians will have, which is I had a really acute episode of mental ill health. And that happened when I was overseas in London, supposed to be having the time of my life. Oh my god, it was the opposite.

2:47 And just to give a quick context, you know, it took obviously about twenty years to work out how to tell this story, so I do it better in the book, but just to put it into context for our deal, isn't it. I when I was seas with a broken heart. You know, I had been with a chap who I adored for many years, and we're in that silly, codependent young relationship were probably should have let each other go a little while ago, and you didn't. And the breakup in the end was brutal, and I was very, very hurt, and I said, my god, I'm going to go overseas. Stuff is all. I'm going overseas. I'm going to start my brand new amazing life. And I was also something that I wasn't saying out loud at the time, but I was trying very hard from a very young age to always be thin, and I wasn't thin, and I thought it really mattered that I go on a diet and lose weight. And the voice in my head was very cruel, and you know, I can see now quite clearly I wasn't well. But I went on to quite an extreme diet overseas. It triggered panic response in me, and I stopped sleeping, and I stopped actually then being able to eat, and I became very unwell, and home I came with my tail between my legs, and I thought my life is over. I hadn't even begun. I was working in a call center. I was I had all these big, fat dreams. I had this list of this amazing life I was supposed to be living, and I was, in the meantime just hiding. I didn't want anyone to know my dreams. I thought, big girls like me don't get to live these kind of dreams. So

4:18 I had a whole lot of cruel in a voice going on, and what it was clearly just you know, good bog standard anxiety. I came home and it took me a while to work out what that was. But in my recovery, and it was a good, slow, but good recovery. So that's the message that I always get out there. I never had to go back to that place again, not in the same way, because I learned to manage it. And in that recovery, I promised myself one day, if I do get well, when i'm really really old, I'm going to write this book. And really really old was forty and here we are. So look I finally did write it. And so for that reason, it's not a celebrity memoir. It's not about you know, the for touring and adventures and naughty things that happen behind the scenes. It's about being a human being who wants to live a big life and wondering how the hell do you do that?

5:09 And I'm so glad that you did write the book because your story is so I mean, it's deeply personal, but it's also universal in some ways. Would you agree the story you talk about the stories we tell ourselves. That's a theme throughout the book, yes, and that is we've all got these stories that we tell ourselves correct. So yes, I do think, I do think that these are very common stories, and we don't like to speak about them in their detail too much because we think that we're weird, or that you know, we're especially broken or something. What the truth is, we as human beings, we are storytelling beasts. That's part of our survival mechanism. Our old brain now our lower brain, you know, our survival brain is carried across generations and it's there to keep us safe, and it tells us stories about how we're unsafe and how we need to long and those can be very useful in certain situations, but day to day, in the modern era, we tempted always to forget we do also have a higher brain. We have the ability to tell ourselves better stories. Now I realized that I can't control circumstances, but what my you know, the greatest gift I guess of this really quite a terrible experience as a young person was realizing that I do have some say. In the second story, I tell myself, I like.

6:31 That, And Claire, the other thing that you pointed out, like one of the big stories, and it's a theme also throughout the book, is this idea and you just said it. Then big girls can't have amazing lives, they can't have big dreams. And there's this. I mean, you were obviously blessed with a beautiful singing voice and songwriting ability and you know, amazing talent intelligence. But weep going this story. But the most important thing about you was the size of your body. Correct. So that was a story I told myself. And to be very clear, this is not a true story.

7:12 But it's not a story that I made up on my own. These are the stories that we absorb from the society around us, and they're just a very normal again, really normal part of a very normal thing to pick up in a commercialized society where we're constantly presented with fantasies about our better life and you know, our magical future selves. When in those advertisements the women don't look like me. They certainly don't. There was certainly no role models in my young life besides you know, perhaps miss Piggy and hey, you know, there was that kind of strong role model, but there was no one I felt who looked like me or had. I always felt too much, you know, I had too much feeling over and what I picked up from society, and I know that this is deeply, deeply common, and I'm just going to articulate it.

8:05 The message I picked up as a kid with a in a big, big, healthy body, actually a healthy, strong body. The message I picked up was that body was wrong. That people who won in life were the ones who could contain their body size, could contain their feelings, could contain their aging. And you know, aging wasn't an issue then because I was just a kid, but I knew, you know, there was a voice in my head that said, you're doing it wrong and there's no place for people like you, and that competed with this longing that I had to sing and to share stories and to connect with people and to ask questions. So, you know, that is the story that I wanted to write, just really as a tale of hope and encouragement.

8:54 Yes, and you're quite right, I'm similar age to you, and so growing up a special in. The nineties thirties. In the nineties, you're right, it was the supermodel kind of Yeah, everybody. It was every diet the most weird whacking. Can we just go through a list? I don't know about it. I did every diet and I want to say, you know, we know now under a health and every size framework that these you know, the diets are really if we want to be healthy, you know this is not the way to go. Extreme measures is not the way to go. It is not the way to go. I didn't know that as a kid. I went on my first serious start at the age of a very young age, and with under a doctor's supervision, I lost a dramatic amount of weight, and then I was trapped in a cycle for the rest of my teenage years of wanting to get back to this fantastical weight, which included can I just say it, so, there was like the Cavish soup diet, not the Israeli diet, but the Israeli military diet was one that was popular at Timers, all the ones in the magazines. It was the at Cans.

10:00 It was the Beverly Hills Diet. Beverly Hills Diet, thank you. There was the WW more than once, many many times. I was alway very proud that I didn't go to Gloria Marshall, but I think that's mainly because I just couldn't afford it. Really, So there were just these dozens of diets and I say it playfully because God, you know, there are many women in society and now increasingly men who have been there as well. I just wish along the way that someone had known to tell me that there is an alternative, that you don't actually have to be any particular size to live your dreams in the world. That when I'm thin, I'm not better than when I'm fat, and when I'm fat, I'm not wrong. You know that this is just I have a what I like to call my piano accordion body, and it sings its little song, and it goes up and down the scales depending on whether I'm giving birth in that particular year, or whether I'm going through you know, anxiety or stress and I'm leaning on food or you know, whether I'm happy and on holidays. So I'm at peace with that now. But it took me a really long time. Tell me about you?

11:09 Have you always been because you're you're a registered psychologist, so yes, And I know that perhaps you don't want to be talking about your own story too much, but I am really cute. At you turning it back interviewing the interviewer. Well, well, I feel less alone when I hear other women talking. So I yeah, I've talked about a little bit before. Growing up in that era, and especially, like you said, adults around us modeled that behavior, so we very much, I too, absorbed that message that this was the this was what you got you approval and validation, this is what was attractive, this is what this is how you needed to look. And I was. I can I had what.

11:53 I would call a eating to sort of uh not otherwise specified to use psychological. Lingo, and. Eating disorder NS is what it's called. It's when you don't have anorexi, you don't have bulimia, you know, you don't have a binge eating disorder, but you have a very very very unhealthy relationship with food. And can I say I came to that point having put on, having done a. Crash diet. Was the Scarsdale medical diet? For God's sake? Yes? Did you do that one? Oh? Look I didn't, but it was there, it was waiting for me. Yeah. And I'd lost a lot of weight in two weeks, and I mean a five kilos or six kilos or something. I was never particularly overweight.

12:35 I was always probably a very normal healthy weight, but I lost a lot. But I had the idea that I was too fat. I was always too fat, and we were all too fat. We all needed to be thinner, and so I no matter how what you weighed, you always needed to be thinner. And so I did that. I lost a lot of weight. I was at the time at UNI. I was working jobs on my feet all day, and I just kept this low weight. And then I got my first full time job where I was sitting at a desk from nine to five, and I put on two I think two kilos, two whole kilos. But those who've never weighed yourself look in the context of a human being, and that's not a lot of weight.

13:17 And I became obsessed with how I needed to lose those two kilos, because that was I needed to get back to, like the the you know, the good, the ideal weight. Yeah, I was like sixty. I was sixty four kilos and I needed to be sixty two or something, which is very thin. I'm one hundred and seventy three centimeters tall. And I became obsessed. I literally like I measured, weighed everything that I put into my mouth for probably two years at least or more. It got in the way of everything. So I've definitely I have definitely been there. I resonate strongly, and. We understand to you listening, we understand that as we're talking about this, if you're anything like me, you know, these conversations can be quite triggering. We compare ourselves to it each other. You know, I did this, I did that?

14:01 Is this right? Is that not? That story so strong in us of wanting to belong and wanting to be enough, and it's only natural and normal that our brains can get trapped in these cycles. But what you just described then, of that, you know that we forget how clever our brain is. If we are not eating enough, and if we are putting an extreme amount of pressure on ourselves. There is a healthy part of our brain that says, excuse my language, this is bullshit. You know, friggin' eat something, and then we very naturally overeat then, and then we accuse ourselves of overeating. We can get caught in this terrible ping pong that for some of us, myself included, lasted four years. And because I didn't look thin or you know, fat, or I was just kind of quite you know, just I was not so extreme on either side that anyone around me, went, ah, she has an eating disorder. We did not know in the eighties and nineties that, and even in naughties that you don't. You can't look at someone and tell whether or not they've got a wacky relationship with food or whether they're suffering because of their relationship with food, and so that can take so long to unpack. I think we don't again.

15:16 I think most people at some point in their life will have some struggle with something that is in this realm of you know, it's a tricky secret using something to cope, and you're in there on your own. What we don't often talk about is the way we use diets to cope. We talk about using food to cope. But for me, if I look back at. My you know, my childhood self and my early twenties self, diets offered this story of hope, real potential, hope that one day, when I got thin, my real life would begin and I would have permission to shine in the world. And it took me a long time to realize that I have permission to shine anytime I want to shine. Yes, you know, it's the message, and it is you know, we're all scared of criticism, what I'm seeing more and more is it's really me who criticizes myself more than anyone else.

16:11 And that's why I named my inner critic. And that's right. So I named my inner critic Frank in the twenties and started telling my ana critic to f off, Frank, foff. That was my thing, and that has been the secret of my success. And you're welcome to take it. And I apologize to anyone called Frank. Call your critic anything you like. But when that awful voice would come up, I would say, hang on a minute, no, get in the corner. You know, that voice is just there to try to protect us, and it sometimes goes a bit rogue. So we're the adults in the room. We get to tell it where to go. I think that's a really good point, Claire, that we have to not be almost critical of our self criticism.

16:57 We need to understand, you know, it's about standing that that is our in some wacky, you know, dysfunctional way. It is our brain's way of trying. To keep us safe, and it thinks it thinks it's being helpful. Yes, And we. Just have to be able to kind of befriend that in a kind of mean yeah or whatever. Yeah, like, don't you're not needed here. I understand you're trying to keep me safe. But rather than getting at that cycle of getting down on ourselves for our self, chudge on, you know. Yeah. And look as we talk about this, you know, we're talking about it in an hour, you know, less than an hour of a podcast in a minute, and we're saying these things out loud. I understand and I know you do too, that in reality, we leave these things out through our lives. They sound really simple, they're not because we forget them all the time. So every day I get about thirty nine thousand opportunities to remind myself that my life is made up of the stories I tell myself and which ones I choose to believe.

17:59 I think diagnos with mental health is so useful in that acute period, and it can be really useful, and it's imperative that we get help, professional help, But day to day we're the ones living with ourselves. And I was able to start thinking about my quirks, you know, these places where I had so much restlessness in me. I wanted to sing songs on stage. What a crazy thing to want to do, you know, that's part of my quirk too, and just learning to own it is an everyday process that is available to all of us. Yes, and Claire, speaking of therapy, you in the book you talked about your first are a psychologist at quite an early age.

18:41 Yes, four to twelve. No, it was, well, it was fifteen fifteen, and it was she was, well, let's put so I'll explain a little bit of backstory again. You know, these days we're speaking from the year nineteen. We're speaking of in the year twenty nineteen. Where am I what? I'm in a dark room? So I would say that these days we are we live in a governmental healthcare system that does allow us to access a psychologist, you know, through our GP. That's really really wonderful and important. That system's only been in play for maybe five, maybe ten years somewhere in between. There Before that, it was quite unusual to put your hand up and go, I'd like to see therapists please. You know, these were seeing as shameful things to want to do. You know, you just we had that Ossie, come on, get on with it, stop being so soft kind of vibe in general. But when I was a kid, I'm the youngest of five, and my older sister, Rowena, two years older than me, wonderful and glorious and bright and brilliant young woman who became very ill lived in the children's hospital for two years on life support because she had a very rare illness.

20:03 It's kind of like a rare form of MS. And she passed away. And this was my normal and in there there was so much love and life and hope and community. But it also left a lot of you know, there's a long tale with childhood grief, and it left me with a lot of things to try and work out. And it may be one of the reasons why this critical survival brain was so loud in me so young. So by the time I was fifteen and I thought I was just really crap at diets. I thought it was a failure at diets. And I guess by this dage, you know, my mom had twigged that something was going on, and she sent me to my first psychologist, who I call Anika in the book. And I wish I had stayed in Anika's care because she was a specialist in childhood eating disorders. And again, you know, I wasn't really aware I had an eating disorder. I thought I was just bad at dieting, and I saw her for a series of sessions, and so many emotions came up for me that I said, no, this is not for me.

21:15 I sort of pretended she didn't know. You know, I said to Mama, no, this is all a bit silly. And I didn't go back again to a psychologist until I had my nervous breakdown at the age of twenty one. Really, but she, you know, she taught. She tried to teach me to meditate and to observe myself, and in observing myself, I found out that I was a little bit weird. And I didn't like that feeling. Oh really, yeah, a little bit weird, meaning that she sort of pointed out that maybe my relationship with food might have something to do with seeking security, or maybe the fact that I liked to tap my feet or have particular quirks to keep me. I thought they were just funny little quirks things I did with my hands or feet or word games in my head. Yeah. I thought they were just sweet little things that I did, and everyone did them.

22:03 And she started pointing out to me everyone does do them, but you know, some of us do them more than others, and sometimes they are a sign that we need a little support. I just didn't like hearing that, so off I went. Did that stay with you though, you know, even though you didn't stay with that process, did that stay with you and help you? Absolutely? And yeah, and now I can look back, and she was telling me that I was experiencing a you know, symptoms of OCDEAH, which is and you know, which might have had something to do with PTSD, which might have had something to do with my gad whatever the names, and you call these these you know, feelings and experiences we have. They were really helpful, just to context to realize it. And I've been able to draw back on that.

22:48 I actually sent her a copy of the book. We're still in contact, just a tiny little bit through a friend, and I wanted, yeah, I did want her to know that even though we only saw each other briefly, she did set me on the path of asking myself questions. Yeah, you know, I'm sure that would have meant so much to her. Good, I hope. So. Yeah, and Claire, I'm so glad that you mentioned that like that, you included that those little the tapping and the word games because I think a lot of people have got little things like that that they don't recognize as being little security, controlling, little compulsive quirks that you know, they serve, they serve a kind of a purpose, but so much of that, like it's just a humanness, right, but we don't necessarily identify readily that.

23:38 Yeah, maybe that's what that's about. These might be little well, they're almost like little messages from ourself, you know, to ourself. And the way she spotted it was she'd asked me to talk about my sister, about Rowie and what had happened. And I'd always told myself, you know, I'd sort of accepted a childhood version of grief, which is, you know, there was Jean Pierjeaux calls it this age of magical thinking, where our identities forming at the age of you know, five seven. I'd always thought there was something I could have done that I didn't do to save her. Now, this is a common story of grief, it's really common. I didn't speak it. I didn't know to speak it. I just had this bad feeling in me, like I'd done something wrong and I didn't know what it was. As I was talking about my sister. I started doing a tapping game with my lip and I didn't realize I was doing it, and that's you know, this is the gift of an observant therapist.

24:31 She said to me, what are you doing with your hands? And I said nothing, you know nothing? Why And she said, well, you're doing a little tapping thing. You know. I was doing a pattern in my head and something to point out here is a small adjunct. You know, I'm a songwriter, ideal in rhythms. These quirks that we have aren't always terrible, horrible things at all. Sometimes they can be channeled into our gifts. But I wasn't there yet. I was just having a little tap and singing a song in my head to come at me and sues me, I guess as I was talking about my sister. So she pointed it out and she said, have a little looks through the week, see if you have other habits. And I said, I don't think I do well. I came back with a hopper of a list, didn't I a good, good, red hot rapper. All the little funny things I did, like standing under the shower for six seconds exactly six and six is my lucky number. And blah blah blah blah blah. Now nobody knows these things about us. But since I wrote this book, I've had quite a number of people come up and say, I do that funny little thing too. And you're right. You would see this as a therapist. You would see this and know exactly what it is. These are these ways that we comfort ourselves, and you know, some of them are harmless, but their messages, like I'm doing a bit of tapping on this promotional tour, you know, with the with the talking about this book, it's quite hard to go back into this space. And I'm aware all the time that I've got these shared stories. I'm talking about our family, but I'm just one member of a really big family, and it's tough to lose someone in your family.

26:00 And the only reason I would go back and talk about it is because I have something I do have a youth. I think it's a useful. I hope it's a hopeful story to tell, but it's not so you know, there are parts of it that are not so easy to read at the beginning, and that's our life, isn't it? Was it healing for you? I just were really observed in that first part of the book. You did such a beautiful job of describing that experience. But through I'll get emotional talking about it now, hey. Making me emotional, bloody hell. Through the eyes of a child, and as children, we don't make sense of those things. And you know, like you said, there was just this badness and there was this shame. But to go back and put yourself in that position again and it was that in some way healing for you, Like you're almost reparenting yourself through that process.

27:00 That's what it felt like to me. That's what it would almost be like. It's really moving for me to hear you ask that question, to hear you and I know that you know that, Yeah, I know that so many of us as little people, feel this stuff. And that is why I wanted to go back in again, because it was healing, because I have still carried this horrific set of feelings and I've done so much in my life to try and channel that into my work. But to be here and be able to say these things out loud with you and to know that I'm not alone in that really is this process now, this conversation that we're having today, and that I'm getting to have now with other people. I'm finding that healing because it's giving purpose to Yeah, it's giving purpose to having said it out loud. Yeah. And that's why it took something you asked at the beginning.

28:00 You know, we were in a lighter mood than and you asked at the beginning why it takes so long to write? And that is this is the truth of it that I knew I had to be strong and steady in order to go out and speak about this stuff. But at the same time, we're all kind of always a work in progress. I also get that sheense that you know, like, oh, write this when I'm when I've dealt with this, then I'll talk about it like. What I'm what I'm fixed this, then I'll talk about it. We never kind of quite get to that fixed No, not at all. I hope you're enjoying season four of the show, and hey, i would love for you to check out my brand new YouTube channel where I'm sharing even more tips on how you can feel less crappy and more happy. It's YouTube dot. Com Forward slash Cast Done, so come over check it out.

28:43 I'd love for you to subscribe. And if you haven't already taken my free seven day Happiness challenge. You can sign up for that at cast done dot com forward slash Happiness. I did a television show yesterday and it was a wonderful show, but I had about two and a half minutes at the end to talk about this experience. And you know, it came after this sort of package you know, when they package up your life in thirty seconds to explain who you are to an audience who are at home and may never have heard of you. And gosh, I walked off feeling so wobbly with all the same old stories about how I didn't do it right and I said the wrong thing too. I sort of was trying to tell a story about how my parents always taught me it was our insides that matter, not our outsides.

29:31 But instead I said, on national television, my parents taught me that it's my outsides that matter, not my insides. And nobody pulled me up on it because the clock was ticking and we were all about to go out, you know, the next show was coming, and so you know, I'm still taught. I would be tempted to torture myself about that, and I did have a little bit of torturing myself. But now that I've spoken about my frank, and now that my family and friends and my husband and you know, everyone knows. Now I've said it out loud, we can have community the friends who can remind us. I still need that reminder all the time that I'm just doing my best. I was always, we will always have a frank. When I say I'm cured from acute anxiety, I mean that I never had to go back to that wall upon wall upon wave upon wave of panic attack in which I couldn't function, never had to go back there. But that doesn't mean I'm not always managing my sensitive, creative nature.

30:30 And I think that's that's that's there's a gift in that lesson, too, Isn't It Like I can't remember what the exact quote is, but it's like you're allowed to be You're a masterpiece and a work in progress all at the same time. I don't remember that who said the quote, and I've probably got it wrong, But you know that quote, you know. When you said that, I was thinking, I was thinking, I don't know that I what did I say that? Did I? Because that sounds really like a good thing to say. But I was flicking through my book secretly here going where is that quote? Somebody else's quote? I don't remember who said it, but this is, yeah, we are we are all things. I write it in a chapter of my book. It's called Storms and Other weather Patterns. And I try to have a little stab at this concept that we don't really understand a whole lot, if we're going to be really, really honest, we don't understand a whole lot yet about treating and managing mental ill health.

31:25 Because so often we fail to include in the conversation not just the storm, not just the weather, you know, the weather pattern, the hail, the awful bit, but also the other part of it, the sunshine, the rainbow, you know, the part that allows us to connect more deeply with human beings as well. And I, you know, we don't even know why. So many mental illnesses are like ven diagrams, you know, this one and the other one. They all share these set of symptoms, and often in a you know, in a medicalized model, which is very useful, you know, for many people. The medications that we give to people who are experiencing mental ill health are often the same for different diagnoses, and what else is true is that it might work for one person doesn't for another. And I guess I say all of this by way of saying, A, it's really important to have a good professional who cares about you and your team. But B there's so much we don't know yet. And we're having a conversation today and in the world about where is the Venn diagram between what we call genius or brilliance or our higher selves and what we call mental ill health. And it's going to be an ongoing conversation and it must be.

32:43 But you know, what really helped me was not finding a name for what was wrong with me in terms of a clear diagnosis, but was a little book by a lady called doctor Claireweeks where she just lumped it all under the topic of nervous sufering. And she was an old Australian post war progressive front runner. She's a first woman in Australia to get a doctorate from the Sydney University and she had this. She was a gp with the technique that helped people with what she called nervous suffering. That is what helped me so much, Just one little book that said this is just a normal, natural thing that your body's going through. You might feel sensitive, weird, shaky as she went through the list of symptoms, and I finally went, oh, my gosh, yes that's me. I'm not nuts. So I'm actually going through a human experience and I'm going to get well.

33:37 That's common humanity, I think. I think that's what is really is such a gift in your book as well, because it's the gift. Of humanity of knowing that you're not the only one. You know that other people have experienced similar things, even the way that you describe the voice in your head, because we all have the same voice, and like you said, we don't speak it out loud, and we all think that something weird and quirky about me, and you wouldn't ever share that with somebody. But when you do, suddenly everybody says, oh, yeah, I say that, Yeah, that sounds exactly like the voice in my head. One of the things that helped me call it out too. And I'm gonna you know, I say this carefully because I'm going to talk about parenthood just for a sec if that's okay, And I know that for many people you might want to be a parent and you don't get to be, or for many others, you have no interest in being a parent, and you just sick of people always crapping on about it all the time. So neither of you know. But I love that disclaimer. I feel for both of those things, because I'm going to just talk about my experience in a way. One of the things that made me feel brave was having something to be brave for, and that could be almost anything, you know, something that's meaningful. And for me this it was the age of twenty seven that I got really gutsy about my career because I knew then I was going to I was twenty six actually, and I was going to become a mum. And I thought, I can't be the only woman who's had this struggle, and I can't be the only woman. You know, the fact that I wasn't hearing my voice on radio or seeing it on TV or et cetera, et cetera. It occurred to

35:11 me that maybe that wasn't Maybe that was just because I hadn't counted myself in yet. Maybe I just had to get out there and do it. And knowing that I was about to give birth made me get on with it, you know, and it made me fiercer with Frank, telling Frank to just poq please. I remember the first time I was ever on TV, and you know, I just wanted to run, run, Run, run, run for the hills. I was on a TV show. It was actually Paris and Nicky Hilton were guests on the show. I had no idea who they were. It was Roy hg the manager of Nicky and Paris that you know, thought that they were being spoken to disrespectfully. There was all this who are going on? He was about to pull the show, and we're about to We've just gotten on the show because our friend Jake worked on the show and somebody had canceled and said get down to the studio. You know, you can be on TV for the first time. So off we went. Look that everybody in my body wanted to just hide under a rock. Everything told me I was going to do it wrong, but I was able to draw on my bravery because I thought, I'm just going to try and be an example in the world of you know, someone who gave it a crack. I don't want to wake up at fifty and say I didn't give it a crack. And it was kind of that simple. So if anyone's listening and they're wondering whether or not you know they have they have what it takes to give it a crack. Look, you might not, but.

36:32 Why not give it a go have a crack anyway. Yeah, then we'll work it out. We'll work it out as you go along. Claire, I just wanted to ask you to We talked just going all the way back to we talked about that eighties nineties kind of diet culture, and you know, without going into all the detail, you know you went on a diet at a young age, lost a lot of weight and got a lot of approval and validation, you know, from school teachers and friends, parents, And so it's really I can understan and why we absorb the message that thing is good. But do you think much has changed? You have, obviously, but in our society do you think we're moving fast enough to change them society?

37:17 I think is extraordinary to be where we are in society. The fact that you and I, two women, get to have this conversation here today, and there's this thing called the Internet upon which this conversation will be uploaded, and anyone anywhere in the entire universe a world. Sorry, let's just say Earth, Well maybe more. Who knows anyone anywhere could listen to it with the technology to listen to it. That's wild, and that reminds me we've got half a chance in a way that we did not in a mainstream society where there was no internet. You know. So once again, the fact that we have conversational and structured, rigorous research based frameworks like health at every size, and we have universities still, you know, sort of able to do research into the nature of our body, our ability to deal with weight and so on, and deal with weight, meaning why does somebody you know white? Did me and my brother eat the same amount and I put on weight and he didn't. You know, these things will give me hope. It might be that I have a special ability to survive. You know, at the moment in our current conversation around what we call obesity, we don't have much positive stuff in there. The truth is, as a pretty healthy, happy woman whose weight does change, you know, the challenge is to be kind to ourselves through all of our different iterations. And so your question was, really, have we changed enough and are we in a good

38:48 place with it. Of course, we've got a long way to go, you know, in all different areas of representation, we are still a very narrow culture when it comes to which voices we elevate and which voices we don't, who we allow to climb up the ranks, and who we don't. And this plays itself out in politics, in the arts, in everywhere, you know, in every working environment, and in every cultural environment, in countries and everywhere. Power is. This is a conversation we can have, so you can see, I never think about my body anymore in the context of one little woman who goes into you know, your local department store and can't quite find our size there.

39:32 It's so much bigger than that. For me. It's about whose voices we allow to be heard, and so I don't. Of course, we're not there yet. Of course we've got a long way to go. But I am pleased that at the very least I can tell a story like this out loud and we get to have a conversation about it. I'm so glad that you did, and what a great reminder too, and for me as well. We all have a responsibility to use our voices and our platforms to make sure that we are elevating the conversation. Yeah, and even if we're not, like, can we at least make it interesting? Guys? You know what I mean?

40:14 Like because sometimes in this pursuit too of trying to be better and more and so we really, you know, we forget how to have a bit of fun as well. So, you know, I like to I like to think that life is for living, and we know that life is pretty short and we don't want to waste it worrying that, you know, we don't fit here, we don't fit there. I really look forward to people being I mean, I love a bit of a bold a bold woman or a man at the dinner party, or human being at the dinner party. What about you? You know, Like, honestly, this is you know, the rogue that like when someone walks into your clinic and you're like, I don't know what to make of you. They must be fascinating.

40:58 I find everybody fascinating. That's why you can do it, you do, Yeah, Yeah, I do. I find every I find people fascinating. I love having the opportunity outside of the clinic, you know, I love this opportunity to speak to so many people about so many interesting topics. I want to make sure that everybody knows not only is your book fabulous, and I haven't finished reading it yet, but in my attempt to get it closer to finished before I had the chance to talk to you, I downloaded the audio I downloaded the audio book and I listened to it in the. Car on the way here. And I want everybody to get the audio version of this book. The fact that you have the connection of the story to the song, the fact that you've actually played the lyrics the old tapes from your childhood, and you know, the fact that you've actually edited in, like subbed in the actual tapes. It's just it's stunning. You've done such a.

41:54 Beautiful Jobs's means so much to me because, my goodness, the you know, this story is a story of some of the origins of the songs. And when it came to recording the audio book, my husband Marty, who's my producer, and you know, we didn't really get to it, but there is this element of our love story in there, and it had to be because he was my bandmatee and you know, our love story was not very straightforward. It was quite a curious one and quite a fortunate one in some ways, but I'll leave that for the book. The two of us said, let's do this together. We'll go to our little home studio out in the burbs and Melbs and we sat down and honestly, we thought this was going to be a walk in the park and just sit down and read the book. You know, that's what I do. Read the book. It's fine. Oh the struggles I had with a trying to do silly things like get my mother's accent and be not weep and weep, you know, as I went through these emotional bits, and it really, it really was a very big project.

42:55 And you're the first person I've spoken to who's heard it, and it just means the world to me that you enjoyed it. Thank you so so much. I would to tell anybody by the book for sure, but also listen to the book. It's it's amazing. Maybe we could do it too. For one, I wish, I wish I had control over the things. I so appreciate it. One of the funnest things about recording the book was getting my mom in and because you know, fr Frank, there's a swear word in there, and my mom's pretty gorgeous and straight up human being Dutch, and she was in the studio. We wanted to do some extra things like like ad mum's Dutch apple tart recipe, you know, to the end of the book and there yet, yeah you haven't got you got that to look forward to.

43:35 And I also wanted to, you know, just just to be sure that we were not leaving people with nowhere to go. I got my friend, doctor Charlotte Keating, who's a wonderful psychologist, to come and help me write a letter at the end to anyone who's still struggling or anyone who needs further resources. So I wanted to make sure that was all there. But we got my mom in to read the Dutch apple tart recipe, and while while she was there, I also got it to do the language warning at the top of the book and my master speaks like this, but she's anyway. It just cracked me up. It was very special to be able to get her in there and give her a little roll to tell everyone that her daughter is a swear bear and you know, if you got kids around, maybe keep that in mind. But thank you so much, cause it's been a real honor and pleasure to be here.

44:22 It's such a beautiful, beautiful thing that you're doing in the world. Thank you, Thank you, Claire. It has been my absolute privilege. Thank you so much for making the time and everybody go and get the book. Lots of love. Thank you so much for listening, and you guys, thank you so much. Also for the feedback I'm already getting on season four. Please keep it coming. I get lots of suggestions for topics that you would like me to cover. I do receive all of your emails and we do file them all and we will do our very best to cover the topics that are important to you. Don't forget. Also that my YouTube channel has launched. Thank you all for coming and subscribing. It's YouTube dot com Forward slash cast Done. I'll see you over there. If you like this show, please do go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. And of course I always love to hear your feedback directly. You can email me at hello at Caasdone dot com. I read all of the emails. I cannot wait to be back with another season. Crappy to Happy is presented by castdun produced by Davis Lenski, audio production by Darcy Thompson Listener