How Sally Hepworth Survived Her Divorce

You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.

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

You know, when someone seems like they've got it all together hmmm. For instance, best selling author Gorgeous, Family, thriving career, beautiful to boot, and then you find out they've been quietly rebuilding their life from scratch. Well, that is Sally Hepworth. She sold millions of books around the world. She's written a best seller every year since twenty fifteen. But what you might not know is that over the last couple of years, Sally Hepworth's life completely imploded. Today we talk

After thinking that it was ten am instead of nine.

Both of us thought that, what a miracle that we made. And here we are. But what okay, you have shared so much of yourself, but kind of in disguise. I think through your characters, which have resonated with millions, literally millions of people, and you have had this is so remarkable, a best seller every year since twenty fifteen. So that's a lot. It's a lot.

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

My first child.

Yeah, all I wanted was to get a novel published and.

Then oh, that's a dream.

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

And when like, how long had you had those dreams?

Well, I suppose as soon as I got my foot in the door and I started to get published.

You know what, might not dream big.

I mean, I didn't know that I was going to make it, But you have to kind of aim for something.

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

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

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

I suspect probably started to come after a little bit of outside affirmation.

That does help.

Yeah, I would like to say it was internal. I think by the time I wrote my fifth book, I remember that was The Mother in Law was the book that you know, broke out, as they say, and then each book since then has kind of built on it. And sometime between then and now, I just started to think to myself, when you know, I've written a couple of short stories recently, and I've never written a short story.

Well, of course I can do it.

And that snuck up on me because I didn't always feel that way.

Of Course, The Mother in Law was a really interesting one because it showed that you have a capacity, which I think you always have to do as a writer. It showed you have a real capacity to see the other side of someone, and you do that with all of your characters obviously, but that was a really seminal one because I think it's so hot, Yeah, isn't it sticky?

I hope so that It's always been the interesting part of writing for me is there are books, I assume that have been written about awful mothers in law, and movies and monsters in law and jokes and jokes, and so what was interesting to me about tackling it was to, you know, to reverse engineer or to look at the other side and what if you know mothers in law aren't awful because they're not. I mean, my mum is a mother in law and she's beautiful. I adore her.

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

You know.

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

Yeah, I mean, look, all of these experiences, they become a part of you, and so they leak out onto the page, I think. But I will say that every you know, my books in a way have followed the trajectory of things that I've gone through, motherhood, you know, even not being able to get pregnant and all of those things. Now with the divorce, I think that's been

I about that?

Like?

Am I over it? Am I? And I'm not.

I mean, it's I wonder if it'll be one of those things like the grief of death, that it changes but it's always with you. Yeah, I wonder.

I mean, I don't know.

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

And how is your divorce? By the way, look a little bit of everything, I guess along the way, but if overall, yeah, look what you know.

The thing that I have learned from this is that whenever someone would get divorced in my life, prior to it being me, I used to want to know what happened. And when I asked that question, I expected the answer to be a sentence or two sentences and something that attributed blame to one person. There was a victim and a perpetrator. You know, I wanted to hear he had

There's nothing. You could write a book, and maybe I will. Well it is. It is fascinating, and because it's such a common experience and for it to be so traumatic, yes, and so common, and yet not really, I don't think it's really given the full weight that it deserves, the significance in a person's life.

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

But I was so.

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

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

And on top of all that, I mean, that is the big part. And then on top of that there's the the life up people. You know that there's worries about financial worries, there's emotional concerns for the children, children, there's you know, I mean that part is so hard that you're going through something so difficult, and yet you have to do the best parenting of your life, you know, in order to hopefully get your children.

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

Or showing it in different way. I mean my daughter, my youngest was six at the time, and so I saw her dealing with it in ways that were not you know, she wasn't expressing it directly, but she was having a lot of trouble with you, nightmares and just behavioral stuff, whereas my old to and have my older too, when you're a divergent and so that had its own host of things.

Did they process it differently? Yea, yeah, how could you like? In what way?

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

Actually a very good question, yes, And so where does the dog we live.

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

The Swedish is that the Swedish model Danish something everything good comes from me.

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

The house with So the idea is that children are not they stay routed.

Yeah, right, and that you know, looking back, that was horrible for us or horrible for me. It was amazing for the kids and I would do it again for the kids.

And what why was that horrible for you?

Like just the the packing up of your life every Friday.

Which is normally what the kids have to do. Yes, and that's what I was going to say.

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

By by us.

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

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

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

No, and because it didn't really belong to either of you no, yes.

And it's also I have to say, it's a privilege to be able to afford to have it, and it was a small apartment, but not everyone has the ability.

To know that's right to do. That's the other thing about divorce. Divorce is expenses.

Expensive, and there's an uncertain period which is just really difficult, and sharing space with that person is so difficult and I found that really really hard.

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

Look, I think the thing that happened with us, which I see happening with so many people, is that you start. I started off with a desire to do everything perfectly. You know, this thing of okay, this our life's going to change, the children's life is going to change. I read all the books you know on children, and I quickly realized that that wasn't going to work. That we weren't going to be working together like that Christian and

I've got a.

Divorced group of women that we call ourselves the golden girls, and.

We share information.

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

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

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

Yeah?

You know, And I was in the really lucky position that I've never stepped out of work. I earn a good income.

Best seller every year since twenty fifteen, which you know, I mean that sounds wonderful.

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

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

Look, I mean, I'm sure there are people who've got some whimsical, wonderful divorce, but then you know, why are they getting divorced?

Are there any in your extended group of girlfriends?

Now there's a few, you know, sort of five years plus down the track that now are working well together.

Right.

I had to and look, I actually this was the best thing I ever did. I had to accept that I was in charge of what happened in my house and Christian was in charge of what happened in his house. And it's the most unnatural thing when you are a parent, even to you know, not have your kids with you half the time, but to let go of things that are really important in your life, like this is what time they go to bed. Things you're used to having control over this, This is what they eat, this is

And suddenly I unclenched, you know.

And that too, is a really important thing to sort of letting go of the marriage that you do kind of have to understand that when you're married you work together as a team. Of course you should, and now I think we're much better at teamwork. But that was a bit of a process too, of just going well, you know, when not controlling, you know, we can't control each other anymore. Maybe I look a lot too it my part. You know, I don't like that idea that

After the break Sally unpacks the part she played in the breakdown of her marriage. What do you think the role was that you played.

I think that the let me step back. I always wanted to be married, you know, I remember that from a youngish age.

Oh that's interesting that.

Yeah. I liked the idea of having a partner my brother's twins. I wonder if that had something to do with.

It, younger or older.

Older older brothers, and Mum said, when we were little, I used to say, where's my other one? You know, like there was something missing. And I don't know, like maybe I'm reading too deeply into it, but I loved the idea of having a partner for life. I mean, come back to it, but I have so many partners for life in my girlfriends, and that's the sort of full circle that I've come to. But I was looking for that, and I had an idea of what my life was going to look like, and it was going

Which is an interesting thing because a peacekeeper's beautiful thing, but a peacekeeper.

Can also be you can breed resentment.

Yeah, that's right, because you're subjugating every natural instinct to just preserve this piece on behalf of who.

Yeah, and it was it was often, you know, I was holding things in that should have come out. I think my career played a role. And again I don't think it's as simplistic as saying. And a lot of people will say, do you think that men can't handle a woman's success or versions of that, and I always think, I don't know if it's that simple, as simple as that, I know Christian was quite supportive of me doing well and wanted that. It's maybe to do with purpose and drive.

Well, and then you swapped and he was he was the state home parent, right, which my husband also was for a long time. Right, So I'm very curious about this dynamic. It's an interesting one. Firstly, there's the external to us. It made sense and at the time I was doing breakfast radio and it made sense for us rather than outsourcing to someone. But there is something about it externally the world is look do you do do other?

Mean?

Even? Yeah, Yeah, it's weird, isn't it. It is, so it's a strange thing. It takes an exceptional man to take on that role. Yeah. In my case, my husband, at some point we could tell he was done with it. Yeah, he was just done with it, I mean fair enough. Yes, And we had four under six, and that was a lot. Yeah.

I mean, look, I and we both because I was not home, I was working. We went from Christian had the main job as the earner when we were first together, right. What was his career an accountant, right, you know? And he was very good at that successful. We went moved over to Canada together because he was sent over there, and then we had the babies, and then I was at home with them, and then I was also writing, and then then we were both working and we had

You know you were No, No, you don't know at the time, do you.

Well, though I knew something. I've got this memory of being on tour in America and.

Which book was this? Which give me an era? I think it worth the era.

I think it was the Soul Mage right, okay, because it was right after Mum and Mia came out with their podcast but are you Happy that Claire Stevens was hosting? And I saw it and I thought I looked at it on my because I would listen to all the Australian podcasts while I was there, just to keep on top. And I thought no. When it said but are you happy, I thought nuh, and it just dropped in yeah. And again it wasn't that moment. There was a series of

This is separate to the Golden Girls. This is the gold some crossover.

There is some crossover in fact, because as soon as I became divorced, I didn't really know anyone who was divorced, and so I sought out, Yeah it is, isn't it. And that's I guess maybe part of what was it a part of what made it hard for me. I

In the ship box?

And they put it in and then that gets taken to their dumb, We've forgotten the ship and.

They'll say, I'll say, where's your shoes? They're in the ship box. How big is the ship box? Like a laundry basket.

It's so those kind of wondrous things come out of the golden girls that to link back, I guess I realized, Okay, my marriage is but I've got these girlfriends who really had stepped up for me in a way that you know, my first night in the apartment after we broke up, they all came and slept over. You know. One of them arrived with a box of tools. Tool. You know, they just use the tools a.

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

But it's extraordinary the things that you can do that you just didn't do if.

You clicked in a traditional sort of compartmentalization of what needs to be done in it. In the family life, I.

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

It's always a pool ball the poor boy. It's always a poor boy sought.

A poor boy. Maybe one day fingers crossed, you've got one.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I think you said that marriage is maybe not good for women. Yeah.

Oh, look, this has been a two year deep dive into.

My two years is not long, though you've really and compressed it or had experienced a lot in that two years. Yeah.

And like I say, I don't think I'm over it and over it's a funny thing. I am in a new relationship and I'm very happy. It's not that I'm not over him. I'm I'm happy. I feel like I you know, I have a great life. I have my career, I have my girlfriends, I have my family, I have my children. Life is so wonderful. I have the scars, and I do feel like I lost a layer of skin.

You know, every thing was.

Raw.

Everything I felt things is more beautiful and sadder and so my you know, is marriage good for women? I've thought about that a lot. And I also looked around in the early days at relationships and thought whose marriage would I want, you know, looking at my friends, looking at my parents looking at and I did find some there were some relationships that I thought I wanted, they weren't the majority, Like I had to seek them out.

That reminds me of a girlfriend of mine who had a brutal divorce. She said one of the worst things that she experienced was that when friends would hear she was getting divorced, they were like, they started talking about how much they hated their husbands. And she said it was just like suddenly they felt like they had an outleadish to say, yeah, permission. And she said, at that period it was the worst thing because what she actually needed was to believe in romantic love, yeah, not to

Yeah, Well, that's the thing. I think I see that a lot. I see a lot of unhappy women in relationships and presumably unhappy men. It's just that I spend more time with women, and I do wonder if this whole idea of marriage like it makes me think, what in an ideal world, if you're unhappy, you could move on without this whole But you look at it and think, oh, I can't. I mean in that time where I was burnt out and everything and I knew and there were a few things that made me go, Okay, this, this

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

Sometimes you know, well sometimes for everyone, yeah, correct.

So part of what I inagen is one of the things that you have to work out for yourself is in any long term relationship, it will have peaks and it will have ebbs, and so you know that you've worked through ebbs before, how do you know that it's not an ebb and that it's something that you can't that you're not going to then be able to surf the next wave onto the beach with.

It's when they are not interested in working with you.

To fix it right for whatever reason.

Whatever reason, And when you feel like you have tried everything in your power and it's except this the way that it is, or try something else and it's your last alternative. That's what it was for me. Every relationship is different and they have different reasons. It might be I don't know.

But the feelings are the same. The circumstances might be. Whoever said some writer, one of those one of those who was it that said every happy family resembles each other, but every unhappy family is uniquely unhappy? Who was that? Someone? Someone? Clear? But I do often think about that, because there's there's just a pataina of happiness that you know, you might

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

I you were like, I'm I'm not doing that again.

And even without not from a bitter place, it was almost the opposite. It was from a place of I'm so content. And I heard I've heard a lot of women say that they have been lonely after they've got divorced or they've had these certain difficulties. I didn't feel that I was never lonely. I was surrounded by love, I mean, which is just so bet And it's funny.

You know, you fought for us, and where are you for you?

And I thought that's nice.

Next, Sally rethinks what love really looks like thanks to the women who carried her through heartbreak. I think that when a relationship is failing, and it's one that you're really committed to, you tend to try and put resources into it to the exclusion of other relationships. So I think sometimes people pop out like a meerkat to a very bleak savannah. Yep.

Yes, And I did have that difficulty, which was to do with all of the horrible stuff about ending a relationship. But my life outside of that, I thought, well, this is good. I actually have got quite a good landscape. And I was thinking more and more that why is romantic love the pinnacle? I have got these women in my life, I mean so many, but particularly the ones that I've been friends with since I was ten. They're my life partners. They're the ones who have been with

Your significant ones.

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

And are there any men in that number? Not in that I have got male friends, Yeah, have those relationships change.

Well, one of my best male friends has been divorced twice.

Okay, he was in the.

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

I love men. No, I'm just always it seems, you know, maybe it's our times or maybe it's been ever thus really I don't know. But there's such a gold mine the female friends. Yeah, and it doesn't seem to be the same crossover with me. Yeah, I mean, I mean they're nourishing in a different way.

They are, and it's good.

I do believe very much in Yin and yang, and I'm not fully on board with women. We're fantastic. We're fantastic and men are fact, which seems to be some kind of very reviling, very much, very much. And I'm like, when did we start to think we were so perfect? That's true, it's not helpful. And I, by the way, I do think that about myself. That's how I recognize it. What you think you have to pull yourself up and go hang on a minute. Yeah, why am I always

We're the dermatologists of our own lives.

Well we are, and it's good for someone healing.

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

When you die.

They're the chief mourner, you know, all of those things that notebook yep, the crying in the rain.

Romantic love.

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

How in real life because that does not happen now, not even in novels. Yeah, I know, Well, so this is a good story.

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

Know more of the.

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

Wear it's been a very heavily workshop.

And a I think I had on a leather jacket or something like that. I felt very unlike me.

It wasn't the kind of thing, almost like you'd put on a costume, yes, which is the Sally goes on a first day costures.

In her forties.

Yeah. Look, and it was. He was so lovely.

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

She's like, tell me more.

And then she said, you know what, I've got a friend who's been separated recently and he's gorgeous and you should meet him. And I was like, oh, I don't know. And then she said can I give him your number? And I said all right? And then he messaged me, oh, I know. And you know what was funny is that he he said, so he lived away, lived in on the Gold Coast, but he was from Melbourne originally, and he said, I'm going to be in Melbourne this week. Do you want to have dinner? And I said yes?

And look at what he flew down just for the day.

God love him.

Oh that's amazing. What was his hunch?

Well, he said that he had heard about me from this friend and he'd cyberstalked me and thought that I looked nice.

Yeah right, that's amazing. And it wasn't you know, it wasn't sparks.

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

How was the geography?

He's moved back to Melbourne?

Oh okay after how many dates?

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

It's amazing him what way I.

Am the poor thing? Because you know, I now I do not let one thing go that annoys me.

Ah right, okay, so the peacekeepers, I just now to have a chat all the time.

Now you know, the thing that you did, I don't like that, right, And I encourage him to do that too, and he's so good about like what I love I think the most masculine trait that exists is for you to give them feedback and for them to say, oh, okay, ah, thank you for telling me that you know, and not being threatened at all or defensive or you know. I just think that's so so you're so sure of yourself and secure to be able to to take that on board and not feel emasculated, or just.

To actually have a curiosity.

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

I'm not.

I want to know what makes you happy. I want to I hear you, I see you.

I want to work that kind of softens you. Yes.

All you need, I think, is to know that someone wants that for you, that are in it for you as well.

And it's not just that.

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

But you don't live together, no, and you won't I don't think so.

Look I always say I'll never do something, and then you know, five minutes later, I think. What's really important to me now is that I have my three kids. I've got my own house. I want them to have their house that is just Mum's, you know, not even house, it's their house. I don't want Mum and Dan's house or you know, I don't know what's going to happen at Christian's house, but I want them to have a space that's theirs, and they don't need any more people.

Take on some other emotional load.

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

How do you think your writings changed now?

Some writers said once, I don't know who it is.

Obviously we know.

The sayings, we don't know the writer. But they said, these characters are a third someone you know, a third made up and a third yourself. And while I don't necessarily, what I think is myself is the narrative that comes on the page. It's not necessarily a character or a thing, but it's the wisdom that I'm searching for in that book. Yes, and I have a new book coming out later this year. It's called Mad Maybe.

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

Yeah, I haven't had a lot of people read it yet, so it's been I love hearing in.

The Yeah, in the early it's a like a binder. Oh they sent your bound, Yeah, I've got Yeah. I don't know what.

That's that's even different from advanced reader copy se.

Yeah, because I've seen the cover online and I'm like, ah, that's what that's how it's going to look.

Well, I think so the big thing that's come out of my life experience is that book in its essence, And it's funny because you read the blurb and it's about an eighty one year old curmudgeonly you know, I had so much joy writing that character who finds her neighbor dead and no one suspects anything until they find out that she, in fact was not a serial killer, like was convicted of murders when she was fifteen years old, and.

We go back in time to find that out.

But the book, unlikely as it seems, is about friendship, and that comes, of course off the heels of my These last two years have been about friendship for me, so much hurt and everything, but the way that friends can save you. And this book what I wanted to explore was can one friend save you? Is that enough? And what if you don't have one friend? What happens to you then?

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

Well, she's vulnerable, Like even the people that want to keep the world at bay, they're probably.

The most vulnerable.

There's a reason that you do that. As humans, we want to connect. And yeah, like there is a kind of hope, a layered story about that, and all of that comes from my experience over the last couple of years and the importance that friendship has. And it's dedicated to my best friend Sash, who has just been diagnosed for the second time with triple negative breast cancer. She's going through treatment at the moment again you know, it's

My girlfriend of mine had breast catcer last year before last. And it does. What it makes you do is you can't hold anything back, no, because it's a currency you've just got to spend. Yeah, and sometimes the watching everyone bring it is, like you said, just beautiful, cruel but beautiful. Yeah.

I always think, look to the helpers, you know. Another one I don't know who said that.

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

No, I'm fine. That's what friendship is. It's the hard and it's the beautiful. And I don't know anyone who's you know, I'm forty five and I don't know any forty five year olds that haven't been through something really difficult. And we know more difficult stuff is going to come, you know, hopefully, because that means we're alive, and that's more difficult things.

I always said that in yoga class. I'm always like, yeah, because there are is. If you're about discomfort, yes, yes, it's about discomfort. And so they'll often say the temporary discomfort in the in this class or in the practice of yoga helps you take on the discomforts that are coming for you in life. And I can't wait, but it is true.

Well, yeah, I heard a similar saying, which was, you know, it was something to do with waves. So it's you know, you stand in the water in the ocean and the waves come. You know, hopefully you get a gap between them. But your role is to learn how to swim because you know the next one is coming. You know, you can't just get bold, you know, if you do, just get bold over But if you learn to swim, then that each time you learn a bit more than you're going to be ready for the ones that are coming.

Okay, that's very interesting because that is. I like that. Sometimes I think that we don't allow ourselves or we don't emphasize enough how much agency we play in our own lives, or how much opportunity there is given. As you said earlier, like it's a privilege to be able to even think like that, really, because some people are just bowled over by waves and can't even get back

I think it's the key to getting through something is to focus on someone else, right, And I you know, as terrible as as you know my friend's illness is, I do think that it pulled me out of a depression. I think I've been in a mild depression for a couple of years, and as soon as I knew that she needed me, Yeah, it does. Yeah, you know, then you you're out of it and there's something more important

Else because also then that reminds you once again of what you're capable of. Yeah, it's a strange gift to be given.

Exactly, and it's almost you know, having friendship is such a blessing, but it's even better to be a friend, you know. That actually is a better feeling in a way.

Oh my god, someone said it's better to give than receipt. That would have been someone smart.

Just attribute them to like random people people that is, so let us know who said them all.

Hey, what's Sally Hepworth's future?

Well, on the tenth of August, my first book to TV.

Oh yes, serious coming so many at once because it's the Family next Door. Also Darling Girls.

So Darling Girls has been optioned and that is currently a writer has been attached and she's working on the script.

Was that that Amy Pohler thing.

Who Amy Polar optioned the mother in law, The mother in law and the soulmate has also been optioned.

I saw that with Asher.

Yes Asha Kitty is attached, which is amazing, and she's going to produce. And also so my short story Uncharted Waters has been.

Short stories that you googled how to write a short story, and Blossom, which is Nicole Kidman's production company has optioned that.

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

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

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

Try also landing all at once, these little ships that you sent out to see.

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

Do you think that's happened? I do, I do.

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

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

The ground, Yes, no, mind's not mine. It has the copper, but it plugs.

In, plugs in. Does it work with electricity for grounding?

No?

Like, how would you know if it works?

That's a beautiful thing about it.

You look really healthy that I'm going off.

I oh everything like that I've done. Yeah, I love that stut can't get enough of it.

And I'm mad on supplements this could go all day. This could go all day, Sally, hepworth. What an absolute duel you are in the crown of artists.

I love this. That is that some something someone said? Is that a writer? We don't Lainbrook.

She wrote this book called chow Bella. It says it's not on that, but it's pretty good.

It's wonderful I've read.

Oh, I brought a gift for you because I've got your soul package I loved.

I can have a signed copy.

I have it at home. Oh, I wanted to give you that.

We still take it, but look and sign.

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

Yes, thank you. This has been lovely.

Sally and I could have talked all day, and in fact we very nearly did, and it just struck me how generous and open she is. Even sometimes in the parts of your life that are kind of shadowy and your inclination is to try and cover them up. She's just spreading sunshine through herself and to those around her. It's always fascinating when the storyteller becomes the story. Sally's life has in ways she never saw coming, and she's

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

If you want to.

Hear the full episode, Well is your Full Body Health Check and drops every week on a Thursday.

This episode of Well is brought to you in partnership with Clear Blue Australian Women.

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

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

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

We will find out what's.

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

Go for it. I've said this before, I will say this again.

I am a deeply immature human being, and I will laugh every time I see butoles.

But here we go.

Something happens to some of our buttholes during our period.

Yep, we need answers.

This is very serious medicine, Mariam.

I want to know where this conversation is going.

Let's go to med school. Welcome to med school, Mariam.

We've discussed all types of pain that women might experience from various things, but have you you ever experienced a proctalgia fugax?

Oh my goodness.

Now, this is something that.

Happens to a lot of women when they have their periods. So you might just be, you know, walking along, minding your own damn business when you're hit with a really short, sharp pain in your buttthole that feels like someone shoved a hop knife up there for a second. Yep, it is like butt lightning. It's reportedly super normal, quite harmless. It's a spasm in the anal sphincter or pelvic floor muscles.

Butt lightning?

Yes, so proctalgia four gucks. It sounds like a Harry Potter spell. It steels more like a curse. Yes, I've had that surprise up and it's usually.

Like surprise that it's exactly what that is.

It's usually in the Coles freezer ales I've gotten us.

That's where your butt decides to betray you to the bat or a butt triggered by the cold. Oh my goodness.

Yes.

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

Today's check up is.

All things pregnancy.

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

So when you conceive, your body immediately kicks into pregnancy gear, right. It wants to support that tiny new life. The fertilized egging plants itself into the lining of your uterus, which starts releasing hormones like hCG and progesterone. And those womens do a bunch of jobs. They keep the pregnancy going, they stop your periods, and they start preparing your body for the months ahead. So why are we all so exhausted during that first trimester? It's always the hormones, same hormones.

Yeah.

The progesterone, which we call the pregnancy hormone, relaxes your muscles, including your digestive tracks, so that can make you feel a little bit sluggish. Your metabolism is revving up, so your heart is working harder to pump that extra blood, and your body's busy building the placenta, which is like a new organ and other essentials, so your blood sugar and your blood pressure can dip as well, and that leaves you feeling wiped out. So you're adding that emotional

Well, that's it.

It's the most common window for miscarriage, right, So, and if something happens to you and you haven't told anybody, it makes it hard.

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

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

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

And a no, they're our cycle, ye exactly.

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

But here's the kicker.

Only one in twenty babies will actually only arrive on their due date. Most babies will come either two weeks before or two weeks after, so the Jew date is more of a rough window, not a ticking clock. So early ultrasounds in pregnancy can help us estimate gesstational age if we're not really sure when our last mental period was or if this cycle regularity, and if things start to stretch beyond the Jude date, then you know you've got your treating team that will help you guide you

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

I love these consults, like I'm a GP shared antiinatal care provider, so I would start if you think you're pregnant, finding a GP with antiinatal experience and don't just wait to kind of book that consultation in early. And there's a lot what we can do to support a healthy

And when Ilse told when I was a teenager, I had a major breakdown. So yeah, it's not always.

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

Was to end that way, because we often find ourselves when we do experience those things asking why didn't anyone tell me about exactly.

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

My gosh, that's.

A lot, it's a lot.

One.

Yeah, I love those consoles and then obviously the physical examination as well, but no, it's a great, great console. I love those consultations.

Well, I wanted to ask.

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

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

Amazing.

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

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

This episode of Well was brought to you in partnership with Clear Blue