Get Booked – Lucy Fry, “Easier Way To Say I Love You”

Hello, I'm Hazel, and welcome to my show here at Women's Radio Station, cleverly entitled Get Booked, which is all about my love of books and the incredible books that are out there. And today I have the fantastic guest joining me, Lucy Fry, Easier Ways to Say I Love You. Hello, Lucy, how are you? Hi, Hazel, I'm well, thank you. Brilliant, brilliant. Um, I have so much I want to talk to you about this book because, um, it's got so many different layers to it. Can you— do you want to just tell our audience a little bit about, uh, what Easier Ways to Say I Love You is all about? Sure thing. Um, so So essentially, I think it's a very hard one to contain, but I think it's really about love. It's about the different kinds of ways in which we love different kinds of people, and we have— we form different kinds of attachments in our life, and how important they are, and how our childhoods can often shape the way in which we approach love and sex and lust and romance. Yeah, I mean, there's, there's so much in this book to do with nature and nurture and how sometimes we need to forge our own path and do what's right for us. And especially when you go down a path that's maybe seen as a little bit different from the norm, there are different elements to kind of get over. And I suppose you're kind of batting in the dark, kind of figuring it— well, we're all just figuring life out, aren't we? We are indeed. Yes, and that's a lot about in the book, about what I talk about very honestly, is the kind of mistakes that I've made and the ways that I've figured stuff out myself. And really it's also about the process of creation and making a narrative out of your struggle, which for me became very meaningful during the course of writing the book. Now, just for all the listeners, I mean, there are so many themes that run through Easier Ways to Say I Love You, but predominantly it's about your, your relationship with your wife and polyamory, although there's lots of other different elements as well. But do you want to just explain to the listeners why you chose to go down the route of having a polyamorous relationship? Yeah. So I'm not sure it was a choice, just sort of happened, but then it became a choice. But what happened and the reason I started writing the book was to try and process the weirdness in my life when I began to fall for, originally in lust and then in love, with someone else who I call A in the book. And I needed to tell my partner at home, B, about this. And B was pregnant at the time, so that was very, very difficult. But we had always had one eye open to non-monogamy, conscious non-monogamy. So I thought that this might not be thrown out the window, if you like, the suggestion that we didn't break up because I was interested in someone else. But obviously it Took an awful lot of unraveling and honest conversations for us to get to a point where I now have two relationships. And it's, do you know what? I mean, I've spoken to you about this book before and it's quite interesting how my outlook has changed from, I mean, I've done a bit more research on polyamory and I've been watching Wanderlust on Netflix. Have you? Yeah. And the thing is, There are probably many people watching Wanderlust going, "Oh, I knew that it would cause problems ultimately." But ultimately you do have, you know, problems in any way that you decide to kind of have a relationship. But there is some, can you imagine? I mean, the beauty of it is that you can't get everything from one person. And if you can be, on the same understanding and be fulfilled in so many different ways. I mean, isn't that a good thing? Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right on that. And I think actually a lot of the problems outlined in that brilliant program Wanderlust are very realistic, which is, um, because the couple in that, they decide to open up their relationship, they're fairly normal in inverted commas couple, and then they just, they just bungle things. They just do it a bit badly and they just are a bit insensitive to one another. And that's exactly what happened to us, and it wasn't for any lack of trying, it was just We didn't know how to do this. There are no rule books. And for me, what I've learned is that there's no limitation on the amount of love that we can feel, but there is a limitation on time and energy. And I suppose I also feel sometimes I want to limit the amount of deep intimacy that I offer people. So I wouldn't want to have like 6 or 7 very, very intimate relationships because I just, I don't know whether I could give that much of myself to someone, but other people can. I, well, I think the main issue is, especially with opening up a relationship, is the fear that the main person in your life is going to prefer somebody else. That's the main fear, is it not? Yes, that is absolutely the fear that comes up for most people in my experience, and I've done a bit of research into this myself, um, not just the lived research, but I think really that that is a fear that if you drill down is, or a worry or a possibility that's always there in every supposed monogamous relationship and committed relationship. And when we say forever to someone, um, we do our marriage vows, you know, when people choose to go down that road, they don't know what's going to happen. They might say forever. So really, all that people who are involved in ethical non-monogamy or open polyamory do is say, hey, this is a possibility, uh, we recognize it, we stand inside that kind of difficult area, that difficult space, and we're prepared to acknowledge that this might happen. And the irony is that the more open you are and the more connected you are to that possibility, I think, the less likely it is to happen in a very painful way. But this is the whole thing that breaks relationships, is lies or the lack of trust. And if you can be open and honest, then surely, I mean, that, that's the most you can possibly give to a relationship, isn't it? And it even works or it doesn't with so many different elements of a relationship. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And you know, it's important to add here that I come from a place where I saw monogamy as the only option. And I once spoke to a good friend who said she'd been in a relationship for 6 years with a male-female married couple, um, and I nearly fell off my chair at the time. I thought it was an extraordinary, bizarre, weird, a little bit— I had so many questions and so many things that didn't make sense for me. But as with anything in my life that I think is a bit odd and will never happen to me, it ended up being the path that I chose. So yeah, I think, I think really it's just acknowledging that we are, we are all able to fall for other people. And what are we going to do about it? And cheating is a thing that doesn't really exist if you do ethical non-monogamy right. You can sleep with other people, but you can't cheat because you're being honest about it. So it's a sort of, we need to look at the words that we use, and infidelity and cheating are things that happen within monogamous pairings. And then I'm sure there's many people listening going, well, you either choose that you wanna be with somebody or you don't, but that's the problem. There are so many people in relationships that have an affair just to spice things up, get bored, and then move back again. That surely is more problematic than being open and honest. Yeah, and as somebody who has, you know, all of this did start for me as an affair, That affair lasted 2 weeks because I couldn't bear the dishonesty and the way it cut me open. Metaphorically, I felt like I couldn't look in the mirror. I couldn't deal with this split life. I don't know how people can do it for longer than that. I genuinely, I don't say that in any judgy way. I just don't know how their bodies and their brains and their hearts can handle it. It nearly broke me and I can't do it, but I can see that it would spice things up. And I think the question to ask yourself, if you're going through that, is try not to judge yourself so harshly. Try not to— try to just be curious and think, what is it that I'm seeking that I'm not getting? And is that something that a long-term partner can give me? And if not, then how are we going to deal with this ethically? And, and if it is something you think your long-term partner could give you and you could give them, then what's going wrong in that relationship? But fundamentally, you know, what you've just described is that we are all different and we all, you know, need to live our lives in, in slightly different ways. Can you imagine if we were all the same? So How could one way suit everybody? Yeah, well, I mean, I, I won't— I, I may well become monogamous again, but I will choose it, uh, in the same way that, you know, I didn't choose heterosexuality, I didn't choose monogamy. I fell into those things growing up, and now I get to choose because I know there are other options. Everybody is different, but if we don't have access to different options, we don't know they're available to us, how can we choose? And the problem at the moment around polyamory, which is a sort of subset of ethical non-monogamy where you are able to, um, be in love with and in strong committed relationships with more than one person. The problem is that there's so much judgment around it that people aren't being open when they're doing it. They often hide it, um, and particularly worried that they might lose their jobs. And in America, you can lose your children, um, by being open about being polyamorous. So we, we need to kind of shift the dialogue around that so people can be open about it, and then there'll be this ripple effect I hope, of just a less judgmental, more curious viewpoint. Just let people be as well. And we've kind of, we've jumped in straight at the deep end with your book, "Easier Ways to Say I Love You." But it's not, you know, this is just one of the topics that you cover. "Easier Ways to Say I Love You," it's just, it's all about, you know, being fallible, being, trying to fill a void and how, you know, our childhoods can shape who we are. It's about addiction. About recovery and finding out who you are, making mistakes. There was quite some really sweet and funny bits to Easy Ways to Say I Love You where I've kind of been laughing out loud at some points. Good. And this is, although, you know, it is a book about polyamory, the themes that lie within it just are so relatable to so many different people who have tried things and failed and just, It's about human nature, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. And for me, it's not really about how many relationships can you have at once and is that screwed up or is that kind of evolved, that decision. It's really about how each and every relationship can trigger some old wounds. And, you know, relationships are the hardest thing in many ways for us to sustain as people. You ask most people what their biggest issues in life are, it'll be some kind of interpersonal thing that's bothering them. So I started this relationship with this new person, A, and they were totally different from my, um, my other partner and started to trigger lots of old abandonment wounds that I then had to look at again in my psychotherapy, which I do regularly, and I'm training to be a therapist, but also just in, in my daily life. Like, why am I behaving like this? Is it this person's fault, or is it my responsibility to go away and really try and heal and soothe some of those old wounds because I'm bringing them into the present. And the past is still, is still sort of open, if you like. The past is still being far too influential in my present life. And I think one of the main things that I want to discuss in the next section, which is coming up very soon— we've got through our first section already, is absolutely flying by— is I want to talk about, you know, attachment theory. And, and this is such a prominent theme in the book. And there was so much that you had to say that triggered a lot within me that I was kind of— I came into one of my shows, actually, do you know what, we'll go out, we'll go on to that into a second, otherwise I'm going to end up talking for hours. We're just going to go off to a quick break and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. 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Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women's Radio Station, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to our next section of Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station. I'm Hazel Butterfield, and today we are chatting to Lucy Fry, the author of her recently released book Easier Ways to Say I Love You. And just before the break, I was getting a little bit excited and I was about to go off on one when I suddenly realized I had about 10 seconds left, so I had to kind of park it. Uh, but, but now I'd like to talk about the attachment attachment elements of your book, Lucy. Um, and there's, there's so much that's running through it. I came into the studio about 4 or 5 weeks ago, um, to a couple of guests, and you could see that my mascara had kind of run. I'd read a part in your— in the book about attachment and when people are— the rippling effects of children that have been put into boarding schools early on, or people that have felt that they've been abandoned, and the the lifelong effects that they have that sometimes you don't even understand or realize you were struggling with until there's that thunderbolt. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. So was that— how did that resonate with you? What did you feel about that when you read that? Um, to be honest, it was— I've been in a relationship with a couple of people who were put into boarding schools from very early on, and the issues they have, the psychological issues that have affected the relationship we had, which ultimately ended it, um, And, you know, it's, it just, it kind of made me think, wow, I mean, that's why. But it just made me really sad that that's the reason that they have formed their life that way and that they've struggled. And don't get me wrong, going to a boarding school does not mean that you're gonna have issues later on in life, but there are some people that really struggle with, you know, there's abandonment issues. People can get abandonment issues for so many different reasons. But, you know, that section in your book, it just kind of made me think, oh, just, just wow, just how people can be shaped by something. And it's not intentional. It's not like someone's intentionally tried to hurt somebody or to try and shape them. But, you know, we're all quite fragile. And, you know, something that happened when we're 3 or in your case, 6 months old, can affect, you know, our family relationships, our closest relationships, you know, forever. Well, yes, I mean, it can. And but I hasten to add that what we're talking about here is kind of trauma, which really for the purposes now— nowadays, when people speak about trauma in the field of trauma work, they really mostly refer to trauma as anything that overwhelmed the individual's ability to cope. So it doesn't have to be a massive car crash or something, some sudden grief. It could be sending a 10-year-old or an 8-year-old to boarding school, you know, how, how do they cope with that sudden rupture, that sudden separation, even if the parents do it because they think it's the best opportunity for the child, even if it happened to the parents and therefore it's just what we do, in inverted commas, you know. Um, but what, what I really wanted to add here is that all those kinds of traumas, you know, if well handled, if noticed, if seen and given enough attention to, don't have to affect you negatively for the rest of your life. They may well be swirling around, but they can become part of an ongoing healing. But I think what happens often when people go to boarding school, or if they're just separated, you know, military families have this a lot, they're separated from parents for a long time, is that people just— we learn as humans to just shut down those emotions. They're just not there. We push them down and we become very unconscious of them, and then they play out in different ways in our life. For example, pushing away people when you actually want connection and you want to be close to them because you don't believe really that you deserve connection because you're unconsciously because you were sent away as a child. Does that all make sense? It's just one example. Well, yeah, because I mean, I'm actually in the process of writing a book at the moment and it's called 20 Weeks and it's 20 weeks worth of therapy that I had. Thank you. And after quite a traumatic experience and that 20 weeks of therapy made me really look quite deeply into why I was the way I was, why I was making mistakes, why I was letting other people treat me a certain way. And it's stuff that I just buried because, do you know what, you know, in your 20s, you just gotta get on with stuff. And when you've got kids that are young, you've just gotta get on with it. When you've got a divorce to deal with, you just gotta get on with it. You gotta get on with it, you gotta get on with it. Somebody dies, you've gotta get on with it. You gotta find ways to help other people. And sometimes we get used to just getting on with it. And it got to a stage where I was so broken that I had to embark on this 20 weeks worth of therapy, and it was so intense. And it— and, and that's why I was so emotional about the section that I read, um, about attachment in Easier Ways to Say I Love You, because, you know, it forms how we treat other people. And, and it's— it just made me go, wow, it's— we bury so much. And there's— and it's, it's scary what's underlying, but I know If what happened to me hadn't have happened, I wouldn't know as much as I do about myself and be able to recognize it. But it's that whole thing, isn't it? Where you read it all in these self-help books and you read it in, you know, even books like yours, you know, sometimes you gotta be completely naked and laid bare and dismantled to be able to build it back up again. Absolutely. It's a reconfiguration that's required. And the question that I would ask you, and I don't expect you to answer on air, is, Where did you learn that you've just got to get on with it? Because that's, that's, as you say, it's a sociocultural thing that we often have, especially in British society. But also that would have been there in your family system. That's your way of handling things. My way is often to collapse and go, I can't handle this, which is equally ineffective in the long term. Ultimately, one of the things I discovered among probably about 30 is that I got on with it because I didn't think people would would give a what's it. It's, I kind of, you know, I was brought up in a family where, you know, my mum was extremely loving and warm and everything, but I just, I didn't wanna put the pressure on her. Other people around us didn't care that much. And also I just was worried about what would happen if I did ask someone to help me. And that's what I kind of uncovered. And then, so I got used to just kind of being glib about things. But this isn't my therapy session. But it is, it is just, it's unpacking what it is and learning to live from that. You know, we can still make mistakes and, you know, the, I mean, this is just yet again one other prominent element that is in Easier Ways to Say I Love You because, you know, we have to find different ways to say I love you and we can't always do exactly what our partner wants, but we can try our best. Yes, exactly. And in fact, just think, just thinking about the title now, I just— my father always used to say to me, you know, Lucy, you always seem to choose the hard route in life. You know, there's an easy route and a hard route, and you literally take the hard route. And I'll be like, Dad, I'm not always choosing it, you know. But I suppose the reason that I chose that title was because there's a bit in the book where I say there are easier ways to say I love you, but this is mine, i.e., writing this book. And to say I love you to my mother, who's quite prominent in the book, my son, and my two partners. But also it's a sort of weird therapeutic love letter to self because through the course of writing that book and telling that story, I learned that I wasn't very good at loving myself. And as naff as this sounds, I actually really do believe the old adage that we can't love and empathize with people any more than we can do so for ourselves. So I think this whole therapeutic process you're talking about and the delving inside and delving deeper is actually the least self-indulgent thing we can do for the world. Yeah, completely. I'm gonna get a bit emotional. My producer's kind of looking at me now. Calm yourself down, Hazel. No, no, that's the voice. That's the script, Hazel. Yeah. Be real, Hazel. It's okay. But the other element as well that really resonated with me was contending with guilt in our life. It's contending with dealing with the guilt for what we might feel about our family, our friends, our lovers, our kids, constantly feeling guilt about whether we're doing it right, doing it wrong, or when we know we've messed up and figuring out whether we're actually letting them know in the right way that we've messed up. And one of the best lines in your book that I absolutely love is when, your, the person that you're having a relationship with other than your wife, A, yeah, when they start being in a relationship as well and they get different things from the relationship that they get with you and you're a bit jealous about that 'cause they're spending, you know, a bit more time together and it makes you a little bit nervous and a little bit jealous. Oh yes, you mean when A and B get together and you sort of— Yeah. Yes, they have their— it's sort of like a triad situation. Yeah. Very confusing. But then it all goes completely wrong and then A dumps B and you're sitting in a pub to your friends saying, "I'm just really upset because my lover's split up with my wife." Yeah, yeah, I mean, that all happened. That really happened. I mean, who doesn't write a book about that just to tell someone, look, Look how strange. If you let yourself run free with your love, this is what happens, people. Don't do it. But it's just the variety of life, and it's just, you know, the book is about— it's not about going, yeah, this is what we're doing, it's the right way, blah blah blah. It's our way. We're doing it right, we're doing it wrong, we're kind of stumbling, you know, messing up along the way. But, you know, you're still with your wife and And your kid's happy? My kid is, as far as I know, I mean, he tells me he's pretty happy. He's got a remote control car this week, so he's named her Rosie the car. So I think that's a real sign of childhood happiness, don't you? He seems to be pretty happy, that's all I can say. Cucumber and remote control cars, only one of which I enjoy myself. The remote control car? Absolutely. How did you know? I have like a phobia of cucumber. I was just hoping really. I love a remote control car. Bridget, you know what? That's that, you've, sorry, I've just hit the table, which is not helpful for the percussion. But I was getting quite angry then. Kids don't play with remote control cars enough anymore. I would love my, do you know what? I'm gonna go to somewhere in Covent Garden on the way home and gonna buy a remote control car. Disney store. The Disney store, that's where we got mine. Oh, did you? I say mine, his. Yeah, sure. Freudian slip there. Yeah, I was gonna say. I think we all know, um, drive my car like it's a remote control car anyway. But yeah, I think women really need, um, there's a fantasy, and I actually wrote a piece for The Guardian newspaper about this. Actually, Lucy, just, I'm sorry to cut you off, we're just gonna have to go off to our other break, but I do want to hear about a piece in The Guardian. No problem. Okay. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. Hi everyone and welcome to the Femaling Show. I am your host Nicole Goodman and I am a woman's identity expert expert and coach. As women, we fall into different phases of identity through our adult life, and during these, our challenges can look pretty similar. Here at WRS, I will be talking to you about the real issues we all face, and even the ones we can silently struggle with. 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Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Welcome back to the second half of today's Get Booked. I'm Hazel, and in the studio today I have Lucy Fry chatting to me about easier ways to say I love you. And just before the break, it always seems to happen that when there's about 30 seconds left before we've got to go over to the adverts, we get really fired up about something and then I have to cut off my guests or cut off myself. And it's just ridiculous. It happens every single time. But also we've just been incredibly animated in the studio talking about getting a remote control car. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna get one delivered by tomorrow and that's it. I'm all over it. Please make sure your son knows he's inspired my inner child. I will, I will. I've got some great work you've done today on the show. So you were just about to tell us about an article you wrote for The Guardian. Yes, I wrote for The Guardian family section an article about what it's like to sort of come out, if you like, as polyamorous as a parent. Um, and I came out as— I would now say non-heterosexual, but I did sort of come out as bisexual and then realized, oh no, I'm probably gay, when I was 26. And that's in, in the book as well, stuff around that. Um, and then at 30— what am I now, 38? So about 37, I'd say it was about a year ago that I came out, really started telling people, year and a half ago, about the polyamorous situation that we find ourselves in. And, um, it's interesting that I received more judgment and quizzical looks and invasive questioning around that than I ever did about coming out as non-heterosexual. Um, and also particularly when I, when I say I have some And then really people are very like, no, okay, we thought this was okay and we could get on board if you were just boho women living a selfish life, you know, loving whoever you want with no boundaries, which is the view that people often take. But if you're bringing a child into this, it's just wrong and it's just going to screw him up. And that's been quite a hard one to tolerate and to combat. Where do we start? Oh, the thing is, there are so many people out there that are in, that are single parents, whether that's the dad being the prominent parent or the mum being the prominent parent. There are, you know, gay parents, they are, you know, there are heterosexual parents There's nothing to say that any single one of them are doing brilliantly or are doing appallingly. Everybody is different, and you know what? It's what works for the individual person. I know some parents out there who have been together for 20-odd years and they are destroying their kids. Yeah, absolutely. Their unhappiness, their obnoxiousness, their, you know, set in their ways. And yet I know some people who are smashing it out the park who, you know, are doing it as a single parent. You don't— you can't judge on that. I think it's so— it's really blinkered. Yeah. And I think actually if we cast our mind back, if everybody casts their mind back to their own childhood and thinks about what caused them pain, it will usually be a parent's emotional unavailability on some level. I mean, that's a sort of adult interpretation of things, but it will usually be that or some awful conflict that the child never witnessed being repaired, or a sudden rupture and separation like being sent away, um, or, or a death. So those are the things. And actually, if you think through the child's lens, whether mommy, daddy, or other mommy or other daddy go away, um, and spend the night elsewhere, um, having a sleepover with a friend, which is how age appropriately I would put it, um, isn't going to really bother them. It's whether that parent is emotionally available and attuned. And able to repair after a difficult conversation or getting angry or unable to take responsibility. So I think it really gets a bit trickier as kids become teenagers and there you need to kind of deal with this a bit. I mean, I can't really give advice on that one, deal with it carefully, because my son's only 2 and a half. So I will be reading up a lot if my situation is the same then. But at the moment, all that really matters is that he knows he has two parents. He doesn't have three. He has two parents and we both love him equally and we just adore him and we're really consistent with him. And if we we fight or if we snap at him, we apologize. Yeah. And I think we are, we are smashing out of the park, actually. I'll go so far as to say that. Um, and the things that have caused that, the areas where we haven't been, is when I have allowed my romantic relationship and my attachment trauma to really get to me. And that means that therefore I am less available because I'm in a heap in the corner. You know, those, those are the times when it, when it impacts on him. But that, those impacts would be there Anyway, I think, because I am a trauma— yeah, exactly. And also, you know, what child wants to grow up with a perfect, perfect setup? Because then they never develop any resilience. Well, do you know what though? I mean, this happens to me all the time. I've, you know, well, not all the time. I mean, it's not like I'm constantly shouting at my kids, but you know, if, if they're arguing and arguing and arguing, and most parents will, will be able to relate to this, that, you know, there'll be an argument about something and you'll be fine and it'll completely wash over you. And then it'll be like the 10th time and you just completely flip and you lose it. Yeah. But do you know what? To flip and lose it and then to turn around and say, do you know what? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have got angry. But do you know what? I don't, you've gotta understand that there are repercussions to actions. However, I shouldn't have responded that way and I apologize. Mm. It's opening the dialogue. It is just, oh, there's a, a noisy motorbike in the back. But it is just, and yet my kids, when they do something wrong, they're quite happy to actually turn around and say, yeah, I'm sorry, that was a bit naughty, that was a bit— Because you've modelled it, you've modelled that to them. And yeah, I think it's important to just think, you know, how can we figure this out together? And also don't, you know, don't shout at them because they've taken your remote control car. This is a crucial part of parenting. You're going to have to learn tomorrow. No, right? If I say to them not to touch my remote control, this is important, you know. You can hand your homework in late, but do not touch my remote control, Kat. No, exactly. Um, and, and just to go back to the book and talking about this parenting thing, you know, I, I open the book with quite a difficult first chapter that's pretty explicit, actually, that's, um, about the process of the sort of hypnotic nature of an affair and that hot unavailable thing. Um, and people have really judged me when they've just read the first chapter. And one DJ in particular who was interviewing me had only read the first chapter and gave a completely different interview as a result. Um, and it was, it was pretty nasty to be on the receiving end of, actually. Um, and the whole point about doing that is because I almost wanted people to judge me and then to read on and to see the context of everything. To see the kind of relationship I'd been living in for many years, to see what maybe was lacking there for me, what was lacking there for my partner, and to go, oh, now it's almost like I've got a deeper perspective and I can look at this person in a different way. Because I think that's a microcosm of how we behave in life. We meet someone, we judge them, and we don't have enough curiosity about, well, why are they shouting in the supermarket queue saying, you pushed in front of me? How stressed must they be to have done that? What's gone on in their life? So yeah, there's my little speech for the day. Do you know what? Just as you were saying that, do you know when you get that feeling in your stomach and it starts to rise up through your chest as you're getting more and more annoyed? I'm annoyed for you because, yeah, the first chapter is slightly different to the rest of the book, but one of my favourite parts of this whole book that really did strike a chord with me was just your openness to say, 'Oh, I've messed up,' and, 'Oh my God, how do I have the right to be jealous about this when I was the one that brought this situation to us?' It's just— it's the element that you could actually just sit there and go, 'Oh, this is somebody else just saying that they've messed up. It's nice to hear that, you know, we can talk about messing up rather than just, you know, always winning.' And that, that was my favorite problem I think one of my most favourite parts of the book was just reminding ourselves that we can fail or life can be a little bit ridiculous sometimes and we can't always control our emotions. I think we need more books like that so people can, you know, it's a bit like Instagram, isn't it? Where everything's perfect and dandy and looks fantastic. And this book is like the opposite of Instagram where it's kind of going, no, I kind of, do you see what I mean? The opposite of Instagram, I like that. It's also been called by one reviewer who gave it a lovely review, "Not a self-help book," which I think sums it up quite well. I don't think that's true because it made me feel a little bit better about myself. Oh, okay. Not a comparative way, it just made me go, "Yes, there are, you know, somebody else has kind of messed up as well. Somebody else has kind of, you know, thought these things even though you knew they were wrong and you couldn't quite control like the jealousy." No, it's reality. And we need to engage with reality a little bit more. And that's what I mean about the opposite of Instagram. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's because it's about having honest conversations. I think to go back to what you're saying about, you know, why people just going, look, I just messed up. I think the reason that that's so difficult for so many of us is because we carry such a lot of toxic shame and that kind of shame where if we do something bad, we think I am a bad person. Rather than I did a bad thing. Now, I did a bad thing tends to be the guilt feeling, which is actually probably quite appropriate and healthy. But as soon as you do something and you feel bad about yourself rather than the thing that you did in that moment, you've gone into shame. And shame for me feels like I want to rip my skin off. For different people, it feels a different way. So the more work we can do about actually speaking those things that we feel shame around, like in an appropriate context— so don't tell everyone you had an affair, but maybe choose a therapist or someone someone who's trained to hear it, to receive it, and to not judge you, the more you'll heal from some of that toxic shame and then be able to go through life making mistakes and not hating yourself for it. And the more we hate ourselves, the more we push good things away and good things out of our life and good people away. And therein lies that kind of thing that we were talking about earlier, where we long for connection but we can't get it because we push it away. And the kind of boarding school syndrome also that comes in. But so it's normalizing it, It's putting it out there a bit more, and this is, this is why I liked it. It is talking about it more and normalising these quite natural feelings. I mean, can you imagine if you were a robot and you didn't have, you know, feelings that you couldn't always control? No, I've never had that problem. No, me neither. I have the opposite. There isn't a robot bone in my body. Not that robots have bones, but you know, I definitely— Construction. My biggest sort of struggle, if you like, or challenge, I'd say, in life has been that my feelings have always been very big and have often felt quite unmanageable. So my journey has been to learn how to healthily contain them, to soothe myself, and to kind of appreciate the fact that I feel things so deeply. I feel like I walk around with several layers less skin than many people. Other people, and it's sort of part of the— it's different ends of the same spectrum, if you like. Other people feel like a bit numbed out, flatlining. They can't really feel as much. And in a way, both of these things can be indicative that there's some kind of trauma or, um, that there wasn't the right kind of emotional regulation as a baby or as a young child. So we weren't met the way that we needed to. And that's— yeah, typical therapist, I'm going back to childhood again, but it is just so— I mean, it is so, so important if we want to move forward and be free to look back. And, and this is why we are all different. And, you know, there's a book out there for everybody. Um, we are gonna just go to our final ad break and we'll be back in a couple of minutes. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Is listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. 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Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter @WomensRadioStation, that's Women's Radio Station, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. You are listening to women's radio station supporting women's well-being. I'm Hazel, the presenter of Get Booked, and we are on the final section of today's Get Booked with Lucy Fry talking about easier ways to say I love you and many other things as well. And today's show has been flying by. We need to increase this show to like 2 hours because we can't squeeze it into an hour. So we were just talking a little bit about the response you've got to how you decide to live your life, Lucy, and the articles that you write. And you've written for the Daily Mail before, haven't you? I've written for the Mail, the Guardian, the Times, lots of different magazines. Pretty much the i newspaper most recently. So yeah, they're pretty— I've written for most publications actually over the 10 years of freelance journalism. And our listeners can find out more about you at lucyfry.co.uk or on the majority of social media @lucycfry. Now, interestingly, because of the emotive topics that you write about, I want to discuss 'Cause the Daily Mail in itself, the comments alone have their own life, don't they? Yeah. Yes, I've written, so I remember writing an article a few years ago about getting sober because I haven't had an alcoholic drink for, oh well, 8 and a half years now. And I wrote this article about getting sober at 30 and how that felt and sort of big 1,800-word article and they had to do photos and I'm not brilliant at being photographed. Don't have a look. Quite as relaxed as I do in person. But at the bottom of the photograph, there was someone who'd put, 'I wouldn't buy that,' and tap that. 'She may be sober, but she, she, you know, I wouldn't touch her,' or something like that. And I was so fragile at the time, and just, it was the nastiness behind it. And there are comments like that all the time, and of course these people remain anonymous. Um, but I think that, that just shows the, I don't know, an extension of the judgment that we think and the opinions that we think people might actually want to know. Nobody wants to know if you've only got something awful to say. So yes, it's difficult to write for The Mail a lot, but I also believe in changing the system from within it. So if I'm writing for The Guardian all the time, those people are probably already pretty left-field and thinking quite widely. So how am I going to change views? Wow. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because if you put yourself out there that unfortunately there are these idiots out there who are given an opinion that really doesn't matter. Yes, I know. And if it's an opinion about the article, that's one thing. But I think, well, we know this from recent events in the media. It's like, you know, people, people do end up at the extreme taking their own life from this kind of online bullying and the pressure that they feel. But also these very barbed comments about women's appearance. You know, you don't get it as much with men. It's just, it just cannot continue. I think everyone should have to put their name, address, address and phone number in order to be allowed to make comments, because I think it would really change the landscape of online comments. Or to be like, you know, have a login, be verified before you can do it so that you can be accountable. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what? If you want to make comments like that, which in no way is it ever okay, but, you know, put your actual name to it, make sure that you will be accountable for what you want to say. And do you know what? Then they won't. It'll just stop. Yeah, and I— but I think this sort of speaks to a wider issue of, you know, there are people in the world who want to create and want to tell their story or want to tell fictional stories, want to put bits of themselves back out into the world. And there are people who want to stand and judge, and there are then other people who want to consume and enjoy. And they're all different kinds of people at different times in life, but the ones who stand back and judge are full of that toxic shame. That I talked about earlier. Oh yeah. They are defending against something. So if we can try and raise the empathy to think like that, we can go, wow, they must feel pretty bad about themselves underneath to need to do that. Not always easy to be quite so empathetic when you're feeling hurt, but that is ideally— and there's some pretty prominent figureheads in the political world at the moment who we can maybe think a bit more like that about, who are behaving with a lot of toxic shame at the moment. And it's projection as well. And it's sometimes just gaslighting. And it is ridiculous. But there are some horrible people— not horrible, sorry. There are some people out there that are wounded. Wounded. Thank you. Angry, angry, angry young men. I don't know. Angry young women. Yeah, there's both. I think that kind of speaks to this thing of like people asking me a lot, why? Why have you written this book? You know, Why would you do that? Why would you put yourself out there like that? And my answer is, it's been incredibly hard to put it out there, to go through the process of publication. I had no idea that I would feel this vulnerable again. But actually, I'd still do it again because what I'm doing is I'm modeling what I want to model to my son. Although some of the content in the book I'd rather he didn't read. But, you know, I want to model that actually courage and authenticity are the two most important things. And I— if I can't do those things as a writer, then how can I expect anyone else to do it? We— it is that really famous old adage from Mahatma Gandhi of like, be the change you want to see in the world. Um, and I suppose I'm trying to do that in my own tiny way. But Lucy, you're not going to please everybody. What? Don't tell me this now. I don't think I've written a book that tries to please everyone. Um, I think I let go of that a long time ago. Yeah, just find your people and just, you know, yeah, my people tend to be people like yourself who have done a bit of thinking and looking at themselves and who are able to go, oh wow, I've got a really strong feeling right now. Oh, oh, oh, this is hard, this is hard, rather than going, go away, um, that's your fault. You know, those are my people. And the, the amount of people that I will let get really close to me is getting smaller and smaller as I get older, but the friendships are getting deeper and stronger. Which, do you know what, it's, it's quantity, not quality. Or the other way around. Indeed, that's exactly what I meant. I got you. I get it too. Oh, deary me. Do you know what, I was, I was just about to say it, like, about a second before I did actually say that line. I was thinking, must get this the right way around. But it also, it depends sometimes, you know, sometimes Quantity is better. Steady on. I think, you know, in terms of telling our stories and the therapeutic nature for me of telling mine, for me it was different as a professional writer. I wanted to craft it a certain way and I wanted it to be a book that would be published, you know. So the structure is important, the layout's important. But I think, you know, just learning to tell a story that you've got inside you that's eating you up a bit is really, really important whether you use any kind of art, whether it's theater, writing for theater, or even just doing some art at home or writing at home. And, you know, it can be incredibly healing. We use these methods in therapy as well. It's cathartic. It's absolutely fantastic. But one thing I just wanna quickly go back to, we were talking about people in the public eye that you think, that you quite nicely worded as being wounded. Are there anybody in the public eye that you think are kind of smashing it out of the park, you know? Oh yeah. That you just kind of look at them and go, "Thank you, I'm so glad you're in the public eye because you discount all the idiots out there." Not all of them, I'll try and— I mean, it's interesting that the first two people to come to my mind are American women. One is Brené Brown, the researcher and writer and speaker who's absolutely had TED Talks. If you haven't seen them on Shamer, Vulnerability are literally a must-watch, um, and her books are great. And the other one is Glennon Doyle, who is a writer in America, um, who's also in recovery from addiction. And her and her wife Abby Wambach, who's one of the ex-most famous female soccer players in the US, are doing great things even using Instagram. They're doing great things. So it, it is interesting that I'm like, wow, who do I know in British society? I do know lots, of course, but you put me on the spot a bit. That's what I do. Um, but yeah, there There are definitely, there are definitely people, people out there from even from Caroline Lucas in Brighton who's fighting for the Green Party, but also, you know, the New Zealand, the president of New Zealand who was breastfeeding very, very soon after giving birth in a political arena, you know, saying this is how I'm doing it. Um, there's a lot of women out there who are making change and it's very, very exciting. Also someone like Matt Haig in the UK, you know, he wrote, uh, Reasons to stay alive. And what he's doing on Instagram— I've taken a long time to kind of finally admit that social media is influential and I need to get on board. But, um, what he's doing on Instagram is just brilliant. I read a post yesterday where he said, I'm so full of anxiety— I'm paraphrasing here— but I'm full of anxiety and I have to take some time off. Um, and, and I had a very bad day yesterday. I was full of anxiety and it was so helpful for me because he's so successful now. It's easy to think, oh, that depression that he went through, that was a thing of the past. But he's successful and he struggles with mental health. Yeah. So those are the people that I love, the ones who are genuinely vulnerable, genuinely honest about it, and still doing what they can. So it's not about, um, kind of this narcissistic sharing that goes on a lot— look at me, look at me, just look at me for the sake of looking at me— it's somebody who's acting from a place of purpose and a place of altruism. I completely agree in relation to, um, Matt Haig. I mean, I follow on Instagram and Twitter, and whenever he comes in my feed on Twitter, I basically, I have to read it all because even his commentary on other people's tweets as well. Yeah, he's very politicised. Yeah, he's brilliant, but he's quite diplomatic at the same time as being succinct as well. I think, and also when we develop a public profile, I say we, I mean, I haven't really, not to the level of Matt Haig, but there comes a sense of responsibility responsibility of kind of adopting a sort of activism as well. And he does that a lot around the political realm, and I want to do that around the kind of therapeutic emotional realm and talk very much about how we're allowed to have all of our feelings and we shouldn't keep rationalizing and pushing them down and talk about shame. And he's talking a lot about the political world and Brexit, and I just think it's— but it's really well done, and it's not— it's not— it's the opposite of those online horrible trolling comments. It's thoughtful, it's accountable, because you know where he is, you can disagree with him, and he's very sensible about it. And also because he's been through what he's been through mentally, and in his book Reasons to Stay Alive you can read about that, he's not going to start bashing people in the way that I'm sure he's experienced online. And do you know what? I mean, yeah, he's absolutely brilliant. There are so So many things on my list I wanted to talk to you about throughout today's Get Booked, but we've come to the end of the show already. Can I say one thing? Oh, quick, quick, quick. Just that I do offer a writing mentoring service if anybody wants to tell their stories. So check out my website if you do. Brilliant. And that is lucyfry.co.uk. Thank you so much, Lucy, for joining us here at Get Booked. And enjoy the rest of your day and good luck with easier ways to say I love you. Thank you, Hazel. Thank you. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. Hi everyone and welcome to the Femaling Show. 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