Get Booked – Pat Sowa, Take My Hand

Hello, I'm Hazel and this is Get Booked for Men and Women's Radio Station, a show all about books and writing which focuses on supporting our emotional well-being. If you would like to sponsor Get Booked, please do get in touch via our website, or you can email us directly at presenters@womensradiostation.com, or you can contact me directly via hazelbutterfield.com. I hope you're all ready to get booked today, and today joining us in the studio is Pat Sower, the co-author of the 'Take My Hand', a beautifully honest and harrowing true story about the power of great friendships when faced with horrific circumstances. What Pat and Kerry Fisher have done with their book is opened up about their son, how their sons faced incredibly dark times, and bizarrely it happened at the same time for them, and how they helped each other through in telling their story and hope to help others who have experienced similar, or are the friend or family member of somebody in such a situation. Pat, hello, thank you for joining us in the studio. Hello, thank you very much for having me. You're very welcome, and by the way, by saying in the studio, obviously this is remotely. We've had a fantastic time getting ready for the studio today. The world of remote broadcasting due to coronavirus, we're all doing it, we're all relying on Wi-Fi and Zoom and Skype Skype, and it's fantastic when it works, isn't it? It's great. It's really good for testing how you cope with stress, I think, as well. It's, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I'm great if everything works perfectly. Other than that— And what I quite often do when I do these shows is I send my kids out on a dog walk so that they don't keep on coming in and asking me for their 8th round of toast. So I'll have to text them halfway through the show and say, can you stay an extra 10 minutes out on your dog walk? But we should get cracking. I've finished Take My Hand. Thank you, Sabine. You're very welcome. It was— I had to stop and start because it's incredibly emotive, isn't it? You must have had a fantastic response. We have, and I'm sure we're going to talk about it in lots more detail, but for me it's like heart balm every time somebody says, "Thank you for writing it, because of that I've spoken to my own child differently today," or, "I've learnt something that's going to help me look after a friend." And every time that happens, it's amazing because that's why we wrote it. But I knew when we were writing it that it might not be an easy read, but I'm really hoping that it feels like a very human read, because we've just tried to be really as if we were chatting with you in a café about life, and that's what we've tried to catch in the book. But lots of people have read it in one gulp and literally just sat down and read it for 24 hours, and other people have done what you've done and had to stop and think and gather and reflect, and I guess we all read differently, don't we, Sam? Yeah, I mean, I am a quick reader, but it was just, I mean, I like to read about 3 different books at the same time, but it really can strike a chord, and there's a reason why I kind of had to stop it. Once we've told the listeners a little bit more about what Take My Hand is about, I'll say another reason why I had to stop halfway through, but just so they can kind of understand what it's all about. So you've co-written this book with Carrie Fisher. If you want to just explain to the listeners how long you've been friends and what happened to kind of utilize this friendship in the most incredibly powerful and useful way. Yeah, I mean, who knows, hey? We met at university, so we met in Freshers' Week back in the 1980s, 1984. I think that's more than 30 years ago now, and who would have guessed back then when our biggest worry was could we get tickets to Glastonbury and, you know, who we were going to meet and make friends with, would we, would we be able to stick it at university, that we would be here now literally propping each other up in really unimaginable circumstances. So that's how we met and we stayed friends through the years. You know, I would say that was all so far so ordinary. You know, we had a brilliant time at university together. We both went off to do a year abroad, which was absolutely fantastic because we were studying languages. Saw each other in that year. Then we went off and did our thing after university, but stayed in touch. Kerry lived abroad a bit. I went and did a marketing graduate trainee scheme. It seems like a lifetime ago, and, but stayed in touch. And then I suppose one of the things that kept us more connected is that in a bizarre twist of fate, we married two best friends as well. So I married my husband Jan and his best friend from school Steve and Kerry met, and they too fell in love and got married. Couldn't make it up, could you? So that's how we met, and then, you know, we had kids and kept seeing each other a bit more sporadically because life gets really busy, doesn't it? But we stayed in touch, and then what really pulled the friendship together was what we've written about in Take My Hand, which is that Kerry's son Cameron became ill very suddenly. He developed a very rare cancer, and I was able— I was a headteacher by then, Hazel, I'm leaping wildly, but I was a headteacher by then, and it was the summer holidays, so it was an extremely rare occurrence that I could be the friend who could drop everything, but I was that friend. And I think Cameron went into hospital on the Friday night, and I was there with Kerry and Steve by Sunday morning. Unable to help them through their trauma. And then little did I know that stacked up behind it was that Dom was going to get very ill as well. Dom being your son? So Dom was my son, and Dom and Cam were both 17, but Dom developed severe social anxiety which culminated in an overdose serious suicide attempt at the beginning of September in 2017. So having helped Kerry and Steve and Cameron and Michaela navigate that sort of early diagnosis for Cameron, he was into chemotherapy by then, but suddenly I was thrown into my own trauma. And Kerry and I suddenly found we were both in a really terrifying parenting territory that neither of us had any skills or knowledge to know how to navigate, really. And so we were just propping each other up. And I think one of our most common catchphrases in that time was, "Well, I wouldn't wish this kind of thing on anyone, but thank goodness we've got each other here." Because we could be totally vulnerable with each other. It's so interesting how friendship plays a part in what you go through, because who you have by your side can completely change the experience and how you can even try to recover from something. And it's, as you say, it is a cruel twist of fate, but the fact that you had the most perfect person by your side. Yeah, I mean, it makes it— who knows what it would have been. One of the reasons we wrote the book was because we said, how lucky are we that we've had each other in this? And we'd both spoken to other parents who've been through similar things by then. And the overwhelming sense of loneliness when you're trying to deal with something that other people don't know how to respond to is a huge theme when you speak to parents who've had to do the really hard yards in the bits nobody wants to do. And so we just had this overwhelming sense of like, we just want, we want to share this friendship because it kept us going. You know, and what I did know, what I thought was fantastic within the areas you covered with friendship, is that not only did it get to be a situation where Kerry could understand what you were going through, and sometimes maybe if you just needed to cut off a little bit or focus on being around the family, or just rant, or again, as you call them, a 3 AM friend. Yeah. There's something really bittersweet in, if you go through something horrific, you get to find out who your true friends are. And it's a big thing, it's like positive attribution. It's like, nobody would want to have to go through what you've gone through, but wow, you know who your friends are. You know who is loyal to you. You know who you feel comfortable with. That in itself is a gift as well. It is. And I mean, I can tell we're people after each other's hearts here, Hazel, because I'm always looking for the, the gifts that come, and they do. And I know some people would say you can't say there are gifts in those circumstances, but there are, you know. Life isn't just black and white. Most of life is all the messy grey bit in the middle. And so for me, Having friends old and new who, who had been, you know, part of my life for a long time, who were able to support me and the family at that time, has been an incredible gift. And I think to be able to bare your soul and the darkest thoughts about your own guilt of what you have and haven't done and have a friend just look at you and go, "Should we go for a walk? It's gonna be okay. I know you're not a bad person." It's a big thing, isn't it? It's incredible. I mean, there was a section actually— I mean, like I said in the introduction, this isn't a book for somebody, just a book for somebody who's going through it. It's to do with It's a book for anybody because inevitably you're going to have a friend who goes through something relatively similar, or a family member, and it's a bit like a manual. Yeah, that's how it is, like a manual for life, really. Yeah. And I had a— sorry, carry on. I was going to say it's like a manual for life. It's like manual for life, subsection part B, the parenting things people don't tell you about the fact that sometimes times as a parent you can't control everything to keep your child well and alive. And it doesn't get talked about much, does it? It gets, you know, it's like sort of childbirth, it's like bereavement. It's one of those things which people prefer to sort of turn away from until they absolutely have to. So we're hoping that the book isn't just for people who are going through that, but for the ones alongside them wishing they knew how to help. Well, that's the thing, is that people are petrified they're going to say the wrong thing, and with that fear, they either just completely switch off, not wanting to take the risk of saying something offensive or using the wrong term or something like that, and some people just don't want to be around it because it scares them. And again, these are, you know, when you find out who the true friendships are. I mean, even just turning around sometimes and saying, "I don't know what to say, but if there's something you want from me," please do shout. But there was a section I was reading in your book, and then unfortunately, just over halfway through the book, a friend of mine's daughter died from leukemia. And it was— the thing is, they're the kind of friend that you see quite randomly in the street, occasionally in the pub, did know them well, we do spend time together, but you know, if I don't see them for 6 months, it wouldn't be completely, you know, abnormal. Yeah. And from reading your book, I then thought, well, I've got to say something. I've got to say, listen, I'm incredibly sorry. But the key is, is not to ask something or send a message which involves a response. Yeah. Yeah. Hooray! That's what I got from the book. And I was just like, I feel comfortable because I now know I don't need to start a dialogue. Sometimes people think, you know, you know, I've got enough going on. It's the kind of being overwhelmed by messages from people, but feeling like people care, but you don't have to respond. And that's what I got. And I was like, do you know what, I had to stop reading the book for a bit because I got quite, I got a little bit upset because it was quite raw. But just knowing that I'd read it at the perfect time, I'd read the correct way to send some sort of well-wish. Yeah, I'm really glad to hear that. And I mean, hey, it was the correct way for us. It doesn't mean it's the correct way for everybody, but I know that I'm sorry for your friend, and I hope one day they'll be able to read parts of the book and maybe get some hope that even when you lose a child, which is the most— it's really quite incredible pain, it's hard to describe— that there are people around who will help you along that road, who'll tuck their arm under your elbow and somehow help you stagger through this early stage. But sending messages and not expecting a reply is huge, because both Kerry and I are polite people, so we would feel obliged to reply in normal circumstances, but that becomes an overwhelming thing when life is crumbling around your ears. And so as the friend, like in the position you're describing, to see it in your mind as a gift you've sent off, just a little virtual hug that says, "I'm thinking about you. Please don't feel you have to reply. I just want you to know that you're in my thoughts." It's like, it's an amazing sensation. And I've had lots of messages, particularly in the last year actually, where— so it's 3 years now since Dom died, and I think lots of people kind of inevitably move on in life a bit. So when a message pops up from somebody after 6 months I don't think, "Oh, where have you been for 6 months?" I go, "Oh, that's nice, they're still thinking about me." Yeah, I mean, life gets hectic as it is, and it's just— life is interesting. You know what, people are fallible. We do, you know, we're not perfect. We say silly things, or we don't know how to function sometimes, or, you know, I mean, as we get on, life is so packed with things that, you know, my brain's like, a tin of baked beans the majority of the time. It's absolutely ridiculous. But likewise, you know, sometimes people— we like to think the best of people, but sometimes people are just annoying and not the people that we want around us. I mean, a section I want to talk about throughout this show is the guilt element of when people say things like, "Oh, well, I feed my kids organic food and I always check in with my children." Great. Are you saying that I didn't? I didn't do something right. Yeah, it's really hard, isn't it? And I've had so many conversations about, is this a mother thing or a parent thing? And it probably varies by person, doesn't it? But for Kerry and I, we both had huge mother guilt about the fact that particularly we felt that it was our job to get our children fledged, independent, and thriving. And so the idea that, that your child might die, as a parent, feels like you failed base point one. It's a— guilt. The thing is, I mean, to put this into perspective to anybody that hasn't actually, you know, had to go through what you and Kerry have gone through, I mean, I remember the guilt I felt for a week when I'd sent my kid in with a tub of margarine rather than the empty tub that was supposed to have his pesto pasta in. But we feel guilt for everything, don't we? Whether we didn't get them invited to a party, or, you know, there's just something that we haven't done right, you feel this incredible guilt. And then, and then when something horrific happens, times that by a million, and it's just— yeah, I wouldn't even know how to— I mean, you vocalised it fantastically in the book, but it's hard to get your get your head around it. It really is. I mean, it's a proper job of work, Hazel. You know, I have, um, actually I've become much more self-compassionate as a result of it. And I, and I think that's because I, I had a fantastically lucky break shortly after, um, plot spoiler I'm afraid, but it's real life. So shortly after Dom died, um, I got a very lucky break because a dear friend said, I think you need, um, to see this lady, and she's a life coach called Viv. And it was, it was very early on, it was about 3 or 4 weeks after Dom died. Now, if you go for bereavement counseling, they'll say, oh, we don't want to see you for 3 months because the first phase of bereavement is a natural process. And so you need to handle that on your own. But frankly, I wasn't in a state to handle that on my own. I needed to get going now. So I went to see this woman called Viv. She was absolutely lovely. She held the story. She was the first person I told the rawest version of what had happened with Dom. And all the mother guilt came pouring out. And instead of saying, oh, you don't want— don't feel like— oh, don't feel like that, she said, write it down. Write down everything you wish you had done differently. And then can you write in the other column what you think Dom might say back to you if you were having a conversation with him? Oh wow. Oh, well, you can imagine. I mean, it's making me well up now, but that was hard to write. But it, but it was an incredibly powerful thing to write because Dom was a really kind person, so he let me off the hook far easier than I let myself off the hook. 'And at the end of that process,' she said, 'I want you to write at the bottom of the page, "I always do my very best."' And to be honest, at that point, Hazel, I think I struggled to even write that, let alone think it, and I certainly couldn't say it out loud. But over time, I've learned to do that because I look back and I think, I don't think I was a bad parent, actually. I've I was an uninformed parent who hadn't been taught about mental health and hadn't been taught about how to ask about suicide. But that was a lack of knowledge. It wasn't a lack of will or goodwill or motivation or whatever. And I suppose that's part of why we wrote the book too, was to just say, hold on a minute, there's all this knowledge out there that nobody's sharing because people don't want to talk about it. But yeah, mother guilt for me ongoing work in progress. You know, another, another great line I was given by a therapist said, you know, why don't you consider that work in progress rather than waiting for it to be finished before you let yourself do anything else? Because I'd be sitting here forever. And have you not found that writing the book has been cathartic? Yeah, actually been able to help somebody else something good coming from something horrific. Yeah, definitely. I, um, I knew instantly after Dom's first overdose, and even more clearly after he died, just this huge sense of, this can't be right. You know, I, I had lots of preconceptions about suicide, and I discovered really that they just didn't fit with my own experience of of what I'd seen with Dom. And so I wanted to honour that. And because I was a headteacher, a very interesting thing happened when Dom died. I went into deep shock, but I'd been trained to take school trips, and part of that training is that they teach you what to do in an emergency. And the basic rule of that is save as many people as you can. And so my brain did this very strange thing under the pressure of hearing the news, and it flipped into what I think of as headteacher teacher mode, and I just went, okay, I can't do anything now for Dom, but I can save his friends. So the first people I phoned were his friends' parents and the headteacher of his school, because I wanted the other young people who were around him to be made as safe as possible. And the book's like an extension of that. The book is a way of saying, right, let's try and save another life, because if I'd known then what I now know, Dom might still be alive. But therein lies the root to madness for me, because I can't change that. So let's change the future instead. Mental health is so incredibly complicated that you don't actually know if there was anything you could have done, because sometimes you can get the right help, but you don't always know what the right help is. And it's It is incredibly complicated. And do you know what? I mean, one of the reasons that Men's Radio Station was started by Russ Kane and Howard Jamieson is because of the horrendously high rates of depression, especially in men. Yeah. And it's not understood as well because unfortunately men don't find it as easy to talk as women do. No, and sometimes not as useful to talk either, I'm discovering. So for my husband, it works far better to go and walk for 10 miles than it does to talk to me for 24 hours. So we're different, aren't we? Not just men and women, but individuals. We're different in how we respond. Some people need to talk, some people need to think. I think mental health is a crystal clear clarity moment that went, hold on, this is a— this is an illness. It's not self-inflicted. There are things we can do to improve our chances of having good mental health, just like we can with having good physical health. So I think of that as the equivalent of going to the gym, um, but for your brain. And so of course there are things we can do, but there's also a ton of factors, whether it's genetic, um, environmental, life experiences, bereavement, who your friends are that you mix with, which we started off talking about earlier. You know, there's all sorts of factors that are way outside of the control of an individual, and I think in mental health we're a little bit too quick to assume that you can dig yourself out of it. And a young 17-year-old said to me after Dom died, she said, 'Do you know, Pat, the thing I don't get is if I had diabetes, you wouldn't tell me to just think myself better. You'd tell me how to treat it and manage my diet, and you'd teach my mum how to do the injections if she needed to, or my dad to carry some health bars in case I needed some sugar. And that made me think, do you know what, she's absolutely right. Dom was ill. He wasn't being awkward. He wasn't being bolshy. He was ill, and those were the symptoms of his illness. Well, likewise, if you have diabetes, you can basically check and see what your insulin levels are. It is— it's quite quantifiable. I mean, I've had— if people have not had certain mental health issues, then it's very hard to understand the concept of your brain not functioning how you are used to it functioning. And I'm quite an OCD person, you know. I'm very straightforward. I know what sorts me out. I know that if I'm low, I need to watch certain things on Netflix or go to the gym or just spend some time with my kids. Or stay away from people or whatnot. And I had a particular moment in my life where it was so bad that it was like, I've always had clarity. I've done a, I did a psychology degree. I kind of understood my brain. And then when something happened, it was literally like someone just shoved a ton of cotton wool in my brain and you couldn't, there was so much fog, you couldn't figure it out. Now, there are certain drugs that can help rebuild those pathways, which can help for some people, but for other people, they need to talk about it so that they can rationalize what's going on going on in their brain. And there's not one exact way that's going to suit everybody else, and sometimes it's trial and error. But having that in your brain where you actually cannot process a thought and figure out what's happening is extremely scary. Yeah, and I think, with, you know, a bit of irony probably, the more I've learnt about mental health and the more I've experienced it as a result of losing Dom, The more I've understood that, that this is just the frontier of medicine now. So 100 years ago, cancer would have been a death sentence for most people, and they tried a few experimental medicines and some of them might have worked on some patients and they might not have worked on others. And that's pretty much exactly what you've just described for mental health. So we're at the frontier of understanding the mind, but the first thing we have to do is say, We're going to stop talking about this as if you have total control of it, because when you're in that fog of mental illness, you haven't really got control of that process at that specific point. And it might be that with— imagine the same research money, the same funding, the same priority for mental health as has been given to some of the cancers and heart disease, and even COVID. And then imagine what we could do to the suicide rates. Well, it's just been— it's a little bit like they've put their hands over their ears and gone, "No, no, no, no, no, we can't deal with that right now. Let's deal with the things that we are making progress with, and we'll kind of dip our toe in with that a little bit every now and again." It's unfortunate because because, you know, both you and Kerry had different situations, different scenarios with the NHS where, you know, dealing with cancers, they're unbelievable. The nurses are fantastic, the resources they have are fantastic. Mental health, it's not through their own fault that they can't necessarily get it in gear. It's because they don't have the resources and they don't have the money, they don't have the research. It's horrific, it's scary, isn't it? It is. But, and it's— and I'm speaking here as a sort of interested party, as a vested interest, because I'd love to think that the next generation of statistics come down. But, you know, I work with Papyrus UK, which handles prevention of young suicide. They do brilliant work, but they're not very well known. But that charity's existed for around 22 years, I think, and the young suicide rates haven't changed much in that time. And so I'd like to see mental health get the money to offer the same service. It's not— I crack it. I'm really delighted that Cameron is still here and that we've learned to crack a lot of cancer treatment and offer that through the NHS. I'd like to see it as a not only, but also, you know, mental health needs to have equal billing. And it's interesting when I've been reading a lot about the post-viral fatigue that they're getting on the back of COVID infection. And the description of that illness sounds almost identical to my post-bereavement illness. You know, wow, almost identical inflammation of my whole system. I had a sore throat for 18 months. I was very close to a full chronic fatigue. My GP said, look, he said, I can call it chronic fatigue if you want to, but you're treating it in the right way, so why don't we just carry on and see what happens?, but the symptoms sound almost identical. I just want to point out that it's papyrus-org.uk, sorry, uk.org, yes. That's right. Just having a look on there now, yeah, it looks fantastic, lots of resources on there as well. Yeah, they do some brilliant work. I found them after Dom died, and some of the work I do now is is to say exactly this: Papyrus offer support for young people up to the age of 35. If they're having suicidal thoughts, they can ring their helpline. And if you're looking after someone, so if you're a friend, a teacher, even a mental health professional, you can phone their helpline and get some advice about how to talk to a young person you're worried about. So it's a great resource. Maybe you could put it up on the webpage or something, Hazel, that'd be great. No, I will do. I will definitely, I'll be promoting. I'm going to look into it a little bit more when we finish on our chat as well, because I'm just having a look now and I don't want to be completely distracted while I'm speaking to you. But there is another website I'd like to talk to you about that you've basically said that they are smashing it out of the park. BeyondBlue.org.au. Yeah. The Australian one. If you tell us a little bit more about that. You say in Take My Hand that the Australians seem to you know, be a lot more knowledgeable about mental health. They just seem to have a— I'm gonna say a less tangled approach. So here we, we get all tangled up in, is, is it your personal responsibility, um, or is it something somebody else can help you treat? And I don't know why in Australia, but they just seem to have a really practical approach to it. Here's the information, here's what you can do, here's the contact numbers, this is the kind of signs and symptoms you might get, and a much more integrated system between the health services and then education professionals. And I was amazed when I saw that website. The first time I saw it, I literally sat crying because I thought, why haven't we got one of these? And I would love to go over, and I'm sure people have been to Australia, to work out why they, they are so good. I think it's a cultural thing. I think here we still still see mental health as something which we ought to be able to manage on our own. So there's a kind of totally institutional stigma around mental health being seen as weakness. And it's deep-rooted. And I think until we shift that, um, we won't see the full change that I hope we see in my lifetime, which is that it gets equal status with physical health? Yeah, it's the understanding, isn't it? It's just making it absolutely straightforward. You know, if you train young people from really young to say, sometimes you'll feel happy and sometimes you'll feel sad, that's completely normal. If you start to feel so sad that you can't get out of bed for a week, you need to talk to somebody about that, just like you would if you'd cricked your neck and you couldn't move it, and make it as straightforward as that from very young. This is why, as I said before, I read about 3 different books at the same time, because I mean, I love reading because it's escay, it's your chance to learn something new, find out about what goes on in other people's lives, or give yourself a better understanding of what goes on in the world, which you are— you're never not going to benefit from reading a book, whether it's you know, something funny, a horror, real life, self-help, there's something to get from every single book. And, you know, don't just read a book like Take My Hand because you're going through a similar situation, go through it so that you can recognise something, and maybe you can, you know, help somebody else, or just have a better understanding of people. There are so many people, there's some incredible people out there, but there's some people that really are a little bit set in their ways and reluctant to understand the intricacies of an individual. Yeah, and I think that, I mean, I love the idea of people reading it just to learn what it might be like, to get some insight into what— you can't possibly walk in my shoes, even if I gave you my shoes to walk in, they would feel different on your feet. Um, but you can try to imagine it, and this book will help you understand. I've had a lot of friends who, um, have known me a very long time and even been really closely involved in supporting us through Dom's death and the years of bereavement afterwards, who've come up to me and said, when I read the book, it helped me understand how I can now help you better. And that's people who know me really well. And, and there's a whole load of stigma that goes, oh, I can't read that book because people might think I— it might make me ill, or they might think I've got a problem. Well, that's the stigma that we need to get over. Because actually, if you read about things like suicide, most of the mums I've met on— I know there's a group of us on Twitter called the Warrior Mums. And there's a few dads in there as well. So we need a new title. But, but they're people who've been bereaved by suicide. And we support each other in an incredible way. But one of the things that's really struck me is how very, very ordinary those families are. And I think in your— Warren's mind, maybe my mind— when you think about suicide, you imagine there's something really complicated and going wrong, whereas actually, just as with Cam's cancer, it's not something that is always down to vulnerable circumstances. You know, it can be, it can make it worse, but most of the young people who I've met who've died are just young people who've gone through an illness that we don't yet know how best to treat, or at least how to get people to know how to access the service. Sometimes there's really good ways to treat it. And it's important I say that, Hazel, because I think the main reason for writing the book was to offer hope, to offer this idea that if we think about it differently, and if you're having thoughts of suicide, it's because life feels a bit rubbish. For most people, it's not because they want to be dead, they just don't know how to sort life out. So if you get help, if you go and talk to somebody, it's actually so much better to go and work out a plan that goes, where's my next step forward in the other direction? I think a great person who has exemplified, you know, Recovering is Matt Haig. Yeah, yeah. And I think what he does is absolutely fantastic. But also, just reflecting back on what you said about, you know, how people see mental health, it was only, what, 10 years ago that people claimed suicide has been extremely selfish? Yeah, people still say it. Do they? They do. People still say, oh, that's a really selfish thing to do. How, how 'How could he possibly do that to you?' Oh wow. So the stigma is huge around suicide. I think people are frightened of it because in our healthy minds it's almost impossible to imagine that you would want to hurt yourself in that way to end your life. It's probably the strongest human instinct, isn't it? Survival. But to me that just shows how intense that illness is. It's, you know, it's for me now, now I understand more. It sits alongside stroke, heart attack, the brain, you know, it's the heart attack of the brain. And so, so to say that it's selfish is to completely misunderstand the nature of it, which is that it's an overwhelming desire that you almost fight against as a character. It's not you. It's an illness. It's an illness. And so you go, it's not me, this is the illness speaking. I'm going to go and get some help with that illness. But with a heart attack, you know that it's a clogged artery or something else, or it's hereditary. But there's— people are— and this is human nature, and rightly or wrongly, people are very threatened by what they cannot understand. And when people are threatened, they can respond in a variety of ways, whether it's to distance themselves or say something completely controversial against it so that they can separate themselves from it. And, you know, that is scary and it's hurtful. So I sort of say, I still say now, you know, people try to row back, they try to put clear blue water between me and them. And that's where you'll hear people say things like, you know, so, so, Dom was 'Gay then?' Yes, but that didn't mean he needed to take his own life. And, you know, 'So he fell out with his friends when he was 15?' They'll try and find reasons that their child's different to mine. And so one of the most common things I hear is, 'Oh, my son talks to me.' And, 'Oh, well done, you! Didn't you do so much better than me? Oh, how do you cope with that? Do you just go to the shop and buy a packet of fags and just go Well, yeah, I love you for that response because that's pretty much my first response. But now I think because I understand a bit more, I understand the fear. And so I sort of think, you know what, Dom, often now what I'll say is, the thing is that Dom used to talk to me as well, but when he became really ill, he didn't want to upset me. And I think that's why he didn't talk to me about it because Part of the way that the illness stops people sharing is that they're frightened by their own feelings. Oh, they can't understand their own feelings as well. I mean, this is a lot of people, you know, the reason that you go to a counsellor or that they use writing in therapy is a case of unjumbling what's going on in your head and speaking about it. Is it a bit similar with what you said about some of the bereavement therapies as well, that you just need to constantly talk about it and to reframe and kind of understand the 60 million words that are flying around in your head. Yeah. And it's— yeah, tangle it. But it's interesting what you said, Hazel, about— I want to come back to this idea that we don't understand mental illness, so we're frightened of it, so we stay away from it, you know. And that's what creates the stigma, isn't it? And you're right that now we have a much better understanding of stroke and heart attack and the causes of those things. I don't think we're that far off having the same knowledge about mental health and suicide, but we need to make the same effort, because if you'd asked us about heart attack 100 years ago, it would have just been a scary thing that came as a bolt from the blue. People wouldn't have understood the causes as well as they do now. So it's not that we've always known that, it's, it's the result of medical research and investigation and money. And, and clever people wanting to spend their time understanding it. That's what's made us understand hearts and strokes and stuff. And that's what we need for mental illness, not just for suicide, but for the other mental illnesses that are extremely life-affecting. You know, they're as life-affecting as having any form of physical illness. The idea that, that depression or anxiety is something you can shake off those words come from somebody who's never had a debilitating episode of depression. And also, just because somebody's got mental illness does not always mean that they're suicidal. As we said, there's so many different areas to it. Yeah. I remember the day before all the pubs closed for coronavirus, and I actually wrote a blog about it. I was sitting— it was kind of that— I mean, we're Brits, we love a pub. It was like, right, the pubs are gonna close tomorrow, okay? So I went into the pub to kind of say goodbye, and I ended up sitting next to this lady who was in her late 70s, and she was sitting there on her own, and she looked a bit kind of upset. I was like, "Are you okay?" She said, "Well, my husband died a couple of months ago, and I come into pubs because I don't want to be a burden to my kids and the grandkids, and also I like to be independent," the ability to go into a pub and be surrounded by people, but yet not have to speak. Pubs aren't just there for you to go and cop off with some bloke, or to go and play darts, or to just have a bit of a riot and neck a load of sunbakers. It is a very social— there's a social element to it. And she just said, "I'm just a little bit scared because I'm going to get lonely. I'm not going to be able to see my family." But 'I will lose my independence because I will rely on them more.' Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I mean, she's not depressed, she's still grieving. It's, you know, 2 months into dealing with the process, somebody who she was married to for 50 years, but being able to be surrounded by somebody else. And this is— there's going to be so many people who will be dealing with mental health issues, after the COVID lockdown because of situations like that. You know, I know 30-year-olds, 35-year-olds, 40, 50-year-olds that live on their own, and they had to isolate on their own. Yeah, and I think it's been a— we could probably do a whole nother show about the lockdown, but I think it's been very, very interesting. I've been doing some training around bereavement with schools, actually, thinking about the impact of massive bereavement on a scale we haven't had to think about it for a while. And it's interesting because, uh, actually something like 1 in every 30 young people will be bereaved at any time in a school. So that's at least one a class. And most teachers, something like 90% of teachers, are not trained in handling bereavement. So when I've been doing the training, because part of what I've done since Dom died is learn about mental health and the kind of things that can trigger mental health are, like bereavement, loss. Bereavement isn't a mental illness, it's a natural process, but it doesn't mean you don't need help with it. And I'm thinking about that lady sitting in the pub, and I'm thinking, you know, as a country, if we got more articulate around bereavement in general, how much less lonely those people would be. And I think lockdown meant that a lot of people started to reevaluate the quality of the friendships, relationships, and support networks around them. And it makes you appreciate it when you haven't got it, doesn't it? Oh, completely. And for people like that lady, she may have found that some friends emerged from the woodwork. And loads of my old school friends and I got back together over one of the various different Zoom, Skype, Teams things. House party. Over lockdown in ways that we might not have done if we'd been just scuttling through life at normal speed. So I'm hoping that lady found some friends came back to find her. Yeah, I mean, I think she did. It was the idea of feeling like you're independent because you can just go and surround yourself. I mean, a lot of us have actually turned around during COVID and actually been a little bit more open and honest and said, oh, actually, do you know what? I would would like a Skype call, but there is also, especially it's a Brit thing as well, stiff upper lip, we like to kind of, you know, chin up, get on with it, and having that freedom of being able to go out, socialise, go and have a coffee, I mean, some of my best activities are just going to a café with my dog and having a random conversation with somebody, and we couldn't do that. Yeah, yeah, and that stiff upper lip thing is really interesting because I know myself that after Dom died, that pride of not wanting to have to ask people to help me, that, that's a really common experience, I think, isn't it? And, and I've had to learn the really hard way. I've trusted— I luckily I've got really brilliant friends around me, but I have actually had to really work at saying I need some company. It's quite a hard thing to admit because because we're trained to look like we can manage on our own. But actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm learning. I think true compassion, true social safety, is when we all look after each other with like a little social safety net underneath us. But we all need it as well. We need to know that we can help our friends. We need to know You know, my friends feel more comfortable knowing that I will ask them when I need them. Yeah, yeah. It's incredibly altruistic. Exactly, you're giving, you know, if you flip it the other way, you're giving people a chance to be the good friend they want to be. I think we assume that people only want us around when we're being a great laugh, but actually being able to be the friend that sits next to you on a slumpy day, what a privilege that is. Well, it is, because it gives somebody else the freedom to actually not be happy all the time as well, and be a bit more honest about their feelings. Yeah, yeah. One of the upsides of writing the book and talking about all of this is that I've had more real conversations with strangers and friends than I have ever had in my whole life. Wow. Because people talk about real stuff. It's almost like having been absolutely burnt in the furnace of life, that it means that they can open up about stuff that's going on for them. And I— and it's been, you know, it's been very moving actually, the amount of conversations I've had with people about their own stuff. And it helps me understand that I, you know, of course I've, I've lost Dom in this lifetime, and and it's gonna be with me forever. I've given up trying to not be defined by it. It'll always be one of the things that defines me. But other people have their own stuff they're going through. I'm not the only one. And I'm just hoping that by talking like we are now, that some— I'm imagining somebody listening thinking, yeah, okay, there are networks in life that can help me. I'm not the only person who struggles when they shut the door. Or struggles to go out, and I'm going to put people around me who help me through that in a better way. Do you know what? I mean, this— the book at the moment, Take My Hand, has got so many pages that are folded back that I wanted to mention during this interview, which we're not even going to get chance to because I have not even gone into the questions that I kind of emailed over to you yet because we've just been chatting away. I can't stop, but first of all there's page 207, which when people get the book, the physical impact of grief, I'd love people to go and have a look at that section, and about how telling stories help people process their experiences, and there's some fantastic books that you talk about towards the end, especially on page 234, that are going to help people through. It's not like you've just said, "Read my book and you'll be fine," it's like, no, I've done this. There's so many different areas that, you know, that you point people in the direction of to kind of help with whatever may be going on. And I love the section on page 130, dealing with disappointing and disappearing friendships, because, you know, we can be paranoid about, you know, why they might have ditched us, but sometimes just understanding that, you know, People can fail. Yeah, we all fail, don't we? I'd love to say I'd never been that friend that wasn't there, but I have been. You know, I, I know that there's been times when my own life's been so full of stuff I'm dealing with that I haven't had anything left over for the somebody next to me who needs something. And I guess, you know, I have a couple of really close friends who just couldn't step in. And Kerry and I talk about this quite a lot, but I really, really understand that sometimes you've got stuff going on in your own life or in your own history that makes it harder for you to be that one. But sometimes you are that one, and that's amazing if you can do it. And just watching a bit of ebb and flow of friendship. So I've had friends, I've got some wonderful new friends who've sort of arrived in life like angels walking across. It's almost unbelievable, the people that have turned up when we've needed them. But letting friends off the hook, I think, is really important. And also just accept, you know what, you actually— we've run our course as friends just at the moment, and we might come back together again later when I'm a bit stronger again. Don't write me off for that. I mean, I would say that Plenty of people who are probably thinking, "Well, I haven't been in touch for the past 8 weeks, so I don't now." I just want to say that though, quite paradoxically, you know, some people, it isn't out of not being a good friend that they don't actually engage with what's happening. They might be teetering on the edge of mental illness as well, and they know that if they absorb any more, they could push themselves over that age that they are scared they won't be able to come back from. So sometimes it's self-preservation and they need to do it for their own family. I absolutely agree, and that's why I don't have any— I literally have no grudgy bitterness about that stuff at all, because I know when I haven't been able to step in, it's because I've had to keep myself safe. Or, you know, when Dom was ill, I had no spare capacity to look after anybody else. I was really busy looking after Dom. And so other people might have needed me, but I wouldn't have been able to step in. I wouldn't have had spare for it. But, but so I completely understand that. And actually now, you know what, you know, people always say, oh, it's oxygen mask on, look after yourself first. And we all nod, we all nod, don't we? But we don't really do it necessarily. And more and more I'm starting to think I think if we just did that bit first and then there was a little bit left over and we chose to share that, we'd all be a bit better off because mental health for me now, it's a constant job managing my mental health. I monitor it just like I would monitor my blood pressure if I needed to. Hmm. And I adjust my goals. I've had to completely redefine how much work I do, what pace I work at. When we finish this today, I'll go off and I'll be in the garden in about 5 minutes flat, um, to make sure that I kind of shake it off and get back into wellbeing mode. Um, I've stopped seeing that as an act of selfishness, and I've started seeing that as an act of, um, self-love, self-compassion. But also, if I keep myself sorted, then I have got a bit left over to share with other people. Yeah, exactly. And do you know what, it'll be a race to the garden as well. I'm going straight to the garden after this, checking in on the kids and making sure that they've done their homeschooling. We've got just under 5 minutes left and we haven't even talked about Kerry and all the books that she writes as well. Oh, she'll be so cross with me. So Kerry, I can hear her going, "Come on, Pat, give me some airtime." I mean, Kerry, obviously goes without saying, she's amazing. She's been my friend for over 30 years. We— an incredibly generous friend, always has been, you know. Loyalty is the big thing for Kerry in friendship. So when you become her friend, she commits, and that's an incredible thing. She happens to be a best-selling author and writes brilliant books. I think she's got 7 books out, 10 books. Oh, Patti, she's an international bestseller. She's got loads out. Just type in Kerry Fisher into Amazon and she's all over the place. And they're all kind of beach reads, aren't they? But kind of, yeah, they're great because she writes about real women. She writes about tricky subjects, but the kind of, you know, the kind of stuff that people know happens in life but doesn't get talked very often, but she talks about them in a way that just feels so, um, chatty and human, and she's got a tremendous sense of humor that comes through in her books. Um, so kerryfisherauthor.com, kerryfisherauthor.com, and yeah, well worth a read. They're really, they're really thought-provoking as well as being, um, good summer reads. So, uh, that's Kerry, and you know, she and I are journeying on together It was brilliant to write for her, and we will continue— our friendship is carrying on in all the texts and emails and chats as it ever did, as we're navigating the next stage of life. And I know she's got a new book coming out soon, so I'm sure people will want to look out for that. And she was absolutely brilliant at helping me learn to write. You know, so she shared her writing skills and her wonderful agent became my agent. And so how lucky was I in the unluckiest of circumstances to have a friend who would share their professional relationship with me? Amazing. But it's what you, it's what you take from what life gives you though sometimes. And you're going out now and trying to do the best you can with the cards you were dealt, and I think that's fantastic. I think the book is absolutely fantastic. I'm going to put a link to it on my website hazelbutterfield.com. There's some book review blogs up there so that people can very easily go and buy it, and I'll make sure that Kerry's link to her website is on there too. And just with the last minute or so that we've got, and we probably aren't even going to have time to get through it all, but if you can, do you have 3 any tips on mental wellness, mental well-being? Yeah, what a great question. Okay, I can do them really fast. The first is learn to spot your own signs. So we all have signs of stress. My first one is cheesecake. If I find myself wanting to make, eat, buy, even Google cheesecake, that's my first sign that my mental health— stress level's going So spot your signs, tell them to other people so they can nudge you when they see you go for whatever your equivalent of the cheesecake is. And then the second is develop helpful habits. So all that coping strategy stuff, it sounds a bit dull, but it's the best maintenance plan ever, and it's the best back-up. And then the third thing would be learn to listen to what other people are telling you. So look after your own mental health, but listen to what other people's stories are, because that's where the hope is, and that's where the tips are for improving our own understanding. Wow. And it is, though, isn't it? It's picking up on what you know is a warning sign of what's gonna, you know— the fact is that you've got cheesecake, I think, is fantastic. I mean, I might I might steal that. I love a good cheesecake. But I also know that sometimes when I'm, you know, teetering on the edge, it's either a book or I need to watch something stupidly funny. I mean, Derry Girls at the moment is the one thing for me. I love that programme. They're ridiculous, aren't they? But, you know, it's very hard sometimes if you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed, you know, find something ridiculous. It's just gonna— just learn to take yourself out of it. Sometimes people need to absorb themselves in cooking or reading or going for a walk. Know what it is, and that's, that is your superpower. Yeah, and I've developed a list of about, oh God, I mean, it's as long as your arm, however long that is, of things that I turn to. And I almost dial through how I'm feeling and go, oh, this is a walk kind of feeling, or this is a crochet feeling, or this is Derry Girls, or 'When Calls the Heart' or something like that, you know, or this is— absorb yourself in a book and get stuck into it. Brilliant. Do you know what, the hour's completely flown by yet again. I've loved chatting to you and we need to do another interview at some point. Maybe we'll get both of you into the studio once the studio reopens and it would be great to meet up. I'd love to do that and it's going out on the men's channel too, which is brilliant, isn't it? So, yes, thank you very much for having me.