Caitlin Moran, MORE THAN A WOMAN
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[1:49]Visit firstbook.org to help. Oh, my gosh. This was probably one of my favorite books of the year.
[1:56]Caitlin Moran's book, more than a woman made me laugh, made me cry. I like fell in love with her
[2:04]and I'm excited that she's going to be at my book club on October 6th, and I basically can't wait
[2:10]for y'all to listen to this episode, but mostly to read the book. So a little more about Caitlin.
[2:16]She is the author of several books, including the best-selling book, How to Build a Girl, How to Be Famous,
[2:24]Moran a Festo, Moran a Fology, How to Be a Woman at the Runaway British Best Seller,
[2:30]and now more than a woman. I hope you enjoy hearing from her. Welcome, Caitlin. Thank you so much for
[2:35]coming on mom's turn out time to read books. It is my absolute pleasure. It is true.
[2:39]Moms don't have time to do anything. I'm presuming yours are probably doing something dangerous in
[2:44]the kitchen. I don't even know what mine are doing. I'm just like, this old and they're not dead
[2:49]yet. I've got to presume I'm doing something right. I have the perk of being divorced, so they're
[2:54]with my ex-husband right now. So I assume that they're okay, but they could be burning up the
[2:58]kitchen just now in my house right at this moment. So you've got to tell me, like, kind of I've
[3:02]been married for 25 years and like, you know, obviously to force traumatic and difficult,
[3:07]all this kind of stuff. But at the same time, I am so jealous of my default female friends
[3:11]because when the kids are gone with their dad, they're gone. Like, that time is yours. Like, that
[3:17]seems like a considerable upside on the whole financial, emotional halfway thing. Like, kind of
[3:23]that's a definite up, isn't it? It is a definite up. But, you know, I don't know. I have a teenage
[3:29]daughter like you. And, you know, she Face Times me every 20 minutes or something crazy. And,
[3:33]you know, she already forgot all her underwear. You know, it's always something. So it's not like
[3:37]it's ever done. I'm still coordinating everything. They're just not right here. I often do
[3:41]you have this conversation. They go, mom, where are my shoes? You say in the coat cupboard. They go,
[3:46]I've looked there. You go, look again. They're definitely in the coat cupboard. And then 30 seconds
[3:50]say to you, you hear it. Oh, yeah, they are. We have a lot of where is my phone, you know, panic.
[4:01]And now they'll like find my iPhone ding. It is constantly going off. More than the phone is
[4:07]the find my iPhone ring. So I know sometimes after 10 when they come and find their phone,
[4:11]they're sitting on it. You'll be on the sofa and then you have to get up. And it's hard to
[4:15]get up when you get to 45. Like, I find it quite effortful. I'm like, oh, it's going to be a bit of a
[4:19]job to get off the sofa. And then I'm looking everywhere. Then they stand up and it's
[4:24]underneath their bum. And they're like, oh, here it is. Totally. I know. I sit down and I read books
[4:28]on the bed with my son. And he's like, no, no, not this Mr. Men book. I want that one. And I'm
[4:32]like, oh, gosh, I've got to stand up now. Can I hold onto the bunk bed? If I hold onto the bunk bed
[4:39]with my left hand and pull myself up, well, my knees are less. Now you need some advanced warning
[4:44]for that. Like, I like to be told a good 10 minutes before I've got to stand up. I need to prepare
[4:48]for it. Like some kind of Olympic athletes. Like kind of, I've got make all the sounds like it's
[4:53]exhausting. Yeah. Do I do the rollover, try to get up on my side? Or should I just go straight
[4:59]up? So knows if I pull my knees together, I find it hurts less. I'm trying everything new just to
[5:04]stand up. When you tell young women, this is what you got to look forward to, they're like,
[5:08]I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. They're kind of that they can spring off the chair
[5:12]and go down. It's like, yeah, I can't do that anymore. So you enjoy it while you can. And we're not
[5:16]even that old. I feel like we're the same age I'm about to be 44. You're similar to it.
[5:20]Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like we're 80 year old women sitting having this conversation.
[5:24]Yeah. It's like it happens really fast. Because you said so many is hunched over breastfeeding and
[5:30]then hunched over a laptop that I should be standing up is quite rare event and you just
[5:34]lose that ability quite quickly. That's true. But you know, to your question about how great it is,
[5:39]you know, the perks of divorce here, your chapter on when your kids are like, go to school,
[5:45]what did you call it? It was so clever. The whole thing was like amazing. And how you're basically
[5:49]a drug addict beholden to your children. That oh, called the hour of missing children. Like,
[5:53]could not have been more apt. I like read it. I underlined it. Then I printed out some pages that
[6:00]I read it again. It's so good and so true. And no one's thought of it that way. And it seems so
[6:06]obvious. Tell me about this whole thing. The drug addict model. You've been the superman,
[6:11]super hero model, all of this. Yeah. Well, because it's a weird like kind of, you know, as a
[6:17]female writer and stuff and writing about being a woman, like kind of when I actually look
[6:20]around at the amount of stuff that's written about motherhood. It'll either be practical advice,
[6:24]like kind of disabled, but just leave and make them have this mashed carrot, or it'll be a
[6:28]traumatic memoir about how painful a birth was. I've done both those things. That's fair enough. But
[6:33]like, no one ever writes about like the emotional creative psychedelic physical drug aspects of being
[6:41]a mother. Like, it's a crazy thing. And it's because it's women. And like, in the years where you
[6:45]you can remember what it's like, you're too busy being a mother. And then like, you know,
[6:48]by the time you have time to write about this, then you've forgotten it because you forget everything.
[6:52]But it just really occurred to me that when my kids were little, they're like, I just couldn't wait
[6:56]for them to leave. Like, because it's just you need to go to school. So I can do literally everything
[7:01]before you come back. You're already not at school long enough for me to do everything I need to do.
[7:05]So I'm working real fast here. And then within two and a half hours of leaving, I find myself, as
[7:12]it goes to the toilet. And then I'd find myself without even consciously thinking about it,
[7:15]getting into that little bed. And like, sniffing where the head had been on the pillow and like,
[7:20]picking up a little toy that now suddenly seems so sad. Now a child isn't playing with it. And kind
[7:23]of being really tired from going, I miss them. Like, physically miss them. Like, I need to smell
[7:28]them. I need to touch that stuff. And just like thinking like, this is like, our kids are our drugs.
[7:36]Like, kind of we are physically addicted to them. It is a chemical process. You know, getting pregnant
[7:40]is a chemical process. You know, breastfeeding, you know, kind of like growing a baby, giving birth.
[7:44]There's all these oxytocin, all these hormones and estrogen and all this stuff. And that continues
[7:49]all the way through motherhood. Like, when you hug your baby or your child or even your teenager,
[7:54]you sniff them and you get high and relaxed off it. So when they're gone, like, after two and a half hours,
[8:00]you're like, you are like a junkie just clicking going, you need to smell the baby's mouth. Like,
[8:04]feel returns now. Just need to sniff the baby. And we find ourselves doing this. And you know,
[8:10]again, so little is written about the weirdness and the weakness of, you know, the emotional kind of
[8:17]aspect of being a mother. And I was just thinking like, it obviously, if men got pregnant and had
[8:22]babies, we would have movies about it all over the shop. Because it's basically like Alice in Wonderland.
[8:27]It's like, you know, you take on this magic substance sperm. And then your body changes, you grow
[8:32]an extra organ. You've suddenly got these superpowers. Like, you know, you can stay at five nights straight
[8:37]with me after a baby and then get your work done. All you want to do is save the kids. Like,
[8:42]you're utterly selfless. Everything is about saving the kids. And I was like, why aren't there any
[8:46]films about this? Like, kind of, there's no films about what it's actually like. This psychic quest
[8:51]that you go on as a mother. And I said, anyone hang on. This is basically the plot to all superhero
[8:57]movies that the superhero takes on this magical substance in our case, in their case, like a
[9:04]radioactive asteroid or gets bitten by a spider. Then their body changes. And they take on all
[9:09]these, so they're somebody they've instead of producing like a, we produce milk. They've used
[9:12]web out of their, out of their wrists. And they're suddenly strong and superhuman. And all they
[9:17]want to do is in our case, save the baby. And in superheroes cases, save mankind. And also, the
[9:23]other thing is with all superheroes is that humankind having been rescued by superhero over and
[9:27]over again is never grateful. You are a secret superhero. You never get the things. All of New York
[9:33]doesn't go thanks the Hulk for saving us. Like, you get no credit to talk. And that's being
[9:37]a mother. Like, you're constantly saving the world over and over again. And the kids never go, wow,
[9:42]that must have been hard. Well done. So I realized that Hollywood has basically taken the whole story
[9:47]of motherhood and just giving it to usually teenage or young white men. And maybe it's superheroes
[9:53]instead. They're just carefully disguised a couple of little details. And they're telling our story
[9:57]with, with vitamins and vitamins.
[10:00]And that's not fair.
[10:01]We did a call story.
[10:05]Collopting the story of motherhood.
[10:07]Marvel Comics, watch out, lawsuit pending.
[10:11]They have appropriated the thing we do.
[10:13]It's so unfair.
[10:15]It's so funny.
[10:16]But your whole thing about the chemical and the smelling.
[10:19]I mean, I literally posted an Instagram like two weeks
[10:21]the last time my kids were gone about how I picked up
[10:24]my daughter's little fluffy pink slippers
[10:26]at the bottom of the stairs and just like, sadly,
[10:28]and also to your point about things
[10:30]left at the bottom of the stairs when I'm home,
[10:31]like with my just my husband.
[10:33]It's like, I have to carry the stuff upstairs.
[10:34]But anyway, I think I'm into her bedroom and like plop them
[10:37]down and it's just like the saddest feeling.
[10:40]And yet, as soon as they come back, like within a minute,
[10:42]it's like gone and I'm like, OK, what are they going to get?
[10:45]Do you need that?
[10:46]Like the cruises of being particularly
[10:48]mother is constantly either saying, go away or come back.
[10:52]Like that's it.
[10:53]And the only other people who do that shepherds with their sheep.
[10:55]It's that closer, go away, come back and go away,
[10:58]come back again.
[10:59]That's what we all wish that it's just letting us to go away.
[11:02]And then come back, mom, this is you.
[11:04]So I just wanted to read what you wrote
[11:06]at the beginning of this chapter.
[11:07]You wrote five hours.
[11:08]That's all it takes, just five hours.
[11:10]At 8.30 AM, I am desperate for the children to leave home.
[11:12]By 1 PM, I miss them again.
[11:14]This is the push and pull of young children,
[11:16]wishing them away, wishing them back again,
[11:17]is either too much or never enough.
[11:19]Parenting small children often makes you feel
[11:21]like Richard Burton married to Elizabeth Taylor.
[11:23]She drives you to distraction when you're with her.
[11:25]Always wanting things, always arguing,
[11:27]always creating drama.
[11:29]But every time you get divorced,
[11:30]you end up staring out at the window,
[11:31]saying, you know what, I miss that crazy bitch.
[11:33]It's no fun without her.
[11:34]And of course, five year child of Elizabeth Taylor
[11:37]are the most beautiful things in the world.
[11:39]And then you say, I leave my laptop to go to the Lou.
[11:41]And afterward, without even realizing what I'm doing,
[11:44]I find myself wandering into the girl's bedroom,
[11:46]like a love sick, home, and pigeon.
[11:48]Right, and that's it.
[11:50]And it doesn't make any sense.
[11:52]I mean, the whole thing about that is none of it.
[11:54]It's any sense of the time.
[11:55]It doesn't work.
[11:56]Like all the way, particularly small children,
[11:59]you go, this doesn't work.
[12:00]But yet, you make it happen every day.
[12:02]And you just never really properly make sense of it.
[12:05]So that was one of the pleasures of being a writer
[12:08]and my job is to think about this stuff and write it down,
[12:10]being able to go, right, women with small children.
[12:13]I see you.
[12:14]I know what you're going through.
[12:15]I'm going to put it in a book.
[12:16]So could you don't have time to do that?
[12:18]But that's my job.
[12:18]So I'm going to do that for you.
[12:20]I know you mentioned Jerry Seinfeld in your book
[12:22]with a whole, you know, men are not really thinking
[12:24]about anything.
[12:25]They're just wandering around, picking things up.
[12:27]And that's like literally, that's the end of the inner dialogue.
[12:29]But I feel like you are like the female Jerry Seinfeld.
[12:32]You are so funny in terms of like all the observational humor
[12:36]and a new way of thinking about everything.
[12:38]And I was just like, oh, this is perfect.
[12:40]You're like the Seinfeld for women.
[12:41]It's perfect.
[12:42]Not that he's not for women, but you know,
[12:44]I will take that thank you.
[12:46]Well, I just, I mean, one of the reasons
[12:48]that I write, what I do, the TV shows and the movies
[12:51]and the books and stuff is that so much of women's lives
[12:53]just isn't written about.
[12:54]Like we're too busy doing it at the time
[12:56]and still the things that are thought to be women's things
[13:00]and the women's world, it's like it's the combination
[13:02]of boring and so ordinary.
[13:04]There's no need to write about it.
[13:05]That seems to be the general sort of cultural feeling.
[13:07]It's like, no, this is, we are literally making the people
[13:11]that will populate the earth.
[13:13]Like kind of without us, it all just ends quite quickly.
[13:15]Like kind of this is there is no bigger job on earth
[13:18]than being a mother and making children inside you
[13:21]and then just getting them to adulthood without them
[13:23]falling off a cliff.
[13:24]We deserve a couple of books about that.
[13:26]Like kind of this is, we're really busy,
[13:29]we've worked really hard.
[13:30]But doesn't anyone just turn around and go, I see you, thank you.
[13:34]I feel like you pointed out in your book so many times
[13:37]all the other books that should have been written
[13:38]that weren't and you were like trying to tackle them all,
[13:40]like even about caring for aging parents
[13:42]and what it's like to suddenly be in that role
[13:45]and like why are people not writing books about this?
[13:47]And like, this is a huge life shift
[13:49]that everybody has to do, I think it.
[13:51]Nobody's really talking about it all that much.
[13:53]But I mean, the weird thing when your parents start getting frail
[13:55]and then when they start dying is that like you suddenly become
[13:59]top of the family tree, like they have been the matriarch
[14:01]and the patriarchy you are the child.
[14:03]And when they get frail and ill and then when they die,
[14:05]like they become the children, you're looking after them
[14:08]and suddenly you've got to climb to the top of the family tree
[14:10]and you're suddenly the matriarch in charge
[14:12]of the rest of the family.
[14:13]And also we'd see, I don't know if it's your experience
[14:15]but I've generally found that it's my female friends
[14:18]that have to go and look after the 18 parents
[14:20]for some reason brothers are just like,
[14:22]oh, you're better at that or I'm too busy.
[14:24]You're like, like, I'm not busy,
[14:26]but they're just kind of like, oh no,
[14:27]it feels like that's a woman's thing.
[14:28]Like kind of you should deal with that.
[14:30]So you get this whole, you know, there's all these,
[14:32]you know, we talk about it in terms of phenomena
[14:33]and life or sandwich hair and so you just very calm
[14:36]and have small children and alien parents at the same time.
[14:39]And then you're still trying to be a human being with the job
[14:41]and you know, and a relationship and friends in the middle
[14:43]of that and we are just weast.
[14:46]And we are extraordinary.
[14:47]We, you know, we deal with this and no one notices it
[14:50]and no one thanks us and no one pays us.
[14:52]And so the very least I could do is just,
[14:55]I've just felt constantly when I was writing this book,
[14:57]I always have this thing that I'm just putting my arms
[14:59]around women going, me, this is hard, isn't it?
[15:02]Like kind of, I see you.
[15:04]I'm going to write down what you're doing.
[15:07]So people know how brave and brilliant you are this time.
[15:10]I see that as my job to just say to women, I see you.
[15:14]You're amazing.
[15:15]You'll do so well, carry on.
[15:17]I feel like this is the book I want to give to,
[15:20]like every girlfriend that I have.
[15:21]Like it is so spot on.
[15:23]And I feel like being in our mid-40s,
[15:26]like, you know, there's suddenly no guidebook.
[15:28]Like we don't, I don't know what I'm doing at the time.
[15:30]I mean, even, and I have to say your book was so funny
[15:34]and like I was laughing at that at parts,
[15:35]but then when you went into all the struggles
[15:38]you're having with your daughter and her eating disorder
[15:40]and over, oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it.
[15:43]So then I'm like, like crying over your book.
[15:45]I couldn't believe it.
[15:46]And all the stuff you've had to go through
[15:48]because every parent has something, right?
[15:50]That they're out of control with their kids
[15:53]and all you want to do is like,
[15:54]take on the pain yourself, but you can't.
[15:57]And that's where it goes wrong as well.
[15:58]So like, I mean, it's, you know,
[16:00]it's so great getting to 45
[16:01]because you can look back and go,
[16:03]what do I make mistakes?
[16:04]How could I have learned?
[16:05]Is there any knowledge I could pass on?
[16:06]And with my daughters.
[16:08]So I would say, briskly badly parented.
[16:12]My parents, people ask me what my parents' parenting technique was.
[16:15]And I say it was basically that to salmon.
[16:17]They spawned extravagant, they laid all their eggs
[16:19]and then they just swam away.
[16:21]So my parents had eight kids in very quick succession
[16:23]and then that was it.
[16:24]We were not parented again.
[16:25]And so I cobbled together a personality based many around
[16:29]watching classic musicals, starring Judy Garland.
[16:31]And what Judy Garland taught me was that you just,
[16:33]whatever your problems are, you stay fearful,
[16:35]you crush all your bad emotions down
[16:36]and you just crack on and do things.
[16:38]And that has worked very well for me
[16:40]and got me to where I am.
[16:41]But as a parent, that became a weakness
[16:44]because if you got girls, little or boys,
[16:46]but I've got two girls, who are sad and anxious.
[16:50]And you keep saying, making a joke or kind of like
[16:53]singing a silly song or kind of,
[16:54]come on, just crack on, just crush all your emotions down
[16:57]and it'll all be fine.
[16:58]That comes the point if they are very sad
[17:01]and very unhappy and very anxious
[17:02]where that becomes quite dangerous
[17:05]because, well, in my daughter's case,
[17:07]I mean, metastarsized into an eating disorder.
[17:09]It was like, you know, I realize now
[17:11]that's kind of like a communication.
[17:12]It's like if you are not taking this unhappiness seriously,
[17:16]then if it became a medical thing,
[17:17]like they need a fear that I am sad.
[17:20]And it took me a long time to realize that,
[17:22]you know, for the first year and a half of the illness
[17:23]that I was scared of her sadness
[17:26]and her anxiety and her depression.
[17:27]I was trying to make it go away.
[17:29]I was just saying to her,
[17:30]come on, just make yourself better.
[17:32]And she couldn't.
[17:33]And that was a huge thing that I had to learn to sit down
[17:35]and go, I'm not scared of your sadness.
[17:37]I'm not scared of your depression.
[17:38]I'm not scared of your anxiety.
[17:40]We're gonna do this together.
[17:41]Do you need to hear me say that,
[17:43]I love you no matter what is happening here.
[17:45]I am gonna say that and we are gonna do this together.
[17:47]And once I learned that, then she started to recover
[17:50]and now she's fully well-suchward and incredible.
[17:54]But that was another reason why I wanted to write about it
[17:56]in the book because I think particularly
[17:58]for people of our generation eating disorders
[18:00]were quite secret and shameful.
[18:01]Any men's illness was not spoken about in our generation.
[18:04]But her generation, they don't have that stigma.
[18:06]They talk about it.
[18:07]And when I was starting to write the books,
[18:09]she was like, please write about my illness.
[18:11]I want you to be able to put that advice in there
[18:13]for other parents.
[18:14]You would be able to help, it's not a secret.
[18:16]It's not shameful.
[18:17]I was ill.
[18:18]It was the same as breaking your leg.
[18:19]And you would want to put advice
[18:21]for how to treat a broken leg in the book
[18:23]if you knew how to do that.
[18:24]It's exactly the same here.
[18:26]See if you can help other people.
[18:27]But it was definitely the hardest thing that I have done
[18:31]with Aratoshad over there in my life.
[18:33]Those three years, three and a half years,
[18:34]were brutal and I was frequently on my knees with it
[18:38]because you're so racked with shame.
[18:40]And if you don't know how to help your kid,
[18:42]there is no failure like a child that won't eat.
[18:45]That's the most fundamental thing that we want to do.
[18:47]So you're baby's born, you feed it.
[18:49]And to suddenly have a child that's going, no, I will not eat.
[18:51]It just, it's just like being electrocuted constantly.
[18:55]You can't handle the pain of it and the worry of it.
[18:57]So thankfully we had an happy ending
[18:59]and I wanted to write about it because also
[19:01]when I was trying to find books about eating disorders,
[19:04]everyone that I found had a sad ending,
[19:07]like kind of they were, she didn't recover.
[19:09]I'm still ill.
[19:10]And I was like, if you are lucky enough
[19:13]to have a happy story, put that out there
[19:15]and give people hope because God knows you need it
[19:17]if you're dealing with it.
[19:18]And if anyone out there is dealing with it,
[19:20]I absolutely salute you.
[19:22]And there's a book by the woman called Eva Muspin
[19:24]which gives you scripts of how to deal with an ill child.
[19:27]Things that you need to say, you can't parent them anymore.
[19:29]You have to be a mental health professional.
[19:31]And she gives you scripts of what to say
[19:33]and the transformation when you say the right things
[19:36]is extraordinary.
[19:37]So I would heartily recommend that if anybody's unfortunate
[19:40]enough to be going through that right now.
[19:42]Oh my gosh.
[19:42]I mean, that's the thing with parenting really.
[19:45]It's like whatever gets thrown your way,
[19:47]you have to adapt.
[19:49]Right?
[19:50]I interviewed a woman whose daughter was born
[19:51]at the developmental disorder.
[19:53]And she was like, well, then I had to learn
[19:54]how to become an occupational therapist, right?
[19:56]You just, as you're saying,
[19:58]like you had to become a mental health professional.
[20:00]special, like you just have to, whatever your child needs,
[20:02]you have to like learn that skill set.
[20:04]And that's it.
[20:05]That's all you have to do.
[20:06]You can't even think about it.
[20:07]Yeah. Well, I mean, the state of being a parent,
[20:09]is this the one thing you cannot walk away from?
[20:11]And you do it every day without a break.
[20:13]Like every day you have to turn up and do this stuff.
[20:16]There were no days off, like kind of it's every day
[20:19]for the rest of your life.
[20:20]There's a bit in the book where I talk about how
[20:22]before you have kids, you have no conception
[20:24]how long it will take.
[20:24]Like you're just kind of like,
[20:26]oh, I'm sure I'll cope with it.
[20:28]And then you get like five years into it
[20:29]and you're like, this is going to go on forever.
[20:32]There's one bit where I go, if I know type the word long
[20:35]and I just put so many O's that it
[20:37]filmed the entire book, an entire book,
[20:39]just full of O's long.
[20:42]That's still not even 1,000th of how long it takes
[20:45]to be a parent.
[20:46]It's so incalculable long.
[20:49]So yeah, it's an endurance, it's an endurance sport parenting.
[20:52]I know, I loved that.
[20:53]It was just thinking you should have like this little companion
[20:55]piece where you literally put just the O in the whole book.
[20:59]I used when I was wearing the book.
[21:00]I thought, could I just keep my finger on the letter
[21:03]and that could give you the book?
[21:04]Because I could finish that quite quickly.
[21:06]Cut and place, bang, we're done.
[21:07]But now I put other words in there as well.
[21:09]There are 87,000 other words of the word long.
[21:14]We also had so much, and I'm, and thank you.
[21:17]I feel like I didn't properly acknowledge
[21:19]you're talking about your daughter,
[21:20]but thank you for sharing it.
[21:21]Thank you to her for sharing it.
[21:23]And thanks for offering up your story,
[21:24]which is quite personal and emotional
[21:27]to help other people.
[21:28]I mean, I think that's the biggest gift we can give others
[21:31]as parents, as women, just sharing our stories
[21:34]is like this key to sanity for everybody
[21:37]and helping other.
[21:38]It's just like, all we can do.
[21:40]It's literally, if you're going to go through that,
[21:42]then what's the one good thing that you could do
[21:45]that would turn negative into a positive,
[21:47]just tell people what you learn
[21:48]and just hope that you make them almost one day shorter,
[21:51]make one day better, like if you're doing that,
[21:54]then it's not worth it, but these should manage to constantly
[21:57]go to the horror.
[22:00]Well, thank you, and thank her too.
[22:01]I mean, it's really beautiful.
[22:02]I've heard to share it.
[22:03]But back to the funny stuff for a second.
[22:06]You also wrote about marriage, particularly long-term marriage
[22:10]in a more, like, brilliant, funny way
[22:13]than I've read about ever, especially the fact
[22:15]that people don't talk about their marriages.
[22:17]And once you're in a marriage,
[22:19]you just sort of stop talking about it.
[22:21]You wrote, you have become replete and also silent now.
[22:23]Once the door is closed on the marital house,
[22:26]no reports can emanate from it.
[22:27]If the marriage is good, then the marriage must also be silent.
[22:30]That is one of the rules.
[22:31]If you not gossip, you do not share a good marriage
[22:34]is mysterious to everyone around it.
[22:35]What happens in there?
[22:36]Who are those people who walked into it on their wedding day
[22:39]and then pulled up the drop-rich?
[22:41]If the marriage is successful,
[22:42]you walk in there in your teens, 20s, or 30s,
[22:44]and then only come out again in a coffin,
[22:46]the partner who outlived you standing there, waving goodbye.
[22:50]And then you said, for we don't write novels
[22:51]about long and happy marriages.
[22:53]We don't have big blockbuster stories
[22:55]and how to raise children.
[22:56]We don't show the endless everyday business of domestica.
[23:00]We have no template for that.
[23:01]Right.
[23:02]Again, when I started thinking that,
[23:05]so this is a sequel to the first book
[23:06]and it had to be a woman, which is about your younger years.
[23:08]I'm making yourself.
[23:09]I'm gonna finish that.
[23:10]I thought, that's it.
[23:11]All the hard years have done.
[23:12]The rest of it's gonna be really easy.
[23:14]I know everything.
[23:15]I've put it on this book, I haven't done.
[23:16]And then 10 years later, you're like,
[23:18]no, no one talks about middle age,
[23:21]like kind of, particularly since the book came out,
[23:24]like kind of, we know about younger women's lives now.
[23:26]We've got girls, we've got flea bag,
[23:28]like kind of, you know, it's all about hot messes
[23:30]and masturbation and pubic hair
[23:31]and sort of having to get an abortion
[23:33]and bad love affairs and stuff.
[23:35]We know quite well what a young modern woman's life is like now
[23:38]and the problems and joys of that.
[23:40]But then suddenly it just stops.
[23:41]If you are in a successful relationship,
[23:44]you know, I'd walk down the street
[23:44]and you go past every single door and you're like,
[23:46]what is going on in there?
[23:48]Like, there are adventures in there
[23:50]as epic as any ring quest in Lord of the Rings,
[23:52]like kind of people are going,
[23:54]they are battling demons, they are facing heartbreak
[23:56]and joy, they are having to be a team, it's a business
[24:00]and we are supposed to be silent about this.
[24:02]It's seen as disloyal to talk about a marriage
[24:05]and I just wanted to throw all these doors open and go,
[24:08]you know, the format of the book is 24 hours
[24:10]in the life of an average middle age woman
[24:11]and just go, you know, what is happening every hour?
[24:14]What are you dealing with every hour?
[24:15]How are you making this work?
[24:17]What is making it difficult?
[24:19]And to just be honest about that process, which, you know,
[24:22]once you realise that you're writing about something
[24:24]that other people generally haven't written about,
[24:25]it's so exciting because anything you put in there,
[24:28]people are going, yep, that was me.
[24:30]Oh my God, a company if you said that,
[24:31]I didn't even know you were allowed to say that
[24:34]when I was talking about sex in a long-term relationship.
[24:36]Even I was going, am I allowed to talk?
[24:38]Is that disloyal to my husband?
[24:40]Like, kind of am I breaking some kind of marriage code
[24:43]to talk about how difficult it is
[24:45]to keep an exciting sex life going over 25 years?
[24:48]And all the advice that you're given is generally
[24:51]for a younger woman, it's all the, you know,
[24:52]and you tried spanking, you know, sending it into texts.
[24:57]Well, first of all, if you and your husband, you know,
[24:58]well, on turn partner are spanking each other
[25:00]and you've got children in the house.
[25:01]You will hear a scared voice
[25:02]on the other side of the door, okay?
[25:03]What's that clapping sound?
[25:05]Mommy, I'm scared.
[25:07]And if you're sending each other illicit texts,
[25:09]then almost every family has it that their phone
[25:12]is linked to another device in the house.
[25:14]And suddenly you've got scared,
[25:15]child who's watching Pippa Pico.
[25:16]Mommy, the texts come up and it looks like
[25:19]it's two hands pressed together
[25:21]and you're like, no, I shouldn't have said that.
[25:22]Bill fee, that was wrong.
[25:25]So it's, you know, and you know, we, you know,
[25:28]particularly women are supposed to be endlessly
[25:30]inventive and questing in their sex lives
[25:33]and, you know, bringing grapefruit and whips
[25:36]and all this kind of stuff.
[25:37]And that completely misunderstands
[25:39]the every heterosexual man who's just happy to have some sex.
[25:42]You really don't need, it was a naked lady in front of him
[25:45]and he's got 20 minutes with her.
[25:47]More than nine times out of 10,
[25:48]he's going to be perfectly happy with that.
[25:51]Instead, we're kind of like,
[25:52]you need to put the spice back into my relationship.
[25:54]If you try and put your spice back into a 25 year long relationship,
[25:57]it's going to be terrifying.
[25:59]We tried role play and I was like,
[26:00]could you be a naughty sexy pirate?
[26:03]And like, if my husband were a famous character actor,
[26:06]no, if it was like, I don't know,
[26:07]James Gandalfini or Mark Rylance,
[26:09]then maybe he would have worked shot that character
[26:11]and it would have been good,
[26:12]but the accent was questionable.
[26:15]He kept saying, what's my motivation?
[26:17]I was, you know, you can't suddenly start being a sexy pirate.
[26:20]It's 25 years of your relationship.
[26:22]And you don't need to.
[26:24]You don't need to.
[26:25]Just have a normal straightforward shag.
[26:27]It's perfectly fine.
[26:28]I've relieved you all of the responsibility
[26:30]of having anxiety in sex life.
[26:32]It's just 25 minutes.
[26:33]Same thank you to each other at the end of it
[26:35]on with the rest of the day.
[26:36]It's done.
[26:38]Everyone can take their eye patches
[26:39]and just check them over their shoulders.
[26:41]It's just...
[26:41]It's not going to work.
[26:43]It's not going to work.
[26:45]So, Caitlin, how did you even get into writing?
[26:49]Like, how did you begin this journey in your life?
[26:51]Did you know you wanted to write?
[26:52]Like, how did this all happen for you?
[26:55]Yeah, I read a lot as a kid.
[26:57]My parents were very clever.
[26:58]I mean, no, generally terrible parents,
[26:59]but they had, they did one clever thing.
[27:01]They had a suitcase under the bed
[27:02]that was full of, like, classic children's books,
[27:04]like, Anne Green Gable and the women's stuff.
[27:07]And from a very early age,
[27:08]they were like, you're too young to read those yet.
[27:10]It's like, kind of, you know, when you're old enough,
[27:12]you'll be able to read these.
[27:13]And so, made books seem like this incredible thing
[27:17]that one day I'd be clever and special enough to read.
[27:19]So, when they finally opened the suitcase
[27:20]and when you can read these, it was like,
[27:22]oh, okay, now I feel honored.
[27:24]This is the good stuff.
[27:25]So, usually if you're a writer or reader
[27:28]and I think it's a bit like the digestive system,
[27:29]if you put enough words into you,
[27:31]then you probably start pooing the man.
[27:33]I don't want to give away the magic
[27:34]of what writing is, but like,
[27:36]I mean, you read something and you either go,
[27:39]I disagree with that.
[27:40]Now, I've got something to write,
[27:41]or you go, they were so right.
[27:43]And what happened to me was like,
[27:44]this, I won't write my version of this.
[27:46]So, you're kind of, you know,
[27:48]to be chinstrokey for a minute.
[27:49]If you're a writer,
[27:50]you're in a constant conversation with all the other writers
[27:52]that have been before
[27:53]and you just want to join in their game
[27:55]and go, I could do that too.
[27:56]So, we were home educated, we didn't get a school.
[27:59]And by the time I was 13, it was very apparent to me
[28:01]that with no qualifications and no schooling,
[28:03]I would probably have to work out what my job would be
[28:06]and then get on with it on my own.
[28:07]So, I just started writing a book when I was 13
[28:10]and I finished it when I was 15,
[28:11]my children's novel and sent it off
[28:13]and it got published.
[28:15]And there were a couple of interviews with me
[28:17]at the time,
[28:17]because it was like a teenager is written a book.
[28:19]And the times newspaper saw the interview
[28:23]and asked me if I wanted to write some pieces for them.
[28:25]And I said, yes, and they gave me a column
[28:27]by that point, I was 17, they gave me a column,
[28:29]which I now realize isn't the normal way that you get a job.
[28:33]And I was also working as a rock critic
[28:35]on a music magazine at the time.
[28:37]So, by night, we're still living at home.
[28:39]So, by night, I'd be at a gig,
[28:40]smoking cigarettes and drinking cider
[28:42]and hanging out a rock stars
[28:44]and then sort of half past 11, I'd creep home,
[28:46]getting to the bed that I shared with my little brother
[28:48]because we could never embeds.
[28:49]And then sort of wake up in the morning,
[28:51]write the review, look after the kids.
[28:53]And then that night, go off and be in the world
[28:55]of rock and roll again.
[28:56]So, it was quite unusual.
[28:57]It's not a template that I'd think anybody else could follow.
[28:59]So, it's kind of useless to me telling you,
[29:01]but that is how I did it.
[29:03]Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
[29:04]I think it's useless.
[29:05]It's like highly entertaining.
[29:07]And then what came next?
[29:08]So, you had the column and then what?
[29:10]So, I had my kids really, really young.
[29:11]I'd met my husband when I was 17.
[29:14]Thank God, that was one problem that I didn't have to worry about.
[29:16]And so, we had kids really young,
[29:17]it was like 24 and then 26.
[29:19]So, it was just writing the column
[29:21]other times for 10 years.
[29:22]And as soon, I was like, I swear,
[29:25]because you don't realize how long a minute
[29:27]or an hour or a day is
[29:29]until you have to sit under a child and not move.
[29:32]And so, the first thing that I love
[29:33]from breastfeeding after the day it hurt
[29:35]was that, like, as soon as I didn't have to have
[29:37]a sleeping child on me, I would do stuff.
[29:39]I was not going to waste any more time.
[29:41]So, the first day, the only one went to school,
[29:43]I was like, right, I'm going to do stuff.
[29:46]So, that was when I started writing,
[29:47]you had to be a woman,
[29:48]which was sort of trying to explain feminism
[29:50]to a young generation and tell sort of dirty,
[29:52]funny stories about life.
[29:54]And then I did a couple of novels,
[29:55]I did TV series about my childhood,
[29:58]just on the film of one of the novels.
[30:00]had to be, had to be able to go,
[30:02]starring Beanie Feldstein,
[30:03]who is an absolute delight.
[30:05]She plays the teenage me.
[30:06]She's better at being the teenage me than I was.
[30:09]And we have a little WhatsApp group
[30:10]when whenever we see,
[30:11]she's as obsessed with dogs as I am.
[30:13]So whenever we see a cute dog,
[30:14]we take pictures of it and send them to each other,
[30:15]like, oh, this is a good dog.
[30:17]Look at this noble fellow.
[30:18]This is an adorable one.
[30:20]And yeah, it's a pretty sweet life.
[30:22]I have to say, at 45, I'm like, wow,
[30:24]if I could tell my 13-year-old self,
[30:26]they was gonna work out as well.
[30:28]I'd be pretty pleased.
[30:29]I would be certainly less anxious.
[30:31]Yeah.
[30:33]Do you have any advice to people
[30:34]who might not have this fall into their lap,
[30:37]although that, you know,
[30:39]yes, no, no, no.
[30:39]Well, it's easy to earn it.
[30:41]Not that you haven't earned it.
[30:42]You're quite a model.
[30:43]So lucky.
[30:44]Well, it was a much easier time to be a writer
[30:47]and get paid.
[30:48]Everyone can be a writer now
[30:49]because you can blog,
[30:50]but you don't get paid for it.
[30:51]So there's necessarily a class barrier now.
[30:53]If you've got your young
[30:55]and you've got parents who can support you,
[30:56]you can write full time.
[30:58]You can blog full time.
[30:59]If you have to get a job,
[31:01]then you're not gonna start writing till you get home,
[31:02]probably quite tired and start writing.
[31:04]So there's an immediate class and economic area
[31:06]put to writing these days, which is sad.
[31:10]But if you are a writer,
[31:11]then it's, it took me quite a while to realise
[31:13]that like, if you're writing what you think,
[31:15]so you look at the game and you go,
[31:16]this is what everyone's writing about.
[31:17]That's what a column would look like
[31:18]or a book would look like.
[31:19]I could do something like that.
[31:21]And you're trying,
[31:22]and if you do that,
[31:23]you're trying to get into a very crowded field.
[31:25]And you're gonna have to be absolutely excellent
[31:27]to compete with people who are already established
[31:29]and have contacts.
[31:30]But if you do this thing,
[31:31]where you turn a hundred eight degrees and go,
[31:33]what are people writing about?
[31:35]Where's the gap in the market?
[31:36]Like, where is the silence?
[31:38]Where are the taboos?
[31:38]Where are the stories that aren't being told?
[31:40]Suddenly, you're gonna be more in demand.
[31:43]You've got more of a market value
[31:44]because no one else is doing that.
[31:46]And that's where things like things that would often be seen
[31:48]as a disadvantage like being of colour,
[31:50]being LGBTQ, writing that middle age,
[31:52]wherever it is, become an advantage.
[31:54]Because those are areas that are not service that well.
[31:57]We don't have that many writers talking about those things
[31:59]or those kind of lives.
[32:00]So once you see that what you might perceive
[32:03]as your weakness is actually your strength,
[32:05]then hopefully that will give you the courage to go,
[32:07]no, I would be doing something useful if I write.
[32:10]And that's a lovely thing to think of as a writer.
[32:12]You're not being indulgent.
[32:13]It's not like writing poetry and having people cry.
[32:15]You're going, no, I'm being useful.
[32:16]I'm gonna tell people things.
[32:18]I'm gonna ask questions.
[32:20]I'm gonna try and work out why these things happen.
[32:22]Like, that's, I have a purpose now.
[32:24]And what you feel as a writer that you've got a purpose,
[32:27]so long as you are determined enough,
[32:28]you will find an audience in the end
[32:29]because people like you will need to hear your stories
[32:32]because no one else is telling them.
[32:34]So that would be my, you've got to be resilient
[32:36]but whatever you think is your weakness is your strength
[32:38]and people need what you are going to be writing about.
[32:41]Love that.
[32:42]Thank you so much.
[32:43]Thank you so much for coming on the show.
[32:45]I am such a huge fan of yours.
[32:47]Love this book.
[32:49]Like, can't thank you enough.
[32:50]It's just been such an awesome experience talking to you.
[32:53]You are absolutely fantastic.
[32:55]And I love your bookshelf.
[32:56]It's giving me such joy.
[32:58]It's my eyes.
[32:59]It's so happy looking at it.
[33:00]Thank you so much, darling.
[33:01]You are welcome.
[33:03]Bye bye.
[33:04]Bye bye.
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[33:19]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[33:23]at Ciby Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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