ELIZABETH DAY: Failure, Fertility & Figuring it all out

My guest today needs very little introduction. That being said, she perhaps deserves the best introduction of all time. Which would actually probably only occur, if she were to write it herself....An award winning journalist, podcaster, and author; this is the woman who has not only taught an entire nation of success wielding workaholics how to fail, but also how to feel, how to move forward and how to find comfort in the uncomfortable. I am of course talking about Elizabeth Day. Elizabeth grew up in Northern Ireland and began her journalism career at just 12 years old as a youth columnist for the Derry Journal. Her early twenties saw her graduate from Queens College Cambridge with a History Degree before working as a journalist reporter for various papers including the Evening Standard, The Sunday Telegraph and the Observer where she stayed for 9 years. Her twenties, on paper, were a plethora of professional success; a renowned award winning journalist on the rise gifted with a perfect balance of empathy and intellect that allowed her to write and communicate at an incredibly high standard. However, running parallel to a successful professional career was a difficult and complex personal life. In her early twenties Elizabeth suffered the tragic loss of an ex-partner which in turn set in motion a fear of losing loved ones, pertaining to romantic relationships in particular. Her twenties contained a series of long-term partners, or mini-marriages as she likes to refer to them, and throughout the decade she struggled with people pleasing tendencies, lack of confidence, and the continuous fear of feeling  like she was never or could ever be ‘enough’. Since leaving the decade behind Elizabeth has gone onto some extraordinary achievements; publishing 7 books including her award winning debut novel Scissors Paper Stone, and her brilliant non-fiction work How To Fail, part memoir, part manifesto. She has also helped thousands of women across the UK in her honest and deeply moving recollections of personal struggles with relationships, divorce and conceiving children. Elizabeth’s willingness, bravery and sheer vulnerability to raise such important topics, is what makes her, in my opinion, the best interviewer around and it is no surprise that her infamous podcast How To Fail recently hit over 20 million downloads. Her most recent venture, Magpie, a fictional psychological thriller - hits shelves this September and it might just be her best piece of work yet. It’s hard to imagine what this spectacularly intelligent, driven and accomplished person could possibly be doing on a podcast meant for people who have no clue what they’re doing or where they’re going in life. But if there’s one thing Elizabeth Day has taught me over the years, it’s that no matter what your perceived level of success is or when it comes, we are all just human beings trying to find our way. We fear, we fall, and we fail. Our Favourite Millennial Minesweeper Quote this week was; “You must remember that no decision is ever really the wrong decision. Because it's the decision you made at the time. Respect your past self and her choices.” ― Emma Gannon, Olive Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.