Show transcript:

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This is what I’ve learnt from women. A podcast for creatives, business owners and quiet rebels. I’m your host, Claire Coupland, a certified coach specialising in helping women find their inner rebel and live life on their terms. Each episode will share stories and empower

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and support each other. This is episode two.

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This week I’m joined by the wonderful Sarah Tasker of Me and Orla. We have known each other for over two years now. We found each other on Twitter, so you know Twitter’s not all bad, and yeah we’ve

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become friends. We are kind of, I don’t know, we ask each other advice about our businesses. I work within her business but we also have become quite good friends and yeah she’s just an amazing human, she really inspires me and has taught me so much. So it’s really lovely to welcome her to the podcast to talk about women and what she’s learned from them.

Hi, Sara.

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Hello, Claire. This is an exciting new dynamic for us.

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Yeah, we worked together for a while, haven’t we?

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We have, and we’ve never done a podcast together. So it’s overdue, frankly.

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Absolutely. So do you want to tell everyone a little bit about what you do?

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Yeah, so I have one of those jobs that’s incredibly difficult to define like so many of us these days. The good version is I help people to tell their stories online through words and in pictures. But what that actually looks like is I have a book, I have a podcast, I have lots of social media accounts. I teach classes, I’m a coach. And for me, it’s all about the experience I went through of the internet changing my life and changing my whole relationship with myself and building this audience of like-minded people who gave me permission to explore parts of my life I’d never really thought I deserved or thought I was capable of. And so I’m on a mission to help other women go through that to see that actually, all the answers that they’re seeking for are actually the qualities they already have and that they can achieve whatever they want to achieve once we start accepting that.

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Oh yeah, that’s, yeah, sounds great. And it sounds exactly like what you do given that we work together. So should we go into the questions?

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Yeah, these questions, Claire, my goodness. Sorry.

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Sorry. These are hard questions. Well, we’ll see how we get with them, right?

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I mean, it’s a good thing, right? Because normally you get questions and you’re like, yeah, okay, I’ve answered those before, but I was like, I don’t know about some of these. I’m gonna have to really think.

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Yeah, I recorded a version for myself last week and, I found them really hard as well. I had to really think about them, so apologies.

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It’s good, it’s all good.

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Okay, so what’s the best advice you’ve been given?

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Okay, I’m gonna open up my notes in case I forget what I wanted to say for any of these. So the best advice I’ve been given, I think it comes from life coach Brooke Castillo. She says, ‘discomfort is the currency for your dreams.’ And that’s one of those things that I revisit again and again in my head. Every time something feels too hard or feels too scary or just feels like something within my entire body is resisting me doing it. I have to remember that on the other side that discomfort is normally everything you’re looking for. It’s the growth, it’s the connection, it’s the money, whatever it is you’re trying to reach. So yeah, discomfort is the currency for your dreams. Oh, that’s good.

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I love that.

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Yeah. Snappy as well, right? Yeah. It looks good on a poster.

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Absolutely, yeah. Oh, I’m gonna have to think about that one sometime. That’s good.

So how do you think you’ve changed over the last 10 years?

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It’s interesting that this one says 10 years. so perfect for me because I am creeping to 40. And when I was 30, I had my daughter, Orla, and she was the catalyst for all of the change that I’ve spoken about, for me starting my

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transformation that I’ve ever had in my life. So how I’ve changed in the last 10 years is a phenomenal amount. Starting with becoming a mum, becoming a business owner, but more kind of more crucially I suppose the change in my relationship with myself, my self belief and my self worth. And I can remember like to give it an example 10 years ago I must have been like 30, 29, 28 you know literally 10 years ago my husband then just my boyfriend

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applying for a position we both worked in special schools and he was applying for some promotion, maybe to deputy head or something. And he’d written like the essay portion of an application

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form. And I was sat on the sofa and I was like, would you like me to take a look at it for you? And he, he was just like, no, it’s fine. I’ll send it to my mum. And I was like, I remember just this, this, this tension in my head of me thinking, I think I could be really good at looking at that for him. And then not speaking up for myself and not saying, what do you mean you don’t want me to to look at it like, do you not realise that these are things I’m really good at like writing and persuasion and all of those things. Just not having the self belief to advocate for myself and then letting him send it to his mom. And then I remember reading it at the very end and thinking there’s still errors to fix in this that neither of them have picked up on that would make me not want to give you the job. Versus now he works for me and yeah, there was no part of me that would hesitate now to say, well, first of all, he would immediately come and ask me because he knows that I would be the best person to help him with that. But also like I would go, right, now give it to me. Like, I need to look at this for you. I can see things that you can improve on this. I wouldn’t even ask for permission necessarily. I would just be like, of course you want my help. And of course I have something to give. And it’s, you know, it’s a huge shift.

I suspect 10 year ago me and anyone who’s still in that space, it almost sounds like arrogance where I am now. I certainly would have thought it was, But it’s not coming from a place of arrogance. It’s just coming from a place of like certitude of knowing what I’m good at and what I’m not. If he was like, here’s an account sheet with lots of mathematical formulas, there’s no part of me that would go, hey, let me take a look at it. I would go, that’s great for you, honey. Go, you could take that away.

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But you know, if it’s in my wheelhouse now,

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I advocate for myself. I have my own back. I appreciate the things I’m good at. and I expect the people around me to appreciate it too. And now I’m surprised when they don’t, whereas back then I think I would have been surprised when they did.

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Yeah, that’s really interesting, isn’t it? I think, especially talking about the age, you know, I’m 42 this year, so I really get that, that kind of like, as you mature, and I don’t know if I like that word, but as you get a bit older, you kind of feel like more self-assured and you’re able to advocate for yourself in a way that I couldn’t have denied that when I was 29. authority. I just couldn’t. Yeah, really interesting. And that whole talking about that kind of self-belief and that growth, I know that’s something we’ve talked about together before. And I think that is something that does come with age as well, really.

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Yeah. And it’s interesting you said, like, I don’t like the word mature necessarily. And then getting older doesn’t sound particularly positive either. And you know what popped into my head when you said that? I was like, we escaped. That’s what happens is that you, a certain point comes where you get to escape from all of that trap that is put on you when you’re younger and you know, it’s half a lifetime’s work just to untangle yourself from it.

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Oh absolutely yeah, there’s a lot, sometimes there’s just so much work to do isn’t there, on those things that happen and then what comes and how that makes you think and feel as a person and you carry that around for a long time and yeah.

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I have hope though that we’re all going to be like super sorted as 90 year olds,

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like we are going to be in that nursing home just zen.

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Oh it’s going to be amazing.

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Yeah, watch out world.

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So who is a woman that has inspired you and why?

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Again, these are hard questions. Okay, I went with Tori Amos, partly because I’m going to go and see her tonight. So she’s on my mind. And she has been like, I discovered her music as a young teenager and felt this immediate connection. So she has literally been the soundtrack to my life. I don’t think there’s ever gone a week where I have not listened to her albums in the last 30 years. And one thing that I really take inspiration from with her career is the tenacity. She has not stopped putting out albums, she has not stopped creating, she has not stopped moving forwards and evolving. Even when the music scene has completely changed,

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as a young teenager and felt this immediate connection. So she has literally been the

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the reporting about her started to shift, even when her fan base started to get quite negative and didn’t like the new direction she was going in. Even when then she hit like 50 and 60 and went from this transition of like you know being the young beautiful pop starlet to being an older woman that’s seen and having to kind of navigate all of that,

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every single part of that. To me, she’s always been kind of just a few steps ahead of me in navigating life so which is really convenient because it means that she’s always written a couple of albums about it that I can turn to when it shows up in my life. And yeah, I find it super inspiring

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just that she’s managed to weather all of those storms and keep doing what she loves because it’s, I don’t know, it’s something we can take for granted in the creators that we admire. Like of course, I’ll keep writing the books. Of course, they’ll keep putting music out, but when you do your own creative work, whatever that means, I think you start to appreciate that actually, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to cut out another piece of work, is to be judged by the people who have already appreciated you or who, you know, if you had previous success to risk failure now, like all of those challenges feel very relatable to me and her navigation of it is very inspiring.

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Oh yeah, definitely that having somebody to kind of look towards who’s making those moves and kind of showing you that anything’s possible is really inspiring, yeah.

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Yes, absolutely. And also I’m hoping one day we’ll be best friends. So Tori, if you’re listening, hi. Call me, call me, let’s do coffee. I mean, it’s possible, yeah. Anything’s possible, I believe in that.

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I do too. Okay, do you have a favourite quote or saying?

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I do, actually, this was an easy one because it’s been my favourite quote for a really long time. It’s from a Danish poem, so it’s the translated line and it says, within you is a world of spring. I really like, well, I love the imagery of it alone, but also, you know, spring, we’re nearly there now. It’s that season of kind of, you think everything’s dead and dormant, you think it’s over and that thing’s waking up. And kind of, you know, there’s that slightly,

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slightly horny energy of spring, where it’s just like a bit giddy and the sun is shining and the rabbits are at it and the plants are everywhere and the bees are humming and it’s that, that’s in you. Even if you forget about it and it’s a world of spring, as in it’s never gonna run out, going to keep on coming when you need it. I love that. I just love that whole notion.

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Oh yeah, yeah, totally. And Spring to me is that we’ve had this period of rest, so the bulbs are under the surface resting and they’re kind of getting ready to kind of put on their show and what you’re doing is sort of indicating that rest is really important, I think, in a way like that.

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I just, I like that. Yeah, we forget that, right? Like nothing in nature blooms all year round and yet there is an expectation that we put on ourselves to be like a cherry blossom tree that never stops being in flower. I think nature is perfect.

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And we get bored of that if it was out in flower all the time.

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Yeah, absolutely. And also it would die because it uses so much of its energy and so much, like it takes a year then to recover to be able to do that again. And we don’t give ourselves that grace period. Definitely.

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So in your opinion, but this is another hard one, I’m sorry. What are some of the biggest challenges that women face today and what could we do to overcome them? This is the hardest one, Claire.

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No. Sorry. You know why it’s so hard as well? Because I immediately recognised that my brain was like, well, you’ve got to mention this and you can’t not mention this and this and this, which is, I suppose, like a people-pleasing instinct of like, I just want to make sure I, you know, I give a shout out to everyone’s problems, which would be a whole podcast series. If I don’t mention your problem, listener doesn’t mean I don’t see it and acknowledge it. I just want to say that. But yeah, I mean, I have so many thoughts about this and obviously, it’s still misogyny and patriarchy and how they show up.

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And how in some ways it’s kind of become more nuanced and changed the way that we have to battle those things because people don’t necessarily even see it. But I wanted to touch on as well, a thing that I see so much in the conversations I’m having with women through my work is, I think there’s a whole issue around health, women’s health. that the science doesn’t seem to have completely kept up with or was never at pace with. And so I speak to, for example, so many women with conditions that are causing them like crippling fatigue or muscle pain, you know, the kind of the fibromyalgia, the chronic fatigue syndrome, the POTS, the autoimmune conditions, but they’re just kind of not fully understood, not fully taken seriously. Like these things are so effing prevalent. There are so many women I speak to who are dealing with them. were diagnoses, some not. I just think it’s so interesting that like this is a real physical experience for lots of women and yet the scientific establishment, the medical establishment is mostly telling us either there’s nothing they can do or that it doesn’t even exist. Yeah. And you know

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women’s healthcare in general like I read a really interesting thing on subset the other day that was talking about how many articles, how many like lovely magazine articles and blog posts for women helping you with things like infidelity or you know chronic fatigue or infertility or whatever, the recommendation is to go and do some journaling, just sit down and do some journaling about it and like I love journaling, I’m with them on that. When was the last time anyone told a man to go and journal about it? Yeah, totally. Especially about a health issue, like are we doing that? I don’t think we’re doing that. My husband’s never been told to journal. And there’s something in that that like it’s given back to us like and if you’re not journaling maybe it’s your own fault that you’re not happy, maybe it’s your own fault that you’re ill because you’re not journaling enough and you’re not meditating enough and you’re not doing enough sun salutations at dawn and yeah I could rant

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about this at length as you may be able to pick up. I do think we’re letting women down and I genuinely believe like 20 years from now when the research has caught up it’ll be like something like MS, which in the up until the 70s, they thought was hysteria. They thought it was a cycle, like a psychosomatic thing. Women were saying they couldn’t feel their feet, but there was nothing physically wrong. Surely it’s in their heads. And then they invented the CAT scan and realized it was lesions on the brain. And it’s more prevalent in women because it has, I think, an autoimmune component or whatever. So, you know, I think that there’s a lot of things like that, that we are just taking the blame for unnecessarily and not getting the help that we deserve that maybe

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to advocate so hard for their own health and push back and back. And I’m sure that is the case with lots of conditions. And I know that obviously, for instance, the NHS is very stretched at the moment.

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But it’s no better in the US or anywhere else.

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No, it’s not. Yeah. And the research and the science and the kind of focus and a lot of of the studies we’ve done a long time ago that just don’t really help women to understand what’s going on and then we’ve talked before about kind of things like medication and we’ve got different health conditions and it just doesn’t feel like it’s a kind of process that is thought of from

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different gender’s perspective. Completely yeah completely and I think it’s probably changing as more women get into those research and medical fields and also like shout out to the men who do do that work and advocate and get it, I know that they exist as well. But yeah, it’s frustrating, it’s so frustrating when you think, I always think of it as like, you know, it’s biology, it’s chemistry, a solution exists in the universe. But unfortunately, until human consciousness catches up with the idea that women deserve to be well, we’re not going to find it. So.

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Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, love that you brought that up. It’s something I’m really passionate about as well so yeah amazing.

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Awesome I’m glad we’re on the same page. Someone will be listening angry right now but I’m sorry, that’s just how I feel.

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Yeah definitely, we’re allowed to be angry.

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Yeah of course.

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What advice would you give to young women who are just starting their careers and looking to make an impact?

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I think it’s about tuning out all of the noise around you and all of the influence and trying to just create from your purest self which is a hard thing to do at any time and especially I think when you’re young and you’ve not tested these things but there’s so much pressure on us to

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be a certain way to show up a certain way to make a certain kind of impact and actually if my career and the work of all the women around me has taught me anything it’s that your unique voice your unique strengths and weaknesses will create the most valuable version of whatever you’re going to do in the world so yeah it’s like kind of go off and find your own path even if that means you’re in a corporate job by day and you’re not really seen but you go home and you make YouTube videos about

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something that just lights you up for three people, keep with it because that thing is the thing that’s going to take you where you want to go in the long run. You just have to trust it.

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Yeah, oh that, yeah definitely. I think I’ve heard you sort of say that in various group coaching sessions that people tapping into what makes them different and what makes them sometimes weird is

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what people love. Yes, exactly because oh my god we can get the vanilla, the you know the sterile, the clean and perfect anytime we want it in abundance. Where do we get the real humans? And in those coaching calls it’s always so fascinating because when it’s a real-life case study of one person I think it’s really easy to see isn’t it? It’ll be like someone going oh well I can’t you know we had one last week where she was like I can’t tell my story right now because my dream house burnt down and now I’m living in like a rented house and I was like are you kidding me that story is gold like I’m really sorry for you but imagine being able to follow someone through that journey but for her like she thought it was a flaw she thought the fact that she didn’t have her perfect house anymore would cause rejection and I promise you whoever you are listening to this whatever the thing is in your head that you think people will reject you

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for is actually like the magic glue that will make people love you with their whole heart.

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Yeah, definitely. It kind of opens you up and makes you real and people love realness, especially we’ve got so many ways to look at a very sterilised or very beautiful way of life. You know, we can look at it and see beautiful pictures and that’s great. I love that. But also that realness is something that we all need because we all feel like we’re not doing great at times and just seeing other people also not doing great helps us to realise we’re not kind of unique. We’ve all got problems.

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Absolutely, absolutely. And just, it’s just more interesting, isn’t it? I think it’s way more interesting. Absolutely. You know, they’re the people I go

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isn’t it? I think it’s way more interesting. Absolutely. You know, they’re the people I go to to look at, you know, the people I search out.

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So exactly. You’re like, Oh, I wonder what happened to that woman whose house burned down. I need to find out where she’s up to. Whereas you’re never like, I wonder what happened to that person whose life is always perfect and always has been and always will be. You kind of like, Oh, I know what her life is. It’s perfect. Yeah, exactly.

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Yeah.

So what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

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I think for me, the answer to this is don’t believe everything you think.

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Which is one of those Pinterest sayings, isn’t it? But it’s so flipping true that

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I have been at very many intervals in my life completely convinced that something is true, completely undeniably convinced only to be proven completely wrong. And the problem, of course, it’s not even just that you’re wrong, but that all of the action you take in your life from a place of convinced of one thing takes you in just the complete wrong direction. So, you know, if you, if you convince yourself that something’s not possible for you, you’re never going to test that theory. You’re never going to try and make it happen. You’re never going to see if you were wrong. That’s kind of like the simplest expression of that, but it shows up in everything. You know, when you’re convinced that someone’s angry at you, you don’t really know why you just feel it in your gut. Like I’ve spent a lot of my life believing those feelings and acting correspondingly when you’re convinced that like you’re going to fail at something when you’re convinced that I don’t know someone doesn’t really like you and they’re just pretending. All of those stories in my head and I think it’s hard especially for women, a lot of us are very empathic, empathetic, whichever version of that word is the right one empathic or empathetic. like especially if you’ve maybe had past trauma you can become super super attuned to the people around you and super attuned to the energy in the room and you almost can tell you almost can read other people to a degree but I think that that makes it worse that then we’re able to always convince ourselves we almost can read other people’s minds and we know what they’re thinking

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and we’re sure how this is going to go and actually turns out not psychic who knew and And yeah, don’t believe everything you think.

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Yeah, taking on that extra kind of, it’s almost like a burden, isn’t it? If you’re believing other people think things or you’re feeling things instinctively, I totally agree. I’m kind of a little bit empathetic and I can feel feelings. I think I can. Well, I think it is real to a degree, yeah. Yeah, but it does add so much more. There’s so much more drama and there’s so much more stress in your life if you’re kind of constantly turning over the, Oh, have I made that person cross? Is that, oh, have I made them unhappy?

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Yes. I saw a really good thing on Tumblr of all places the other day that was like, I am no longer responding to subtext. And it was just someone saying like, you know, I’ve been through abuse or trauma in my life. And I learned as a coping mechanism to read the subtext. Like, why is her body language like that? She sounds a bit sad. She sounds a bit quiet. Why is she banging a cup on the side? And you read all into those things, keep yourself safe. And then try and people please to the subtext, right? you’re like, she seems a bit mad. I need to adjust how I’m responding. And basically what it was concluding was like, if you’re angry, you need to tell me you’re angry. I will not pick up on clues. I will not respond to clues because it’s not good for my mental health. And we’re adults and you can just tell me if you’re angry. And I so relate to that. Like it is exhausting responding to the subtext, constantly scanning and we can be wrong. And especially if you’re like hyper attuned to it from trauma, you’re often wrong. So to just let that go and say, okay, like I’m just gonna trust the people in my life that if I need to know something, they’ll tell me. Otherwise, I’m just gonna assume everything’s fine. So much relief in that.

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Oh yeah, that sounds like such a nicer way to be than kind of worrying all the time. Yeah, definitely.

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Yeah, what that actually looks like in practice is me, like say with my husband, he’s giving me the like something’s not okay vibes very deliberately and I’ll be like, I’m not responding to some text. Is there something you want to tell me? So it still kind of is me responding to some text reality but I’m hoping with practice we might get a little bit better at that. Yeah definitely.

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Okay so how have you seen women’s roles in society evolve during your lifetime?

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I think about this one I think when I was little my mum would take me to school take me and my siblings to school and it was all the mums and only mums were doing the drop off really and then they would go for coffee and cake they’d just spend the day and then like we didn’t have had much money. So my mom would, she loved to shop, but she’d just go around like bargain

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then she’d pick us up and get very stressed out about making us tea. And I just think

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about that now and I think God like in just our lifetimes, women have gone from like a lot of women, not all women, of course, because financially it wasn’t possible for everyone, but a lot of women when they had kids, that was their role. They stayed at home, got the kids to and from school. Now I don’t know anyone where both people in a household don’t work. Kids or no kids. To afford a mortgage now, if you’re in a couple, both of you have

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to work. And that’s just like the assumption now. I mean, my mum was saying to us not long ago, she was like, well, all my children have got nicer houses than I did at your age. She’s kind of slightly jealous, like, and I was like, well, yeah, that’s true. But for all of us, like both people work like full time to afford that. And I think there’s so many knock on things that come from that because of course, we are now expected to contribute 50% of the household income, but we’re still expected to be a really good parent to parent like we don’t have a job to show to our job like we don’t have kids if we do have kids. We’re still expected to have a perfect home, in fact, more than ever, because now you need to be able to show it on social media. So you can’t your house can’t be a tip. Now we’re we’re still expected to be beautiful. That’s not changed, except I think that’s got worse because now in the age of like YouTube makeup tutorials and I look at the kids going to high school around here now, the girls, and I just think, oh my God, like what would they have thought of how we all looked at high school? No, like it wasn’t even GHD, you couldn’t even properly straighten your hair. You had those metal ones that kind of like scraped against your hair and didn’t actually do anything or your crimpers or something. The makeup was innocent and very DIY. Now they’re like baking and contouring and showing up like Kardashians. And that pressure is so much more acute. You’ve got to be so much more polished and beautiful from a young age. You’ve got to do nail art now. You’ve got to do like, I mean, I’m probably exaggerating some of it, but you know, you’ve got to have a social media audience. You’ve got to have followers. That starts young, right? You’ve got to be good at those skills. And all of that squished into the tiny bit of time you now have where you’re not doing your full-time job. I just think it’s so much pressure. It’s so many roles. And of course, men have similar pressures,

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but for women, like it’s not been evenly lifted. You know, the caring responsibilities, whether it’s parents, whether it’s children,

[00:26:57.139] speaker 0:

when I look around my friendship group, haven’t gone, okay, now we’re doing 50-50, So we have to split that 50-50. It’s still kind of defaults to being the woman’s job. And there’s so many instances of that, like the cleaning.

[00:27:10.774] speaker 0:

where the men just don’t clean, even though they both work full-time because they see that as a woman’s job. Like just so many of those defaults that are still embedded in our systems

[00:27:24.105] speaker 0:

that mean, yeah, we’re kind of trying to do two full-time jobs and look amazing while we do it and be thin and not eat sugar and do yoga And journal, don’t forget to journal. Oh yeah, journaling, gosh. How could you forget the journaling? If you feel bad about the fact that you don’t have time to sleep, maybe you should be journaling more.

[00:27:32.965] speaker 1:

Oh yeah, journaling, gosh. How could you forget the journaling?

[00:27:43.039] speaker 1:

Oh, it’s so true, isn’t it? And I see it even around my friendship groups as well, that kind of difference in what people do in the house and how people kind of split the division of labor and sometimes it’s more even. Like I do it more evenly, but on the whole it really isn’t. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that we have changed to become full-time workers, but we, I don’t know whether it’s us as individuals or as women still feel that we need to do it, but there’s also that expectation that we need to do it. You know, that kind of-

[00:28:12.604] speaker 0:

You know, that kind of- You’re right, it’s partly a self-expectation, isn’t it?

[00:28:15.777] speaker 1:

Yeah, it’s like you can do it all. That’s the message that was over the last 10 years. And that’s beginning to become less of the message, which I’m really pleased about, but it was she can have it all. And that feels quite almost damaging. in some ways really. Now I think about it at the time it didn’t, it felt empowering, but now I think about it, it’s kind of making you work harder and longer and in different ways in order to make it work. And actually what you could do is just ask for help.

[00:28:43.047] speaker 0:

Yeah, and just choose intentionally which bits of it all that you actually want. Yeah. If you let them go, not by choice, you feel like a failure. You know, like the days when you don’t manage to look like a Kardashian and just sit around the house. Yeah.

[00:28:58.977] speaker 0:

Like those days, you know, and then you kind of feel, then someone comes to the door and you’re like, crap, I’ve been caught out. I’m not perfect. Now they know, God, I can’t go on, I can’t go live on stories or whatever, because then they’ll know that I’m not. And yeah, like instead going, actually, I don’t need that. Why, why do I think that that’s something I need? Did I choose it? Did I put that in my brain intentionally or did someone give it to me and kind of let go of it? And it’s almost like asking yourself that about every single responsibility and belief you’ve picked up in life.

[00:29:28.457] speaker 1:

Definitely, yeah. So this is a bit of an easy one, I think. Who’s your favorite female character in a book, film or TV series?

[00:29:37.502] speaker 0:

I mean, it’s an easy one, but then it’s not easy because you’re like, oh, but there’s so many. I ended up on Leslie Knope from Parks and Recs. Oh. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I recently rewatched the whole series. But I also, maybe it’s because I’m quite like her. It’s also because like, she’s badass. She’s really good, she gets shit done. She knows what she’s amazing at, but she’s also like,

[00:30:02.832] speaker 0:

she’s not turned into one of the boys to do it. You know, she doesn’t, she’s not emulating masculinity in order to be strong. She’s still very stupid and ridiculous and art led and soft and strong.

[00:30:17.159] speaker 0:

And I don’t think we have that many examples of that.

[00:30:19.808] speaker 1:

No, I remember reading a book, you kind of made me think of reading a book about, I think it’s about Mary Porter’s, about this alpha culture that we take into the work. So we have to be like men to be powerful, to be strong, to be, you know, a certain way. Yeah, really interesting.

[00:30:35.586] speaker 0:

Right, like it’s all like the idea that you check your humanity at the door to be taken seriously. And even like wearing suits and all of that stuff, it’s just actually none of that helps. Like that’s given us the late stage capitalist system that we’re watching slowly die now. Yeah. And I really like examples of, you know, Leslie, who’s basically on her way to being president by the time that series ends, by, you know, being herself. Yeah. And that taps back

[00:31:04.004] speaker 1:

into what we were saying earlier about what people want to see is you being yourself. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:10.517] speaker 0:

That series would be so boring if it wasn’t for her being bananas at the centre of it. Yeah,

[00:31:17.520] speaker 0:

Definitely eating waffles and yeah, going on adventures.

[00:31:22.144] speaker 1:

Yeah. So what have you learned from women? Final question.

[00:31:27.966] speaker 0:

I think I’ve learned everything I know from women. Sorry, guys. There’s no guys listening to it. Let’s be honest, no guys are listening to this. Yeah, everything. Everything worth knowing I’ve learned from women. I’ve learned to unlearn all

[00:31:42.884] speaker 0:

the rules that none of what I thought was going to be true for life as a woman really is and I think I learned most of that from 90s glossy magazines which in hindsight was probably not not the guidebook to success and happiness that I expected them to be. Yeah that all of the rules and all of the roles are fake and you get to pick. I think I’ve learned to be soft, to be strong, and that the so-called soft skills and the so-called sort of feminine,

[00:32:19.502] speaker 0:

I hate even the cliches of all of those, but you know, all of those things actually, they are not indications of weaknesses, they are indications of flexibility and growth and insights and humanity, and those are generally very good things, whether it’s in business or in friendships or just in whatever you’re trying to do in the world. And I think women more than anything have shown me that if the system doesn’t work, you know, the glass ceiling, if you can’t smash through it, oh fuck it, let’s just work around it. Like that’s women, that’s the women’s energy to me. It’s like, right, okay, let’s just leave that then we’ll go over here and do our own thing. And we’ll get it done in half the time. And that energy for me, that’s what women have given me that just slight exasperation and a desire to just roll up my sleeves and get on with it and get it done because we’re really

[00:33:12.608] speaker 1:

awesome at that. Yeah definitely definitely the the rules I think is really interesting because I do think that I personally think that that is something that’s come to me as I’ve got older again but I just feel like I’ve unlearned lots of stuff as I’ve got to this point in my life and I I took all the rules on, I don’t know about you, like when it was a proper job, you know, the nine to five proper job, I took all those rules on and I was really keen to kind of do them because it’s what society said I should do, but yeah, that unlearning. And I do think I’ve learned that from a lot of different, I can think of lots of different women who have taught me that unlearning, definitely.

[00:33:49.058] speaker 0:

Yes, and it’s so powerful, but then it makes you wonder, where do we learn these things in the first place? Like, because we’re not born with them, right? Who gives us these rules and all these lies that we’re like, okay, okay, that’s how to be happy. That’s how to be valued. That’s how to be wanted. And then I think every single one of us then spends most of our thirties having to go, oh, that was another lie, right? Okay. And figure it out for ourselves.

[00:34:16.497] speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely.

[00:34:17.104] speaker 0:

Yeah, definitely.

[00:34:19.247] speaker 1:

Wow. That comes to the end of the questions.

[00:34:20.104] speaker 0:

Whew. Did I pass? Did I pass?

[00:34:22.247] speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely. Absolute flying colours.

Do you want to tell people where they can find you online?

[00:34:30.992] speaker 0:

Well, sure. So my brand online is called Me and Orla. Orla is my daughter that started it all with me. And so you can find me at meandorla.co.uk. I’m on Substack. You can look for my name, Sarah Tasker, or Entre Nous, which is the name of my, pronounce that badly, by the way, of my Substack. It means between us. I’m on Instagram. I’m on Twitter for as long as Twitter still exists. And my podcast is called Hashtag Authentic.

[00:34:57.722] speaker 1:

Yes. And you’ve been writing on Substack for a while now, but you’ve just gone paid, haven’t you? It’s been exciting.

[00:35:03.510] speaker 0:

This week, yes. Apparently, it’s been one of the UK’s like fastest ever paid super launchers, whatever those words mean. I don’t know, I’m just quoting, but yeah, it’s been an adventurous week, hasn’t it? It’s been a bit wild. Yeah, so good.

[00:35:20.149] speaker 1:

Okay, well, thank you so much for joining me. I’ve really loved chatting to you.

[00:35:23.912] speaker 0:

Same, it’s always a joy to talk with you Claire. You just, yeah, you make so many parts of my brain light up with new ideas. I love talking to you.

[00:35:35.022] speaker 1:

Oh, you are wonderful.

[00:35:35.522] speaker 1:

You can find me over on Instagram @grow_with_moxie, or you can email me at hello@clairecoupland.co.uk. I’m also on Substack under 

 . The podcast will also be hosted over there as well as in all the other places that you can find it.

[00:35:57.544] speaker 1:

Thank you for listening. And if you like this, press subscribe so you can get the next episode straight in your feed. I hope you’re having a really wonderful week. I’ll speak to you soon.