What do you do when life throws you two cataclysmic curve balls in a short period of time that fracture your whole identity? My guest today is Lucy Melville. Lucy is a widow, and mother of three young people. Her husband Brian died of stage IV lung cancer in July 2023 just 6 weeks after diagnosis whilst her youngest child was still at school. Just one year after losing her husband, Lucy was unexpectedly made redundant from the job that kept her functioning through her grief.

In this moving and emotional interview, Lucy talks us through the surreal process of finding out about Brian’s diagnosis and navigating the speed of his illness and ultimately his death just a short time later. She describes the impact on her and her children of losing the husband and father they adored, and then being rocked again by dealing with both an empty nest as her children left home, and the compounded grief of losing the job (and second ‘work family’) that had kept her steady through her bereavement.

Lucy talks honestly about how isolated, invisible, and abandoned she felt at this time in her life, but also the subsequent reinvention after her long dark night of the soul, and finding hope and renewed sense of identity through her new business venture River Light Press.

Listen in to hear Lucy’s advice for anyone grappling with difficult times right now, and be inspired by her heroine’s journey to light and a new life.

You can find Lucy at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucymelville and River Light Press at https://www.aurorametro.com/river-light-press/

If you enjoy the podcast please help us grow by sharing this episode with someone who might need to listen or writing us a review.

You can also find me at www.thetripleshift.org and www.managingthemenopause.com or connect with me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmacthomas/

My guest today is Lauren Currie OBE, the Founder of UPFRONT, an organisation on a mission to change confidence, visibility, and power for 10 million women.

I start by asking Lauren what does confidence means to her personally and how she has learned to cultivate it?

Lauren describes confidence, not as a lack of doubt or feeling ready, but learning to show up and speak up even when full of doubt. She is, she says, still on a confidence journey. The world is not a place that is kind to confident women - she is continually unlearning, reconnecting with her gift for being onstage and inspiring others, and saying yes to hard things before feeling ready for them. Confidence differs across our lives and it’s vital we all can see that being modelled to us.

We might appear very confident to others, but just because they can’t see our inner critic or our fears, doesn’t mean they’re not there. We all have moments of self doubt and nervousness, and confident people don’t feel confident all the time…

Lauren explains how the Upfront Bonds work: impressively, the average salary increase post-attendance is 46%, and 82% of attendees are more likely to apply for a job they wouldn’t have applied for before the Bond.

Lauren also talks about past career mistakes: rather than failures, she sees these as lessons in disguise, data, insights, information, and opportunities to be better and grow.

We also discuss her upcoming book “Taylor Meets The Trick” which aims to help children and families understand the patriarchy and was inspired by her son Atlas, who has long blonde hair and is often mistaken for a girl. Taylor learns about the rules for boys and rules for girls, and through the book starts challenging the neat little boxes that we are expected to fit into. There are also guides and resources at the end to support adults to continue the conversation.

Tune in to listen to all of this, plus Lauren’s experience of moving to Sweden, her advice for anyone with a young family thinking about moving to another country, and what she would change if we gave her a magic wand!

You can find out more about Lauren and her work at Upfront by visiting https://www.weareupfront.com/, and https://www.instagram.com/upfrontglobal/

If you enjoy the podcast please help us grow by sharing this episode, or writing a review.

You can also find me at www.thetripleshift.org and connect with me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmacthomas/

My guest this time is Elizabeth Dalziel - a photographer with an illustrious string of assignments under her belt. She’s lived and worked in more countries than most of us will visit in our lifetimes! She has won awards for her work covering the Iraq war, the 2004 Tsunami in Asia, and - closer to home - documenting the homeschooling of her children during the pandemic.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer aged 48, she was put into a chemically-induced menopause and plunged immediately into a maelstrom of hot flashes, mood swings, brain fog, depression and more.

She felt like she was falling apart….but Elizabeth has used her experience to fuel her creativity and created a brilliant photojournalism project that includes self-portraits, images of friends (depicting their own symptoms and struggles), images from different cultures around the world, and images of prominent activists and medics working in the menopause space.

Tune in to find out more about Elizabeth’s personal experience of menopause, her creative processes, and the insights she has gained from her work with women in other cultures and countries.

You can find the series at https://www.elizabethdalziel.com/index

If you enjoy the podcast please help us grow by sharing this episode, or writing a review.

You can also find me at www.thetripleshift.org and connect with me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmacthomas/