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- [00:02]
A
Hello. Welcome back to Homing. Today's guest is the psychotherapist Julia Samuel MBE, who's one of Britain's leading experts on grief and trauma. Julia has worked with hundreds of families navigating bereavement, including members of the Royal Family. She was a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales, and supported Prince William and Prince Harry following her death. In this conversation, Julia tells me about her own family's experiences of loss and how they shape the emotional atmosphere of her childhood home. We explore the role that home plays in early life and how our earliest experience has become embedded in the nervous system. We discuss belonging and why some people never quite feel settled where they are. And she explains why changing a home can sometimes help us process grief, as well as regaining a sense of agency and making sense of difficult experiences. I found this to be a really fascinating and surprisingly hopeful conversation, and I very much hope you enjoy it as well. Happy listening. Hi, Julia.
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B
Hello, Matt. Nice to meet you.
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A
Yeah, you too. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
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B
Pleasure.
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A
So what I'd really like to do today is look at your work through the lens of the home very specifically. So I think it'd be kind of interesting. So my first question for you is how would you personal define that word home, do you think?
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B
For me, I think it is where I feel both physically and psychologically kind of rooted and a sense of belonging, like it's a door I go through where I can feel myself and all the different versions of myself and feel safe.
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A
Yeah, exactly. That's a great answer. And when you say belonging, do you mean belonging as in you belong to the physical structure of home, do you think, or do you think it's belonging in the sense of the sort of wider community, country, earth and beyond?
- [02:10]
B
I mean, I think it is. So when I kind of walk towards home, I can feel my nervous system dropping and the sort of sigh of, like, relief. You know, I've been busy working, doing out, and then so there's. I think it's in the country. And so it is rooted in the country, in nature. And that green environment has a big part of it and the garden is part of it, but it is really that sense of relief and few. It's like, hello, home. It's like, honestly, home is really. This place is really, really important to me. And it feels like a person. And it feels like a person who. I mean, occasionally is really a pain in the ass when things go wrong, like the roof leaks or, you know, things are broken. But on the whole it's always pleased to see me. It doesn't have bad moods. It's where I rest and eat and play. And I really. It means an enormous amount to me.
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A
I love that. Are you suggesting that. Does it have almost a human character to it, then?
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B
Well, I mean, there's something called object relations where you store inside internal objects and sometimes they're your mother figure, your father figure, important people in your lives. And I have home as an internal object, like thinking of it and being here automatically, I feel safer and happier. I get homesick very, very quickly. So I like. I love going away and I'm so happy. Like when I step off the plane and it's sunny and you feel the warm air. And then after about four days, I kind of already want to get home. And the relief when I get back and I'm like my head on my own pillow in my own bed is huge.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
Even if I've had a really nice time.
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A
Well, it's interesting that, isn't it, actually? Because don't you find that on holiday, you know, we get to the point where we start saying things like, oh, I think I'm ready to go home now, you know, and actually. And then as you. As you're coming into land on the plane, if you've been abroad, for example, you see it with fresh eyes somehow, I think, and everything looks slightly like it's in high definition. And then you walk through your front door and it feels different somehow.
- [04:38]
B
It does. And I think, you know, when you're talking about, does it mean the uk? It's that relief of landing at a British airport. I know where I'm going. It's the familiarity, you know, I get into the traffic even is familiar. Whereas when you're stuck in it abroad, you kind of feel more anxious because you don't really know what on earth's going on. So I think there's. And what we know psychologically is that as human beings, we are pattern, meaning making beings, and we create maps in our minds and we have a particular part of our brain that is wired for evolutionary reasons, for home, so that we could remember home to go back to when we've been hunting or home to go back to when we've been in danger. And so home represents more than just a roof and bricks. You know, that thing of your home is your castle. Is that the right. Is that what it is? I think for those of us that are lucky enough to feel safe in our home, and that is by no means for everyone, and of course not for people who are refugees or homeless. But I think it really has an enormous psychological impact.
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A
Yeah, I agree. I want to ask you about attachments because obviously, you know, there's a lot of. Well, there's John Bowlby in his attachment theory, which is the idea that we attach to our early caregiver and those attachments somehow shape our relations, sometimes into later life. But also, of course, we attach to places as well. So I wondered if you had any thoughts on place, attachment and those early childhood experiences of home, particularly in the first couple of years, and how those shape what comes after.
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B
I mean, I think bowl being attachment, we hold places as feeling embodied emotional connectors to those people. But also in early development is Winnicott, and what he talked about was a holding environment. So if you put kind of Bowlby and Winnicott together, you have this idea of insecure attachment and good enough parenting. The home that you're in is more than shelter. It's a secure base and place where you can develop and recover and. And often heal. But also, if it's negative, and every kind of negative input also has the negative output, if that makes sense.
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A
Yes, it does. So, therefore, to what extent do you think we sort of try and recreate or react against that early environment that we all had?
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B
Well, I mean, I think it's very interesting and very individual. And even when we've had very difficult environments, often we repeat patterns and external environments because they're familiar. And again, that link between familiarity and safety is what is the strong link is that if it's familiar, even if we somehow know it isn't safe, familiar is better than unknown. But I think some people do literally intentionally do the reverse. Like, if they were brought up in a very messy and chaotic home, they become manically tidy. Or if they were brought up in a very tidy home, they can go to the extreme of being messy and kind of everything in between. But I think subliminally we are also influenced by what colors are okay and what's allowed and what isn't allowed by our external environment. You know, like, somehow subliminally pick up what your parents get. Oh, that's a really awful color. Or, you know, I mean, certainly with my face. And that influences you kind of unconsciously. And then you suddenly find you're not using orange or yellow. And then you think, actually, do I personally actually like yellow? Oh, yes, I do. But you've been refusing to have yellow because you've somehow banned it without even knowing that you were banning it.
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A
I think that's so true. I've been writing about that, funnily enough, Julia, Actually, I've also been writing about the idea that. So in my family, we were brought up with the idea that you should never buy a flat or a house that someone else has done up because you're in inverted commas, acquiring, paying for their input and their taste, which I've always thought is such an interesting one. And actually, I've really questioned that in recent years because, of course, doing a refurbishment project is very stressful, it's very expensive, it's not great for your health, takes you away from the children, even more so now. So I love that thing of trying to maybe just take a moment to question those preconceived ideas that you've carried through from your childhood.
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B
So where does that taste come from? And really be. Awareness is, of course, the portal to expansion. The more we're aware of what's going on in us, what isn't going on in us, what we allow, what we don't allow, then that gives us choices. And the minute we have choices, we can get out of our comfort zone and begin to experiment with new shapes, colors, sizes. You could have been brought up that everything modern is disgusting, or vice versa, and then discover. Actually, I really like a mix.
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A
Exactly right. I want to pivot to grief because I think this is obviously your real area of expertise, and I'm interested, first of all, as to how that came about and what were your personal experiences as to why you ended up with that specialism.
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B
So, I mean, I think there were a lot of reasons. I think the most sort of clear biographical one is, in a way, and it's photographed. So both of my parents, by the time they're in their mid-20s, my mum was an orphan. Her mother, her father, her sister and her brother had all died traumatically by the time she was 25. And my father, his father and his brother had died traumatically, and we vaguely heard their names. And there were these black and white photographs of some of the people. So there was a photograph of my Uncle Tony, who was killed in the war, and my Aunt Aileen and my grandmother. But I didn't see photographs of my father's side. I did of my father's father, but there were no stories really, that went with them. And they never really talked about the death or the sadness they felt or the trauma. There were a couple of kind of mini clips. And I think in the way that you're talking about home, there was a lot on top, above the waterline, that you could see in our family and home that looked kind of happy and jolly, and then below the waterline, which is two thirds. If you talk about emotions, there was so much that was unprocessed, unspoken, and that pervaded, I think, our whole family system, all of us, differently. I mean, if you spoke to each of my siblings, they would tell you a completely different story and wouldn't even necessarily agree with me. But for me, that pervaded what was unspoken and unfelt and unacknowledged. You know, in transgenerational trauma, what we kind of say is the pain that isn't processed in one generation passes down to the next generation until someone's prepared to feel the pain. And I think I picked up on all that. So then, unconsciously, I was drawn to working in bereavement. I mean, literally, probably 10 years before I really realized what the kind of underlying reason was.
- [12:32]
A
So interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I find that so fascinating. How would you describe how you took on some of that grief and why you felt it and how it manifested itself if you hadn't personally experienced it? How could someone try and understand that?
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B
I think I felt it by feeling nothing. So there was a kind of numbness. So there was a thinness of emotional experience that I felt. And if you block pain, you also block joy. So I was actually quite good at playing, but I didn't really know how to kind of have a big emotional. In our. Well, we call a window of tolerance to big emotions. I had a narrow tolerance, and I kind of functioned very effectively, but not deeply emotionally. And so I think a lot was cut off. And then as I've been having therapy and, you know, I've been a therapist now for, like, I don't know, 37 years. I've probably had therapy for, like, 45 years. I've processed a lot of stuff and done every type of bloody. Cause if I haven't dealt with it now, I'm never gonna. But stuff still comes up. I don't know if now is the time to say it, but I walked past my childhood home for the first. I'd driven past it often. This is in London, but I walked past it with my best friend only about two months ago, and it was deeply emotional. Looking outside that house and walking around it. And there was a little hole in the wall where my twin brother and I would play, put things through, and that was still there. And the front of the house looked the same. The back looked very different. But, I mean, I remember every single thing about that house. And I got married when I was 20, so I left when I was 20 and I've barely been back. They sold it when I was 23, but I could tell you every color, every step, every room. My bedroom, all of it. The little squeak on the floorboard outside my bedroom that I tried not to step on when I kind of crept out of bed. All those things I remember like it was yesterday and it was like 46 years ago.
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A
How would you describe the emotional atmosphere of that place?
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B
I mean, I think it was a bit like I was describing the kind of myself. So I think above it kind of looked quite jolly. My parents were very social. We were five children. It was quite noisy. But I think there was a lot that was complicated, that was emotional, that didn't. That we could sort of all feel somatically in our bodies. And there were lots of, you know, I was brought up in a very old fashioned way. There were lots of rules then where children were seen and not heard. I didn't have a front door key. I was only had to use the back door. I had to use the back stairs. You know, it was a different time.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of what you're saying resonates with me because in my family, we had a major family trauma. So before I was born, my parents had a daughter who died at a young age. What was called cot death in those days.
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B
I think it's still called cot death.
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A
I mean. Exactly. And it. But I suppose I say. Yeah, I suppose I say in those days just because it did seem to happen a little bit more. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about that.
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B
But it's now. Yeah. Because you've understood more what is protective. But I mean it still happens cot death, unfortunately.
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A
Yeah, yeah. So it's obviously, you know, you'll have seen it a lot, but it's obviously incredibly traumatic for a parent that. And then I think in that emotional climate I was born. And I think that I can imagine that my parents would have been going through a lot emotionally and a bit like you. I've sort of sought to try and make sense of this because their way of dealing with that trauma really was to not talk about it. And I think I have huge respect for them as parents. They gave us an extremely happy childhood and in many ways it was the best way to deal with it because it's how they got through it and they're brilliant, brilliant parents to us. But of course there has to be some sort of low simmer somewhere that finds its way through. And I always wonder whether that found its way a little bit into my own nervous system through pregnancy and early years. So you mentioned the word somatically.
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B
And epigenetics.
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A
And epigenetics. Tell us about epigenetics. And also the somatics of somatic nature of trauma as well.
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B
So, I mean, just as an overarching kind of what research shows is that not every traumatic event gives you PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder, probably 20% of traumatic events give you PTSD. So a single event that is traumatic, that isn't linked to insecure attachment, of lots of kind of small mini traumas before people can recover between six and eight weeks, they kind of very disturbed to begin with, have flashbacks, and then they process it if they get the right support at the time. And so PTSD is often linked more to chronic trauma, where it's continued injury and shock. And, you know, trauma, the Greek word for trauma is wound. So it's a wounding of the psyche. When you're talking about epigenetics and pregnancy and your mom, when a baby dies, that tears up the rule book of life. That moment, everything that you believed and trusted in is torn up. And you don't know, what did I do wrong? Did I fail? Was it the milk I fed her? Was it because I took her to the park yesterday and she got some infection from another child, this terrible regret, like, what did I. Because if you have a child that doesn't thrive and dies, there's this inevitable feeling of failure as a parent. There's an absolute kind of definition of failure as a parent when your child dies. But also it completely reverses your trust in yourself and your body in the future because it has torn up your future as you believed it should be. You should never bury your own child. And I think cot death is, you know, like every death has its unique difficulty. But cot death, because it's silent, because there isn't an infection, because it's invisible, I think leaves so many gaps. And where we have gaps, you often have terror and fear and lots of complex emotions that you don't know what to do with. So your mum, when she was pregnant, I imagine both of them during that pregnancy, and they may have talked about it, may not have talked about it, felt that your belief system is forever and irrevocably changed. I can no longer trust that everything I expected to be okay will be okay. I now know in a way that no one can deny me, that a baby and a child can die. So this pregnancy could die out of the blue for no reason. But then also there's this fear that maybe you'll get meningitis, or it opens the window to fear. Fear that those of us who are lucky enough not to have that happen kind of see it happens to other people. And so epigenetically, it heightens your emotional system, your nervous system, and epigenetically, the heightened state will change your genetic coding as a baby to be in a heightened state. So that you may say to yourself, why am I like this? Just because I'm 10 minutes late? Or so that your response to manageable stresses is higher. And you could be probably defined as a highly sensitive person so that everything that distresses you, rather than just a three or four, it's a 10. And there are lots of ways of learning how to build resilience into your nervous system. I mean, the first is always to recognize it. That's a very long answer. I'm sorry.
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A
It's a fantastic answer. Well, if the first one is that, what are the other ways?
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B
Well, the first one is recognizing, I think everything somatically is again, about awareness. So what we suppress persists. What we repress persists, if you see what I mean. So when we recognize, like, that thing that your body is doing, and we tend to want to push it away, so we work faster at pushing it away and get more done. But actually, that heightens our emotional system into code red 10. But actually, if we pause and take a breath and say, what am I feeling in my body? Where am I feeling it? How stressed do I feel from 0 to 10? What is that about? Just even doing that connects your mind and your body, but also when you're not suppressing it, because emotions are signals of information to say to yourself, something is up, watch out. And if you're ignoring the signal, it just keeps pushing the signal faster and harder. But when you're paying attention to the signal, then you can have your cognitive brain online and go, okay, well, hang on, take a second. Maybe I can do this, maybe I can do that. And then you're more creative about the response to the difficulty, and your whole system goes back down to kind of a two or three.
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A
Now, obviously, this is a podcast about the home, and some people may think, well, what does this have to do with the home? But for me, the reason I've called it homing is because it's this idea that there's also a link between our physical homes and our bodies and our minds, which are homes of sorts as well. And I'm always Really interested to probe that, that link and.
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B
Well, do you know about the polyvagal theories, Dr. Stephen Porges?
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A
I do.
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B
So Deb Dana and well, Deb certainly talking about glimmers, but all of them talk about going back to the home in the safety and the nest of your body, of your calm, you know, the green zone in your body in polyvagal theory. And that when you're in a heightened state, finding the ways that take you back home to safety.
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A
Exactly, exactly. And thank you for pointing that out. That's exactly how I see it. And I suppose to push this slightly further, I mean my parents as an example, as when I was young, they bought and sold a few houses and they would do them up and they would improve them and sell them on partly as a way of frankly making a living because my dad was an architect. But also I've always wondered for all of us that do that, are we also trying to process something? Are we trying to make sense of the world? What's your view on that?
- [23:47]
B
I mean, probably not all of us, but I think one of the great things about our external world and doing upper house is that grief is invisible. Emotions that we feel are invisible. But when we can paint a wall, build a wall, reshape a room, it gives us that active sense of agency and that you can see the impact of what you're doing and that can feel internally such a relief and so you can be motivated. I mean, one of the things I loved about moving here was that after I think I'd been in therapist maybe 16 years when I got here and then my husband and I were we and our children were growing up, we did quite a lot of building and decorating. And because everything I do is invisible, doing something external where I could see the impact of saying, okay, let's paint this green or let's build this wall here or move this window here, I got such a sense of agency and power because grief you feel so, I mean, unbelievably powerless. Doing a room, you go woo. And you can do it and it lasts and it isn't going to die. I mean it can get dry rot and all sorts of things. But basically buildings are very reliable. You know, like I said about this home. And I think that can be a real anchor for one's emotional self. They kind of don't spit at you and turn away from you and horrible to you.
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A
Yeah, exactly. Well, you've raised a good point there. Actually, as you're talking, I was thinking it's very rare, but sometimes of course, that primary territory of ours is compromised through a flood or a fire or a natural disaster or something like that. And that burgles or burgle. And that's why it feels so horrendously personal.
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B
Yes, it really does.
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A
So it causes you to sort of question everything.
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B
In a way, it literally tears up your foundations. And I think that, you know, insurance companies, when they tend to spend two years not giving you the money you've spent years paying for, don't recognize the psychological trauma of having your home turned upside down, whether it's a burglary or a fire or a flood. But also, everything in your house is imbued with memories, so that our body is imbued. But, you know, I look behind me and I can see a photograph that was taken by Don McCullen. He's a great friend of mine. He's a neighbor. So that photograph reminds me of Scotland, where he took it, where we've spent time together, of lunches we've had. Everything that one owns has a story. And so when that's ruined, too, you feel like the story of yourself has been flooded or burned or robbed. And that's very, very distressing.
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A
Yeah, well, exactly. Well, let's ask about that, then. I mean, if we lose someone in our life, what value do those objects hold that remind us of them and contain the memories of them?
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B
I think it's both. So I think the thing that's most powerful is the presence of absence. You know, Dad's chair or his desk or bed or, you know, where all clothes, all of those things that are in the home, whether it's your brother, your partner, your father, your mother, they represent and they smell. So most of our emotions are initially ignited by sound, smell, and what we see, taste and touch. So stuff does all of that. Touching your dad's jersey, smelling it, looking at the chair, the place in the dining room table or the kitchen where they sat, the half empty mug that they used before they had a stroke, all of those things are both used. Both kind of give you a wave of grief. And the task of mourning is to face the reality of the loss. So it updates your brain. Like he is not sitting in his chair in the kitchen. So every time I recognize that and face the reality of that, feel the pain of that, I incrementally adjust to the fact that this person has died. And as you continue through your grieving process, the things that you do to block the pain are the things that do you harm over time. So if you allow the pain to Be your healer. Those things, over time become touchstones to memory in a positive way. So what initially is extremely intense and painful then becomes, I'm going to sleep with that jersey wrapped around me, or I'm going to particularly sit in that chair, because I want to feel close to that person. So it becomes the touchstone to memory. Because when the person dies, our love for them never dies. And then objects are again the portal to connect to them as they were the portal to recognize their loss at the beginning.
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A
That's so interesting. I watched a very powerful documentary recently about parents who had lost children in America in school shootings.
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B
Oh, gosh.
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A
Yeah, it was very beautiful. Quite harrowing. But what it was, this filmmaker had gone in and filmed and photographed the empty bedrooms of the children. And they were. Well, what was so interesting was it was sort of without exception. They were perfectly preserved, almost as shrines, with the posters on the walls and the bed made and all the reminders of those children. I guess the question there is, at what point do we. Are we able to let go of something like that? Because they are obviously, as you say, the child is still there, and the smell on the bedclothes and everything in there reminds them of that person. How do we know when to let the objects go?
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B
I mean, it's very subjective, and it depends on the person, their psychological history and their history of loss, their relationship with the person that died, the circumstances of the death, the support that they get at the time and after the death. All of that will predict how much we hold on to what we can hold onto. And I never think about grieving as letting go, but it is about accommodating, like building your life around the loss. And so when I've worked with families, and I've worked with huge numbers of families where a child has died, some families within two or three years want to change the bedroom. Maybe the other sibling will go and live in there. But they'll put some of their clothes in a trunk that's in the sitting room that's inside the trunk so people can't see them. Or they'll make patchworks covers from the shirts and the pajamas and the top so that they're still there, but they're kind of not purpose, but kind of reinvented so you can feel close to them without actually just being the shirt. And some people, like in this Havisham in Dickens, never move a thing. And it becomes a shrine that this is Mat's room and nothing is moved. Sometimes people go in and sit there and remember and Be sad. Sometimes it's the door that's closed that no one goes in there. And so it really is subjective and different with each one. And I don't think there is a right or a wrong way. I think what's important and helpful is within a family system to talk about it together. So if. When things are not addressed, I think they can get stuck, and so then no one does anything. But actually, if you give members of the family to allow them to be different and to have thoughts and want change and then work out together, what you're going to do as a family, I think is really helpful for the family system to adapt and accommodate the loss of this person.
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A
So when it doesn't get discussed enough and it gets stuck, to use your word, then what?
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B
So grief is naturally adaptive, and we can get stuck in being restorative, like pushing on, like completely wrecking the room, not thinking about it, not being sensitive to it, or holding on to the loss, like not touching anything in the room. And what you want is an oscillation, a movement between the two, because then you're adapting and changing. And grief is a form of learning. You're updating your mind to know that I will love this person forever. And the reality is they're no longer physically present. And so you can keep that room and still be adaptive, but it depends on your relationship to it. So if it's still like very frozen, fossilized grief, then that can become chronic grief that isn't naturally adapting and that is often influenced by trauma, but also very influenced by how much support you get at the time and after the death.
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A
I recorded a podcast a few years ago with Ruth Rogers, who has the brilliant restaurant the River Cafe in London. And it was not long after the death of her husband, Richard Rogers, the architect. And I recorded it in her home, which was really humbling in some ways because she talked about how so many things within the home reminded her of Richard. And I was interested by that because I also know other people who've sort of had the opposite experience, where everything reminds them of that person kind of in a bad way or in a negative way, and they feel like they hear that person's voice around the place and they sort of don't want that, and they smell them and they somehow feel, okay, I need to sort of shed myself of this place in order to move on. What are your thoughts on that? Why do we have different responses there, and what do we do with that?
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B
We have different responses because we're different people. You know, we're as different on the inside as we look on the, on the outside and there isn't a right response. And I think it can also depend where we are in our life. You know, if you're older and it might be that moving forward and getting on with life and living and loving even when you're grieving has a very different external appearance. Like holding onto all your stuff to when you're in your 30s, where moving forward might be more like, I really need to change everything. I may have to move or I may have to redo everything because I've got another 50 years or 60 years of life and I really. So I think it can be that. So there isn't a right or wrong.
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A
Yeah. Okay. Do you have any thoughts around how we might use our home environments to help us through a period of grief? I mean, are there any particular things you think we can do?
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B
I think what really helps with place in this dual process of loss orientation and restoration orientation, I think we can develop rituals which are habits with soul that give us opportunities to do the loss work, remember and connect to the person that's died. So it may be looking at a photograph, it may be touching their clothes, it may be making their favorite dish in the kitchen, it may be sitting in their chair, it may be, you know, holding onto their teddy, whatever. It is where you connect your grief and allow yourself to emote and grieve. And that could be in a particular room that you regularly go to. So were habit forming beings. And place becomes part of how we associate with habits. So the minute you step into a particular room that you use in a particular way, your system expects you to do it. So that supports the processing. But then you could use another room to like this is where I'm going to be restorational, where I'm going to have new ideas, I'm going to contact people, I'm going to be social, I'm going to go out into the garden, I'm going to move, I'm going to move forward with my life and let myself have fun and give myself permission to love and live. And so I think place can really be a holder where we can have the container to allow both and then the specificity where we move towards a particular aspect of it by using a room or an object and a habit. You haven't heard that before.
- [36:45]
A
I just think, I think you put it very succinctly. I completely agree with you. And as you were talking I was thinking, you know, some of us are lucky to have space around us and Other others of us live in quite constrained, constricted environments. I wondered about how important it is for us to try to find some personal space within the home that we're living in and how we kind of go about that. What do you think about that?
- [37:10]
B
I mean, I think, you know, and in Eastern culture, that definitely happens in very small spaces where there's a shrine with an image and a candle and maybe flowers that are in a small. You know, it can be on a table, it can be in a little alcove, it can be in a corner of a room. And that's where that holds the spiritual connection to the person that's died and all their ancestors. And so I don't think you need rooms to do it. You can choose spaces within a small space to do that.
- [37:43]
A
I just want to sort of move on to this idea of belonging to. Why do you think some people spend a lot of their lives moving around a lot, trying to put down roots, but never quite managing it, never feeling settled somewhere? What do you think on that?
- [37:57]
B
I think that's a lot to do with their early developmental years of anxiety and insecurity and unpredictability. And so when you talked about Bowlby at the beginning and Winnicott, you know, if we have reliable, predictable, good enough parenting, we have that sense of security that gives us, as an idea, it's like an oak tree with deep foundations where we can root and kind of grow and dwell. And if we have a lot of precarity because it was unpredictable or violent or traumatic, then we have this very narrow roots and it's stony ground. And so that we're always using our external world to try and settle our internal world. But actually it's the internal world that is probably driving the move. And if we can recognize that, then we can, I think, change our relationship with our external world and begin to kind of hold steady and find ways of rooting ourselves and being different in place. But if we're constantly moving because we think this time it's going to be right, we're just doing the same pattern over and over and getting the same negative result.
- [39:17]
A
Exactly right. Yeah. Just because some people might not be aware of Donald Winnicott, this idea of the good enough parent that he came up with, could you just put some colour on that for people that might not know?
- [39:29]
B
So what he talked about was the very opposite of perfect parents. So that if you know that a child has to learn to be able to hate you and to learn to recover from you making mistakes and forgetting to Pick them up from school. But the big thing with the good enough parent is that you repair after the rupture and you recognize it and you reconnect rather than dismissing the child like you're making too much of us. Shut up. So that the child trusts in your failures as much as your good actions, because you repair afterwards.
- [40:14]
A
Okay, so just finishing up with belonging then. I mean, what do you think when people do move around a lot or they move from one area of the country to another, or they might move from the city to the countryside or from one postcode to another or. So many of us do it, you've described that we're sort of trying to make up for some kind of internal.
- [40:36]
B
I think that can be the reason you can be just wired that you really flourish in change. So, I mean, that is not me. I am, because of my upbringing, I am the most habitual, rooted, don't move person on the planet. But you can get people who are really healthy and strong and flourish, who love change, who love moving, who thrive from being in a different place, a different country, learning a different language. So it isn't always from precarity and insecurity that people move. What I think the tell is how they feel when they're there, what the expectation is, what the hope is, and then what the outcome is. And if you find you actually feel as shit as you did when you got there, then it's probably because of some internal thing. But actually if you find that I'm, you know, and some people do, there's an AA term which is doing a geographic, which is like when you go away from your bad things, your bad things travel with you. I think that can be true, but I think it can also be true sometimes you really have to go to a very different place to discover the unknown parts of yourself that just arise from the habit of being in the same place. And I have known people like move abroad for 10 years and really discover whole new versions and identities of themselves because they're not someone's sister or child. They're not in the area that they knew and they just grew. So I think it's not a black and white simple geography, internal geography and external geography.
- [42:17]
A
I think you said that a lot today actually, that it's, you know, it's no one size fits all for any of this stuff. And it's. It's so true, isn't it? I think they've done studies on this that it takes around six months to a year, I think. So basically, if you move to A new place, especially kind of thinking about the fabric of the building. You're really excited about it for that first period of time. It's kind of like a love affair. It's like falling in love. And people say that, don't they? They say it was meant to be. It was a process of fate. You know, the house found me and the endorphins are flowing and it's fascinating to watch. But of course, we all know that the early throes of that love affair give way to something more practical. To your point about the roof needs repairing or there's a cracked window or it's got damp or wrong on. Chatterjee talks about micro stress doses, which I really like in relation to the home. So we've all got these things in the house that we haven't dealt with with a dripping tap, a door handle that never quite closes or whatever. Yeah, exactly. We all have them. It seems to me that once those more practical considerations take over and the financial implications of living in a place take over, that's when you can start to feel unsettled and start dreaming about another place again. Again, not everyone has the same experience, as you say, but I think that's true.
- [43:40]
B
I also think the intentional experiences and environment that you create within that place makes a big difference. So when we first moved here, we've got four children. None of the children wanted to move here. They were furious.
- [43:58]
A
So where are you? In Somerset, is that right?
- [44:00]
B
I'm in Somerset. And children don't like change on the whole. I mean, some children do, but on the whole, children like familiarity and stability and habit. And my children, our children were furious coming here and hated it. And we very intentionally did up their bedrooms first and gave them agency. What color do you want your walls? What are you going to do? I mean, we took 10 years to do up the house, but we did theirs within about three, their rooms within about three or four months. But we also were lucky enough that we had Christmas and then we had some birthdays and then we had some celebrations. And within about three years we had created enough good memories, get them to have their friends to come and stay doing silly things, bringing some of the habits that we had from our previous home here that we developed, that they had choices over, like, I don't know, dens in the woods or picnics and things. And so I think it's memories, good memories can help build your attachment to a new place. And I think you intentionally need to kind of think about those, what you're going to do to make them happen.
- [45:21]
A
So how many years have you been there now?
- [45:23]
B
25.
- [45:24]
A
25 years. Could you see yourself moving on from there?
- [45:28]
B
Never. I have literally planned my death here.
- [45:31]
A
Are you serious?
- [45:32]
B
Yes, yes.
- [45:33]
A
Go on, go on. Tell me about that then.
- [45:34]
B
I mean, I'm upstairs and so I've spotted the room that I can go to when I found. I mean, this is. If I don't die tomorrow, which I could also do, but if I live into older age, I'm going to be on a floor that doesn't have stairs, a smaller room, but it looks into the garden, and I'll be able to use just three little rooms. Then when I die, or whoever dies last between me and my husband, the children will sell the house.
- [46:01]
A
Why do so many of us feel that urge to be at home in our final days like that? What is it about it?
- [46:09]
B
Well, I mean, I'm not 100% sure about the research, but it's something like 80% prefer to die at home, but only 50% do. Whatever the stat is, it's much, much less that do die at home. And it's because that sense of safety and memory and familiarity and hospitals are noisy and disturbing and frightening. And so unless you need the medical treatment of the equipment that hospitals offer, if you're in palliative care and you're dying and you can have a palliative care team visit you and give you morphine, then I think anyone would rather die at home.
- [46:49]
A
I always think it's a very interesting phraseology we have where we say, you know, someone's going into a home, which is obviously a care home, but the reality of that is quite unhomely, actually, isn't.
- [47:02]
B
Is. Have you seen these new developments? There was one I saw about two weeks ago of a group of older women that bought a place together and they've made their own kind of care home.
- [47:13]
A
Okay, No, I haven't seen that.
- [47:14]
B
No, I saw it in the papers about two weeks ago. I mean, obviously for the government, it is an enormous issue of everyone living longer with multiple chronic diseases, not working and not having saved or having a pension, and who's going to look after them and how they're going to be cared for. That is not an answer that is coming anytime soon.
- [47:38]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just before we wrap up, Julia, is there anything else that you want to cover on this subject of the home and grief that you think we haven't touched on?
- [47:47]
B
I mean, we're touching on it, but I do think within families like me talking about dying here, the More we talk about death as much as we talk about life and birth, then the less fear there is and the less regret there is. And so that if you talk to your parents and ask them, you know, where do you want to die? What are you frightened of about dying? What do you want for your funeral? Do you want to be cremated or do you want to be buried? What's important to you? And have those conversations, that can change, too. It can evolve. Do you want to die at home? Then at a time that is so stressful and you feel so much fear, you'll have knowledge. And that knowledge will give you confidence to make informed decisions for your parents when they're not able to make them for themselves. And it also protects the sibling group of not fighting, because everyone was there. Everyone heard it. This is what Mum or Dad wanted.
- [48:44]
A
Okay, so you're a planner. You think it's good to plan it.
- [48:48]
B
I'm a planner. And also passwords, like, put your passwords. I mean, I'm sure now there's some brilliant AI thing, but, you know, the distress when people can't get into their computers and their bank accounts and their phones because they didn't know their passwords. So all of those things just being kind, thinking about. Catherine Mannix is a brilliant palliative care consultant. She's retired now. She wrote a brilliant book called the End In Mind. Talks about tender conversations. And it wouldn't be one conversation at once. It would be a series of conversations over time.
- [49:21]
A
Yeah. So interesting. And also, there's also a lifetime of objects and belongings that we all carry with us as well.
- [49:29]
B
Do you remember Neil McGregor, who is the director of the British Museum, who did that brilliant book and radio series called the History of the world in 100 objects? And every object represented a civilization or a particular aspect of us as human beings. And I definitely think within our families, we could. I mean, we'd probably make it the history of this person in 20 objects. But it could be their pen. It could be their favorite cooking pot. It could be their vase. It could be. And then that would tell so many stories about that person.
- [50:09]
A
Yeah, Exactly. I'm approaching 50 now, Julia. Right. So you could class me as in the midlife phase of life, maybe.
- [50:18]
B
It's not that I could. I would. Because that's what you are.
- [50:22]
A
Okay, thanks. Thank you.
- [50:24]
B
I mean, you're more than. If you're gonna be more than 90, that's still quite unlikely. So you're way more than midlife.
- [50:30]
A
Exactly. So I'm over the hill. In other Words.
- [50:32]
B
You're just in denial about what midlife is.
- [50:36]
A
I'm in horrible denial about it, yeah. But I'm feeling a bit of an urge to reduce. And by that I mean I don't. I'm actually not in a mood for amassing more things. I kind of feel like trying to divest a bit. And I think that is also an instinct that quite a few people I've interviewed over the last few years have also described to me. Lucinda Chambers, for example, who worked at Vogue for so many years, she'd said that her mother, when she reached her 50s, her mother had collected lots and lots of stuff, and then she basically shed all of it. And she kept three paintings that she loved, that she knew she would pass on one to each of her children, and that was it. And she'd lived in very modest surrounds. Polly Morgan, an artist I spoke to, she said she just wants to live like a Japanese minimalist with one knife and fork and a plate, and that's it. What do you make of that? I mean, why are we feeling that instinct? And is that something to do with moving closer to the end of life, or what is that, do you reckon?
- [51:40]
B
It's really interesting. I think it is a kind of Zen approach, isn't it, that so much stuff creates chaos and a sense of discombobulation. And I want to feel this real simple harmony with myself and the outside world. And that harmony can come from one picture, one cutlery set and one room that really kind of soothes me and calms me. And there's. I think it's Dutch or Swedish. There's a word for it that is cultural in Northern Europe, where as the older generation, they start getting rid of their stuff and clearing it. I mean, from my friends who are. I'm 66, my friends, their parents have been dying for the last sort of 10, 15 years. The opposite has been true, where their parents did not move or clear anything. And that is a dreadful burden and conflict for families because there's just so much stuff that has never been dealt with. So I think your idea is easier to inherit than kind of totally un. You know. So a great friend of mine's father died as a last parent, and they had been in the same house for 60 years. So there was 60 years of stuff it's taken months and months to clear, which is quite a burden for your children, I must say.
- [53:09]
A
Okay. So it's actually about thinking ahead slightly and maybe thinking what you're leaving behind for others.
- [53:14]
B
But also, I think, as we mature, I Hope we get to recognizing that stuff isn't what gives us joy, it's connection to others, its experiences, its nature, its simplicity, you know, delicious food rather than buying a whole new, I don't know, wardrobe or something. So I think as we age, hopefully we do get wiser and we recognize that it is the joy and the gold in our life is our relationships that predict our outcome and our longevity actually much more than it is our status or our wealth or what we spend our money on.
- [53:58]
A
So true. You put me in mind of a while back I did a podcast with a Japanese born architect called Takeru Shimazaki and we titled it Do We Really Need More Stuff? Because his whole angle was there's enough in the World already. He told a really lovely story about how he wears his grandfather's cashmere jumpers that have been passed down the generations. And I just loved that so much.
- [54:26]
B
They obviously don't have moths.
- [54:27]
A
I know, that's what I thought. But I really urge people to listen to that because he's absolutely fantastic. It's a really great message. It chimes with what you've just said. But Julia, I've massively enjoyed this. There's so much wisdom there. I think there's so much good advice. And these are not things that we particularly always want to have to think about, of course, but I think they're hugely valuable. So, yeah, thank you. I've really enjoyed it.
- [54:50]
B
Thank you. I've really enjoyed it too, and I hope it's useful.
- [54:53]
A
It will be. Thank you to the brilliant Julia Samuel and thanks to all of you for being here, as always. If you're new to the podcast, you might be interested to know that we do house tours with lots of our guests and you can watch those over on Patreon. So you'll find us on YouTube and Instagram as well, if you prefer. And the handle for all of those is omingwithmat. This episode was produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again folks and talk to you very, very soon. Bye for now.