Life, Love and Legacy

Dr Wendy White was out running when a cyclist called back, ‘Careful, there are runners coming.’ Wendy looked behind her. And when I called her a swimmer after she’d swum three kilometres in the sea? She was quite sure she wouldn’t call herself that. I loved those two moments. They got me thinking about how long it can take for a word to catch up with who we already are, and how freeing it can be t...

You can spend years getting on with life before realising that something doesn’t quite fit. You’re doing what’s expected, perhaps even doing it well, but there’s a difference between managing the life you’ve built and feeling comfortably yourself within it. In this week’s Life, Love & Legacy, I’m joined by Dr Wendy White , NHS GP, writer, runner and a woman whose wonderfully dry humour regular...

Can the darkest moments in our lives become sources of extraordinary light? And what might help us find that light, even when the world around us feels increasingly dark and divided? In this week's Life, Love & Legacy Insights, I'm reflecting on my conversation with Kat Applewhite, and two moments that have stayed with me. The first was Kat's beautiful observation that times of great darkness...

Have you ever kept quiet about something that matters to you because you weren’t sure how it would be received? Or found yourself keeping everyone else happy because, somewhere along the way, their happiness became connected to your own sense of safety? In this episode, I’m joined by Kat Applewhite: CEO, coach, entrepreneur, adoptive parent and self-described accidental tech leader, for an honest...

When people really value what you give, stepping back can feel difficult. Their well-intentioned encouragement comes from a place of care, but “we need you” can be hard to hear when you’re trying to understand what needs to change. In my conversation with Michelle Taylor, she spoke about a time when she felt she was walking away from celebrancy. Friends and colleagues told her she couldn’t be done...

Have you ever felt ready to walk away from something you’ve loved, then wondered whether there’s another way forward? Perhaps the work still matters to you, but the way you’re doing it no longer reflects who you’ve become. This week, I’m joined by independent celebrant and celebrant trainer Michelle Taylor, who knows that feeling really well. When we first met at the Independent Celebrants’ Retrea...

Welcome to Season Three of Life, Love & Legacy! How do we bring what we’ve learned into the way we live? How do we make choices that reflect who we are, make room for other people’s experiences, and recognise when something no longer fits? In this opening episode, I introduce seven guests who’ll help us explore identity, belonging, ceremony, connection and what it means to have enough. There’l...

Season Two of Life, Love & Legacy has taken us through recovery, mortality, ritual, changing relationships, identity, trauma, courage and the sometimes uncomfortable work of becoming more fully ourselves. But looking back, I realised these conversations were never really separate stories. Together, they asked a much bigger question: Who do we choose to be when life does not go to plan? Season...

What happens when life changes unexpectedly and the future you imagined is no longer the future in front of you? How do we move forward after loss, illness, disappointment or a major life transition, especially when simply “letting go” feels impossible? My conversation with Richard Tyler left me with far more than I could fit into one Insights episode. There was grief and illness, identity and hea...

[A note before listening: This conversation includes frank discussion of cancer, a life-limiting prognosis, grief, serious illness and some of the physical realities of hospital treatment.] What happens when life becomes almost unbearable? When the future you thought you were heading towards disappears? When there’s no neat resolution, no obvious lesson and no way of simply getting “back to normal...

None of us can resolve every conflict, repair every division or carry responsibility for the darkness of the whole world. But we can pay attention to the choices available to us in the next conversation, the next disagreement, the next difficult moment. In this Insights episode, I return to my conversation with Jo Berry CBE, and to one of the ideas that struck me most strongly: the difference betw...

In 1984, Jo Berry’s father, Sir Anthony Berry MP, was killed in the IRA bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel. Sixteen years later, Jo met Patrick Magee, the man who planted the bomb. That first, unsupported three-hour conversation began an extraordinary relationship and more than 25 years of dialogue, reconciliation and peacebuilding. Most of us will never face a choice on that scale. But what happen...

What part of yourself are you still editing for other people’s comfort? The accent you soften. The opinion you swallow. The ambition you make sound smaller. The thing you want but can’t quite bring yourself to say aloud. At the end of last week’s interview, celebrant Penny Boycott offered one final invitation: “Be unapologetically yourself.” Not simply authentic. Unapologetic. Authenticity allows...

Have you ever found yourself in a life or career that looked perfectly fine from the outside, but somewhere inside you knew it no longer quite fitted? Penny Boycott remembers sitting in the registrar’s office she’d worked so hard to reach, looking at a window she couldn’t actually see out of and wondering whether she really wanted to spend the next 20 years there. She loved the work. She loved peo...

This one is personal. My conversation with Monica Douglas prompted me to listen back to the eulogy I wrote for myself around ten years ago. It was less than three minutes long, but it contains some of the harder parts of my story, alongside the values, relationships and hopes that I wanted to shape the life still ahead of me. And, thankfully, there's also a somewhat lighter reminder that five-year...

What happens when the relationship you thought would last forever can no longer remain as it is? And is it possible to end a relationship without dismissing, destroying or denying everything it once meant? Monica Douglas is a conscious relationship mentor and minister who helps successful men navigate marriage crisis, separation and the question of who they want to become on the other side. Intere...

What if the experiences that change us aren't the ones we push through and conquer, but the ones we allow to transform how we live and love? In this Insights episode, I’m reflecting on my conversation with Lottie Moore and the very different way she approaches challenge, ceremony and transformation. Lottie spoke about the contrast between “bro state” and “bliss state”. One treats the fire as somet...

What might become possible if you stopped asking whether your life looked normal, and started asking whether it felt true? Lottie Moore has lived a life shaped by adventure, ceremony, risk and a remarkable willingness to say yes. She has lived without electricity and running water in both Burkina Faso and Ireland, travelled across Turtle Island and been welcomed into indigenous ceremonies. Yet the...

We often avoid talking about death because it can feel like inviting darkness in, especially when life is challenging or even ebbing away. But what if the opposite is true? In this latest Insights episode, I reflect on my conversation with Katie Costello and the idea that talking more honestly about death can help us live a richer, fuller life. It's not that talking gives us all the answers. Nor d...

What does love look like when someone is dying? Not the polished, sentimental version of love. The real, human kind. The kind that sits at the bedside, makes the tea, starts the difficult conversation, writes three things on a Post-it note, or simply stays present when there is nothing to fix. In this episode, I’m joined by Katie Costello, a multi-award-winning soul midwife, funeral celebrant and...

What if the thing we're most afraid of losing is also the thing we're most afraid to let ourselves have? In my conversation with Tom Fitzsimons, he spoke with extraordinary honesty about only now beginning to understand love. About learning to say it, receive it and trust it. About the fear that can grow when loving people becomes closely tied to losing them. That stayed with me. Because fear rare...

For Tom Fitzsimons, alcohol offered something he’d been searching for since childhood: belonging. After moving from Belfast to England and losing his father at just thirteen, he spent twenty years believing the world was against him, using drink, anger and violence to escape the grief and disconnection he didn’t know how to name. Then running gave him another way forward. Tom went from being unabl...

There are moments when we know life cannot continue as it was. Sometimes the threshold is unmistakable: a death, a relationship breaking open, a truth we can no longer avoid. At other times, it arrives quietly, as the growing realisation that who we’ve been can’t carry us into whatever comes next. Season One of Life, Love & Legacy explored identity, visibility, alignment, kindness, truth and b...

What if legacy is less about how we’re remembered and more about how we’re living now? In this Season One finale, I’m looking back at seven conversations that explored identity, visibility, self-worth, kindness, success, truth and the courage to live more fully as ourselves. What began as an experiment in creating a different kind of conversation became something much deeper. Again and again, the...

Some truths were never really ours. We inherited them, absorbed them, repeated them, and somewhere along the way we began treating them as fact. In this solo Insights episode, I’m reflecting on my conversation with brand strategist, writer and ideas person Matt Thomas, and exploring the themes that stayed with me: truth, rebellion, language, ideas and becoming. Not rebellion as noise, ego or some...