Episode 59
The Spicy Book Author
Spicy book author Sara Madderson joins Beyond the Surface to explore the intersections of faith, sexuality, and personal identity, drawing from her convent education in Dublin and Manchester. She reflects on the pervasive guilt and shame instilled by Catholic teachings and the ways purity culture shaped her understanding of desire and repression.
As the conversation unfolds, Sara discusses her literary work, including novels written under the pen name Elodie Hart, which challenge traditional narratives by exploring sexuality (sometimes within religious contexts). Through her writing, she reclaims her story and invites readers to confront the often-taboo tensions between faith, sex and self-expression. This episode offers a thought-provoking look at the power of literature to spark dialogue, promote healing, and challenge deeply ingrained beliefs about autonomy, desire, and self-acceptance.
Who Is Sara?
Sara Madderson is the person behind the pen name Elodie Hart, an author of super spicy contemporary romance with side helpings of Catholic trauma and priest kink.
Connect With Us
- You can find all of Sara/Elodie's books on her website - https://elodiehartsaramaddersonshop.myshopify.com/
- You can also connect via Instagram, Facebook or her Facebook group.
- You can find out more about Sam on her website - www.anchoredcounsellingservices.com.au
- To connect with Sam on Instagram - @anchoredcounsellingservices
- Want to contact with Sam about the podcast or therapy? Use this contact form.
Transcript
I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gundagara land and people. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today.
I recognise the deep connection that first nations people have to this land, their enduring culture and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Speaker B:Hey there and welcome to beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control occult communities and are deconstructing their faith.
I'm your host, Sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced and the insights they've gained.
Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place. This is beyond the surface. Hey, friends, before we dive into today's episode, I just want to give a quick heads up about the conversation that.
Speaker C:You'Re about to hear.
Speaker B:My guest today is the incredible Sarah Madderson, who, under her pen name, Elodie Hart, writes some very, very spicy books.
And as part of our chat, we touch on some of the themes in her work, including some sexual practices in religious settings and role play involving religious figures, particularly in the Catholic context. Now, just to be clear, everything we discuss is purely fictional and takes place within the context of consenting adults bringing fantasy life.
There is nothing explicit in this episode, but I do want to acknowledge that these topics might not be for everyone. If that's you, that's no problem. You just might want to sit this one out or challenge yourself, see how you feel and stop it if you need.
But if you're still with me and ready for a conversation that is equal parts fascinating and insightful, and, let's be honest, just a full blown fangirl moment for me, then let's get into it.
Speaker C:Welcome, Sarah. Thanks for joining me.
Speaker D:Thank you for having me. I'm excited.
Speaker C:I am borderline irrationally excited for this episode. My regular listeners will probably recognize that my tone just seems like significantly more perky in this episode.
And like I said to you before we hit record, I am just. I'm just such a fan I'm just such a fan. Oh. And, and I have been like, hinting.
I don't usually like hint at guests on my social media, but I have been hinting about your appearance because you're a little bit unlike any other guest I've had in that. Most of my guests are people in the religious trauma deconstruction space specifically.
Speaker D:You are not in that qualifications.
Speaker C:But you do have a story in this space still. So before we get started, tell everybody where in the world you are. Let's start there.
Speaker D:I'm in London. Yeah. So I'm, I'm Irish. I was brought up in Dublin, but I've lived in London for 24 years and I love it. It's my adopted home.
Speaker C:Oh, lovely. We actually did 12 days of our honeymoon in love in London and just like fell in love with the city. It beautiful.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's a gorgeous city.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:Very special.
Speaker C:Now I like to start these episodes with like a super duper vague question because I like, see where it takes us. And so I, I start the episode with. Where does your story start?
Speaker D:It starts with my dad's company going bust when I was 10 and us moving to Manchester, which is in the northwest of England. I did almost all of my primary education in a convent, a Dominican convent in Dublin.
And then I did my secondary education in a Loretto convent in Manchester.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker D:But I guess that was the beginning of my kind of fish out of water story, if you like.
Speaker C:Now I know one of those terms, I don't know the second. So I'm wondering, and I'm not going to be surprised if people don't know that. What are those two, what's the differences between those two convents?
Speaker D:The Dominican order was, is like your quintessential kind of penguin nun. You know, the ones in the black. It's a black and white uniform. There were. Everyone wore a wimple. A wimple had headpiece.
There were some of the very old nuns who had the proper sound of music up to their chin kind of headpiece on, who were pretty spooky. And then the Loretto nuns are more of a working order of nuns. They tend to be out in the world a bit more.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker D:Doing a lot of charity work and being out and about. So they were a bit more urban, I guess.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:But yeah. 14 years of convent education.
Speaker C:Yes. So what was that like for you to grow up in that environment and what were you taught in those environments?
Speaker D:I guess we could go off on a whole none tangent here because I have a lot of thoughts And I'm gonna go out, you know, I'm just gonna put it out there that a lot of the nuns who taught me were absolutely awful. They were just awful human beings.
And I think I have a lot more compassion for probably why they were awful human beings now than I maybe did when I was little. Yeah, I, I don't know if your question pertains to school or to kind of growing up in a Catholic environment.
Speaker C:Happy for you to take it wherever you feel you want to.
Speaker D:I.
When you sent me a list of kind of potential questions, I think I've been laughing since I got the list about the first question, which was, how did you discover your faith? Yeah, because it was like being in the Truman show, like the movie, you know, where he doesn't know that he's in a TV show. He thinks that's.
world. And so In Catholic in:Yeah, I didn't know any people of color. I certainly didn't know any people who were Jewish. Catholic people didn't really talk to Protestant people then. Yeah, there were. It was.
Every single person I knew was Catholic. My mum was from a family of six kids, my dad was from a family of seven kids.
So the idea that there was ever any element of discovery is just completely false. It was, it was kind of like knowing you're right handed. There was, it was as part of who you were as, as any other part of you.
And I never, I was never, ever. And I still haven't really been officially ever presented with a. An alternative.
And Manchester was kind of like a microcosm of that because we moved purposefully to a kind of little enclave which was very much a Catholic ghetto, if you like. And.
And again, I was at a Catholic school, so the community was very, it's very, very Irish because it's only over the Irish Sea, which is a tiny stretch of sea, that part of England is very Irish. So my parents, you know, wanted to go somewhere where they would feel like they belonged. And so, yeah, that continued.
Speaker C:What were you taught about in terms of like the faith and how you were to view yourself and the world around you?
Speaker D:Yeah, I don't ever remember. I was too young to really remember what that felt like in Dublin.
But in Manchester, religious education was, was a part of the syllabus, obviously, and I think it colored everything.
So we were taught about other faiths in the same way that you have a geography lesson where you Learn about other countries, you learn about their beliefs and their structure. It was all very much obviously focused on organized religion. There were elements of theology. We did quite a lot of theology as we got older.
I also have a degree and a master's in history, so I learned a lot of theology through that because I studied the Reformation quite extensively. But the main issue in school was that there was never any. No debate was even tolerated, let alone encouraged.
There was one truth, that was what we were taught. And to even question any of that was considered very blasphemous and disrespectful. So it was a. There, there was no. There was no room for debate.
And I particularly remember my aging kind of spinster religious education teacher teaching us sex ed, which was the closest thing we got to sex ed, and that was abstinence. And we learned the rhythm method and the mucus method for understanding when you were fertile.
Speaker C:What is that? I've not heard that.
Speaker D:Was it. Oh, oh, the idea that you, you can kind of, if you're, you know, producing mucus, you're. You're ovulating, so that's when you know you're fertile.
So you should probably abstain. So contraception was a hard. No. The school wouldn't even.
The school wouldn't even donate to charities like Oxfam that, that use contraception, that give away contraception. So, yeah, it was very much. This is the line, Comply or die. There's no room for any discussion here. This is the. This is the truth.
This is the one truth. And everyone else, I always feel like it's my experience of Catholicism is it's very self righteous and it's very much. Everyone is very.
Everyone else is very deluded. God bless them and they haven't seen the light and they're all going to hell.
Speaker C:Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker D:Spanish Inquisition, the infidel. You know, slightly less bloodthirsty, but equally judgmental. Never any idea that other people might have it, right?
Speaker C:No, I'm not sure. Evangelical Christianity is much better with that.
Speaker D:No, like, they're all.
Speaker C:I feel like there's a song. I think it's by Candy Carpenter and she writes music based around her deconstruction.
Speaker D:And.
Speaker C:And one of the lines in her song is everybody goes to hell in someone else's religion. And it's like every religion thinks they're the one true church and the right religion. What else has got it wrong?
Which, you know, that's why we have so many issues.
Speaker D:The chosen ones. Right. The chosen race. And yeah, it's very us. It's very us and them. And I've always found it to be a very defensive religion.
And I think, you know, if you look at the history of theology, that Catholic Christianity and Catholicism were one and the same until Luther came. Martin Luther came along and protested because it was so.
The church was so rife with abuse and he kind of gazed inward and the early Protestants, I actually had quite a lot of sympathy for them, for their beliefs. So the Catholic Church has had to defend itself against a whole host of, of things. And so I feel like it's very much a fear based kind of structure.
We can't let any, we can't give anyone an inch because they might take a mile and then they might, they might realize, you know, it's like, it's like the Truman show again. When his character goes to the edge of the, of the world, he just gets a bit too close to. Yeah, for comfort, right?
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely. At any point. I mean, obviously it's a bit tricky when, you know, you grew up with that faith and being taught to you from your family.
Was the faith ever something that became personal for you or was it always just the space and the culture that you were raised with?
Speaker D:I think it does become personal as you get older and trying to figure this stuff out. When you have a very. What's the word? There's like an incumbent system that you have been given, so that's your default.
So trying to, trying to worm your way out of that is very difficult. I found it very difficult. And I have a lot of. You have a very strong rule follower, good girl part.
I think growing up in a very patriarchal society, that's not a particularly a particular surprise. But I never got the memo that I was allowed to explore any of this for myself.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And I went through the, the key stages of Catholicism. I did, I did. I made my first confession. I made my first Holy Communion when I was 12. I made my.
I, I was confirmed and, and like, you know, a lot of cultures similar to Judaism, I guess that the idea of a confirmation is that you are old enough to make up your mind. But I would say that as a 12 year old who's been raised in a kind of echo chamber, that is not the case.
And so I, I feel like, and again, this is my, this is my kind of pet peeve. This is, this is me. But I feel like there's a lot of language in Catholicism around lapsed Catholics and that, that has always.
I think I put that in one of my books. But that's always suggest you couldn't hack it. You didn't have the moral fortitude. You couldn't, you, you didn't have what it took to make the cut.
So you've lapsed. Yeah. And it's. Or it's laziness or it's selfishness. And I always felt so. I don't think I, I struggled with.
I'm sure I did struggle a lot of my, I did struggle a lot of my teenage years but I don't remember struggling with my faith.
It was more when I was in my 20s after I'd got away to university and I'd seen a different side of life and I'd met different people and then I was working in London and I was in a very, very intense job. I was working in a bank on a trading floor. It was 60 hours a week. The money was insane.
It was kind of like being thrown out of church into the wolf of Wall street.
And, and then that felt very much like I've either got to choose a spiritual life which for me at that point equated to the Catholic Church or I've got to lapse and just become this kind of creature of sin and materialism which is very, very much a cliche. You know, what the church warns you about and, and those.
And it felt like a sliding scale that I was sliding down and those were the only two options that felt open to me. So kind of total atheism or, or going to church. And so I, I think I struggled a lot in my twenties with feeling deep down that it was a lot of.
It felt in my mind to be like a crock of. But still going to mass every now and again and still feeling very guilty when I wasn't going to massage.
Speaker C:And guilt is one of those, like guilt is almost a defining factor for you know, it is any type of Catholic. Right.
Speaker D:You're not a good Catholic if you don't feel guilty.
Speaker C:Yes. Like you're doomed. Shame, self sacrifice.
Like it's all, it's all just wrapped up in like you said, a very fear based environment and type of theology.
Speaker D:Oh, don't get. I mean the fear based thing. I think that's what it is. I was doing a project with my 12 year old daughter the other day.
She's doing medieval Christianity and in history and we were talking about whether the church or state had more authority and, and I was trying to explain to her that, you know, in those days obviously there were. People had a lot more reasons to believe in an organized religion. Than we do. But she, she felt very much.
I was trying to explain to her that the church was a very effective way of controlling people.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And it is fear based. It's. There's a carrot and a stick. Right. Heaven and hell.
And if you, if you don't stick to the very clear, very defined guidelines that they helpfully, you know, furnish you with.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:Then you're probably going to go to hell.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker C:Which makes every choice you make. Not actually a choice. Because when you are threatened with like eternal damnation. Yeah. It's not really a choice.
Speaker D:It's not a choice.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:And you're not really doing it for intrinsic reasons. You're doing it because you feel like it's the safe option.
It's like I'm just going to, I'm, I'm going to play this, get the game safely here and hope that, you know, St. Peter upheld, you know, uphold his end of the bargain when I get to the gates of heaven.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:But I always found that, I think that was one of the things that for me started to. That was one of the cracks that you, for me, the Catholic Church is. So it's very over engineered, if you think about.
And also in Protestantism, the catechism, the endless amounts of dogma, someone has thought this through very, very thoroughly. Right.
Speaker C:Mm. Yes.
Speaker D:So for me, I was just like, it's. Is it something spiritual, really? Be that over engineered seems.
And again, I think I said this in one of my books, but it's almost the idea that we're just going to. It's like a legal team. We're just going to bury you in the small print. So you haven't even got a chance.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely. It's like love, but with a bunch of terms and conditions attached to it.
Speaker D:Yeah. It's conditional love, which is very ironic given what it still does.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
And I mean, you mentioned, I guess, the, the Catholic version of sex education, but I know that purity culture is not just an evangelical thing and Catholicism just has their own flavor of purity culture. So what was that like for you as a teenager growing up with that, that type of messaging as a young woman?
Speaker D:Incredibly, incredibly damaging. And I wouldn't even say as a young woman. I'm still dealing with it. And I, I get a lot of, I get a lot of messages from readers about this stuff.
And I have a lot of. I have a lot of readers in the US who grew up in the Bible Belt.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And had the same message. I had a reader message me the other day saying, I was told never. And she's my age, she's in her 40s.
I was told that the reason you don't have sex before marriage is because it's so incredibly painful, physically painful, that only the love of your, the love you have for your husband can surmount that pain, can make the pain worthwhile.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker D:That's a whole other level of fear based.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:I think one of the very clear messages that you get as a, as a Catholic, especially as a woman, is that your body doesn't belong to you.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:It's a vessel for your soul, I guess. And I'm trying to explain. I'm fine. I'm struggling to find the words to explain what purity culture. Because it was so completely hard line.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And you know, spoiler alert. I worked it out for myself eventually and didn't, you know, didn't wait till I was married. But I never felt comfortable with it.
It still always felt dirty. You know, everything, everything felt dirty. And the idea that sex is anything other than a method of procreation was never, never mooted.
And if you, if I, if I look back now at the kind of sex education I want my kids to have, and they are, you know, I have a 14 year old boy and a 12 year old girl.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:The idea that it was all just brushed under the carpet, so a lot of it just wasn't dealt with because we can't teach them about condoms because it's not, it's a sin to use them. So therefore we're not even going to mention it.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:It's so irresponsible. Mm. You know, the morning after pill was as much of a crime, as much of a sin as abortion was. And so I think we were just woefully underprepared.
And again, I kind of feel a bit silly. I grew up in this very, very, very protected atmosphere of an all girls school.
And I didn't, I didn't even know that it was something we could, we could fight back against, I guess. But I think that purity culture is so dangerous.
And I've definitely, I've definitely kind of treated myself by writing those books which are very spicy, but they've gone up in a straight line and my writing has gone up in a straight line.
And there were, you know, there was a time towards the beginning of my author career where I couldn't even bring myself to write the word dick because it felt too rude.
And so I think my books are a way of me living vicariously in a way that I didn't myself and teaching these characters who are much younger than me that it's okay to enjoy your body and that really, if adults two or more are consenting, then who cares? Like it's, it's no one's fucking business.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And this is the thing that I'm still really trying to get over myself. And I know a lot of women my age are, and I'm, I'm horrified. And I'm also impressed because, God, they played a good game. Like it's effective, right?
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, it works.
Speaker D:And I now I know more about, you know, neuroplasticity and things like that. And I think back to St. Ignatius of Loyola's comments of give me a boy before the age of seven and I'll give you a man.
And now that just sends shivers down my spine because if you tell a kid that young that something is categorically true and it's a fact, not, not an opinion or a belief, then they will take that on board.
And you, you can't really undo that because it's so deeply subconscious and it's so embedded in your nervous system's perception of the world around you.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker D:Scary as hell.
Speaker C:Yeah.
I mean, there is a reason why, you know, we talk about, you know, I say we as like people who talk about religious trauma refer to, you know, religious conditioning and purity, culture, trauma and indoctrination as it is like hardwired into your nervous system. And it's really hard to rewire that. It's not impossible, but it's certainly not going to. It's much harder to wire it in than it is to rewire it.
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker C:And, and it's so I think it's also really helpful for people to hear you say like you're still dealing with it because it is something that is not. I think purity culture in its essence is just a shame based ideology.
And when, you know, even 20, 30, 40 years down the track, people are still dealing with it, there's still the shame attached to it that they're still dealing with it.
And so even when we're out of it, we're still racked with that shame that there is something wrong with me that now that I can't, I can't get over that I can't, you know, it's not, it's not a physical injury where you can just, no, break the bone, you know, mended and be done with it.
Speaker D:I've been doing a lot of work on my nervous system this year. Over the past year. My author coach got me on To a woman called Sarah Baldwin, who has amazing. She's a somatic practitioner. Do you know her?
Speaker C:I know. I know the name. Yeah.
Speaker D:Yeah, she's amazing. And I've got to learn a lot more, but my God. Yeah. It's been a can of worms. And I think the lesson I've learned is that you can.
You can treat it and you can heal from it without necessarily it being a particularly traumatic process. You know, you can regulate yourself. And.
And I'm also doing ifs work at the moment and doing internal family systems work where I'm looking at parts of myself, and that is a can of worms. My ifs therapist is having a ball with me.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:But it's really interesting to understand how young some of these parts are and how scared and how compliant. And shame is so interesting because it is a social. It's a social construct, and it's a. It's a construct that other people.
That other people inflict on us, but then it's also a conflict, a construct that we let other people inflict on us.
So when you say that a lot of women my age are still struggling with it, it's like society has stopped inflicting that on us now, but we haven't got that memo when we're still preemptively punishing ourselves. And it is really interesting because if you do dig deeper and you do say, well, what if I did follow through with this?
I know intellectually that the sky won't fall.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:But it feels as though it will. Like, it really, you know, it really is. It's scary enough to. To really pull you into, like, deep into your sympathetic nervous system.
You really believe there's a lion.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the.
It's the separation between something that we know logically and cognitively, but our nervous system is still responding to every, you know, ounce of conditioning that we received growing up. It's the same. I find it's very similar to someone can logically and cognitively not believe in hell anymore.
But it doesn't mean that the fear of that is not.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:In their body until, you know, to move that through.
Speaker D:Yeah. I categorically don't believe in hell, and I don't think I ever did. Yeah. I. But.
Which means that all of the fears I still have are less tangible than that. It's not an actual fear of going to hell, but it's something worse. I think the shame is almost as bad.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:And my husband grew up in the Church of England with a very kind of In a very balanced way. And has absolutely no. He has no baggage. He had no. If he, you know, wanted to have sex with someone, he had sex with them. Like, it was not.
It was just. And it's fascinating. I kind of watch him, like, he's this creature under my microscope. I can't even imagine.
And I have so many readers say I have no idea what any of this religious stuff is. I've never had this. I'm like, how. How would it be not to feel shame? Like, yeah, your parents just told you you could have sex. Like, it was.
It was just a thing. Like, I can't even imagine how that feels.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely. I've had some people say to me when I tell them about things that I was taught growing up and.
And they're like, you do realize that that's, like, absolutely batshit crazy, right? And I'm like, yeah, but it's not. When you hear it, like, it's.
Yeah, it sounds batshit crazy to someone who has never had an ounce of religious, you know, conditioning or even just, like, stepped in a, you know, step foot in a church as a young person. But, you know, you can look back at it and go, yeah, it sounds batshit crazy on the surface, but, yeah, of course.
Speaker D:Yeah, of course it's unhinged. Like, of course it sounds over engineered and ridiculous and farfetched.
And I think if you take away all of the dogma and all of those lines of catechism and everything else, just the idea that another human being thinks they can tell me what to think, or that an institution made up of those human beings, yeah, it makes me crazy. And I think that's actually one of my big triggers I worked out recently, for some unknown reason, I have become a. I have become a target.
It's happened twice in the past two weeks in my local part of London where I live. I have become a target for delightful, very sweet young female Chinese students to come up to me and try to press a Bible on me.
And this has happened twice. And it's kind of the same as when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on my door.
I get, like, irrationally angry because a trigger for me is that this other person, God bless them, they're trying to save my soul. I know that's what they're trying to do. They're not trying to control my mind. They're just worried about me. But I.
The idea that another person thinks they can try that with me now after everything I've been through is like a really big trigger.
Speaker C:For me, it seems, yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the biggest things that I often talk about with clients is when they realize that they were never taught how to think.
They were only taught what to think. Because that's all, you know, fundamental religious institutions do is not let's think critically about this, but this is what you are to believe.
And so, you know, yes, they're door knocking is because they think that that's what they need to do.
And they might not be doing anything, you know, quote unquote controlling, but they still think that they can tell you what to believe and what to think. Then you lose all sense of being able to trust yourself and think critically about yourself and the world around you.
Speaker D:Oh yeah, 100. I didn't, I didn't learn that.
And if you think about, you know, thank God for my, my degree and my master's because obviously history is a, is a degree of critical thinking.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:But I feel like I'm very bad at that because I didn't, I didn't get to exercise those muscles because it was this knee jerk reaction of that's disrespectful. You don't talk back, you don't question things. That's rude.
And I also think it's really interesting because if you were a robust framework of any kind, you would welcome critical thinking because you could, you could withstand it. Right. So it's that idea that, you know, again with my history degree having done modules on the history of modern political thought.
And I look at, I look at all the, I look at all the people who got, you know, executed or excommunicated for coming up with scientific ideas, most of which were, were actually true. Like people like Descartes and people like that who the Catholic Church saw them as a threat because progress was a threat, because it couldn't with.
Because their, their framework couldn't withstand progress. And now I look at what I think about spirituality nowadays and what we know about quantum physics and they're actually complementing each other.
Like the critical thinking and the scientific progress is actually for me and the way I believe it's a, it's a way of cementing my, my beliefs rather than undermining them.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker C:I'm curious if you are comfy to talk about the. What it was like for you because you did hint at the fact that you did not wait for marriage to have sex.
Speaker D:Y.
Speaker C:So I'm curious what it was like the, the aftermath of choosing that and what emotions came up after that. Because I too did not wait for marriage and it came with a whole host of emotions afterwards.
Speaker D:It's really interesting. I think it was a, I think it was a kind of slight case of being boiled slightly in a lobster pot. You know, it's a, it was gradual immersion.
So I had this. It's like a very. It's such a Catholic thing, like just the tip. Like, it's, it's, it's like I had, I, I kind of.
I messed around with a reasonable amount of people at uni before I actually had sex. And again, it's that Catholic thing of, oh, well, it wasn't actual sex, which is obviously a load of crap.
But for some reason in my, in my kind of meaning making brain, I was able to, to live with that. Um, I think weirdly by that point I had. And then.
So actually by the time I actually I, the, the, the person I put my cherry to was like, was a boyfriend. And so it was, you know, lovely, and he was wonderful and I was absolutely. I think I was just so fucking relieved to have got it over with.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker D:I think what I feel angry about actually, is that it caused so many more obstacles in my brain. So I really wanted it to happen, but I had. I was so scared of being intimate with people I was so scared of.
And it becomes like a vicious circle, right, where you, you know, you're inexperienced, so you're embarrassed because you don't think you've got the tools and you don't know what, you haven't got a clue what you're doing and you don't know what it's going to be like because you haven't ever, you know, no one's ever taught you how to masturbate or you haven't watched any porn or anything, so you have no idea what you're dealing with. So it's, it's really scary. And then it's one of those things, the long. It's like the library book you haven't returned.
It's like the longer you leave it, the worse it get. Yes.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:So I was just like, I'm done, done, thank God. And it's kind of like you get your period and you're thinking, why haven't I got my period? Why haven't I got my period yet? And then you get.
And then you start your periods and you're like, oh, actually, this was very overrated. And I think that's another thing. It's not just the act of sex. It's the idea that the female body could ever be a pleasure center.
That is, that is Nowhere. That was nowhere on my radar at all.
Speaker C:A pleasure. A pleasure center for you, anyway. Like, for you.
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker C:Like, it's totally okay for your body, a pleasure center for men, because that's the point. But for you, not so much.
Speaker D:100% and actually marginally related to that. And this is not a Catholic thing at all. It's a cultural thing. But I read somewhere, and I loved this, that, oh, it was.
It was a sexpert talking on the Goop podcast, I think, a few years ago. But she said young girls are taught very early on how to be. How to be sexy.
Girls are taught by culture how to be sexy, but they're not taught how to be sexual. And I was just like, oh, God, that's so true. So even outside of the church, girls struggle with this. It's like, I want. And it's very primal, I guess.
I want him. He has to want to impregnate me, so he has to want me. It's more about him wanting me than about what I want.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:Yeah. But again, just struggle with. Because had to work it all out for myself.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And I think that's almost. I think that's maybe even more of an area of kind of shame and fear than the act of having sex.
It's the fact that you're supposed to be able to orgasm.
You're supposed to be able to take what you want for nothing more than the fact that, as we all now know, the female orgasm is an amazing thing for your nervous system and your overall health, and it's like a miracle of science, and only good things can come from it. And the idea of seeing it like that, it's. I don't even. I can't remember a single time in my upbringing when the idea of a female orgasm even came up.
I don't know.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker C:I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't, but, you know, in that environment. But it's. I think it's also like shifting it to seeing it as almost, like, you know, scientific. Like, our body is scientific, and.
As opposed to seeing it as a moral issue, which it could not be, you know, obviously. Yeah.
Speaker D:And then it's kind of like, how do I have that conversation with my kids without being like, the creepy mum from sex education? You know? But, like, I mean, to be fair.
Speaker C:The creepy mum from sex education is like, fabulous. She's fabulous. Yeah.
Speaker D:Otis, why aren't you masturbating?
Speaker C:Yes, but.
Speaker D:Yes, but it's like, that's the message. It's like, it's it's not even a thing. It's just you and your body. It's just like do whatever makes you feel good.
If having a head massage makes you feel good, do it. If having an orgasm makes you feel good, do it. It's just not a thing. Yeah. And I can't believe they made it into one.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I, I mean I find that it's like if you really just narrow down to it, it's just, you know, control. It's just control of women.
Speaker D:Yeah. Particularly a hundred percent.
And actually it's kind of ironic that the Catholic Church didn't cotton onto the fact that if, if, if they taught women how to enjoy sex, they might actually get even more babies.
Speaker C:Yes, exactly. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker D:But yeah, it is mind control. And, and that's, I think one of the things that's become. That's one of the hardest things to forgive. It's so patriarchal. Oh my.
Speaker C:I did, I did purposely wear my. The patriarchy earrings for this conversation. Yeah. It's a bit hard to read from a distance, but I thought that was for this conversation. So.
Speaker D:It is. Women are. No, women are nowhere.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:Okay. I'm curious but I want to transition to the books because the books are just like my favorite thing in the world.
And so I, I am curious to, to start just with how much of your story is, is in these books. Like particularly in Unfurled.
Speaker D:So in case people aren't familiar with the book, which I'm sure a lot of people won't be. Elodie Hart is my second pen name. So I wrote under my real name for a while and my books are.
They got progressively spicier and then I wanted to try something different and being very Catholic, I wanted to put a pen name on it. Even though it's not a. It's not a secret pen name. But the idea was that I could have more fun, take more risks with Elodie.
I would protect the two author brands and if my mum was scrolling on Amazon her also bought wouldn't show my name.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:It wouldn't get served up to under my name. So Unfurl is about a 22 year old virgin who's been brought up very like me and her parents.
Hot older neighbor who's 36 who owns a sex club and she decides she's really, really sick. This noose around her neck, her virginity and she decides to deal with it. But like me, I mean there's a lot. I mean I'm basically Belle. I am her.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:Apart from the sex club part, sadly.
Speaker C:That would have been significantly more fun. I suspect it would have been significantly more fun.
Speaker D:And she has this idea of, God, I've left it so long, it's getting so awful. I have all this shame. I'm worried about it. I'm worried it's going to hurt. I'm worried it's going to be crap.
I've never let any of my boyfriends pass kind of second or third base. And she meets this guy and he's really hot and he's obviously very experienced and a man about town. And he has a sex club called Alchemy.
And Alchemy has a program called the Unfurl Program.
And the idea is, what if we took women like this and why should they have a shitty first experience and why shouldn't it be like, why not just reach for the stars? And so it's all very kind of choreographed and tailored to her demons and her kinks.
And like a lot of people raised in an extreme version of purity culture, she kind of goes the other way and has some pretty kinky needs. And Rafe is only too happy to get his friends involved and don a few dog collars and show her what she's been missing.
And I think we can all agree she makes up for lost time.
Speaker C:She does. Yes, she does. I mean, I love, I love unfilled for a myriad of reasons, but I love Belle is like this.
She has absolutely no idea what she wants, what she's doing, and yet the whole focus of the book is centered around her and what he wants, what she desires. And you know, Rafe is like, you know, this very prominent figure, but he's. His desires and his needs are still to the side.
Like they're there, but they're like there is this focus on what the woman wants in the scenario is needed and is like worth conversation and worth thinking about. And, and I just, I love that because it just centers her needs and her desires.
And the second thing that I want to, which I loved but I want to ask about is what was it like for you to write the most kinkiest scenes about very religious settings?
Speaker D:It's really interesting. I definitely found having the pen name and I regret the pen name in a lot of ways because it makes.
It's a pain in the ass for kind of cross selling between the two pendings because a lot of my. Actually almost all of my readers came came up the spice scale with me.
But now a lot of my Elodie readers won't read my Sarah books because they think they're not spicy, which is not true. But writing. Being Elodie, for some reason gave me like, it took away the filter and I had this very. So I write in a linear fashion. I write.
I start the book and I write through to the end, but with unfurl the very first paragraph of the book, which is basically like, I'm sick of the push pull of terror and temptation. I just want to take a bite of the apple. Like, I'm done. That was the first paragraph that I wrote.
And I wrote that way before I wrote the rest of the book. And that was like the nugget for me of like, that was what Belle. That was the entire essence of the book.
The idea that the terror makes the temptation even more delicious. It's like, it's the forbidden aspect that makes it. And she's. I think she's guided by that the whole way through.
It's like being on a roller coaster and you're terrified, but it makes it even better because you've got. You've got no choice. You just have to give in. You have to give into it.
And I'm kind of skipping around here a little bit, but Rafe says to her, it's something about how I'm gonna take that shame and I'm gonna. I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna make you feel like the reason I'm making. I'm shaming you is because I know what it's. I know how much it does it for you.
Yeah, right.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And. And that was the fun bit for me about the book. That all of this trauma I can turn into kink and it makes it richer.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And I almost borderline feel sorry for the readers who don't have that context because it's. They're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. She had sex with seven guys. What? It's so much more fun if you've had to live through the forbidden.
It makes it hotter. So that's the fun bit of it. But in terms of answering to the scenes, I got carried away a lot of the time. So I didn't really. I.
I'm not really a plotter, so I kind of. I knew the beats, I knew what was going to happen. But the scenes I definitely got carried away with.
And the epilogue, which is basically a kind of the epilogue. Oh, my God.
Speaker C:Oh. I got.
Speaker D:I got carried away with that. So when I'm writing Spice, I've had to teach myself, like, there's a reason that my very first book was. It was actually closed door.
And then a Few months later, I went back and put one very, like, vanilla sex scene in. And then it kind of went up. It went up like that. In a straight line. Like, you can plot the spice level versus the chronology. One for one.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:Because I had to get used to it. When I'm writing the Spice, I'm not me. I'm her, or I'm him, or I'm the reader. I'm thinking about what the reader wants.
And with Elodie, every time I think, I. I cannot. I cannot go there. I'm like, oh, I can and I will. And it's so. I'm overcoming my own demons, and I'm terrified.
And a lot of the time, I do feel sick, and I feel. I feel shamed. And I have to kind of like, Belle. I actually have to take that and bite into it instead of running from it, because that's where.
Yeah, I have to dig deep, and that's where the richness comes from.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:Actually, can I tell you something really tangential? So one of the first, like, super, super, super spicy books I read was the new Camelot series by.
By Sierra Simone, who also has, like, a Catholic back. I don't know if you've read any of her books.
Speaker C:I'm on. I'm literally. I've read Priest last week, Sinner late this week, and I'm on Saint currently.
Speaker D:Yeah, I. Yeah, I'm listening to the audiobook of Saint again because it's one of my favorite audios of all time. Those books are beautiful.
But the new Camelot one is between. I didn't know it was mmf, so I just didn't know. So it's her, the president, and the vice president. I mean, do I need to tell you anymore? No, I don't.
But there's a scene early on in the book where she's just wearing a shirt and, like, his dress shirt, the president's dress shirt, and she's not wearing anything underneath it. And the vice president, at this point in time, you don't know what the relationship is there between any of them.
But the president makes her crawl on the floor towards him, and the vice president is sitting on the other side of the room. And I. When I tell you the reaction I had to that scene was almost like, I have to close the book. I'm going to hell. I'm going to hell.
I'm going to hell. It was such a weird. I was terrified. It was really, really, really confronting. It was really strange.
And now it's one of my favorite scenes of all Time. I've read that book like, a million times. It's the scene that lives rent free in my head. But it was so interesting that I found it so terrifying.
It was kind of like there was like a nun on my shoulder going, you dirty, dirty girl. You can't read this stuff. It's porn. And so when I'm writing the scene, sometimes I do feel like that I feel filthy and I'm just thinking.
And I think that's one of the reasons why I don't think I could ever do dictation, because I can't hear my voice saying those things. But it's not me. I'm very. I'm an intuitive writer. I write kind of in a meth, almost like method acting. So when I'm in it, it's a movie. I'm the cat.
I'm the POV character. And it's all unraveling before me. So I'm in it, and so I'm not. I'm not me.
And the only way I can write the scenes is to think, what does this character want and need? Like, yeah, very specifically.
And that's kind of why the scenes get out of hand, because if I try to think about them intellectually, I wouldn't be able to plot that kind of stuff. But once you get your kink on writing a scene, the inspiration flows, shall we say? So I'm wondering.
Speaker C:I mean, there's. I've got so many questions to ask, but I'm going.
There's two that come to mind which are sort of like two sides of the same coin, I guess, in the good and the bad, you know, which is very binary, but the good and the bad in that. How many people have told you that you've unlocked a priest king for them?
And the second thing is, how much backlash have you gotten from books in terms of the. The religious language?
Speaker D:So the priest king thing, loads. And even people who aren't Catholic or religious, which I really. I'm really proud of.
And then I've also had a lot of people who are various Protestant denominations say, I didn't have a priest king because I'm Protestant, but actually priests are way hotter than vicars. And now I'm done, I'm like, yes, I agree. Like the Catholic Church does. Does clergymen better? I'm sorry.
Speaker C:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker D:Because Vickers are allowed to get married, which kind of takes away the fun. Right? Yeah.
Speaker C:The forbidden aspect is gone.
Speaker D:So I have a lot of people. And actually, I. I sent out a newsletter this week talking about the hot Priest thing. Like, why is it hot?
And it's not just because of Fleabag, but it's. It's really interesting. The hot priest thing, it's like, it's hot because it's forbidden, and it's because that. It's. That.
It's that embodiment of, like, the good man unleashed. He's so good. He gave up everything for God, but you're better. He wants you more.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:I mean, that's literally the biggest validation in the world, right? Yeah. So. So I've had a.
I've had an absolute ton of people, and it's definitely one of my biggest kind of marketing starting points for Unfurl and also for Audacity, because he's a former priest. And I wanted to give. With Audacity, I wanted to give people a slightly different view of the Catholic Church.
I just wanted to temper it a little because I had gone so hard on it in Unfurl. I was so angry when I wrote that book. And with this, I just wanted to.
I wanted to point out that organized religion does have things to offer, and there are comforts and there are beautiful things.
And I also think that I love learning about human beings, relationships with rituals, and how rituals are just so important to us and to our nervous systems.
And so I wanted Gabe, who's the former priest, to have that where it wasn't that thing of I'm in the church or I'm out of the church, I'm a priest or I'm. I leave it. Like, he's.
I wanted him to take all the good bits with him and a few of the bad bits, and for him to have, you know, very much those still be part of his experience, his lived experience.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And backlash. Yeah, I do get backlash. And I get.
I have people, especially on Facebook ads, because I think, like, if you put something on TikTok, it's whatever, tick tock. But if you put some. If I. With Facebook ads, I'm really conscious that I'm. I could offend people. I'm targeting God knows who.
And, yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to offend people, but I have a lot of people saying, jesus will save you. Your dirty little.
I obviously set my Facebook ads to target women, but occasionally the odd guy creeps in. If a guy says something like that, I just think, oh, off. Like, I'm sure your wife is deeply unsatisfied. Like, off.
Speaker C:Yeah, very.
Speaker D:But if a woman says to me something like, jesus will save you, or you should. She should they settled this a lot about Belle. She should be saving it for her husband. I get that a lot.
It actually really, really, really upsets me because I think I want to save that person.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:From that belief. So that's what upsets me.
It upsets me that women are still being told that and still believe it rather than I can handle them thinking I'm going to hell. I just get really upset that there are women out there still living that experience.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And that makes me as bad as the people who want to save me. Right. It makes me as intolerant. But I think it's a trigger for me, obviously, so that's upsetting. I get shamed a lot more for other stuff. Like I.
I get people. I got loads of comments about Untethered. There was like a mask thing in it. He wore. He wore a mask. You are condoning rape.
You are encouraging men to rape women. It was apparently both anti Islamic and pro terrorism. Like all of it. Just a lot, a lot of stuff like that. And a lot of them will come from people.
So it won't even be like you're a whore. It'll be like, oh, hi, Elodie. I love your book so much. I think you're an amazing writer, but I want you.
Do you realize that you're encouraging rape with this scene? And that hits worse because it kind of comes from someone who. They're presenting it in a rash. They're presenting it in a well meaning way.
And that hurts more. So I now have my assistant checks my DM requests on Instagram. I don't. I won't check them anymore and I don't check TikTok messages for that reason.
Just because I get. I get too upset by it. Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah. I. I think I've read some far darker books than yours and there are some other books that are far darker in terms of, you know, consensual.
Non consensual stuff. So.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:Okay. I actually, while you mentioned audacity, I am curious because you did present a very different side of religion in that book.
And there is a lot of spiritual language in there. And I'm curious what it was like for you to try and present that and tap into the good and the beauty within a spiritual space.
Speaker D:I. I really enjoyed it. I thought Gabe was going to be a lot more up than he was actually. I was going to make him this real kind of.
I wanted him to be this very, like, almost militantly, like, dealing with his demons and just having to kind of his way through his problems. And it didn't really come out like that. He came out in a much more balanced way.
The decision to present a better side of the Catholic Church was deliberate. And just to go back to Unfurl, I got some heat from a few readers for a scene in Unfurl where Rafa and Belle go to church one Sunday.
And for me, that scene was important because I wanted to show that someone can walk away from the unhealthy trappings of a religion that doesn't serve them and still choose to partake in the rituals and the comforts and the element of spirituality. You know, I will never, not walk into a beautiful Catholic church and not feel moved, like it's never going to happen. It's so.
And I understand that that's conditioning, but it's something that serves me. And so I love it. And I. I embrace that mystical aspect of it.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And I. And so my.
In my view, I think a lot of readers thought that scene was a cop out or I hadn't really taken my storytelling far enough in terms of I was scared to really cut cords with the church on Bell's behalf. And for me, it was deliberate.
And so that was the starting point for Gabe's story, which was unless something horrifically bad happened, he wasn't going to come out of the church just automatically not believing in God anymore. And I. I will admit that the hot priest thing was a slight gimmick at the beginning. Like, I just thought it was like, why not make him a priest?
It would be hotter.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker D:But it became much more intrinsic to who he was as a character. I really enjoyed it. They're both very intellectual people.
And I felt like it was the theological side of Gabe that that's what he enjoyed about religion more than the actual service side. Ironically, that's what he thinks. He's actually very good at serving. And his verb in the book was serve.
So I give all my characters a central verb, and his was serve. And he's still serving, even after the church. But I also wanted.
I wanted Athena to be one of those kind of intellectual snobs who's like, profoundly atheist and just thinks the whole thing is an absolute crock of shit. And it's just deeply intolerant. Just like, you're an intelligent guy. Like, come on, come on. And so I really had fun with that. Like, she believed.
She likes stoicism. And I really had fun with them challenging each other and looking for parallels, etc. I just chose.
I made a choice that Gabe believed in a God who was benign And I had to take some artistic license with the stuff that Gabe got up to because a lot of that would not be okay with the Catholic Church.
Speaker C:No, no.
Speaker D:But for me, his faith made him a more interesting character. I didn't want him to be that quintessential billionaire asshole.
I wanted him to have some conflicts, and I wanted him to have that depth to him that just, for me, it made him sexier.
And that pastoral side and that humility that made him just a far more attractive partner for Athena than he would have been if he'd been some kind of broken guy who'd forsaken everything. So, yeah, I'm definitely. I don't. You know, I'm not as tolerant of the church as Gabe is. No way.
I'm definitely much more on Bell's end of the spectrum.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I don't think I can have.
We've talked a lot about purity culture and women and things like that, but I cannot sit here and have this conversation without talking about Dex, because Dex, like, has my.
Speaker D:Oh, my God.
Speaker C:And as a queer person, Dex just has my whole heart. And I love that you spoke about not just the impact that purity culture has on men, but particularly on queer men. And he is.
Of all of the books, Dex is just the most beautiful character I think you've ever written, in my opinion. He's just beautiful.
Speaker D:I'm so happy. Well, I'm so happy that you think that, because Unstitch is my favorite book.
And I'm also very honored that you think that as a queer person, because it means. Because obviously it's not my story to tell. Yeah, it's not my story to tell.
Although, you know, growing up in a convent, you are with no boys, you're going to have some crushes. And I, I, I definitely had feelings for a few girls at school where I thought. I thought, I'm gonna. I'm. I'm a lesbian. Like, I'm. I'm gay.
And I'm never, ever, ever going to be able to act on this, or I'm certainly never going to be able to come out. And it was very, very scary for me. And they just, they faded turns. But I kind of channeled that with Dex.
And his by awakening story was like my favorite thing I've ever written in my life. I think the scene between him and Max in his office was my favorite scene I've ever written. And it's probably the scene I'm most proud of.
And it was weird for me how easy it was to get Inside Dex's head. He's such a gentle little lamb.
And without going into too much detail in terms of Dex and Belle's father, I have had a very similar upbringing myself. Very similar. And so what he went through is what I would have had to go through. There's no doubt about it in my mind.
And I think the interesting thing about Dex was, like, he was genuinely clueless or he did a very good job of denying any feelings for men. And one of the most fun parts about writing him was that he was such an unreliable narrator of his own.
I really enjoyed watching him try to rationalize his reactions to Max, et cetera, when actually it was clear to everyone else that there was something there.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:Yeah. It was really good fun.
Speaker C:It's so. It's so beautiful. And. And I think from a queer perspective, I think the progression that his by awakening took was just. It was just beautiful.
And it was, like, heartbreakingly beautiful because, like, it is heartbreaking, but it's. It's just. It was just gorgeous. And so, yeah, I love it. It's just my. It's my favorite book. It's my favorite book of all of them, but it is. And. Oh.
And if people want spice, it is so spicy, so. And it's just so good. So.
Speaker D:Yeah, I'd love to write another mmf. I mean, I've actually loved to write an MM because I had way more fun with the boys. Old Darcy, I think, again, it's that thing of, like, the priest.
It's the forbidden aspect. That was what made it so hot. Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I love asking questions that. And I.
And I think this is part of what your books do, which is almost reclaims the things that you were told were wrong and not okay. Like, reclaims a beautiful, authentic version of spirituality. I was gonna. And sexuality. I was gonna say wholesome. It's not always wholesome.
Speaker D:Let's not miss sell here, Sam.
Speaker C:Good. And it is authentic version of sexuality that you were just not taught.
And one of the things that I often do in these episodes is I ask people what brings them joy and peace presently, because we think that their terminology that the church owns, but they're not. Joy and peace is there for absolutely everybody in a whole bunch of ways. And so what brings you joy and peace at the moment?
Speaker D:That's a lovely question. And I will say that my idea of spirituality is always being rewritten, and it's always evolving, and I love that.
I think that's part of the joy of it, because I. I don't have to subscribe to a rule. A rule book. I can work it out for myself.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:What brings me peace is this sounds kind of not very spiritual, but is regulating my nervous system. And so I've got a lot better at understanding what peace is.
So maybe a year or two ago, I would have asked myself, like, am I happy or am I sad today? And now I ask myself, am I regulated? Am I inventorial? Like, am I in my happy, sunbathing elephant space?
And so I try, and it's really hard because I'm someone who defaults to their sympathetic nervous system most of the time. I try to regulate, and I try to cultivate that kind of peace. I guess my number one tool is going for walks. Walking's my. My secret regulating tool.
It's just remembering to breathe and remembering to take a. To take a breath. And I don't mean literally. I mean just trying to pause.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And be present. And I. I kind of. I don't like the language of mindfulness, I find. Makes me want to slap someone when they say that. I just find it really virtuous.
Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:Because it's something I find it really hard to ascribe to. So, again, I feel like I'm failing. Right. I'm lapsing. But it's about being regulated. It's about taking time.
It's about trying to find myself under all these. I told you, I'm doing parts work. It's about trying to find myself under all the parts because my parts are exhausted and exhausting.
I find my children, especially at this age, are kind of like little walking bottles of tonic. They're just. Just being with them just makes me way, way, way more present.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:Writing makes me unbelievably happy.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And I try to. I think I have a very long and successful history of dissociation. I'm very good at it. Yeah.
And so I try to make sure I'm doing it from a creative perspective and not from a dissociating perspective. But sometimes a little escapism is okay. But, yeah, writing is. Is something that brings me incredible joy.
So I feel so lucky to be able to sit in my kitchen and write when my poor husband is, you know, off at work. Yeah. I feel like I'm gathering a set of tools slowly but surely, and I. The things that bring me peace and joy. I guess peace brings me joy.
Does that make sense? Whereas it used to, if you asked me five years ago or 10 years ago, I stopped drinking a year ago. So I'm.
I'm way On, I'm way more boring than I used to be. But just being boring is what I want. Yeah, I like staying home. I like being with my husband. I like watching tv, I like having sparkling water.
I, I love reading a good book. I love baths. You know, it's really.
My, my, I feel like my life has got smaller, but my, my joys are less frenetic than they used to be, if that makes sense.
Speaker C:It sounds like your life might have gotten smaller, but your ability to live your life has gotten bigger. Yeah.
Speaker D:And I wonder about that a lot.
Like, I wonder, I wonder from a nervous system perspective, am I living a smaller life physically because I don't need that outlet because I'm having it through my books or is it because my nervous system is like, let's temper this progress you're making in your career with keeping things because my capacity gets more taken up by it. So yeah, I'm, yeah, I do analyze that a lot.
But I, you know, kind of the hormonal joys of being a, you know, 46 year old woman aside, I, I do just spend most of my time trying to focus on staying regulated and.
Speaker E:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker D:Not losing my too much over stuff that isn't really. Oh, and ice baths. Ice baths bring me peace. They are. I'm a massive wimp, but. And I hate like cold swimming pools and stuff.
But yeah, there's an ice bath in my local gym and when I get in there it's like my nervous system just goes. Yeah. So that's amazing.
Speaker C:Love that.
One of the, the final question that I ask everybody, I'm going to slightly tweak for you, which is typically what you would say to people who are deep in their deconstruction of religion and faith.
But I'm going to ask you a slightly tweaked version of that, which is what would you say to someone who is knee deep in unpacking purity culture, still in their 40s?
Speaker D:Holy crap. Read smart. It's really good.
Speaker C:And if you want to go hard or go home, start with unfurl.
Speaker D:I think reading romance is a good way.
You know, you just, you just mentioned that there are books that are way darker than mine and we all have dark fantasies and they are just in your head and they are safe and they are okay. And you're allowed to think or imagine whatever you want and, and you're allowed to get turned on by them.
And so I think reading romance is such a good way to immerse yourself gradually to get used to it.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:And to Kind of wallow in the feel good factor of people loving each other and people being there to fulfill each other's needs.
And kind of what I said about that Sierra Simone book, it's like if stuff comes up for you sometimes if I'm writing or I'm reading something that is confronting and I'm getting, you know, my, my nervous system is, is sensing danger and I just look up and think it's just me at my laptop or it's just me with my book. Yeah, that's it. Everyone's fine. I'm just in my kitchen. No one's going to hell. Your house is not going to burst into a ball of flames.
Just, just get used to it. But I, I kind of think it's a journey you have to almost go through by yourself.
You know, I have an incredibly loving husband who's amazingly tolerant of the fact that I am kind of, you know, 50 shades of up, but if kind of bewildered by it. But I kind of think it's the kind of thing you have to get over by yourself. Yourself. Does that sound as in.
What I mean is no amount of someone telling you it's okay is going to change that for you if you don't believe it's okay. But I think for me, hitting 40 was a massive turning point because my dad became way more radicalized in his early 40s. Right.
That was his like, I guess whatever you want to call it, midlife crisis, he kind of doubled down, triple down and into his, his, his version of what faith looks like. And, and then I hit 40 and I was like, hang on, I'm that age. Like hang on, I'm 40 year old woman.
Is, am I really going to let someone else tell me how to believe?
Like, would my parents at 40, when I was a teenager have listened to their parents telling them they were grown ups, like I have a mortgage and I have kids and suddenly for some reason that just seemed, that made it seem so ridiculous.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:See, I read smart.
Speaker C:I love that simple summary. Well, I, I have a double thank you. A double thank you. Which is obviously thank you for joining me. It is, has been an absolute pleasure.
But also thank you for your beautiful writing and your incredible books. And they are just like I said to you before we started recording, I introduced them to my wife who has never read Spice before.
She was hit with a rooster in that first book.
But it is, I think I, I think even if it has not been something that you have read before, I think even though it might be an intense first book, into the Spice World. It's too good not to is my summary of that. They're just. Just the Alchemy series is just too good not to read. So. So thank you for joining me.
And thank you for your writing.
Speaker D:Oh, it's been so lovely. I've had such a nice time chatting to you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker B:Thanks for tuning in to this episode of beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.
If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you. Remember, no matter where you are on.
Speaker C:Your journey, you're not alone.
Speaker B:Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning, and keep moving forward.
Speaker C:Take care.
