Lucy Kellaway on fear, freedom and starting a whole new life in her 50s

The Shift with Sam Baker

Sam Baker Ltd

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 525 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever wanted to chuck it all in? I mean ALL of it? My guest today did just that - baby, bathwater AND bath. For 30 years, journalist Lucy Kellaway was a columnist on the Financial Times. Then, in the space of just a couple of years she ditched not only that but her home of 15 years, her husband of 25 years - and even her hair! (Not in that order.) In her new book, Re-educated, she talks about the overwhelming urge to remake our lives that often hits women in our 40s and 50s and why she decided to upend her life, chucking in her enviable - and some might say cushy! - highly paid job to retrain for one that er, isn’t… teaching in an inner London secondary school. Over the next 40 minutes Lucy tells me about her newfound freedom, why fear is one of the most important emotions, how her house became a physical symbol of a marriage that no longer worked for her and why going grey was possibly the biggest shift of all. (And don’t get her started on the inequities of internet dating…) You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Re-educated by Lucy Kellaway and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me! The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo have arrived on Disney Plus.
0:04.5	We're having a baby.
0:05.5	We're having a baby.
0:07.2	I've always wanted to be mom.
0:09.4	And we're bringing you on our journey through everything.
0:12.4	I have no idea what we're doing.
0:13.6	Thank you. I have more of an idea.
0:15.6	I think of it like a Tamagocchi.
0:17.8	At the end of all of this...
0:20.0	We're going to have a little baby.
0:21.8	Raising Chelsea, a Hulu original series streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:27.3	18 plus subscription required T's and T supply.
0:35.0	Hello and welcome to The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds-bar truth about being a woman post-40, created and hosted by me, journalist and author, Sam Baker. Ever wanted to chuck it all in? I mean, all of it? My guest today did just that. For 30 years, journalist Lucy Kellerway was a columnist on the Financial Times.
0:56.7	Then, in the space of just a couple of years, she ditched not only that, but her home of 15 years,
1:03.8	her husband of 25, and even her hair, not in that order.
1:08.2	In her new book, Reeducated, she talks about the overwhelming urge to remake
1:12.3	our lives that often hits in our 40s and 50s, and why she decided to upend her own life, chucking
1:18.4	in her enviable, some might say cushy, highly paid job to retrain for one that very much isn't,
1:26.2	teaching in an inner London secondary school.
1:29.1	I'm free from having to write a sodding weekly column. Thank God. And the new things that I've
1:35.1	taken on in their place don't yet feel like burdens. They feel like excitements.
1:41.3	Over the next 40 minutes, Lucy tells me about her newfound freedom, why fear is one of the most
	...

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