Poet Donna Ashworth’s masterclass on grief, intentional positivity & the daily ritual that could change your life
Postcards From Midlife
Lorraine Candy & Trish Halpin
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The ‘people’s poet’ joins Lorraine & Trish to talk about her remarkable life - from cruise ship singer to best selling writer - all the while contending with an eating disorder and a midlife ADHD diagnosis. Discover how Donna, 51, healed from trauma, retrained her brain to silence the inner critic, learned how to nurture a soul algorithm & believes that ‘everything good is on the other side of cringe’. Plus why she’s proud to be a member of ‘the worst poet’s club’. And a beautiful reading from her new book ‘Loss: Words to Weather The Many Waves of Grief’.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to the penultimate. |
| 0:13.0 | That's the last but one, Lorraine, in case you didn't know, episode of this season of Postcards from Midlife. Now, we do both love a bit of a wiffly waffle, |
| 0:24.2 | don't we at the beginning of this show, but we're going to keep it to a minimum today because |
| 0:27.8 | we have a corker of a guest who really has the most remarkable life story. And we want to hear |
| 0:34.3 | all about it, don't we? Oh, we absolutely do indeed. |
| 0:38.6 | And I have to say, young Trish, I'm impressed. |
| 0:41.2 | You've been breaking rules and guidelines around, |
| 0:43.8 | because you have a very set, strict guidelines for how we record the show. |
| 0:48.0 | Yes. |
| 0:48.4 | I think that's because we had the uncertainty expert, Catherine Templar Lewis, didn't we, a few weeks back, and she's |
| 0:55.4 | loosened you up a bit. She has. She talked you about interoception, didn't she? So not relying on |
| 1:01.4 | your externals, more on your internals, all about the biffly waffly feeling. And actually, that is our |
| 1:07.6 | motive for doing the podcast, isn't it? Internally, we learn a lot from all of the guests that we have on the show. And we kind of have them on the show because we want to improve ourselves and make our own lives better, don't we? That's, and we're learning all the time. It's all about us. It's all about us. What do you think we're going to learn from today's guest? Well, I don't think it's going to be how to write poetry. |
| 1:30.9 | No. What do you think we're going to learn from today's guest? Well, I don't think it's going to be how to write poetry. |
| 1:30.9 | That's not our forte. |
| 1:33.0 | Although, having said that, you are actually something of a limerick writer, as I recall, Lorraine, aren't you? |
| 1:38.9 | As you know, particularly two margaritas in, I love a limerick. |
| 1:43.3 | All I know, Trish, is that Margo sort of rhymes |
| 1:46.6 | with weirdo. I think I feel a Margo. Stretching it a bit there. Anyway, no more waffle. |
| 1:53.1 | Must must stop it. I'm going to tell everyone about our guests because we're really proud to have |
| 1:58.0 | her on and I think she'll be super helpful for everybody listening. |
| 2:01.5 | We have the award-winning self-published, best-selling poet, Donna Ashworth. |
... |
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