Reshma Saujani, Wendy Mitchell, Fern Champion

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.1 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2019

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We speak to author Reshma Saujani about the idea that girls and women are brought up to be perfectionists while boys are expected to be brave. Wendy Mitchell was diagnosed with young on-set dementia at just 58 years old. Before the diagnosis she was known for her sharp mind and organisational skills, both at work and as a single mum to two daughters. She talks to Jane about how she copes with the disease which steals her memories and why she wanted to write her memoir Somebody I Used to Know for the woman she once was and as an affirmation of the woman dementia has seen her become. A woman who was raped three years ago has decided to waive her anonymity so she can call on the government to provide more support to people like her. Fern Champion has set up a petition and written to Theresa May saying that rape counselling must be available to anyone who needs it, wherever they live. When Fern wanted support she couldn’t even get on a waiting list. She was told a funding shortfall was stopping her getting the help she needed. About one in everyone one thousand women experiences Post Partum Psychosis - the rare but very serious mental illness that can occur in the first few days after having a baby. Claire and Aiden, from Leicestershire, have two children and after both births Claire had Post Partum Psychosis. We hear how it affected them as a couple. Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Helen Fitzhenry Interviewed guest: Reshma Saujani Interviewed guest: Wendy Mitchell Interviewed guest: Fern Champion

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, this is Jane Garvey and this is the Woman's Hour podcast from Monday, the 11th of March 2019.
0:11.5	On the podcast today, you'll hear from Wendy Mitchell, both at the start of the program
0:15.3	and at the end of the podcast as well. Wendy has early on set dementia and she has a
0:20.0	memoir called Somebody I Used to Know. She's a brilliant, brilliant speaker and you will
0:24.5	really enjoy her wisdom today. I promise you. Also, on the pod, white girls need to take more
0:30.9	risks and learn to fail. This is all about women in tech or the lack of them really and how all
0:36.6	of us need to be prepared to fail, perhaps in public because it will make us better people and
0:42.0	ultimately more successful. That's the theory. You'll hear more about that later and we also have
0:47.5	one man's view of a terrifying condition. His partners postpartum psychosis. That's all in the
0:54.0	podcast a little later. So to Wendy Mitchell, welcome to you, Wendy. Thank you. So lovely to chat to
1:00.2	you. Now you were diagnosed with early on set dementia when you were just 58. That's right.
1:06.8	At the time you were an NHS manager and a mom to two daughters as well. I know that your daughters
1:13.1	have been absolutely brilliant and a huge help. Very biased but yes, they have. You can be biased,
1:18.0	that's all right. Now your memoir is called Somebody I Used to Know and I've got to ask this,
1:23.0	people will be thinking, how has somebody with dementia written a memoir? So how have you been
1:28.2	able to do that, Wendy? Well, with the wonderful help of the writer Anna Warton, if people
1:36.0	had often asked me to write a book before and I'd always said, well, I couldn't write it on my own
1:42.2	because I'd write the same thing on every page. So with Anna's help, he taught me so much about
1:50.3	writing and we worked our way over a year through to writing the book. Now when you first began to
1:58.6	notice that you were changing, what was it like for you? It must have been a terribly confusing time.
2:06.2	Well, dementia never entered my head because like so many other people, I thought it was only
2:14.6	affected older people and so I thought maybe I had a brain tumor or something drastic like that.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.