S22 Ep4: Donna Ashworth, Poet & Author: The Women's Wordsmith, celebrating Midlife, Messiness & Mindset
Conversations of Inspiration
Holly Tucker MBE
5.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2025
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
These powerful words come from this week’s inspiring guest, Donna Ashworth—author, the UK’s best-selling poet, and a true artist when it comes to capturing the human heart in words.
In this deeply moving episode, Donna joins Holly for a conversation that’s as honest as it is healing. With her signature vulnerability and insight, Donna opens up about the life experiences that have shaped her poetic voice and heightened her sensitivity to the world, enabling her to offer not just words but solace, strength, and a mirror for the human experience.
Together, they explore how embracing midlife can lead to profound transformation and how speaking our truths—even the messy ones—can bring us closer to ourselves and each other.
This is a conversation brimming with soulful wisdom, raw honesty, and the kind of truths that make us feel seen. It’s one you won't want to miss.
Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions about eating disorders, which may be distressing for some listeners. If you need to, please skip from 9 minutes 20 seconds to 10 minutes 30 seconds.. Take care while listening.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you feel good about yourself and you feel empowered and you feel like you're your own safe space, |
| 0:04.9 | you'll go and do whatever you want, you'll learn any subject you want, you'll take any exam you want, |
| 0:09.5 | you'll do it late without feeling ashamed of that, because you're intact. |
| 0:14.0 | There are some conversations that stay with you long after they've ended, |
| 0:17.8 | the ones that make you reflect, that shifts something deep |
| 0:22.5 | inside of you. And that was today, my incredible conversation with Donna Ashworth, author and the UK's |
| 0:29.6 | best-selling poet, it was tonic. Because Donna, she has this rare ability to put into words the things we feel but don't |
| 0:41.7 | always know how to say. I found it so comforting and I can imagine for those maybe in their |
| 0:49.4 | darker moments or who are lost or need to navigate life, that her words are, where she said in the |
| 0:58.2 | podcast, a GPS. They remind us of the sheer joy of being alive. And in this conversation, |
| 1:06.6 | I got to meet the woman behind these words and she's everything that you think she is. |
| 1:13.1 | She is the most beautiful soul and we talked about the incredible privilege but also the joy of |
| 1:21.0 | aging and the power of embracing the vulnerabilities and the ugly and the odd and the imperfect parts of ourselves and the |
| 1:29.9 | deep sensitivities that we feel and the burden that we take on. And it was just one of those |
| 1:37.0 | moments where I just will never forget. And of course we talked about the wonder of women and |
| 1:43.9 | the unshakable bonds that we have and the way we lift each other up and believing in the power of amplifying ourselves, our sisterhood as we stand together. |
| 1:55.7 | And this conversation, I've got to say, is a love letter to life, to words, to the quiet, I suppose, strength that comes from owning who you are. |
| 2:08.0 | That's what I'm going to take away. And I hope you love it as much as I did. Enjoy. |
| 2:13.7 | Bow your head and let your eyelids close on down. Where we're're going you won't need to bring your frown. |
| 2:21.2 | Hi, I'm Holly Tucker and welcome to my podcast Conversations of Inspiration. |
| 2:27.3 | I've reached out to founders and those who simply inspire me to share their hard-earned wisdom with you. My hope is that collectively, these remarkable |
| 2:37.5 | realisations will help you on your own journey. I like to think of it as inspiration for life. |
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