The Shift with Sam Baker Clover Stroud on grief, love, sex & sisterhood - THE SHIFT REVISITED
Last of my trips back into The Shift archives is this conversation with Clover Stroud. Since this conversation, Clover has written another memoir, The Giant on the Skyline about our relationship with home (borne in part out of moving her family from her home in Oxfordshire to Washington DC where her partner's job is based). Since then A LOT has changed. She has also launched an excellent substack, On The Way Life Feels.
The original show notes:
It takes courage to lay yourself bare on the page the way todayβs guest does. Journalist Clover Stroud has written three memoirs - The Wild Other, My Wild and Sleepless Nights and, now, The Red of My Blood. Each more visceral, more exposing, than the last.
But then Clover has lived no ordinary life (whatever that is). Hers features adventure, divorce, trauma, lots of sex, depression and five kids aged between 21 and 5. But before that, when Clover was 16, her mother suffered a catastrophic fall from a horse which left her permanently brain damaged. A state in which she remained until her death 22 years later. Then, two years ago her sister Nell Gifford, to whom Clover was exceptionally close, died of breast cancer, aged 46.
The darkness that descended in the wake of Nellβs death informed The Red of My Blood - an emotional read about living with and learning from grief.
Clover joins me from her bedroom in Oxfordshire (excellent wallpaper!) to talk - extremely candidly, so please brace yourself if youβre feeling vulnerable - about grief and trauma, bearing the unbearable and how, out of loss, sheβs finding a new person to be. But Itβs not all sadness. We also discussed midlife sex, sobriety, looking forward to menopause and why weβre bloody lucky to be middle-aged.
* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Giant on the Skyline and The Red of My Blood by Clover Stroud as well as the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.
* If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com.
β’ And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com
β’ The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls at Pineapple Production. 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
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