Writer and campaigner Rebecca Schiller moved her family to a rural smallholding in the hope of a simpler life. But she soon found that life wasn’t any simpler and was a damn sight harder in many ways. She has written movingly about how we can never escape ourselves – no matter how much we try – as well as her experiences with depression, anxiety, and living with undiagnosed ADHD until recently.

Rebecca says now: ‘everyone – including me – wants neat and happy endings to stories of chasing a dream. Society encourages us to believe that we are one thing or the other: happy or sad, good or bad, right or wrong; that we must pick an angle’. But we’re all beginning to understand that life is a little more complicated than that - and as Rebecca has also written: ‘nature is not a simple fix’.

Here, we talk about:

Neurodiversity and how it’s misunderstood
The positive aspects of having a ‘different’ brain
How at our lowest ebb, something profound shifts
Rejection and learning to understand it
Parenting and the importance of risk
Being kinder to ourselves. Starting now…

Follow Rebecca @schillerrrrr on Twitter and @rebecca.schiller on Instagram and check out Earthed via Bookshop.org (where you can also find How To Be Sad, the book, plus a host of other podcast guest book recommendations!)

Follow Helen on social media @MsHelenRussell How To Be Sad, the book, is out now. Thanks to Joel Grove for production and to Matt Clacher at HarperCollins for making this podcast happen.

43. Abby Levene: Aligning your Job (and Life) with your Passion