Bonus Episode: The EveryWoman Festival - Episode Transcript

Helen

Hi, I'm Helen, and this is Why Mums Don't Jump: busting taboos about leaks and lumps after childbirth. All the stuff that happens to your pelvic floor that no one ever talks about - incontinence prolapse, pelvic pain. Problems that affect millions of women, one-in-three! I'm one of them. I have a prolapse. My pelvic organs fell out of place after the birth of my second child. And if you had told me back then that I would be speaking about this stuff out loud, I would have told you to give your head a wobble.

Okay, hello and welcome to this extremely special episode, bonus episode of Why Mums Don't Jump, which I was going to say could be completely chaotic, but has actually already been completely chaotic, although none of that will end up on the final result. So, hey, don't worry about it.

And that's because, as well as me, there are three other people in the virtual studio here. Everyone say hello. And we're here because we want to tell you something very special that's happening in just a few weeks from now, on June 24, I think. Yeah, June 24, which is the Every Woman Festival, which is happening in Cardiff. So let's just briefly introduce everyone who's here. In a sentence, just who are you and what's your involvement in EveryWoman?

Luce

I'm Luce and I'm an author and I wrote my first memoir about pelvic floor dysfunction and incontinence that came out a couple of years ago.

Helen

And you are speaking to every woman. As is Dr. Aziza. Tell us about yourself.

Aziza

Hello, I'm Dr Aziza Sesay. I'm an NHS GP. I'm also a health content creator, so I'm very, very passionate about everything health awareness, but particularly women's and gynaecological health. And I'll be talking about the gender health gap.

Helen

Amazing. And the woman behind it all, the brains behind the operation. Julie, who are you?

Julie

So, I'm Julie Cornish. I'm a colorectal consultant surgeon in Cardiff and I'm the founder of EveryWoman.

Helen

And so this is where we need to start because this is all your idea.

Julie

Yes though I'm slightly regretting it now.

Helen

Not surprised. Tell me a little bit about the festival. How did you dream this up? What's it all about?

Julie

Okay, so I've been working in conferences and events for medical professionals for ten years, which sounds bad, and I've also been doing a lot of service development for pelvic health services in Wales and in the UK, and just getting really quite frustrated about the lack of change and how slow it is. And the fact that I see women in clinic all the time who tell me they've had symptoms for 7, 10, 15 years and they've suffered in silence, or they've gone to see somebody and they didn't have the knowledge and the power to know that that wasn't normal, it wasn't right, they should get help and they've been bounced back. So it takes them a long time. So I thought right. You know what? So the menopause movement has had some fantastic traction. But there's so much information now, it's almost like Dr. Google is a bit crazy. And the idea of this is to signpost women - so practical workshops, seminars and more evidence based treatment about what's normal, what's not for all stages of life in womanhood, and kind of just some ideas, really. So that's where it came from and it's escalated.

Helen

It sounds incredible. I'm like, I've never heard of anything like this happening before. I keep telling everyone it's like a Glastonbury, but for women's health. But I mean, I might be over egging it a bit.

Julie

Glastonbury. Hay Festival for women's health.

Helen

Hay Festival, there you go.

Aziza

It's on at the same time as Glastonbury as well

Helen

It is isn't it! It'll be much less muddy and more refined,

Julie

I hope.

Helen

And you've got like all these amazing speakers - us included, obviously, and there's going to be people on the main stage talking about periods and pelvic health and birth injury and gender health gap and menopause and...

Julie

We've got a comedy show. So Fran Bushe, who does a comedy show at the end of a fringe festival on her broken vagina, and this cracked me up. So she's been in, she does a Channel Four series, she's an author, she'll be talking about her book, but she's basically saying about how she got to 30, didn't enjoy sex and what she decides to do about it. That's the last thing, which frankly will be done with a gin in my hand and that will be quite entertaining.

Helen

It sounds amazing. That's on at 4 o'clock, though, isn't it? And you've just told me that I'm signing books at 4 o'clock and I was going to go along and watch. So we might have to have a little chat about that.

Julie

We may need to move things.

Helen

She'll be great.

Luce Brett, author of the inspirational book PMSL and one of the first ever guests on the Why Mums Don't Jump podcast. What will you be speaking about at EveryWoman?

Luce

I will be speaking about PMSL, which is a memoir I wrote with a lot of similar intentions to the ones that Julie just spoke about. Because I sort of flipped from to be more cross than I was upset about the state of my own gynaecological health post birth injuries and my own incontinence and also the sort of state of the world and how unkind we are about incontinence and women's health. And the more I found out, the crosser I got and get a cross, busy woman, and then you might begin to try and change the world. So that's what I decided I would do. I'd write a memoir about incontinence, the first incontinence memoir.

And then it's been a real journey because I sort of didn't...it's quite a frank book and I didn't really think that anyone would buy it. And even right up to the last minute, my editor was a bit like, are you sure? I was very frank. But the reason I did it, I did it because I wanted to start a conversation. And I think that there aren't enough conversations about this. Because when it came out, I got a letter from a woman in her 90s who said, I wish I'd never had children. What happened to me was terrible and detailed not so much her specific injuries, but she was like, nobody ever spoke about a birth that was traumatic to me. And I was writing about a birth in 2007. She's talking about one in whatever it was, like the 60s or 50s. And she's like, it was the same, and no one listened. And I thought, how sad that there's all that trauma and upset and maybe she was a lot like me and she just needed to sit down with someone's big sister to go like, oh, yeah, I'm one of those women who got it all, kicking ass around the world and doing my job and looking great on Instagram with my kids. And actually I'm devastated sometimes that my sex life has been ruined. And I know I should be grown up and feminist enough to get the answers, but I don't know how to articulate it to my doctor. And I just talk in a funny way, and I can't remember whether it's my vulva or my vagina and all the stuff, or I just felt so powerless it changed me. And things like that. And no one had said any of that stuff to her, so she'd been trapped in it for years.

And then I want to come and talk because I want to read a bit some stuff from the book, because I think there is a power in validation. And I just think that if people hear some of the stories, it might empower them to do something, and it might make them feel... you know when you wet yourself in public, for example, which happened to me, or when you have a time at a hospital where you know they're probably going to say something's wrong, but you were kind of hoping they wouldn't. Or you have an operation that is supposed to save everything and then doesn't quite work. Or you prepare for a childbirth like you prepared for all your straight A exams in life and it didn't work out. When those things happen to you, even if you know all the answers, that does not mean you don't feel completely alone, I don't think. I think it's completely isolating. So I wrote it to start the conversation, and I will be at the EveryWoman Festival talking about my mangled minge. And about how even something like as awful as bowel incontinence is something where you can look up and there will be someone talking to you who's been through it and come out of the other side. Maybe not in pristine form, but who has come out because you just think you're never going to get to the end of that journey. And it's so important to know there are people who've been through it before. You you need your sisters there. Your big sisters and your friends. Big sisters who've walked the path, right?

Julie

And your daughters. One of the big things for this is about I mean, it's not scaring people about having babies or anything like this, it's just about understanding the fact that it happens. So, actually, if you kind of say, this could happen to you and actually there's ways to fix it, and this could happen to you and there's ways to reduce the risk, would you not want to know that? And also, if you're pregnant, having had a baby, anything like that, or even if you've finished menopause, you can still get incontinence then. So the whole generation, bring your mum, your sister, your aunt. You've got to be over 16. That's the only thing.

Helen

Dr Aziza Sesay. Am I saying your name correctly?

Aziza

You are. That was accurate. But you can call me Aziza, please.

Helen

Yeah, okay, Aziza, you're on the main stage. Early doors, I think, which I'm quite jealous of because I'm on later and I know I'm just going to spend the whole day being really nervous and biting my nails, but what can we expect from you at the EveryWoman Festival?

Aziza

Well, I am really excited and privileged to be on the main stage. Julie has been very accommodating, very very welcoming, but it's a passion, the topic that I'll be talking on, the gender health gap, the gap that is wider than needs to be. It's insane. I mean, the reality is that when it comes to women's health versus men's health, we lag way behind. We've practically been forgotten. And we know that it's really, really bad in the UK. Actually, the UK is one of the worst in the whole of Europe. The gap is the widest, unfortunately. And recently we had the call for evidence come out and there's a women's health strategy. It's pretty dire that things need to improve.

And they need to be improved because there's not enough research, there's not enough information about common conditions that affect more than half the world, half the population. And it's because when we talk about women's health and gynaecological health, it is riddled with shame, stigma, taboo. And this is perpetuated because, for instance, I run a platform on Instagram, I run a social media platform where I do a lot of health awareness and it's difficult to get this information out there. Like, just like Luce was saying, you need those big sisters to hold your hand and talk you through things and no longer hide it in shame, because it's a reality that happens to a lot of people, right? And you don't want to feel alone, you don't want to feel dismissed, you want to feel like your symptoms are real and need to be dealt with. And when you have platforms that censor you just for using gynaecological names, and I'm going to say it because they're not bad words, but vulva, vagina, clitoris, you use any of those words, immediately you won't see the post, your reach will drop. And recently it was put up on LinkedIn and they have auto generated captions and they censor the words vulva and clitoris.

And these are the kind of things that perpetuate the shame and the stigma and just widens the gap, because why would people want to talk about something if it's seen as negative?

So, yeah, I'm going to just be talking on this, reinforcing the fact that change needs to come and it needs to come yesterday, and also hopefully empowering people to come forward with their ailments and just reassuring them that they're not alone and there is help out there, basically.

Helen

It's going to be great. And I noticed you're on stage as well with Tiffany Sequira, who was on the podcast a while back. She's @gynaegirl on Instagram, she's a physio, she's great, she'll be great on this. And the Welsh Minister for Health

Julie

Yes. Eluned Morgan is going to be opening, so actually she's going to be talking about her Welsh health strategy or vision for it, for women's health, but we need more details exactly on that. And I hope that you're going to be.. in fact, the other person who's chairing that is going to be Suzanne Rankin, who's the CEO of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, and I think she's got some fairly challenging questions. So that one is going to be a good one, and it's highly likely we're going to have some gaps in the seminar session. So do come early because that session starts at eleven, so if there's any gaps, you can just chug in there and have a watch because we want that full so we can ask some questions.

Helen

I'm so excited. It's going to be so powerful, the whole thing. Yeah. So I'm on at 2 o'clock, I think, with friends of the podcast - pelvic Health physiotherapist Emma Brockwell and Dr. Rebecca Moore from Make Birth Better. We're going to be talking broadly about birth injury, and I'll be wanging on some more about my prolapse, which you've all heard before, and how, like, one post on Instagram grew into this podcast and a community and a book, and now here we all are. So that sort of flavour.

Julie

But you'll be there in person and you can do book signings, so if you've got a copy of the book come along, get Helen to sign it. She'll do a personalised thing for you, or buy a book there and then at the bookstore that's going to be there.

Helen

Yes! Honestly, there's so much stuff and we can't get through it all now. There's just hundreds of things. And like Julie was saying now, you were telling me just before we came on, there's going to be like a cookery demonstration as well as the belly dancing and the painting and the pilates and the meditation, and it's going to be just...

Julie

Conversational stitching, creative market. We've got live music, we've got some choirs, we've got pop-up foods, there's a bar, there's a picnic area, nordic walking, circle dancing, ultimate skipping, drop in sessions. Meet the expert to speak to consultants about polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, managing pelvic pain. It's going to be immense!

Helen

Brilliant. Honestly, it's going to be amazing. So the key thing now that we need to do is, Julie remind us when, where and how to get tickets.

Julie

Okay? So it's on on Saturday, the 24 June. It's in Cardiff at insole court. You can buy tickets at everywomanfest.com. They're currently 15 pounds. And yeah, it's got a beautiful, beautiful venue. So all the particulars are there. Come along all day. So you get one seminar, one workshop, guaranteed. But there will be loads of drop-in events that you don't have to book for that are part of the ticket, you get free goody bag. There's trades, there's charities.

Helen

If that's not sold it to you, then I don't know, I don't know, maybe you're going to Glasto.