Mid-Life Interiors Guru & Content Creator, Joanne Hardcastle

[00:00:27] Joanne's current chapter, which she's calling "the fun chapter" of her life, only happened after the ups and downs of life, love, and loss.

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[00:00:46] I hope you enjoy the episode.

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[00:01:04] I really am. Yeah, it took a lot of getting here to be able to do that and to enjoy my life.

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[00:01:19] Joanne: Hi, it's really good to be here. Thank you for asking me on.

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[00:01:29] Joanne: We are good hairstyles.

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[00:01:35] Joanne: Fringes are so high maintenance. And when you hit the menopause, it's even worse because they're constantly sweating. It's just hard work, but I'm committed to it now. I'm not turning back.

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[00:02:01] Joanne: If you'd ever seen a photograph of my two daughters, my grown up daughters, we've all got the same hairstyle. So it's like clearly we're setting good trends here. If a

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[00:02:13] Kristin: Yeah, exactly. Though I do have to say there's pictures of me at about five with the same hairstyle. So

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[00:02:19] Kristin: maybe I'm a little too committed. So sometimes I ask people what would they say their chapters of their lives are obviously for the second chapter. But as I often say, we have way more than two. So I ask you a bit in advance, for some of your chapters, and I'd love to kind of go through those and chat a little bit, maybe in chronological order, we see where we go about what you consider, the real changes and chapters of your life.

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[00:02:53] Joanne: Yeah, and that's, that was the first Biggest change in my life. That's when I had to grow up and yeah the blinkers were brought off my eyes and I had to grow up. My dad disappeared. My mum died. I was all alone. So it was like, it was massive a massive part, a massive change for me.

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[00:03:24] Joanne: it was. I look back on it now. Hindsight is really good. I was 17. I had to grow up. I had nobody to look after me. I I was doing my A levels at school. I had to kind of get a job and look after my 14 year old brother. I look back now and it was like quite a traumatic, horrific time that we were going through.

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[00:04:00] My brother didn't fare quite as well as me. I think I got my big girl pants on and thought I'm gonna make a go of this.

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[00:04:10] What did you end up doing to support yourself and your brother?

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[00:04:35] I couldn't go to university. I look back now and there should have been help for me. There should have been people stepping in, welfare people. Me and my brother should have gone into care, really, if anybody knew what was happening, but nobody did. And I just thought I can't go to university now.

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[00:05:07] still a little girl,

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[00:05:28] How has this lasted so long? So how did you end up leaving? Insurance, which was funny that you called a safety net because I think they'd appreciate that.

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[00:06:23] I didn't get pregnant. I did get pregnant easily, but I lost. Six babies and it was horrific. I eventually left insurance when I had my first daughter And I never went back to work after that. So having a baby, that was the next chapter of my life.

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[00:06:47] Kristin: I'm always interested to talk about loss, through miscarriage, because I think it's something that even now. It's such a hard thing to talk about, and rightfully so, but because we don't talk about it, I think there's still so many people that aren't aware how often it happens and how difficult it is.

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[00:07:23] Joanne: Nobody talked about it. It was awful because I'm a talker and I wanted to tell everybody I was hurting and I was I didn't have these babies, but I still was a mum. I'd still experienced this plan This like you're not just losing that little 12 week old baby in your tummy. You're losing all The, your futures that you'd imagined with it, the first birthday, the first it growing up, all the plans that you make for this baby are just gone like that and it's awful.

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[00:08:07] It was like, it was such a massive part of my life that's affected me to this day. I've got this huge hole inside of me that's never gonna go away. It's, you just grow around it, don't you? But I've got this hole where six babies were, and yeah, I wanted to talk about it. I wanted everybody to know how much I was hurting.

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[00:08:25] Kristin: Yeah, I definitely think it's something I just never want to glaze over because obviously if people don't want to talk about it, that's their prerogative, but I, it was my manager at work who said to me , said, I'm sorry, I haven't really been around or, I've been a little bit unavailable, she was really struggling and had several miscarriages and, wasn't really talking about it, but she wanted me to know. And it was only then that I started looking into it a bit more and really realized how, how prevalent it was.

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[00:09:10] Joanne: I reached out to, it was a charity. It was all newsletters and telephones back then. The miscarriage Association. And I did volunteer for them for a little bit as a telephone counsellor. So people who were going through it could ring up and just talk

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[00:09:27] You want to ask them, is this normal? Is this what happens? Am I, should I be feeling like this? And Now, I will always reach out to somebody who's lost a baby. My niece recently went through it. And I, you understand it, you know what they're going through. Not many people are willing to talk about it.

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[00:09:55] Kristin: And I'm glad you mentioned that you still have this hole, because even though you did go on to have children of your own and to have a foster child, I do think so often you hear people like, Oh, it was so sad, but now I have my babies. And that's not the story for everyone. And even When, there might be a quote unquote happier ending, it still isn't necessarily the end all be all for everyone.

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[00:10:23] Joanne: It's part of who me and my husband are. It's part of our relationship, our family, the girls know about that we lost babies. I don't know, would I go back and change it? It's difficult to say because I would never have had my beautiful daughters if I'd have had these other babies. It's such a, it's massive.

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[00:10:44] Kristin: so once you did have your first baby, obviously that was a great time. Is that kind of the next chapter?

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[00:11:13] So that, that period up until they were about I suppose Lily left home when she was 18 to university. That hit me hard. But yeah, it was the happiest I've ever been. I don't, I wish I could go back and relive it because it was just, it was wonderful. It was lovely.

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[00:11:37] Joanne: Yeah.

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[00:11:47] Joanne: Yeah. When we talk, it's funny when you talk about this hole inside, you're still trying to fill it. So I'd had my two babies. We were really lucky. My brother then I've got a genetic condition so we were really lucky to get these two girls. My brother had a baby who died and just after I had my youngest daughter and we thought we can't do this anymore.

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[00:12:24] And that's how we ended up fostering. We just, I just thought there's, I've still got so much more to give. I want another baby. It didn't quite work out like that. It's a nice fairytale little image. It was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. But yeah, we took we took in a little girl who's still with us now, nine years later.

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[00:12:58] I couldn't do anything 100 percent while my attention was divided. So I gave up work to look after. The two youngest girls,

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[00:13:09] This podcast where I'm so big on talking to women who have made these amazing changes and, but there's still this sort of, you have to explain yourself if you want to be a mom, you have to explain yourself if you want to be a working mom, you have to explain yourself.

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[00:13:33] Joanne: I felt guilty. I am a feminist. I was brought up in the 80s. I went to an all girls school brought up by socialist teachers that told us we could do anything we wanted to do and men were evil. And I am a feminist. And I felt so guilty for giving up work, and I felt like I was setting a bad example to my daughters, that I was just a stay at home mum.

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[00:14:13] So yeah, it was quite a struggle that period.

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[00:14:29] Joanne: We never can, can we? We never can, it's always a struggle. It's... It's mainly us women who are picking up the pieces and trying to juggle everything and justify what we do and explain why we're doing it.

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[00:14:47] Kristin: Yeah. I hope so too. It feels like the struggle's been too long.

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[00:14:56] Kristin: Yeah. And I say that a lot because I'm an eternal optimist somewhere inside. I think it's interesting also I mentioned your blog, but you talked about, and you said to me just now that the fairy tale image of a foster child and how you're going to kind of save them and everything. But I know that wasn't as easy either.

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[00:15:23] Joanne: Exactly that, I thought. Let's have another child and it'd be all like, skipping through the forest and it'd be wonderful and it wasn't. It was, that first year was so hard. It nearly broke me and Tim. I remember the first day that she came to live here, going upstairs and lying on my bed and crying.

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[00:16:00] She was scared. It was really hard and it took about a year before we all found a level ground and I worried terribly if the girls would have said, my girls would have said at any point we can't do this, their needs would have always come first. I had to make sure that they were okay and they were and I think it's made them better people as well, more resilient and more caring and they've seen.

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[00:16:30] Kristin: pardon my ignorance, but why a long term foster or how does that work versus adopting?

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[00:16:53] So she still sees her mom, she still sees her dad. She wasn't put up for adoption, but she was never going to go back to her mom. It was a lot, she was, she had been taken away from, she was never going to go back to her. So she just needed a safe and secure and settled home. And we adopted for long term foster care because my youngest daughter.

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[00:17:33] That's crazy, isn't it? That's crazy that we were just taking a person into our family.

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[00:17:55] So getting to meet her at all was

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[00:18:04] Kristin: You mentioned that it was really challenging as your daughters grew up as well. And obviously now you also have the foster child, but you, I think you even used the term mental illness or you were really struggled as your daughters left home to go to university.

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[00:18:39] and to let her go because she had completed me, I love them all, I love them all, but this, the eldest daughter, she had completed me, she'd healed all my sadness and then I had to let her go and that, it was horrific. She moved to London, she moved about 300 miles away and I was just in a depression for three months.

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[00:19:25] So all that my mum's loss, the miscarriages. I think it all came out as she left home.

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[00:19:36] Joanne: I was a 47. I thought it was my menopause I thought this, all this feeling of doom and anxiety was my menopause. So I went to the doctors and I said, you've got to help me, it's my menopause. And she said let's deal with your anxiety first and let's get this sorted out. And she put me on medication which made me better.

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[00:20:14] Kristin: somewhere along the you did an A level as mature student. Where did that fit into all of this?

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[00:20:38] That was me finding that I was this creative person again, met new I did all sorts of fun things, but yeah, that was like. That was the beginning of turning me back into me.

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[00:21:06] Joanne: Always, I've always wanted to make a nest and wanted to make a home. So from being a young girl, I decorated my bedroom. I've always been really into making my space lovely. And the thing with interiors, it was It was Instagram. I started following all these Instagrammers, the Instamums, like Mother of Daughters, Mother Pucker, people like that, and I thought they were really quite aspirational.

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[00:21:49] Brands wanted to work with me. So yeah, it's through Instagram. So it's, the design's always been there, it's just, I never shared it before.

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[00:22:16] Joanne: Content creator, let's call me a content creator.

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[00:22:41] It's like the equivalent of going to university. It's not like getting a degree, but you've put all that work in behind and then you start to get the jobs coming in. So it's not something that you can just pluck out of air. It is hard work and I wouldn't say I'm an influencer, I'm a content creator, so I.

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[00:23:18] It's not just taking a picture. People think that you get free stuff, you don't. It's not just taking a picture. There's a lot of work behind it and I think there's a lot of, not shame, people look down on content creators and think that it's, we're all just doing this like easy job and we're all freeloading.

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[00:23:45] Kristin: I don't know if I have.

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[00:23:54] wrote a really good reply saying sorry, but exposure on Instagram doesn't pay the mortgage. I'm not going to give you this cake and everybody was piling on going, I don't know how these people dare do it. They want something for nothing, which is true. It's all good and well, but on the other hand, are content creators out there and sometimes brands will approach me and they'll say, Can I send you this candle and you'll produce an advert for me?

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[00:24:36] Kristin: Yeah, on both sides, because, if you're, if it's an advertisement from you and I just think, Oh, you just love this sofa company because they make the most amazing sofas. It's good to know, this is an advertisement. But also, yeah, I don't know. Cause because I'm an actor as well, I feel like so often there's this thing about exposure, Oh, we don't have a budget for actors, but you'll have great exposure.

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[00:25:06] Joanne: I It's a transaction, isn't it? It's a transaction, it's got to benefit both parts.

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[00:25:17] And you're like, no, I'm doing all the work. You're sending me a candle. That's not the same thing.

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[00:25:24] Kristin: And I do think in a way there is something very There's something very lazy on the advertising side some of the advertising even self tapes that I get, they're like, Oh, just improv around the product. you're asking me to be an actor, but now you're also asking me to be a writer.

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[00:25:47] Joanne: You're doing it all, you're creating it, you're getting the props and see styling it, you're taking the pictures, you're videoing it, you're editing it. You're doing the whole job and they're getting away with it. They've still got budgets, haven't they?

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[00:26:09] Kristin: So how did... You are following an interior design masters and obviously they've kind of merged together a little

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[00:26:18] Kristin: So how did you end up on interior design masters? And for people listening who don't know about interior design masters because they're not located here, tell us a little bit about the show.

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[00:26:41] It's like Bake Off for designers. With my Instagram, because I talk a lot on stories and I'm quite opinionated over the years I've been approached quite a lot by TV producers wanting me to try out for different television programs. And I just thought, my attitude is, this is the like, the fun chapter of my life.

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[00:27:16] And I thought, why not? Why not? Let's see where it goes. And I got quite far in the process for the year before I was supposed to be on, but then it got right to the last hurdle, and they decided I was too much like a previous contestant, so they said, no, we're not going to go with you this year, will you come back next year?

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[00:28:04] And before I knew what was happening, I was driving a van through London, ready to start filming. What am I doing? What am I doing? But it was. So much fun. I'm so glad I did it.

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[00:28:24] Joanne: Yeah

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[00:28:51] Joanne: Oh, I learned so much because I came to it just like winging it like I do everything. I'm not a designer There were amazing designers on there. And I just thought when I saw them all oh my god, what am I doing here? there's such clever people pouring legs out of cement and sewing things and I'm just like getting on my flat pack furniture out So that first week was such a shock to me, but I looked around and I thought I've got to come back With something more next week.

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[00:29:34] So it's It stood the test of

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[00:29:41] Joanne: not all of them, not all of them lasted, but my thing's still there. They have a team when we finish, a snag team, that they go around with the owners and they sort things out because we have to do things really quickly. We've got 48 hours, so sometimes there are shortcuts made. Sometimes the people don't like it.

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[00:30:21] Learning curve for me is such a massive thing for me to do.

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[00:30:31] Joanne: I love it. I love it. I wouldn't have made the lamps. The lamps will haunt me for the rest of my life. With the feathers, I would've bought some lamps. I think I tried to do, I tried to make too much. I'd made the dressing table, the bedside tables, I'd beaded on the wardrobe doors. The layout as well, because I think Jack was on.

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[00:30:56] Kristin: Oh yes,

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[00:31:05] If I'd have gone on to the week four, it would have been about layout and changing the shapes of the rooms. That was the next step for me, I think.

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[00:31:31] Joanne: Genius.

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[00:31:35] That's when I start getting just like, that's next level. Whoa. What has it done as far as you've come home now? Have you added a wall? Have you built a thing? Have you done the things that you weren't doing before?

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[00:32:01] We did have the buildings in place, but I came home and I ripped up my plans like NO! It's not going to be like that. This is what I want. It's got to be multifunctional. I've got to do this. I've got to do that, and I've created I'm so proud of it, it's an amazing space. Three rooms, each room does different things, there's lots of hidden storage, and I learned all that from the show, I learned how to do that, and to make an area work and flow, so yeah I'm really proud of that.

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[00:32:43] I have a very dark navy bedroom. I like to mix in a lot of pink. As I said, we have the matching Like the color, I think, do you have a magenta or like magenta? Yeah, I would call it magenta. Hot pink wall.

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[00:32:57] Kristin: Where did I swear I've seen on your Instagram a hot pink wall

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[00:33:11] Kristin: I'm an investigative journalist,

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[00:33:15] Kristin: So also, I'm really interested in your blog. I think you've not been as active on your blog, but when did that start in the whole scheme of things?

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[00:33:43] I want to write it down. And it was too big a chunk of writing to have as an Instagram post. So that's where the blog came from. I wanted to write. about the moment I became a mum and what it meant to me. And then it like, it opened it, I just wanted to carry on writing. I just needed to get my story out.

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[00:34:16] It's just hard. It's the juggle again, isn't it? It's hard finding time for everything.

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[00:34:45] This is the vulnerability people talk about. It does make it, it just makes for a more interesting person that you want to get to know.

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[00:35:09] told people that before and it's quite scary that's there in the open but it felt quite therapeutic and healing to write it and get it out, because it's not something I struggle, I will, I talk about it on a certain level, but I don't ever go very deep with people about it, because that hurts too much to go into the deep, so I'll say yes, I had miscarriages, it was awful, but I don't let myself get too vulnerable, I don't think, so writing that down.

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[00:35:46] Kristin: before we started recording, I was mentioning, because this is such a nice chat that sometimes I forget. well. Yeah. I forget that it goes out to, I mean, I've said things to a friend of mine who's an avid listener and he's like, Yeah, I know. You said that on the podcast. And I was just like, I thought I was doing some kind of true confession to him, one on one and realized, I've already told thousands and thousands of people.

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[00:36:19] Joanne: sometimes I write things and I think I second guess myself and I think, should I share it? Should I share it? I'm never, I never regret sharing things because I think it helps other people as well. I've recently been sharing I've talked about my second daughter who had learning difficulties.

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[00:36:58] But when I was in, when I was a young mum, I'd have loved to have heard that. I'd have loved for someone to say, don't worry, keep going because it's all going to work out all right. so I think it's really important to share stories to help other people.

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[00:37:42] But yeah, I think so often just hearing one person say. I tried it and sometimes I tried it. I failed. I had to do something else. And sometimes it's, I went through all of this to get there, but now I'm there. I usually know that that vulnerability or knowing, what I've been through or what my guest has been through. Or how they've gotten where they've gotten. It's not just an interesting story. It's actually something that could be helpful in a time when somebody needs it.

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[00:38:34] I really am. And it took, yeah, it took a lot of getting here to be able to do that and to enjoy my life.

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[00:38:53] And Shonda Rhimes had already written, I think the book is called my year of yes. Or, and I was just like, okay, I can't compete with Shonda Rhimes. Ended up still saying yes to pretty much everything and now I'm constantly drowning, but I'm

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[00:39:07] Joanne: Too much to do, I've too much to do, but life's so short. When my... One of my eldest daughter's friends she died when she was 17. She had got cancer and that was another massive thing. So when, I'll say, when Ella died, because I think it's important to say people's names when they've died to remember them as well. That was such a massive thing. in our community, in our, in our neighborhood. And it's made me look at my daughters and think they're still here and they're still living their life and Ella didn't get that chance.

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[00:39:46] Kristin: I absolutely agree. I think my WhatsApp, little thing, it's so cheesy and I don't even care. It just says ready for adventure.

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[00:39:56] Kristin: Cause you know, who knows who's going to WhatsApp me and maybe they're going to say, Oh, I've got an adventure for you. Okay, let's do

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[00:40:06] Kristin: I

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[00:40:20] Joanne: I've got three. Am I allowed three?

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[00:40:25] Joanne: Which is my favorite one? Which is my favorite one?

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[00:40:31] Joanne: Okay, so my first one is, and this has really helped me because I was such an angry person for a long time. Which is understandable, I was such an angry, confrontational person. And this really helped me. Would you rather be right or would you rather have peace?

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[00:40:53] Kristin: I'm trying to think because I just spoke with someone who I can't think if it was the same quote or very similar because it led me to say I hope this isn't one of your other quotes, but I like perfect is better than, or done is better than perfect because, or sometimes I prefer good is better than perfect because I cannot give fully up my perfectionist tendencies,

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[00:41:12] Kristin: but you probably encountered that actually on

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[00:41:17] Joanne: Yeah,

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[00:41:35] Kristin: Okay. Sorry, I interrupted. What's next?

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[00:41:56] mean, I don't hold grudges. I'm not a sulker, but I remember that

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[00:42:04] Kristin: Yeah, I would say the whole forgive and forget, I can well, I've had a lot of conversations about forgiveness the last few episodes, but like I'll never quite forget.

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[00:42:40] So yeah, I think that's push yourself, just keep pushing yourself a little bit further.

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[00:42:48] thrown in.

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[00:42:51] Kristin: I've had so much fun talking to you. Is there anything else that you want to impart on my listeners that I've missed?

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[00:43:07] enjoyed

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[00:43:12] Joanne: Oh, thank you.

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[00:43:15] Joanne: Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it.