Remona Aly on breaking an engagement and the transformative force of grief
The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Remona Aly on breaking an engagement and the transformative force of grief
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In this episode, I speak to journalist and broadcaster Remona Aly about her life-changing decision to call off an engagement, and how it echoed through the years to teach her about forgiveness, faith and empathy.
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine May:
Hi, I'm Katherine May. Welcome to The Wintering Sessions. I am sitting in my back garden under a big parasol. It's really hot here right now. I live in the very far southeast of England, and when there's a heatwave we always get the hottest bit, every single time. And we are told that for the first time ever in the UK, on Monday, the temperature's likely to go over 40 degrees Centigrade, which is over a hundred Fahrenheit. And that's not a temperature that I or my country are adapted to. So there's a slight feeling of panic in the air, except for some of us who are really looking forward to it, but I'm not one of those people.
Katherine May:
And because of the heat, my Ménière's Disease has kicked off. Ménière's is a condition of the inner ear where basically, I mean, this is a very big simplification, but you get an excess of fluid building up in your inner ear, and that leaves you with a sort of severe dizziness, so I'm quite disoriented right now. But one of the side effects of it is that all of the muscles in my body tense up, because my brain thinks I'm falling, and so every muscle in my body braces. So I feel like I've got a whole body headache. I'm feeling very sorry for myself.
Katherine May:
It's been a week of things, not going to plan, my friends, because I was hoping to be introducing a kind of grand finale before the summer for you today. I had one of my literary heroes, Susan Cain, author of Quiet and the new Bittersweet lined up. We'd had a wonderful conversation. She had said many, many really interesting things. And my producer emailed last week to say he'd got halfway through the edits and the file had got all mangled from, you know, 20 minutes in. So with some level of devastation we're going to hold off on that. We're not sure if there's something we can do to recover the second half. Worst comes to worst we'll put the first half out as a bonus, because I'm sure there'll be wonderful things in there. But Susan's on holiday at the moment and I hope she's having a wonderful relaxing time and we'll see what we can do for you.
Katherine May:
However, instead of that, I've got a great treat for you, which is a re-up of an old episode. Now I'm taking a break over the summer. So I'm planning to give you some, I don't know what the word is, like remastered versions of season one of The Wintering Sessions, which is when I was making it myself in my office, in the middle of a pandemic with absolutely no editing skills whatsoever. And so now I have the brilliant producer, Buddy, on board. He has agreed to take some of my original recordings and turn them into something that maybe, I don't know, sounds a bit more competent. And I think for loads of you who listen now, maybe you didn't catch season one. So I'm really excited to get some of my favorite interviews back out there again. They were all great, but I did ask for votes on Instagram and on my Patreon feed. And these were the ones that came up trumps.
Katherine May:
So first of all, I would like to introduce to you one of the favorite conversations I had in the last couple of years with Remona Aly, who is a journalist and writer on how to live our life, really. She's got a wonderful spiritual perspective, but she's also incredibly, incredibly funny. And I know that because I went to school with her. We are both from the very glamorous suburb of Strood, in Kent. I'm actually from a village just outside, but that doesn't make it any more fancy. And we both went to the same school and I... well, I don't think either of us ever expected to be working in the media now. And so when I spotted her online a few years ago, I had to send her a message to say, "Is that you? Did we go to school?" It took a little while for us to realize, but it's just so nice to be back in touch with her. She's amazing. Anyway, that's rambling. I hope you really enjoy this conversation and I'll be back a little bit later.
Katherine May:
Hello, and welcome to The Wintering Sessions with me, Katherine May. Each week I talk to a writer who's experienced a wintering period where they felt frozen out of the world. And this week I'm delighted to introduce journalist and broadcaster, Remona Aly. Welcome Remona.
Remona Aly:
Hi Katherine, and thanks for having me. I know we tried before. And then we went into a two hour chat.
Katherine May:
We should, we should own up to-
Remona Aly:
Catch-up.
Katherine May:
... There's a whole load of stuff we need to own up to there, at the beginning of this podcast. Because, yeah, first of all, we tried this once before and it just failed and you ended up-
Remona Aly:
Or succeeded, depending on how you look at it.
Katherine May:
... Yeah, it was lovely. I had the best time and you ended up sitting in your wardrobe, talking to me for like two hours.
Remona Aly:
I'm back in my wardrobe again.
Katherine May:
I love this vision of you in your wardrobe. But that is because we went to school together. And, yeah.
Remona Aly:
Yeah, many, many years ago.
Katherine May:
I know.
Remona Aly:
We went to the same school in Kent and in Rochester, and I think we reconnected many years later. I think you connected with me on Twitter.
Katherine May:
Well, yeah, so I saw you be retweeted or something on Twitter, and I recognized the name instantly, but because I'm face blind, of course I had no idea if it was you or not. And I spent a little while looking at Facebook. Nope, not a clue. And so I sent you a tweet, like, "Are you the Remona that I went to school with?"
Remona Aly:
Oh, it was so cool. It was such a lovely moment actually. I was like, "Oh my goodness!" Because obviously your surname has changed.
Katherine May:
Yes, yeah. Of course, yeah.
Remona Aly:
And I was like, "Wow, she's this big, hotshot. I knew she would always be that."
Katherine May:
Hardly.
Remona Aly:
Because I was so, I love... I mean, at school I was just so in awe of you, you were so confident-
Katherine May:
Stop.
Remona Aly:
... and so clever, I'm like, "Obviously, nothing's really changed in that regard."
Katherine May:
Oh yeah, obviously. I mean, I'm just exuding cleverness in the 20 minutes that we've just spent for me trying to sort the sound out on my podcast. Can't even do the basics, honestly.
Remona Aly:
Look, you're doing a podcast. This is amazing. And the book. I've been reading Wintering as well. It's just so beautiful.
Katherine May:
Oh, thank you.
Remona Aly:
So beautiful. And what you are doing is just so brilliant, just like talking to different people about wintering sessions and wintering periods.
Katherine May:
I'm loving it.
Remona Aly:
It's so resonate. It really resonates. It was amazing. I've been listening to them. So, yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Katherine May:
Oh no, well, it's so lovely to be there. And it was just, it was lovely last time to catch up on like, what is it, 20 years worth, more than 20 years worth of life.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. 20 years in two hours. Yeah, it was full throttle.
Katherine May:
It was a lot. Yeah, I learnt a lot. But I think, I guess we don't ever expect to be part of an old girls' network, going to a state school, and it's just always so lovely to talk to someone that's in the same industry as you anyway, but when you've got history with that person, it's amazing.
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
So, so exciting. So since I knew you at school, you have become a kind of uber journalist and broadcaster on Muslim spirituality. Would that be fair to say?
Remona Aly:
Yeah, that's definitely part of it. Yeah. So on faith, on identity, lifestyle, culture, I've really been interested in exploring what people believe, how they feel their spirituality and just everything to do with life because it's just very holistic. I see faith as very holistic and it's not in a vacuum. So there's so many sides to who I am, my personality and my writing and I just wanted to always be authentic to that.
Katherine May:
Yeah, absolutely.
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
And that really comes across. And that's a little bit about what we're going to talk about today, isn't it? That I think what you do is you talk so beautifully about real life as a Muslim woman. You're not a romanticizer necessarily. You kind of dig into those quandaries of real life that you've experienced.
Remona Aly:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, because it's really important to be honest and open, but at the same time kind of not giving away everything that would maybe compromise other people's trust, you know?
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Because often I'm talking about my family and it is very sensitive, and I think we spoke about this together when we were talking about these things, we want to be so open and we want to be personal, but you have to also respect the other people around you.
Katherine May:
Yes.
Remona Aly:
So it's kind of a balance. It's finding a balance in that and finding your voice as well through that.
Katherine May:
Yes. Because I mean, I think that's the eternal dilemma of the memoirist or life writer. I've been putting together these courses lately for people who write from life and I absolutely love doing it, but I think one of the parts of that I've really wrestled with is the ethical component, like how do you teach people about the ethics of being someone who... like when you write from your own life, you always touch on other people's, and that's crunchy, isn't it?
Remona Aly:
Absolutely. Yeah. So I've often, sometimes when I've written pieces, I've actually had to just check with my brother or my sister or my mom, go, "Look, I'm talking about this, it's really personal to all of us. So is this all right? Is the way I'm saying this okay for you?" And often they're like, "Yeah, no, that's fine," because I'm always conscious of that, that this is their emotions as well that I'm talking about, it's not only my own, because we have this shared grief or shared loss. When we lost my father, for example.
Remona Aly:
So conveying that in a public space, it can be really daunting, but also it can be really empowering and sharing some of my experiences in public, I've had the most incredible responses to it. Not only from strangers, but also from my own family members, because it's like you process your grief in a certain way. And I've certainly been able to do that, I've certainly been able to process those times in my life that have been traumatic or painful, and that writing, it really does help, as you completely know.
Katherine May:
Yes.
Remona Aly:
It really does help you kind of channel that. And I understand how you're feeling about those moments in hindsight and at the time. So yeah, my writing has definitely helped me and I hope also my family members.
Katherine May:
Yeah. And I mean, I sometimes get some kind of askance comments about why on earth I'd write about my own dirty laundry, essentially. And yeah, it is hard. That process of writing can be really painful and kind of gut wrenching.
Remona Aly:
Oh yeah.
Katherine May:
And it drags out all your shame and all of your kind of self-loathing sometimes. And definitely your grief. It's definitely, there's always-
Remona Aly:
Oh, definitely.
Katherine May:
... stuff that surfaces that you still feel terrible about.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. You're absolutely right, it is. It is gut wrenching. When you're writing, it's not easy, it is not easy to write in this way, in this open way and digging deep into your soul and just bringing it out. I was really nervous about the reactions to some of my writing. What I was saying, like when The Guardian commissioned me to write something, a moment that changed my life, or the one thing that worked. And I was like, "Well, there were a few things, but one of them was my broken engagement where that just kind of went really bad." And talking about that was difficult, and I was really, I was scared and I was feeling a little bit sick about it actually.
Katherine May:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that's really great that we're going to talk about that today.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. That's the segue.
Katherine May:
You can feel sick all over again, Remona. I'm giving you that opportunity now.
Remona Aly:
Oh, great. Oh, that's good, I've got lots of clothes around me, so it's all right. It can absorb it.
Katherine May:
I'm so glad you're in your protective wardrobe.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. I am in my little room of my wardrobe.
Katherine May:
I mean, because I read that article and I thought it was wonderful. That's why I wanted to talk to you about it. But I think one of the things that does when I read about that story is that it tells me a very different story about Muslim women that I guess we don't hear very much.
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
I think that's one of the really important things that life writing does. So tell me, first of all, about the plans you had. How did you meet your partner, and what was the... what was the deal?
Remona Aly:
Yeah. So this was a long, long time ago. I was in my twenties. I think I was around 24. So this is well over 15 years ago.
Katherine May:
Yeah. That's a long time ago.
Remona Aly:
And I, you know, as the good Muslim girl, I didn't really have any relationships at all growing up. I remember at school when we used to go to parties or whatever, I used to just stay away from everybody, and there was like all these kind of discos and I'd be sitting on the sideline-
Katherine May:
Oh, those school discos.
Remona Aly:
... watching everybody else. You know?
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Those school discos. And I was brought up with freedom and liberal values and Islamic values, and I just I knew that boys were kind of off limits. So when I met my ex-fiance, I was quite naive, bit of a romantic. And I met him outside of a traditional setting, which is like, normally at that time, where you'd have people come over, you know, suitors come over to the house to meet you.
Katherine May:
I love that word, suitor.
Remona Aly:
Suitor. I know it's so-
Katherine May:
It sounds fantastic.
Remona Aly:
... It's so like archaic.
Katherine May:
No, it sounds great. I'd love to have had suitors.
Remona Aly:
I know, it's like Jane Austen time, or something. So we used to have people call up, there used to be some kind of auntie network, and they would call up the house and call my mom and say, "Oh, I know a suitable boy who is," you know, whatever height, whatever, like skin color. It's so stupid.
Katherine May:
Oh, wow.
Remona Aly:
There is so much colorism in the Asian community as well. And then they would come over with their parents and probably their entire family sometimes, and yeah, we'd just sit very awkwardly in the living room and have samosas and tea and kind of chat marriage.
Katherine May:
That sounds incredibly awkward.
Remona Aly:
Oh, it was so terrible. It was honestly the worst experiences of my life. Terrible. So when I kind of met my ex-fiance, it was beyond that setting. So I met him at some demonstration in London, my first demo that I went to, when I was like, "Oh, right on." Yeah, and it was... and it felt like, "Oh, this is it." This is free from all that kind of cultural setting, and I just met him and I quite liked him and he liked me. Yeah, and so I kind of was on cloud nine a little bit and I couldn't believe that someone liked me as well. That was a bit of a shocker.
Katherine May:
Now, now.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. You know, everything's so artificial normally, and nothing was organic. So this kind of happened a bit more organically.
Katherine May:
Yeah, it's a big change.
Remona Aly:
So I was quite excited, and I told my parents about him. They weren't that happy because at the time he didn't really have a good job, he didn't have a degree, and with Asians, it's like, you know, "You got to give financial security to my daughter." So for that reason they weren't too happy, but when they saw how happy I was, they accepted it. And they were happy for me and they told the world about it. So the whole world knew about my engagement, like even the taxi driver, the local taxi driver knew about it. That's just the nature of how like Asians are, they just, it's an entire community getting married, when it's you getting married, you know, everyone is in on it.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
And actually throughout my knowing him and my relationship with him, it was actually, there was so many alarm bells ringing that I kind of just dismissed because I thought, "No, I met him, and I'm the one that brought him home, and this can't be right. He's perfect. I'm the issue." So I kind of dismissed a lot of those doubts and those niggles about him. I don't really want to talk about what [inaudible 00:17:19]-
Katherine May:
The doubts are, that's fine. No.
Remona Aly:
I want to focus on my own feelings. I'll respect his [inaudible 00:17:25].
Katherine May:
That comes back to those ethics that we-
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
That we kind of try and build.
Remona Aly:
Again, those ethics, those ethics are coming in. Yeah. And I eventually had this huge panic attack a week before our engagement.
Katherine May:
Oh, my goodness.
Remona Aly:
Where I couldn't breathe. I couldn't eat. And this all happened at his mother's house. And it was horrible. And my mom was with me, my sister, we'd gone shopping for engagement gifts for each other. And I think that's where it came to a head, you see, because I kept brushing it under the carpet, thinking, "Oh, we'll be okay. I just need to get through this and get to the engagement." And then this huge... like my body literally just conked out.
Katherine May:
Oh yeah, I know that only too well.
Remona Aly:
Yeah, you know.
Katherine May:
And I often think... Yeah, I know all about those. In fact, by the time I left school, I couldn't get into school without having one of them. It was really fun times. But I often think that panic attacks are something that arrives when you are ignoring your... you know, you've ignored your feelings for too long and your body just finds this way of going, "No, come on. Here I am."
Remona Aly:
Yes. Yes. That's exactly what it was. It was like, "Okay, you're not listening to me." Your mind is not listening. You're not listening to your mind. So, all right, I'm going to... the body has to act.
Katherine May:
I'm going to make you listen. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
And it did. It really did. Well, it almost did. So I kind of was pretty floored at that time, but I was speaking to some members of my family and I was just describing how I was feeling, and one of them, my brother, was like, "I think you're, basically, you're depressed.
Katherine May:
Wow. Your brother, he's a doctor isn't he?
Remona Aly:
He's a doctor. Yeah. He's a doctor. And yeah, and he said, "Look, do you want to go on pills? Do you want to have Prozac?" I was like, "Listen, I don't want any antidepressants. I need to get through this in my own way." So I literally turned to my faith. That was the only thing I could cling to, because I felt like I was plunged into this place where it was just a dark place of complete loneliness. So yeah, I only had my faith, and there's this verse in the Koran that says like, "God is closer to you than your jugular vein." And I'd never felt the meaning of that until that time. It just really came to me because I felt like nobody was really hearing me.
Remona Aly:
And so I turned to my faith, but then I still, I still went through with the engagement and it was the unhappiest day of my life.
Katherine May:
Oh my goodness, that's so sad.
Remona Aly:
I was just looking at the photos thinking I look dead behind the eyes.
Katherine May:
Wow.
Remona Aly:
It's terrible. But we had, it was like a big party, because we don't do things by half. We had a marquee in the garden, a cake, I mean it was like a wedding. It was like a mini-wedding. And everyone, all my relatives in India knew, everyone was calling. Oh my gosh, it was just dreadful. And I thought, okay-
Katherine May:
The stakes are so high by then.
Remona Aly:
... So high. So high. So yeah, it wasn't just my own trauma I was dealing with, it was thinking about what kind of trauma and pain would I bring to everyone else as well if I say no and I can't do this. But I eventually did, I eventually did do that, and it was really, really, really difficult. And I kind of lost sense of who I was in that, in that process. I think you say so beautifully in your book, you fall into gaps of somewhere else.
Katherine May:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
And I was reading that thinking, I fell into the gaps of someone else as well.
Katherine May:
Right. That's interesting. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
And I didn't recognize myself, I lost sense of who I was. I forgot how to smile.
Katherine May:
Oh, that's so-
Remona Aly:
I kept beating myself up. Even, I remember one uncle saying to me, "We trusted you, we trusted your judgment." And he was just so surprised and that made me feel even worse.
Katherine May:
Wow. That's quite a harsh comment though, isn't it?
Remona Aly:
I know.
Katherine May:
Because who does have that level of judgment about... I mean, that's... You know, choosing a partner is the hardest choice, if you position it as a choice, it's the hardest thing to do because you just cannot tell everything about somebody else and you can't tell everything about yourself even. You don't know what you're going to feel like 10 years down the line. It's a tricky, tricky decision to make, really.
Remona Aly:
Oh, totally. Totally. And it's almost unforgivable in a way with me. I certainly couldn't forgive myself for a really long time because I thought, "I've brought everybody to this point. It's my fault. I didn't trust my judgment early enough." You know? And I was the one who was pushing it because I was this silly, romantic who was totally inexperienced. And I just beat myself up way, way too much. And also there was this time where I thought, "Okay, now I need to choose." Just before I made the decision to break it off. I was like, "I literally have destiny in my hands." Like, "What do I choose? Whatever I choose is my path." So I was like, "Okay, so do I break it off or do I go for it?" because actually in a way breaking it off was much harder.
Katherine May:
Yeah. Definitely.
Remona Aly:
Doing it would've been easier because it would have been an easy way, but then ultimately it would've been the worst thing for me. So I just had to do it completely on my own. And I decided, and it took me a long time to recover. I think the first time I smiled was about three months later or something.
Katherine May:
Oh my goodness.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. It was terrible. Really I'm laughing now, but it was extraordinarily difficult and dark. And you know, I didn't even say the word depression really until much, much later, because it's something that you think, "Oh no, this doesn't happen to me. It happens to other people. Why would it happen to me?" But I do now recognize that I was depressed.
Katherine May:
Do you know what? I actually think we've forgotten that you and I come... I mean, I'm 42. I'm not going to give your age away, but we're in the same class at school.
Remona Aly:
Well, now. It's important to be honest, but not all time. But go on.
Katherine May:
Sorry, couldn't resist that one. But when we were growing up, depression was not normalized, I don't think.
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
And it was not talked about in the way it's spoken about now, and I'm [inaudible 00:23:27]-
Remona Aly:
It was taboo.
Katherine May:
... It was taboo. I was first diagnosed with depression when I was 16.
Remona Aly:
Oh my gosh.
Katherine May:
And I remember a member of my family saying, "You can't be depressed. That doesn't happen to people your age." And I, not only did I feel terrible because I was depressed, but also I felt terrible that I'd kind of brought this humiliation, which meant that we as a family were somehow faulty, as well as me personally.
Remona Aly:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh gosh, oh gosh. I can feel that pain. I can feel it right now.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Terrible. I understand completely.
Katherine May:
And having to go into school and talk to kind of random teachers about it. You know who our head of year was at that point, and whether you'd want to tell her about your depression.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Yeah.
Katherine May:
Yeah. We forget how much that conversation's changed for the better and how much more open we are about it. But I can well imagine that-
Remona Aly:
Well, it's only recent though, isn't it? I mean [inaudible 00:24:27]-
Katherine May:
It's so recent.
Remona Aly:
... Very recent.
Katherine May:
Yeah. And I can imagine how hard it was for you to recognize it.
Remona Aly:
Mm-hmm.
Katherine May:
To see it for what it was because the information wasn't really there.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. No, exactly, exactly. And when you're not really recognizing it, you're kind of very scared of it. And and also with the whole cultural background, it was even like a double taboo. And then like a triple taboo with my Muslim background. But even though there is recognition of trauma and pain within that tradition, and reassurance as well. Which I only really found it in my faith, and a lot of my friends were even like, "What's going on?" Because I couldn't really explain what was going on. I kept saying, "Look, he's just not right for me." And I couldn't explain to them why. But there was something in my gut and in my core that was telling me, "Do not do this."
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
So, yeah. So I would even do this guidance prayer. I was doing a guidance prayer at the time that Muslims do when they want to take a decision.
Katherine May:
Right.
Remona Aly:
It was this-
Katherine May:
That sounds handy. Can we all do that?
Remona Aly:
... It is very handy. It's a very good get out clause as well. Yeah. Yeah. I've used, it's called like my God disclaimer, so I'm like, "It's not in my destiny, God hasn't written it for me so I'm not meant to be with you." So it basically goes along the lines of if this thing is good for me, then bring me closer to it, and make it good for me and my end. And if it's bad for me than just remove me from it, and remove it from me. So it's for people who are kind of a bit more uncertain. I kind of did it for an assurance, that it was a confirmation of what I already felt deep down inside. And it did. And every time I thought about breaking it off, I did feel some kind of relief.
Katherine May:
That's so interesting.
Remona Aly:
So that's why I just... I did it. I did it. And very... literally, just a few months later, I broke off the engagement and I remember telling my dad, I think it was Ramadan at the time and had come back from-
Katherine May:
Oh, that's a good moment to pick.
Remona Aly:
... Very good moment. I'm like, "Okay, this is a good month to use." Because he didn't know. My mom was like, "Don't tell him yet," because he was so excited and he was also not well at the time. So came home from the mosque and I was waiting up for him and I said, "Dad, I just need to talk to you. I just can't, I can't do this. I can't marry this guy." And he literally held me, hugged me on the sofa. And it was just the most reassuring moment for me. He just said like, "Don't worry about everything. I will sort everything out. I will tell everybody, you don't need to worry."
Katherine May:
That gives me chills.
Remona Aly:
And I was just like... oh, it was just the most amazing.... I was just crying. And yeah, I just felt so much, so much comfort and reassurance. And he really did. He really... He kind of said he was the one that called it off. You know, he wrote letters to all like kind of the important relatives, and it just, he took so much pressure off my shoulders. And it was a way, it was kind of... so it comes from a kind of place of authority as well. So people won't question it so much, they won't go, "What's going on? What are you talking about?" So he kind of removed that for me.
Katherine May:
He kind of shielded you. I mean, that's-
Remona Aly:
Shielded me. Yeah, he did.
Katherine May:
... a beautiful thing to give to your children, I think.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Yeah. My mom's so grateful.
Katherine May:
If you can just shield them from a little bit of harm while they're figuring the hard stuff out, I think that's a wonderful thing to do.
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
Wow.
Remona Aly:
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll never ever forget that.
Katherine May:
We'll be back to Remona in a minute, but I just wanted to take a short pause to tell you about a workshop I'm holding in Rockport, Maine. I know, American soil.
Katherine May:
On the 8th of August this year I will be working with the brilliant Alyssa Altman to deliver a day retreat courtesy of Barnswallow Books. And the workshop is called On Comfort. It's a whole day to join us and explore what comfort, sustenance and homecoming mean to you. So I'll be working with the group first to explore feelings of being at home, of being comfortable and cozy, and how we can create an environment that makes us feel safe and from which we can springboard into the work we need to do in the outside world.Alyssa will be working to explore what food means, the idea of comfort food, but reimagined. So thinking about how we can truly sustain our minds and bodies through the act of cooking, preparing, and eating food, which I know is such a complicated issue for so many of us.
Katherine May:
There will be a light lunch included, and at the end of the day, a lovely communal supper so we can all get together and break bread, or something else if you're gluten free. We know how it goes. There's a link in my bio to explore more about the workshops, but do take a look quickly, because I know they're going to book up quickly. It's the only workshop I'm running on American soil this year, and it's my first ever. So if you can come, please do. I'd love to see you there.
Katherine May:
Okay. Back to Remona.
Remona Aly:
People absorb your wintering as well. There is this, even for myself, there's an empathy of wintering, where you take on other people's sadness and grief. And it does help, it's kind of distributed a bit more, isn't it?
Katherine May:
Yeah. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
And sometimes that empathy, it just becomes your own winter, doesn't it? When people are going through that-
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
... because you're so close to that person.
Katherine May:
You can take small bits away from people, can't you? You can just lift the burden and share it for a while.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Sharing is... it really helps so much. And not only with your own family members, but also with just general people.
Katherine May:
Mm-hmm.
Remona Aly:
The article that I wrote had so many hits worldwide. Apparently it had like 160,000 hits in the first week or something. So that means that there was this recognition.
Katherine May:
Yes.
Remona Aly:
People go through this pain. There's this collective sense of it, collective sense of wintering going on and the collective sense of the resilience as well. So people kind of saw that and I got so many messages saying, "I've been through something really similar." And that kind of assured me, and at the same time really alarmed me, because I'm like, "Oh no, everyone's going through this pain." But at the same time, you're like, "This is life. This is what human beings go through."
Katherine May:
Yes. Exactly.
Remona Aly:
These are all lessons and they build us, they build. You know, we have to be broken down in order to be built up again, just to have those scars, but you carry them with more wisdom and more clarity going forward. So that was very overwhelming for me to have that kind of empathy from people. And you realize how deep it goes, how deep these roots go in all of us.
Katherine May:
It's that moment of feeling part of a big human community, which I think we glimpse so rarely, but often we glimpse that in our moments of intense pain actually. And when we see other... and actually that takes me right back to what I was talking about when we started, about life writing, just gives us those points of contact with other human beings and their humanity and their commonality with you.
Remona Aly:
And that is the best writing, isn't it?
Katherine May:
Oh, for me, every time.
Remona Aly:
When there is resonance.
Katherine May:
Every time.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. When people can recognize themselves and their emotions and their experiences in your words.
Katherine May:
Mm-hmm.
Remona Aly:
It's the most incredible feeling.
Katherine May:
What a privilege to be able to write that too. I mean, honestly, I'll never stop being grateful for being able to-
Remona Aly:
Absolutely.
Katherine May:
... put that most painful material out there. And to always find a mirror that reflects me back at myself. I think that's just-
Remona Aly:
Yes.
Katherine May:
... Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Definitely. That's it, that's exactly what it is. It is a mirror. And also you're giving a sense of honor to what you've gone through.
Katherine May:
Yes.
Remona Aly:
There is a dignity to it-
Katherine May:
Yes.
Remona Aly:
... in the way you're conveying it, and that is what people will also recognize. You're not just kind of like, "I'm sending all this stuff out there for sympathy," and people kind of going, "Yeah, I feel you, bud."
Katherine May:
Going, "Oh, poor you." Yeah.
Remona Aly:
You know. There is integrity there and people really appreciate that you're being authentic.
Katherine May:
Yes.
Remona Aly:
And you're being open and you're being dignified about it as well.
Katherine May:
Well, I think it returns dignity to it, because often the whole experience is very chaotic and-
Remona Aly:
Yeah, that's right.
Katherine May:
... it's you never get your narrative arc. You know, you never get your perfect beginning, middle and end and sense of closure. But that creation of the story of it, I think helps to reintegrate everything and returns the dignity, to the moment, I suppose.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. That's beautifully said. That was beautifully put.
Katherine May:
I'm loving this. It says everything to me about writing as a kind of spiritual practice, actually. And as an act of prayer, almost. As an act of-
Remona Aly:
Oh, yeah. That's exactly it.
Katherine May:
... worship, somehow, of something that's bigger than you are. Even if that's intangible.
Remona Aly:
You sound like a Sufi Muslim. That is exactly it.
Katherine May:
That's never been said before, but I'll take it. Thank you.
Remona Aly:
It is. It honestly is. It is, it is sacred. What we're writing is sacred because our existences are sacred.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
And we are all spiritual beings. Whatever our beliefs are, we are all spiritual beings and there is something deep within us that we need to convey to the world. And when people recognize that and there's a bridge there, there is a beautiful universality of spirit and love and compassion and understanding. And I think your writing does that and it does it so beautifully.
Katherine May:
I try very hard to do that, you know? Well, but only because-
Remona Aly:
It's hard. It is hard. It is hard. It's not easy.
Katherine May:
It's really hard. But I also think, like I come from an atheist, kind of culturally Christian background. I have no template for discussing my spiritual sense of the world, and was very wary of it too, because religion was always taught to me as kind of control and something to be resisted. So I wanted to communicate with people like me who are a bit wary of anything that's got rules behind it, but who want that spiritual engagement with the world. That's definitely my aim. But it's very hard to talk about that in the UK specifically as well, I think. That conversation is much easier in America.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Yeah.
Katherine May:
We're kind of-
Remona Aly:
No, I completely... Yeah. Though, there is a move towards like more spirituality via mindfulness and things like that. There is this need and yearning for it. And for me personally, I've obviously, I've been brought up in a religious setting and upbringing. And I wasn't somebody who liked rules either. And I never wanted to approach it like a set of dos and don'ts. For me, it was just about expressing who I was. It was very liberating, it was like seeing the beauty of my faith and seeing how it can open up so many doors to me and also make me really understand who I am and help me in self development. So that's how I approached my faith, and I still approach my faith in that way. I just see it as very dynamic. And very nuanced. People always try and put it in a box and it really, it does not belong in a box. It belongs everywhere, and I think it belongs to everyone as well because that's the sacredness in all of us.
Katherine May:
... And that's what lets you be of such service to other people as well. That's how you feed it back into the world. You take in that wisdom and you go out, and it helps. It helps.
Remona Aly:
Yes. That's exactly what the writing is all about as well.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Like that's what you're doing, it is a service. It's a service to yourself and to others, and it is bringing benefit. And that's why we do need to be honest. And honesty is a challenge but ultimately it is something that is a human experience that everybody will appreciate and recognize, and we'll grow from each other's experiences. I feel like I... You know, you grow every time you read anything. There is a growth in there. It's definitely like a plant or a seed that just keeps growing and growing. That's why I love reading [inaudible 00:37:46].
Katherine May:
Absolutely.
Remona Aly:
... work and experiences. And I always want to know about everybody else's lives, "What's going on with you?" Not in the way of celebratory gossip, but what people go through. Like I think I was listening to Sheryl Sandberg's-
Katherine May:
Oh, right.
Remona Aly:
... Was it Desert Island Discs, was it?
Katherine May:
I hadn't caught that.
Remona Aly:
Oh, it was just, I think it was just about her losing her husband.
Katherine May:
Right. That's Sheryl Sandberg. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
And it was so... Oh my God, you're crying with her. You're feeling that pain with her and that recognition of pain is so important. I feel like grief personifies in each one of us and it becomes like two people who recognize each other when you-
Katherine May:
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
... So when you're, I guess like... So me listening to what you've gone through and your loss, it helps you, doesn't it?
Katherine May:
Yes. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
To kind of... You know, you do see it as a person, almost, and a [inaudible 00:38:39].
Katherine May:
And your grieving self meets other grieving selves, I think.
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
Those two can always be in dialogue. Whenever you meet someone who's lost someone, those two parts of each person can always talk. There's always something there.
Remona Aly:
Totally.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Even in the silence. Honestly, like your souls just can hear each other.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
It's just, it is incredible. And I felt that with... You know, one of my closest friends had a... she lost her baby in a stillbirth. And it was one of the darkest moments of her life, and of mine, because I kind of took on her pain and her trauma. And then it also happened in our own family when my sister lost her baby. And that also again, because I was kind of almost prepared for it with my friend, it just happened recently before that loss. It kind of prepared me for that in a way. But the pain was so deep, like you feel like your heart has-
Katherine May:
Yeah. It's hard to imagine deeper pain than that.
Remona Aly:
... You can actually feel the heartbreaking. It's actually, actually feel the cracks, you felt the cracks. And I thought I knew pain. I thought I knew pain? And then, pain's just like, "Yeah? No, this is how it feels. This is how it can really feel."
Katherine May:
That's life for you.
Remona Aly:
That is life. That really is.
Katherine May:
You don't know pain, lady. Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. And just watching how my friend and my sister just came out of that, and how they found the strength to come out of that, was extraordinary. And it gave me strength as well. It was kind of like a symbiotic kind of relationship going on. We were kind of, I was supporting, and then she was supporting me, and it was... yeah, it was extraordinary.
Katherine May:
It's redemptive.
Remona Aly:
Extraordinary. This empathy of wintering is extraordinary.
Katherine May:
It's a wonderful thing. This has been the best conversation that I've had for years with anyone. I feel like I've got absolute chills. It's just so beautiful. And I just-
Remona Aly:
Me too.
Katherine May:
... Yeah. It's really lovely. We could just sit here and have a little cry now, couldn't we, afterwards.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. I mean, I think we probably will need to afterwards.
Katherine May:
Yeah. Maybe might have a cup of tea in a minute.
Remona Aly:
I'd like a cup of tea, sure thing.
Katherine May:
I want to ask you one final thing before we go off for our little individual cries. Did you, did you come to a point many years after, after all the pain and the embarrassment of breaking off that engagement, and all of those, kind of that big cluster of feelings and the confusion, did you ever come to a point of clarity about why you needed to do it?
Remona Aly:
Whoa, that's a big one.
Katherine May:
Sorry. Hey, we're doing big ones today. That's where we are.
Remona Aly:
Big endings, big endings. I think that I had clarity even around the time that I made the decision. I knew that I was doing the right thing so I never, ever had regret about the decision that I made to break it off. But the clarity, it became clearer as I went along, because I actually heard things that reconfirmed that I made the right decision from others, other people's experiences of that person. But you know, for years I couldn't forgive myself. Until, I think this was many years afterwards, I kept beating myself up about it, and then I think I went to some talk by a Muslim scholar and he said, "Look, you keep asking God for forgiveness, but you need to forgive yourself. You need to know that that prayer has been accepted and answered. And then you got to let it go. You just got to let it go."
Remona Aly:
Because I kept praying over and over.
Katherine May:
For the same... Yeah.
Remona Aly:
I kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I've done this." And then there was a moment of release where I was like, "Okay, I'm not going to make this prayer. I'm not going to offer this prayer anymore. I'm going to let it fly. I'm just, I've done it. I've done with it and I know that I've been forgiven and I know that it set me free now. Why am I chaining myself in this way? It was like shackles, you put invisible shackles on yourself. And then, that's I think, probably that's my real moment of clarity.
Katherine May:
And that's true faith. Faith that your prayers are actually answered, you know?
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Katherine May:
That's... And faith that you can-
Remona Aly:
And just believing in yourself that you made the right decisions. Because these what-ifs and why didn't I do this? They just destroy you and you need to nurture yourself, not kill yourself. So it really helped, that really helped me, and actually that entire experience now? It was a huge lesson for me, and it built up who I am. It really did because it enabled me to kind of dive deep into my emotions and to understanding myself better.
Katherine May:
Oh, I can tell. I can tell. I mean, like when you meet someone that you knew kind of then and now-
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
... I think you're probably more aware of the contrast than most. But you are so... Oh, I don't know, self-actualized is a really naff term.
Remona Aly:
Oh, no, no, no. Let's use it. Let's use it.
Katherine May:
Let's do it. Let's do it. But you inhabit yourself fully in a way that not many people do, I don't think. And it just shows, it shows. You've grown so much wisdom since I last knew you and it's extraordinary.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Since I was that silly girl at school.
Katherine May:
Oh. Weren't we all. Oh, my days. I just... Mm-hmm.
Remona Aly:
No, that's really... No, I really appreciate that though. No, I do. That was really lovely. Really nice to hear. And I'm taking it and I'm going to take that sound bite and play it back to myself every morning.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I wish I hadn't used self-actualized now, I just feel like that's naff language. But you know what I mean. My heart was in the right place.
Remona Aly:
No, I completely know what you mean though. Like there is a comfort there and a confidence in who you are, in your sense of self. And it's a constant journey though, Katherine, I have to say.
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
I still, I still get so much self doubt and confidence issues and anxiety, and it's a constant battle. But you know what your strengths are, you know what your weaknesses are better at this time in our lives than perhaps when we were at school or in my twenties when I was going through that experience. And kind of a journey into yourself is so, so crucial and so revealing. And these emotions, we're still learning, we're still learning within them. I still, I don't know what love is still, I still don't know what grief really is. It's a constant, constant learning curve and a constant journey.
Katherine May:
I just think that we don't talk about ourselves as a work in progress enough, and if we ever give each other the impression that anyone can be fixed and have it sorted once and for all, then we're doing great harm.
Remona Aly:
Definitely.
Katherine May:
The journey is the point.
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Yeah.
Katherine May:
And I-
Remona Aly:
We haven't got it sorted. It's not like, "Oh yeah, I've done that. And now I know everything." You know?
Katherine May:
... I don't even want to get it sorted.
Remona Aly:
No.
Katherine May:
I mean, can you imagine how boring it would be if you had it sorted.
Remona Aly:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
But we carry on this kind of cycling through change.
Remona Aly:
Yes.
Katherine May:
And every time, it's a spiral rather than a circle, so we move up a little bit maybe, hopefully, if we take enough time to reflect, but maybe we don't always manage to do that. But it's never going to stop. That's not the point of this, you know?
Remona Aly:
Yeah. Yeah.
Katherine May:
That's absolutely not how this works. And I think that too much of our culture talks about, "Okay, here's how it's done." Like, stuff's solvable. And we have to start seeing that's totally undesirable and totally unwise and totally cold. It's not even interesting to me at all. I like the work.
Remona Aly:
Totally, yeah. I mean... Yeah. It's not. It is. I mean, it's what keeps us alive really, isn't it?
Katherine May:
Mm-hmm.
Remona Aly:
And ticking and... Oh, I just thought of something really clever to say, and it's gone now. I was like, "Oh, I thought of something." And it's literally gone. But just think-
Katherine May:
Ain't that always the way.
Remona Aly:
... just know it was going to be the best thing. It was going to be the best thing on this podcast.
Katherine May:
I know I'd have felt nourished by it.
Remona Aly:
Oh my gosh. That was so funny.
Katherine May:
That's amazing.
Remona Aly:
I'm so sorry. I don't know where it went. It really, it went somewhere.
Katherine May:
No, we felt it. We felt it. You downloaded it. It's fine. We've all got it.
Remona Aly:
Did you?
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Remona Aly:
Did you feel it?
Katherine May:
I did. I did. I did.
Remona Aly:
Basically, whatever you said [inaudible 00:47:06].
Katherine May:
Oh, Remona. Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me.
Remona Aly:
No, thank you.
Katherine May:
And for just saying such amazing things that have given me chills. It's just been wonderful. Thank you.
Remona Aly:
Likewise, likewise. Everything you've said has just been beautiful, spectacular, and meaningful. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Katherine May:
Thank you.
Remona Aly:
You've been wonderful.
Katherine May:
Can you hear that wood pigeon in the background?
Katherine May:
I know loads of people absolutely hate the sound of wood pigeons. They always come up on lists whenever they're made of people's least favorite bird songs. People find them really noisy, but I find that sound really always transports me back to sitting in my grandparents' garden, in the middle of summer, a bit like it is today. And I must have been really small because my grandma had pulled me a bowl of water, like a sort of washing up bowl of water to sit in. And I love the sound of them. They're quite annoying though, I do accept. I've got two that fight in the tree that overhangs my garden. All the time, they're just constantly battling with each other. I don't know what's upset them so much.
Katherine May:
I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. So good to hear it again, honestly. It's amazing how my little lockdown project has come so far and it's about to change a bit. We're kind of coming to the end of our third season and I've realized it's time to make a bridge, I think, between wintering and my new book, Enchantment, which will be coming out next March. So I need to freshen up the format a bit from October. There's still going to be loads of things that are just the same. It's still going to be about rambling, intimate conversations with really, really interesting people, but I'm going to be changing the focus a little, as I have in the last few episodes anyway, to focus on the question of what we do now in the face of all the changes we've so recently endured.
Katherine May:
And that means I can talk to maybe a wider range of people, but it also means, I think, that I'll be addressing the shift that so many of us are feeling right now. That sense that there are new battles to fight, definitely, but also there's a new world to be won. A breeze is just blowing up as I said that. I love talking about change and having the wind running through my hair. I think that there were some things that happened in the pandemic that were terrible. Many, many things that were terrible. But there were some things that made us realize that the lives we've been living weren't sustainable. And there were some things we just did not want to go back to. And some changes that we wanted to make that were permanent.
Katherine May:
And for me, there's a big, wide open space out there in which I need to talk about what we do now, what we do next, how we should think about this world and what toolkit we can draw on almost to inspire and elevate us in the world to come. That's all I'll say for now. I'll be launching a new name and probably a new visual identity after the summer. But for now, I just wanted to tell you all about it, because I'm really excited. I'm really ready to take this more seriously, you know? It's been a couple of years since I've been making The Wintering Sessions, and I've started to see myself as a podcaster in a way that I didn't before.
Katherine May:
So yeah, that's where I am right now. I hope you are having a really lovely summer and I'll be back really soon with another re-upped episode. See you later.
Show Notes
While we take a rest over the summer, we’re sharing some remastered episodes from Season One, chosen by listeners.
In this episode, I speak to journalist and broadcaster Remona Aly about her life-changing decision to call off an engagement, and how it echoed through the years to teach her about forgiveness, faith and empathy.
This is such a special one for me - I went to school with Remona, and I think you can hear our joy at reconnecting after a couple of decades, and feeling so at home in the process. We cover all of human life here: buckle in.
We talked about:
Finding the sacred in everyday life
How grief changes you
The need for community
Breaking off an engagement and family shame
References from this episode:
Other episodes you might enjoy:
Season 2: Zeba Talkhani on surviving online abuse
Please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing to my Patreon where you’ll get episodes a day early (and always ad free) along with bonus episodes and more!
To keep up to date with The Wintering Sessions, follow Katherine on Twitter, Instagram and Substack
For information on Katherine’s online writing courses, including her programme Wintering for Writers, visit True Stories Writing School
Note: this post includes affiliate links which means Katherine will receive a small commission for any purchases made.
Wintering is out now in the UK, and the US.
