Louise Pentland: “You have to live twice as hard now…”

Author and content creator Louise Pentland joins Happiful’s podcast to talk about adulting, boundaries and grief

Author of Time After Time Louise Pentland brings a beautiful energy to the opening episode of our new season of I am. I have, as well as a ton of talk about continuing to learn, boundaries, her thoughts on grief and what she hopes the future will look like…

Our full interview with Louise can be read in Issue 66 of Happiful Magazine.
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Louise on

Learning

Just when I think I’ve got the knack of things, whether that’s Motherhood, my job, friendships or just adulting, I learn something new or I learn that I don’t know something, because you don’t know what you don’t know.

In terms of relationships, I’m still learning that the impacts of those, how they can affect you, how things you’ve said to people can affect you too and how to make peace with that, as well as how to validate your children’s feelings.

Boundaries

For a long time I think I didn’t really consider what my boundaries were. I just went with what I thought everybody else would be happy with. And then if they were happy that was positive. Sometimes though, you do have to stick to your guns and make hard decisions about things.

If someone says, ‘why have you done that?’ I’m happy to just say, ‘I wanted to’

I feel a bit more confident now that I’m 37. If someone says, ‘why have you done that?’ I’m happy to just say, ‘I wanted to’. That’s the only answer I need to give there!

I do find myself still pre-empting things. So I’m happy with the boundaries that I’ve got but I worry about really small things that I know because I’m on social media will become a comment. So I preempt negative comments and I want to stop doing that

Grief

My Mum died when I was very little, when I was seven. So I’ve had 30 years to get used to that and I am very used to it now. I get a lot of women and girls messaging me saying that they’ve just lost their Mum or their Mum died last year or recently and how will they ever cope? How will they ever continue living?

You can still have a very happy, meaningful life with grief in it.

I always tell them the same thing, that you will continue living. You have to live twice as hard now cause you are living for you and for them. And that it’s okay just to accept having a Mum shaped hole in your life, or a Gran shaped hole. The point of grief is not to get rid of it. Death changes you, but grief can live alongside you. And you can still have a very happy, meaningful life with grief in it. But I think you have to just accept that it’s there.

Meeting Louise ten years from now

I hope that future Louise says, ‘Well done on finally organising all your bits of paper in the office. You’re doing such a good job knowing when all the direct debits come out!’ And I hope that all the creams that I use have paid off and in 10 years it only looks like five years…

Louise’s new book Time After Time, published by Bonnier Books (£14.99), is out now.

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