Prince William, OK! Magazine & Finding Our Own Path
Hello my lovely VIP
Welcome to Friday, you gorgeous person. How are you? I hope you’re well and have settled back in after half-term as the summer (sort of) begins.
We’ve now reached the ‘OSA’ era of our year, which is our code for ‘Overload of School Art’. Every day there’s another wonderful masterpiece brought home from the walls at school. We clap, applaud and then wonder where we’re going to put it? Cookie’s corner is starting to look more like an art gallery. Banksy or Picasso?… you decide.
But with our youngest tween in his last term of junior school, this is also the end of many eras in our home. It’s bittersweet, exciting and scary all in one. (Didn’t he just start Reception two years ago?) But it’s also a big reminder to treasure our time.
And speaking of treasuring time…
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S12 Ep4 From Editor-in-Chief, OK Magazine to PR Consultant & Screenwriter: Lisa Byrne
Lisa has always loved learning about people. She has been, in her own words ‘nosy’ since she was a child. It was this curiosity which took her to journalism and eventually to be the Editor-in-Chief at OK! magazine for ten years.
The Beckhams’ wedding was one of her first events, she was also with Katie Price when she married Peter Andre. She’s been on a boat with George Clooney & Brad Pitt and she’s hung out with the royals, especially Prince William - as seen above. She has in other words, been behind the scenes and seen it all.
But when the world of celebrity began to change (and not in a good way, she explains), Lisa began to feel it was time to do something else. She also suffered personal heartbreak and then had her own diagnosis to deal with – so she moved from London back to her roots in York.
Lisa now has her own PR consultancy looking after high-end brands like The Ivy restaurants. But she’s also a screenwriter and is bringing the stories of inspiring, historical women we’ve hardly heard of back to life. Her love of learning about people continues.
Lisa is very open, honest and brave in this conversation. We cover all sides of life - and do be warned we touch on some very difficult parts too. But Lisa believes we have to take these tough times and use them to help drive us into our Next Chapters. She believes we are all capable of creating our dreams and the only person standing in our way is us.
And speaking of standing in our own way…
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We’ve just returned from a very lovely week away in Porthleven in Cornwall, or as we call it - Porth-heaven.
And for us it really is. There’s something for us all- a big long beach, gorgeous cakes and delis, a lovely pizza restaurant, pasties, fish and chips and one of my husband’s favourite pubs in the world (The Ship Inn, with more brassknockers than you can count). Plus it has a path I can run/shuffle along which is one of the loveliest and most special I know.
But my goodness we grappled about going.
Should we? Shouldn’t we? The reason being it would be our FOURTH time there.
Fourth time? What’s the problem, you may wonder?
When I met my husband and we realised this would be our own long-haul trip, we decided we would make our mutual love of travel one of our biggest goals. What’s the point of returning somewhere when there’s so much to see, we declared? When we grow up (we were 32) we’d be those cool, older traveller-types, the ones that visited all corners of the world.
But here we were.
We looked at other places, we really did, but we kept sneaking back. There was the beach, the pub and those pizzas? But had we lost our sense of adventure? We had to face the question.
Are we in some sort of midlife rut?
It was while running/shuffling along my favourite path the answer came to me. It goes along the coast, and then inland around Cornwall’s largest fresh water lake. It’s calm, quiet, magnificent and magical.
When I say magical, I mean magical.
When I run along it, something always happens.
This time alone 2 friends messaged at the very moment I was thinking of them and if I listen to random music I know my dad’s and my song will always play. Other people pass, I suspect they sense the magic too. We wave and smile and we go on our ways.
But the path doesn’t always run smooth.
I use it to face my biggest hurdles, you know the ones, the ones that come at as all at certain times. The doubts, the fears, the grief, the uncertainty. But when I run along this path and look at them all, they somehow seem to dissolve. I can only imagine how many millions of hurdles it’s dissolved over the years, but it doesn’t seem to bat an eye. It’s the kind of place which can take it all - our giant hurdle is simply a drop in its magnificent freshwater lake.
If there’s a book I want to read about a tougher subject, I save it to listen to along this path. I know, I know… I should be mindful and present in a place like this. But there’s something about it which helps me face my fears. This time I chose ‘Waking The Tiger' by Peter Levine. It’s all about trauma, so not the lightest of tales, but it had been recommended many times so I thought now was the time.
But a couple of days in, while listening to the book, I lost my concentration and tripped.
What was I doing? I thought as I looked at my grazed hands. I should be enjoying the view, not listening to trauma. Why had I even brought my phone? I dusted myself and felt sorry for myself, alone and a bit of a fool.
At that very moment my phone beeped. It was my friend J, many miles away sending a text:
“Happy holiday, just checking you’re okay?”
It made me smile and feel not so alone, I sat on the bench above and told her about my fall.
A few days later another friend called with some dreadful news which had made her world stop turning for a bit. She was sorry to call, but she didn’t know what to do. It’s okay, I told her - I’m on the path, the path will show us what to do.
It’s a path that’s a million miles away from my daily life but it makes me feel more connected to my world. It shows me the way, and gives me the space to see the answers that were there all along.
And there was my answer - why we were back there again.
Adventure is wonderful but there are also times in life when we just need a bit of comfort and love. Our little Porth-heaven, is to us, like a blanket. It wraps us up, makes us feel better, we leave feeling more connected and ready to go again. At a time in life where there’s so much change and uncertainty, this little place and path is truly our rock. It doesn’t matter what happens or what life throws, this little corner has seen it all. So, when we left this time, we didn’t even try to play it cool.
See you soon Porth-heaven, we all waved, we’ll be back.
And finally…
Next Chapter Wisdom of the Week 1
A slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very different destination. Success is the product of this - not once-in-a-lifetime transformations
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Next Chapter Wisdom of the Week 2
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate
Carl Jung
So, my lovely VIP, I hope you have a lovely weekend ahead filled with colourful corners, doing what you love in your very own magical corners of the world.
And do know wherever you are and wherever I am, I love so much that we’re here together - in this very own corner of our own.
See you next week
Love E & C
P.S Just to show Cookie isn’t just putting up with the art - she had a wonderful time swimming too (that’s her happy face btw)
P.P.S If you like the idea of magic paths and benches, you may enjoy my latest book. Peggy has a bench, and when Jack and Iris find her there one morning, it changes all of their lives. Click here for your copy
Thank you to our partners, the wonderful Empire Fighting Chance for supporting our Next Chapter living. Their work is transforming young lives and you can learn all about them here.