The Don't Buy Her Flowers Podcast

In this honest, funny and incredibly validating conversation, Steph is joined live at Henley Literary Festival by Lou and Dr Punam to talk about the realities of modern motherhood, the invisible workload women carry, and what happens to our bodies and minds when we're expected to be everything to everyone. Lou shares how her own frustrations with motherhood turned into writing, while Punam talks about her experience as a doctor, a mother and the gaps in support for women after having children.

Together, they explore why becoming a mum can change so much more than you...

In this candid and very funny conversation, Steph is joined by couples coach and Be a Happier Parent founder Alex Trippier to ask why so many loving couples end up having the same arguments once children arrive. Alex is honest about his own marriage. He thought being good with kids made him a good dad, and he couldn’t understand why it was never enough. Steph and Alex unpick what was really going on for both of them, and why neither side is the villain.

They talk about the invisible work of anticipating children’s needs, why...

NOTE: This episode contains references to Christmas Magic that you may not want your children to hear!

In this honest and often hilarious Christmas bonus conversation, Steph sits down with psychotherapist Emma Reed Turrell to talk about the emotional, logistical and often invisible labour of Christmas; especially for women. From managing everyone’s expectations to trying to manufacture magical memories, from teenage eye-rolls to “it’s not that deep, Mum,” the pair unravel the layered reality behind creating a holiday that feels good for everyone but you.

Emma offers sharp insight into why December...

In this powerful conversation, Steph is joined by Elliott Rae, speaker, podcaster, writer and social changemaker, to explore how masculinity is being renegotiated in today's world.

They dig into how traditional gender roles are evolving, why relationships shift after having children, and the ways societal expectations impact men’s mental health and fatherhood. They also discuss the influence of online culture on teenage boys, the lessons from the BBC drama Adolescence, and why open conversations (especially the messy, imperfect ones) are critical for change.

This episode is an honest, moving and often funny loo...

Parenting teenagers and navigating midlife can feel like a perfect storm. One moment you’re managing eye-rolls and slammed doors, the next you’re questioning why no one warned you about perimenopause. In this episode, Steph is joined by journalist, author, and parenting pro Lorraine Candy for a frank and reassuring conversation about raising teens, handling hormones, and keeping a sense of humour through it all.

In this episode Steph and Lorraine cover:

Steph sits down with her husband of 17 years, Mark (Doug) Douglas, for an unfiltered and often hilarious deep dive into marriage, equality at home, and the invisible workload that often falls on women. From their whirlwind romance and early parenting struggles to resentment, gender roles, and the reality of balancing careers and family, no topic is off-limits.

Doug is a finance professional navigating the ever-evolving dynamics of modern partnerships. As a couple, Steph and Doug have had to unlearn traditional gender roles, redefine teamwork, and figure out how to stop bickering about the food shop. Spoiler...

Steph sits down with the hilarious and incredibly talented makeup artist Genevieve Turley. Known for her candid takes on beauty, motherhood, and life in general, Gen shares her journey from being a nurse in the Air Force to becoming a sought-after bridal makeup artist and an Instagram star with over 400k followers.

Gen is a freelance makeup artist and content creator helping women over 30 navigate the beauty industry. With a previous career as a burns specialist nurse in the RAF, Gen is on a mission for women to rethink the way they talk to themselves and e...

Steph chats with Rob and Josie da Bank about what it’s like to run a festival with your partner, and how they make it work alongside having four children. After 32 years together, and many festivals under their belts, they talk about the difficult bits, how they divide and conquer, and how helping people escape real life, screens and make some IRL memories is what drives them.

With Camp Bestival around the corner, in Dorset and then Shropshire, Rob and Josie share what they’re excited about. Their book ‘Camp Bestival at Home’ is out now, givi...

Feel like you do everything at home, or at least more than is your fair share? This one’s for you. Steph speaks with Eve Rodsky - Harvard-grad lawyer, activist and New York Times Bestselling author of Fair Play.

Eve is working to change society one partnership at a time by coming up with a new 21st-century solution to an age-old problem: women shouldering 2/3 or more of the unpaid domestic work and childcare for their homes and families. Eve and Steph talk about the massive impact this has not only on relationships, with couples everywhere his...

Steph talks with author, journalist and mental health campaigner Bryony Gordon about her new book Mad Woman, an account of her life and challenges over the last few years.

With a live audience at Henley Literary Festival, in classic Bryony-style, she brings lots of energy, honesty and humour to the conversation, in which they discuss depression, OCD, Bulimia and Binge Eating Disorder, addiction and alcoholism and being perimenopausal and a woman in her 40s.

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Steph talks with Dr Kirren Schnack, Clinical Psychologist and author of Ten Times Calmer, a book with tools to help beat anxiety.

The conversation starts by understanding what anxiety is, what happens when we’re anxious, what are the triggers and what is happening to our nervous system. They discuss the impact having children can have on anxiety, and with the festive season around the corner, they also talk about how to avoid Christmas anxiety.

Steph and Kirren then chat about some of the basics for good mental health, plus Dr Kirren talks thr...

Recorded Live at the Henley Literary Festival, Steph interviews Louise Boyce AKA Mama Still Got It, Gill Sims and Clara Batten live from a Town Hall full of women out for a Friday night! Join them as they discuss the rollercoaster of motherhood - the first year of being a mum, identity, holidays with kids, the PTA, and Louise’s gross middle-of-the-night payback on her husband. Expect some swearing, some drinking and a touch of raucous.

This episode is sponsored by Ancient + Brave, who create pure, potent and sustainable supplements, and are offering 20% off with the...

Ahead of the release of her new book, Clinical Psychologist Dr Karen Gurney returns to the DBHF podcast after her previous episode about sex in long term relationships became the most downloaded to date, resulting in at least two pregnancies (that we know of!) and Steph received hundreds of messages from women and couples that felt huge relief in what Karen said about desire in long term relationships.

Now Karen, AKA The Sex Doctor, has written a book specifically for parents - How Not to Let Having Kids Ruin Your Sex Life - out in A...

Steph chats with broadcast LEGENDS Fi Glover and Jane Garvey about their move after thirty years (each!) from the BBC to Times Radio, where they host a radio show and the Off Air podcast. 

Fi and Jane describe how they found juggling a broadcast career with small children, with Fi owning that hers ‘ground to a halt’ for a period, but that she now has a job she loves that may not have been where she’d have ended up without the career break. They discuss phones, teenagers, teenagers with phones, the impact of Perimenopause, Tweakmen...

In this episode we're looking back at a brilliant episode with Helen from January 2022...

Steph talks with bestselling author, journalist and speaker Helen Russell about how and why so many of us try to bury sadness, and the harm that causes.

After eight years of researching happiness, Helen realised that most of us desperately want to avoid sadness, but all the experts have said we can’t, so we need to work out how to be sad, better. Helen and Steph talk about grief, infertility, perfectionism, anorexia, men and sadness, and a whole lot in...

Steph chats with brilliant comedian Kelly Convey about motherhood; it’s all very fresh for Kelly as she has had two babies with a fifteen month gap, her second still only seven months old. Steph and Kelly discuss those early months of motherhood, flashing the postman, feeling annoyed with your partner and navigating advice from others. Kelly talks about baby group blunders and making mum friends (or not!). 

As a stand up, they discuss the pros and cons of Kelly being back onstage supporting Alan Carr three months after having a baby, trying to find balan...

Steph talks with writer and speaker Brigid Schulte about Overwhelm, where it comes from and what we can do to rally against it. Brigid brilliantly uses research and history to understand how we got here, and reassures that when it feels hard, it’s because it is.

Brigid explains why women feel they don’t deserve free time, why we feel we have to ‘excel’ at motherhood and importantly, what all this pressure and juggling does to women’s physical and mental health, careers and relationships. They discuss how women find it difficult to live in the momen...

Jo Tutchener Sharp, Founder and CEO, tells Steph about how life-changing brain surgery led to her hugely successful purpose-led fashion brand Scamp & Dude. From childrenswear to now 95% womenswear, a shop in Marlow and two more opening this Summer 2023, Jo’s PR background and desire to ‘do better’ have combined to create powerful partnerships, charity work and donations, alongside much-loved clothing.

Jo talks about setting up and then leaving her previous PR business, in a not ideal situation after her second child was born and then being told that she would need brain surgery. Jo tells Steph h...

Psychotherapist Siobhán Murray talks with Steph about Burnout. Originally coined in the 1970s to describe an occupational phenomenon, recent decades have seen an increase in people experiencing burnout as we’re ‘nearly always switched on’. Siobhán and Steph talk about why this is, what makes women in the Rush Hour susceptible to burnout, and the signs and symptoms to identify it.

Siobhan goes into ideas on how to manage burnout, and gives some detail on the tools that will help, which are explained in her book The Burnout Solution, a step-by-step 12 week plan.

Sarah Rossi and Steph talk about how Sarah’s online profile, where she’s known as ‘Taming Twins’, has rocketed in the last 12 months. She talks with Steph about her career so far, from starting a bakery that she loved, and recognising that she couldn’t scale the business because it relied on her being physically there too much. Sarah’s blog Taming Twins started out as a creative outlet to share about her life with twins, until she noticed that recipes she shared were getting more traction.

Sarah talks about blogging for ten years, growing a ste...

Steph chats with businesswoman Alex Depledge for a Business Special episode of the podcast.

Alex is undoubtedly a brilliant entrepreneur, having co-founded, grown and sold first business Hassle.com for €32m, before starting another tech platform – Resi.co.uk – the UK's largest and only nationwide residential architectural platform. Alex’s ‘thing’ is disrupting with a tech solution, and cutting deals, both of which she’s very good at. She appears to have no fear, has been involved with a number of bodies, boards and think tanks, and is passionately championing women in a male-dominated industry.

Ale...

Steph speaks with Illiyin Morrison and Sophie McCartney (AKA Tired and Tested) about those early days and months of motherhood, as part of the Lost For Words series. Rather than gloss over it, Sophie and Illy both have careers that centre on being reassuringly honest about motherhood, and in turn offering support to women who may be finding it tougher than expected. Illy trained as a midwife and now helps women debrief after birth, and Sophie is a comedian and bestselling author with a huge Instagram account sharing the trials (and hilarity) of motherhood.

Illy a...

Each month, the DBHF podcast will speak with founders for a business episode, to find out how they’re doing it.

The strapline for Alison Burton and Natalie Duvall’s business March Muses is ‘Celebrating Diversity by Diversifying Celebrations’. It begun from a search for Christmas decorations that represented the black community, and opened up a world of possibilities with the realisation that so many celebrations are lacking that representation.

Steph talks with Alison and Natalie about how they started, their successful Dragon’s Den pitch that resulted in investment from Deborah Mead...

Continuing the Lost For Words series, Steph speaks with Leanne Pero and Emma Campbell about Cancer. Both women have been diagnosed with breast cancer – Leanne is in remission and Emma continues with regular treatment after her third diagnosis in 2019. Both women are incredibly honest about their experience, struggles and the mental health impact. Sometimes the voices of cancer are either gloomy or exceptionally brave, but it is clear from this conversation that it is so much more nuanced. Leanne and Emma explain the imprint of fear that a cancer diagnosis leaves and the impact that will forever have on th...

For the second episode of this Lost For Words series, Steph spoke with podcast hosts The Other Mothers AKA Caro Tasker, Elle Wright and Jen Reid, three women on a mission to talk about Baby Loss, pushing through the discomfort people feel, to better support those going through it. 

Through their tragic experiences of baby loss, which include stillbirth, neonatal death and SIDS (formerly known as cot death), Caro, Elle and Jen explain to Steph how those early weeks felt. The ladies talk honestly about the impact on their identity, friendships and their relationship, and fe...

This series of the Don’t Buy Her Flowers podcast is about those events that can leave people Lost For Words, kicking off with Cariad Lloyd talking about grief and death. Cariad is a comedian, actress and writer and the woman behind the award-winning and brilliant podcast Griefcast, where she speaks with guests about their own experience of grief. And rather than being depressing, it’s about life and relationships and love and even more, about opening up the conversation to try to remove shame and loneliness that people shouldn’t feel given death is the one thing that is gua...

Zoe Blaskey from The Motherkind Podcast joins with Steph and the Don’t Buy Her Flowers podcast for this end of year special! Steph and Zoe have each chosen three guests they spoke with on their own podcasts in 2022 to discuss and see what each other took from the guests.

The conversation centres around motherhood, identity, relationships and sex. Zoe has chosen Psychologists Dr Rick Hanson and Dr Becky Kennedy, both experts in motherhood, family and relationships, who speak brilliantly about our standards and expectations, where they might have come from and how we can low...

Steph chats with Laura Belbin AKA Knee Deep in Life and Victoria Emes, two brilliant comedians who separately have taken social media by storm, leading to hundreds of thousands of followers, books, a stage show and then together, they have created the Podcast ‘No Holes Barred’, where listeners write in with their frankly disgusting stories. Obviously Steph asks them about the grossest ones.

Laura and Victoria chat openly about how they fell in to these careers, their plans for Christmas, the challenges of motherhood and how to talk to new mums without terrifying them. They also...

After studying Design at London College of Fashion, Beth Huett opened her clothes shop Dolly Rock in St Margarets in 2011. Beth talks with Steph about getting started and the challenges of being an independent retailer, Brexit, and the Pandemic. Beth closed her shop after almost ten years at the end of 2020, and tells Steph about how she made the decision to avoid administration and take control as much as she could.

Beth talks about the sadness she felt, like a heartbreak, but also two years on she can recognise the relief she felt and talks about st...

Yvonne Telford is the founder of clothing brand Kemi Telford, which she started in 2017 with £60 and some tote bags. Yvonne tells Steph about her founder story and how the business evolved into what it is now – a highly regarded fashion brand with partnerships with John Lewis and Tate, celebrity fans and featured in Vogue.

Yvonne talks with Steph about the boom Kemi Telford experienced during the Pandemic, and the importance of remembering her ‘Why?’ as retail slows down. They discuss how it’s easy to lose focus with the distraction of other people’s ideas and other bu...

Steph spoke with James O’Hara about his life in hospitality as a serial business owner - the challenges, the peaks, managing a team and the lessons James has learned along the way. James also talks about how young people don’t drink like we did in the 90s/00s, Covid’s legacy and how belligerence has helped him as a founder.

James’ career in hospitality started with a club night in Sheffield; James has a talent for spotting what customers are after next, and now owns multiple bars and venues and is part of the team...

Emma Cantrell is the CEO of Children’s Charity First Days. Emma explains why she started the charity in 2013 when her two children were very small, initially to redistribute kids’ clothes and toys from people who didn’t need them anymore to those that did. 

Since then, Emma and her team have added more services including advising families on where they can get additional help, peer support and one to one coaching. Emma talks about how she has had to find balance, how to cope with doing a job where the stakes are so high and what...

Abi Selby founded Spabreaks.com in 2008, a spa booking service working with more than 700 spa destinations in the UK and a team of 65. Abi’s aim was to make spas accessible to every body as well as spotting the business opportunity of matching customers with vacancies in spas that needed filling.

Abi talks with Steph about realising the opportunity in the spa industry, starting a business shortly after having a baby and trying to find a way of work that works for her family and her business. She describes the impact of Covid, what she lov...

Steph speaks with Psychotherapist Zara Arshad about what is really going on for couples after a baby arrives – the common feelings of anger, disappointment, resentment, loneliness, and feeling underappreciated. From her own experience, Steph found it tough and was also surprised to feel this way as no one had really mentioned it prior to having a baby.

Zara specialises in couples and new parents improving communication, and helping people in relationships during what is a tricky time. They discuss the most common issues that couples go to Zara with, a predominant one being anger. Zara exp...

Laura Danger AKA That Darn Chat has amassed a massive 350k+ followers on TikTok and an Instagram account growing by thousands every week, creating videos about the mental load, with the strap line ‘Domestic labour is labour’. The reaction she gets shows that Laura’s is a voice people are wanting to hear from, and as one of Steph’s favourite topics, they get into it!

They discuss the wider impact on society of inequality at home, how writing lists isn’t the solution, and ask why women are ok in their own discomfort for everyone else’s...

Aileen Barratt is the woman behind the hugely popular Instagram account Tinder Translators, where she translates the awful bios in dating apps to explain what they really mean. ‘Looking for fun’ means ‘looking for sex’, ‘girls that look after themselves’ means only thin women should apply, and we learn how to spot if a man is, in fact, married.  

After sharing funny (dreadful) dating bios and stories, Steph and Aileen get into what these profiles say about how some men treat women, but also ask why women don’t expect more for themselves. They discuss the impact of growing up in...

Anna Mathur is a Psychotherapist, mum of three and best-selling author of three books all aimed at helping women manage anxiety, self-esteem and calm after having children.  

With 180k followers on Instagram, Anna’s drive to take therapy out of the therapy room and support more women comes from a trickier experience with her second child, when she couldn’t keep up the façade anymore. She talks about feeling guilt and shame, and invalidating those feelings because she felt she should be good at being a mum.  

Steph and Anna talk about the bigge...

Natalie Lee AKA Style Me Sunday talks with Steph about her mission to ‘free’ people from shame when it comes to our bodies, sex and fitting in, and answers some questions from listeners agony-aunt style.  

Natalie has undergone a lot of change in the last five years, on her view of her body and sexuality as well as ending her marriage. Steph and Natalie talk about summer bodies, growing up in the 80s and being taught that sex for women is a performance. She also encourages us to stop feeling guilty if we don’t love our...

Steph chats with Sunday Times Bestselling author Sarah Turner AKA The Unmumsy Mum. From launching a blog in 2013 after having her first baby and feeling she’d been missold motherhood, Sarah’s authentic voice has amassed a huge following; currently over 400k on Instagram and over 700K on Facebook. 

Steph and Sarah met on the ‘blogging scene’ back in 2014, and they recall what it was like back then in the world of mummy bloggers, when influencers were but a twinkle. They also talk about end of term madness, strategies for surviving summer holidays, vasectomies, stopping breastfeeding and having rubb...

Matt Coyne, AKA Man Vs Baby, has made a career writing and talking about being a dad (after a stint as ‘the worst graphic designer in Yorkshire’ among other things), amassing a huge following across social media.

As a Stay at Home Dad, Matt shares his insight in to men being praised for showing up, with expectations on women so much tougher, and the narrative of dads as either wet or buffoons. Steph and Matt talk about Kate’s handling of Prince Louis at the Jubilee, what happens when your toddler wants to touch a goat’s...