Most of us have a conversation we’re avoiding: a child coming out to their parent, a family losing someone to terminal illness, a friend noticing early signs of dementia. There are moments when we simply must talk, listen and be there for one another.
DR KATHRYN MANNIX, a consultant in palliative care medicine, has spent her career having what she describes as “tender conversations” with bereaved families. Her book, Listen: How to Find the Words for Tender Conversations, is a guide to broaching difficult subjects with those we care about.
In this classic reissued episode Andrew and Kathryn discuss why it is we so often don’t say what needs to be said. They look at how to be brave in the face of discomfort, how to sit with silence, and how to speak from a place of gentleness and care.
Dr Kathryn Mannix has spent her medical career working with people who have incurable, advanced illnesses. She is also the author of the bestselling With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well. Kathryn is a qualified cognitive behavioural therapist and started the UK’s first CBT clinic for palliative care patients.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50
This week supporters will hear:
Three Things Kathryn Mannix knows to be true.
AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Attend Andrew's new men's retreat, Reconnect With Yourself, this autumn in the Brandenberg countryside near Berlin.
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things.
Read Dr Kathryn Mannix’s books: Listen: How to Find the Words for Tender Conversations and With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well
Listen to Dr Kathryn Mannix’s previous appearance on this podcast, What You’ve Been Told About Death Might Be Wrong
Follow Dr Kathryn Mannix on Twitter and Facebook @drkathrynmannix
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
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Jessa Fairbrother: Into the Void: Dealing with Pain When There's No Happy Ending
At some point in our lives, we all step into the void. Something so big happens that we struggle even to make sense of it.
This week Andrew is in conversation with artist JESSA FAIRBROTHER about finding our way through the pain of these unwanted experiences without getting trapped in repeating loops.
We discuss:
How grief over the loss of her parents and experiences of infertility have shaped Jessa’s work as an artist.
Finding value and beauty inside the void.
The cultural concept of the happy ending.
The transformative power of art.
Jessa Fairbrother is a British visual artist whose work spans stitch, photography, performance and drawing. The body is her main material. The artist book of her work Conversations with my mother, is held in collections at Tate Britain, the V&A, London and The Museum of Fine Art, Houston. Her companion piece, Role Play (Woman with Cushion) is included in Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, a Hayward Touring exhibition travelling the UK throughout 2024-2025. Jessa became an RWA Academician in 2023. In 2025 she was awarded a DYCP award from ACE to expand her interdisciplinary writing and is authoring her experimental hybrid memoir. She works from her studio in Bristol and the Wye Valley, UK.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50
This week supporters will hear:
The Healing Power of Making Things With Your Hands
Three Things Jessa Fairbrother knows to be true.
AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Attend Andrew's new men's retreat, Reconnect With Yourself, this autumn in the Brandenberg countryside near Berlin
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Visit Jessa Fairbrother’s website
Follow Jessa Fairbrother on Instagram @jessfairbrother
Read “Letting Go of IVF”, by Jessa Fairbrother, on the Wellcome Collection website
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
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Malcolm Stern: Slay Your Dragons with Compassion
Are you being held back by darker moments from your past? Would you like to find the courage to shine a light on some of the tragic or shameful moments that you don’t like to think about?
In this classic reissued episode, author and therapist MALCOLM STERN joins Andrew to discuss his book Slay Your Dragons With Compassion. Malcolm and Andrew talk about confronting your fears and working through blocks in a way that is compassionate to yourself and others.
Malcolm Stern is a psychotherapist with over thirty years of experience in the therapy room. His book is the result of his professional experience, but also of working through personal tragedy: his daughter Melissa took her own life in 2014, leading Malcolm to question every aspect of his work and life.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50
This week supporters will hear:
How to Break the Spell You’re Under
Three Things Malcolm Stern knows to be true.
AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Attend Andrew's new men's retreat, Reconnect With Yourself, this autumn in the Brandenberg countryside near Berlin
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Read Malcolm Stern’s book Slay Your Dragons With Compassion: Ten Ways to Thrive Even When It Feels Impossible.
Visit Malcolm Stern’s website
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
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Connie Zweig: How We Self-Sabotage: Understanding Your Shadow
SHADOW is a Jungian concept that refers to those traits we have suppressed in ourselves that may be waiting to find expression in our lives. This week Connie Zweig PhD returns to the podcast to talk about shadow-work for conscious relationships.
We explore:
How the unconscious erupts in our lives and sabotages our relationships
Why we can become caught up in repetitive arguments, criticism, distancing, projections, or addictions.
How the shadow forms in childhood and how to detect it when it emerges
Making a conscious relationship to the shadow, and choosing different outcomes.
Connie Zweig, Ph.D., is a retired psychotherapist, writer, and Climate Reality Leader. Known as the Shadow Expert, she has written several books about shadow-work, including Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature and Romancing the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital, Authentic Life, both of which have recently been reissued. Connie has been doing contemplative practices for more than 50 years, and is a wife, stepmother and grandmother.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50
This week supporters will hear:
Psychology of Evil
Three Things Connie Zweig knows to be true.
AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Attend Andrew's new men's retreat, Reconnect With Yourself, this autumn in the Brandenberg countryside near Berlin
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Read Connie Zweig’s books:
Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature
Romancing the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital, Authentic Life
The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul
Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening
Explore Connie Zweig’s Substack, Shadow Work to Expand Awareness
Listen to Connie Zweig’s podcast with her husband, Dr Neil’s Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality
Visit Connie Zweig’s website https://conniezweig.com
Follow Connie Zweig on Twitter @InnerWorkofAge and on Facebook at @Dr.ConnieZweig
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
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Graham Johnston & Matt Wotton - Good Boundaries: The Foundation of Happy Relationships
We all know that good boundaries are essential if we want happy relationships. There is a lot of confusion, though, about what exactly a boundary is and how to make it work. Can we have too many boundaries? Should we ever compromise on the boundaries we set?
In this week’s classic reissued episode, Andrew talks about boundaries with Graham Johnston and Matt Wotton from the London Centre of Applied Psychology. Matt and Graham share their own experiences of creating boundaries in both love and parenting, and what it means if we are struggling to get this right.
Our ability to set boundaries is linked closely to our attachment style: those with an anxious attachment may allow their boundaries to crumble too easily; while those with an avoidant attachment can have so many rigid boundaries that they struggle to let anyone in.
Andrew also shares a prayer for good boundaries, which he often uses with marital therapy clients:
'I am me and
You are you.
It's a miracle that we've found each other
But I'm responsible for my stuff
And you're responsible for yours'
Graham Johnston is a psychotherapist and educator. He is Director of Policy at The Bowlby Centre, the UK’s leading training institution in attachment-based psychotherapy, and has also worked for the UK Government, specialising in home affairs. He and Matt Wotton are the Co-Founders and Directors of LCAP.
Matt Wotton is a psychotherapist and executive coach, and also Chair of The Bowlby Centre and Director at LCAP. Matt has over two decades of experience in forensic mental health in the criminal justice system - in operations, coaching leaders, and advising ministers. He led the review of Race in the Criminal Justice System (The Lammy Review), commissioned by the Prime Minister, and has been a member of the Prison & Probation Board.
Follow Up
Attend Andrew's new men's retreat, Reconnect With Yourself, this autumn in the Brandenberg countryside near Berlin
Get Andrew’s free guide to difficult conversations with your partner: How to Tell Your Partner Difficult Things
Learn more about the London Centre for Applied Psychology (LCAP), where Graham Johnston and Matt Wotton work as Directors.
Learn more about The Bowlby Centre, the UK’s leading training institution in attachment-based psychotherapy.
Follow LCAP on Twitter and Facebook @LCAPsychology.
Read The Mindful Athlete by George Munford.
Read the poem “On Marriage” by Kahlil Gibran.
Take a look at Andrew’s new online relationship course: My Best Relationship Tools
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50 https://www.patreon.com/andrewgmarshall
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Hello, I am a marital therapist, communications trainer and author. I have thirty-five years helping couples and individuals make better relationships. I have written twenty-plus self-help books which include the international best-sellers ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you’ and ‘How can I ever trust you again?’ My books have been translated into twenty languages. I trained with RELATE the UK’s largest counselling charity.
Perhaps it has been turning sixty but I have become interested in spiritual as well as psychological questions. Who am I? What are my values – as opposed to my parents, my teachers and the wider society? What makes my life meaningful? What do I believe about life, the universe and everything? Although my clients might come to me because of destructive arguments, falling out of love and infidelity, they are also interested in having more meaningful relationships and a more meaningful life.
So what is the meaningful life? Why do we so easily lose our way and get lost in depression, anxiety, doubt, addictions and obsessions: the swamplands of the soul? One thing I know for sure is that there is not one answer. Each of us has to find out for ourselves what makes our life meaningful. But we can learn from each other, share our experiences of how to navigate the journey, how to endure and learn from the swamp, and finally how to find solid ground.
I have decided to use my original training in radio and journalism to interview witnesses for what makes life meaningful. Each week, I invite someone who is a therapist, academic, self-help coach or who has an enlightening personal story to share their knowledge or experiences. I hope our discussions will help you discover what makes your life meaningful and find more purpose and contentment.
New Zealand