RAIN CITY RECOMMENDS | WE WILL GET PAST THIS BY SANDI TOKSVIG

As you may have read in my last Monday post, I’ve been having a bit of a tough time recently. I have a family member who is ill and not getting help very quickly, which is stressing me out. We also have a terminally ill cat who has been in our family since she was a kitten, 14 years ago. She’s also my kid’s current favourite of our three cats, so this is extra hard because of that. I won’t go into the whole thing again, but suffice it to say it’s not been a fantastic couple of weeks. I don’t know what made it come to me, but I remembered during the early days of the pandemic, comedian Sandi Toksvig came out with a podcast called We Will Get Past This.

It is 52 short episodes, about ten minutes each, that focus on sharing strange, interesting, lesser known women through history. It’s entertaining, educational, and oddly soothing. I joked to a friend of mine that Sandi Toksvig is my emotional support comedian – I was only slightly kidding (now that I’ve completed a re-listen of the podcast, I’m listening to her memoir). I don’t know what it is about her, but she has a wonderful voice to listen to – soothing and authoritative, but kind. She’s also an incredibly smart woman and has had an interesting life. I enjoy her observations about the world around her, and her curiosity about people’s differences, their lives, what has happened in the past that carries through into today, and the people (particularly women) who made the discoveries and inventions that have shaped our modern world. She values the same things I find most important and helpful in hard times – family, time alone with books, nature, thinking, and being grateful for the things we are lucky to have in our lives, whatever they may be. I owe her a debt of gratitude for helping me through more than one difficult period in my life, and I expect I will return to her podcast and books again in the future. If you haven’t yet, check her out – she was a presenter on The Great British Bake Off with Noel Fielding, and a host of the well-known British comedy quiz show (originally hosted by Stephen Fry), QI.

You can find her podcast, We Will Get Past This on Audible here, or wherever you find your podcasts. Her memoir, Between the Stops, is also available on Audible and any other book platform you use (in print, digital or audio formats, though I recommend audio).