The life advice edition with Marianne Power

"Go to bed and have a massive nap"

Nov 02, 2024

Hi friends,

I’m still not 100% and haven’t written properly in a while. This week, the fabulous author Marianne Power has answered The Uplift’s live advice questions for you. Her latest book Love Me! One Woman's Search for a Different Happy Ever is out now and also available on audiobook for Spotify subscribers.

What’s the best advice anyone’s ever given you?

It's advice from the poet Mary Oliver 'things take the time they take, don't worry...' I mean I don't listen to it at all, worry constantly about how long things take me and whether I'm going to earn enough to pay the rent this month... and yet that phrase is in my head most days. I sense that it really is true, whether it comes to work, love, health...

If you could go back and give yourself some advice to yourself at a certain point in your life, when would you go back to and what would you tell yourself?

Save the money I earned from my first book Help Me! It took me four years to finish, I moved back in with my mum and dad to write it and then lots of international deals came in. I thought the good times would roll forever - they didn't! I wish, wish, wish I had saved more money when I had it.

What's your best life advice for other people?

Rest. I look at all of us hooked to screens, burned out and worrying and I want to tell us all to go to bed and have a massive nap. I am always telling people to rest. I have been diagnosed with long covid and have spent many months in my bed - it's been financially horrible and really stressful, but the time out has also been a blessing in some ways.

What inspired your latest book and what would you say to anyone thinking of reading it?

Love Me! One Woman's Search for a Different Happy Ever After is me exploring how to build a life full of love, family and sex as a single woman. It celebrates the many different ways to live and love and I really hope it makes people who have not gone down traditional paths feel better... but also I've heard from married people that it made them think a lot about how they behave in their relationships. There's a lot of sex in there too, as I try to shed some of my Irish Catholic schoolgirl hangups via tantra retreats - so read if you'd like to enjoy sex more than you do.