Louise O’Neill - ‘Full Recovery Is Possible’
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What inspired Louise O’Neill to write her first memoir?
From the age of like yeah, 14 to 32, so nearly 20 years, and all of my adult life, um, I yeah, went between kind of anorexia and buidemia. And uh for that entire year, every time I woke up, the one sentence that kept going around my brain was, I'm going to die soon. And then the therapist said, She was really firm on this. She said, Oh no. Should people make full recoveries? Like my failure to recover and then the subsequent like almost like as I said rewiring of my neural pathways has actually led me to be an adult that I think has a lot more freedom.
Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast where each week I ask a guest about what failure has taught them. It's sometimes surprising, sometimes funny, sometimes moving, but it's almost always uplifting. Before we get started on this conversation, please do remember to like, follow, and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode.
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Louise O'Neill is a best-selling, award-winning Irish author and former journalist whose writing has been a shaping force in modern feminism. Her fiction is taught on the Irish curriculum. Paul Mescal starred in a highly acclaimed stage adaptation of her work. Her debut novel, Only Ever Yours, won multiple awards, but it was her second, Asking For It, published in 2015. That catapulted her into the public eye. It told the story of Emma, who wakes up the morning after a party on our front porch with no memory of how she got there. It's only when she sees photos on social media that she realizes she's been assaulted. The book caused a national discussion in O'Neill's home country, raising issues of consent and sexual violence.
Her subsequent work has tackled similarly crucial topics: coercive control, female shame, toxic masculinity, and the dark sides of fame and social media. Now, with her new book, she has ventured for the first time into memoir. A bigger life turns this unflinching lens on O'Neill's decision, after the collapse of a long-term relationship in her late thirties, to set herself the challenge of dating a different man each night in three different cities: Paris, London, and New York. The experience taught her more about herself than she could have ever anticipated. And it was inspired by something her father, Michael, said to her. My life at thirty-eight looked nothing like the one I had envisioned for myself, O'Neal recalls.
I felt like I had failed in every possible way, and I had no idea how to fix it. He listened to me and then he said, Louise, if you want a bigger life, you're going to have to take bigger risks. Louise O'Neill, welcome to How to Fail.
It is so surreal listening to you. Cause I've been like I've been a fan of the podcast for such a long time. To actually hear like me getting the how to fail introduction, I'm just like, this is insane. This is very surreal. I can't believe this is happening.
Well I had an additional pressure because you are one of my favourite people and we are really good friends. And I didn't want to get a single thing wrong. Is this your eighth book?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Louise O’Neill to write her first memoir?
0:00–9:33
2
How did the “dating every night” experiment shape her view on love and self‑discovery?
9:33–16:04
3
Why does she believe choosing hope after heartbreak is essential?
16:04–22:31
4
What pressures do women face around marriage, milestones and societal expectations?
22:31–27:03
5
How does aging fear and beauty pressure affect her mental health?
27:03–32:37
6
What does “fear of vulnerability” mean for her recovery journey?
32:37–37:59
7
How did she rewire her mind to achieve a full recovery from a 17‑year eating disorder?
37:59–43:40
8
What does redefining success look like after a life‑changing memoir?
43:40–59:19