You're not behind. We're all just ordinary, in the middle, just trying - Sue Cook on growing up without support, finding strength through hardship and why we're all just figuring it out | The Daisy Chain

Most of the wisdom we consume comes from people who have arrived. People with titles, platforms, track records. People who have packaged up what they know and presented it as a formula. This week's guest has none of that. What she has instead is a life, fully, bravely, extraordinarily lived.Sue Cook is not a public figure. She is my neighbor. One of my mother's closest friends. One of the women who helped raise me after I lost my mum at 14. I have known Sue my entire life. And then I pressed record, and she showed me sides of herself I had never seen in thirty years of knowing her.Sue grew up with a violent father and a mother who didn't want her. She escaped, raised three boys alone without a car, built a career entirely from scratch, completed a degree in her fifties, and is now caring for Joyce, her 98-year-old aunt, with the same fierce, unsentimental love she has brought to everything in her life. She has never had a safety net. She has never waited for permission. And she has never let anyone else's opinion of what she can do change what she knows she is capable of.In this conversation, Sue and Daisy talk about what it really means to be strong when you're terrified, why nothing you learn is ever wasted, and what it looks like to build a life entirely on your own terms. Sue shares the unexpected gift her violent father gave her, introduces the zone of proximal development - a concept that reframes where you are right now not as behind, but as exactly in the middle of getting there, and explains what Joyce, at 98 and living with dementia, has taught her about presence, pleasure and how to really be alive. She also shares the one piece of advice that has carried her through everything: there will always be someone with more and someone with less. We are all just ordinary. Just trying.This one is for anyone who has ever felt ordinary and wondered if that was enough. Sue has something to say about that.Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼In this episode we discuss:Growing up without a safety net and finding strength through adversityHow to be strong even when you're terrifiedWhy nothing you learn is ever wastedThe zone of proximal development, why you're not as behind as you thinkGiving yourself permission to stop doing things you've always doneWhy we're all just ordinary, just tryingIntergenerational wisdom, what the elderly can teach us about being aliveBuilding a life and career from nothingThe importance of friendship during parenthoodCaring for an ageing parent and what it teaches you about yourselfFollow The Daisy Chain:Follow The Daisy Chain on InstagramThe Daisy Chain's TikTokKnow an amazing guest? Contact us at [email protected] this episode?Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.Leave a 5🌟 review — to help more people discover our pearls of wisdom.What found us- Links & MentionsHolly 'What found me this week'Mob Fresh CookbookSue:Quiet by Susan CainCome On Over by Shania TwainConclave — Edward BergerGuest: Sue Cook Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.