The Daisy Chain

I was sitting in the audience at an Albright event in March when a room full of women started cheering. Not politely. Properly.

Eliana Sydes had just told them that at 60 she was invited to join a board as the only non-founder executive director. And every woman in that room understood exactly what that meant - because most of us have quietly absorbed the idea that if it hasn't happened by 30, it isn't going to.

Eliana is 61. She is a financial planner who qualified later in life after changing career entirely. But she started out wanting to be an actress, in a family where her mother was a singer, dancer and ballet examiner and her sister trained at the Royal Ballet School. She wasn't the dancer. She couldn't sing. And when her grandmother (her mother figure) died in an accident Eliana was just 19, it took over a decade before she could put any of it into words.

At 25 she genuinely believed her life was over because she hadn't achieved anything remarkable yet.

She has thoughts about that now.

Fifteen years ago she wrote her own obituary - a strange exercise that made her realise what she actually wanted to be remembered for, and it had nothing to do with the version of success she'd been chasing. Four years ago, after doing the conga in the street at the Platinum Jubilee, she walked into a ballroom dancing class after a 38-year gap. Completely terrified. Unfit. Unable to remember a single step.

She still goes every week.

We talk about why ordinary life has been wrongly framed as failure, what the Forbes 30 under 30 does to everyone who isn't on it, and the difference between visible success and actually being happy. Eliana shares what she has learned about who you let close to you, and what she is still figuring out at 61 - which turns out to be the same thing most of us are.

If you have ever quietly wondered whether you've missed your window, this one is for you.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Changing career later in life
• Why you don't have to achieve everything by 30
• Losing a parent young and grieving without support
• The pressure of the Forbes 30 under 30 list
• Redefining what success means to you
• Writing your own obituary as an exercise
• Starting a new hobby in your fifties
• Financial planning and why women need to plan
• Who to trust with advice in difficult times
• Balancing work, family and your own life

What found us - Links & Mentions

Eliana:

• The Luck Factor — Professor Richard Wiseman (she refers to it as The Luck Project in the episode)

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Instagram: @thedaisychainpod
• TikTok: @thedaisychainpod
• YouTube: @TheDaisyChainPodcast
• Know an amazing guest? [email protected]

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Leave a 5🌟 review — to help more people discover our chain.

Guest: Eliana Sydes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Corinna Tolan grew up listening to business being discussed at the dinner table. Her parents were entrepreneurs. So were both sets of grandparents. Her mother opened one of the first skin clinics in Dublin at a time when nobody's mum in 1980s Ireland worked or drove - and built it specifically as a place where women could feel safe.

Corinna has been in that industry for thirty years now. She runs her own clinic. Her team has been with her for decades. In Ireland she is the person people go to when they want to know what actually works.

But the thing that stayed with me from this conversation wasn't about skin at all.

It was the moment Corinna realised the worries she had been carrying for years weren't hers. They were her mother's - absorbed at that kitchen table, aged ten, listening to the adults talk. Forty years later she was still carrying them and had never once asked whether they belonged to her.

Then her sister said something that stopped her mid-sentence. Where would you be without that thought? Corinna had no answer. And it changed how she has handled every difficult thing since.

We talk about the wisdom we inherit without choosing it, why taking things personally is the thing she'd most want to spare her younger self, and what it means to still feel like a beginner eighteen years into motherhood. She shares the book her sister handed her that gave her a set of tools she now passes on to her own clients - and the Taylor Swift song she uses to get her daughters to help clean the kitchen.

This one is for anyone still carrying something they never agreed to pick up.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• How to stop taking things personally at work
• Inherited anxiety and beliefs from parents
• Byron Katie's Loving What Is and how to question your thoughts
• Building a career in a family business
• Women in business in 1980s Ireland
• Letting go as a parent
• Motherhood and still figuring it out
• Setting boundaries between work and family
• Building a team that stays for decades
• Skin, skincare and working with clients long term

What found us - Links & Mentions

Daisy:

• Lost Weekend by Phoebe Bridgers
• Furious

Corinna:

• Loving What Is - Byron Katie
• All Too Well (10 Minute Version) - Taylor Swift
• Silver Springs - Fleetwood Mac

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Instagram: @thedaisychainpod
• TikTok: @thedaisychainpod
• YouTube: @TheDaisyChainPodcast
• Know an amazing guest? [email protected]

Follow Corinna: 

• Instagram: corinna_monicatolanbeauty
• Monica Tolan Skincare Clinics

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a 5🌟 review — it helps more women find their way here. And that's the whole point. 🌼

Guest: Corinna Tolan

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of the women we assume have it together are carrying things we can't see. They show up, they lead, they put their makeup on and walk into the room looking like someone who has never doubted herself. This week's guest is one of those women. She came on this show to tell you what's behind the front.

Jaclyn Lauder has worked alongside Daisy for nearly five years. She is a leader, a mother, someone who shows up every single day with warmth and a refusal to sugarcoat. What Daisy didn't know - until she pressed record - was everything Jaclyn had been carrying while she did it.

Jaclyn's mum was at her wedding. Ten days later, she was gone. Jaclyn was six months pregnant at the time - a pregnancy that had taken seven years to reach. She has since navigated cancer, chronic illness, and grief, often simultaneously. Not because it was easy. Because getting up and showing up, she says, is its own kind of strength.

In this conversation they talk about what it really costs to keep going when everything is happening at once, what her mum handed down simply by how she lived, and why the most confident woman in the room is often carrying the most.

This one is for anyone who looks like they have it together and wonders if anyone can see what it's really costing them.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Losing a parent to cancer and navigating grief
• Being diagnosed with cancer and going back to work
• Chronic illness and mental health
• Grief during pregnancy
• How to keep going when life gets hard
• Imposter syndrome and self-doubt
• How mothers pass down wisdom without knowing it
• Grieving a parent your child will never meet
• Women's health and invisible illness
• Building resilience through adversity

What found us- Links & Mentions

Jaclyn

• 90s Dance Music
• Pikes, Ibiza

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Instagram: @thedaisychainpod
• TikTok: @thedaisychainpod
• YouTube: @TheDaisyChainPodcast
• Know an amazing guest? [email protected]

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Leave a 5🌟 review - to help more people discover our chain. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nancy Blair was 70 when she started posting videos online, sharing creativity, dancing and what she's learned about starting again later in life.

She wasn't building a platform. She was dancing in her living room every morning, the way she has for decades, and thought other people might like to see a woman her age still moving. Then she posted something about creativity, it went viral, and at 78 she now has an audience of strangers who write to her about the things they've been too frightened to start.

She has been an artist for over forty years - sculptor, author, teacher. But that's not the interesting part.

The interesting part is everything that came before. A childhood that gave her very little to build on. Dancing in clubs to survive, and the night on stage when something shifted so completely she walked out mid-shift and never went back. Hitchhiking across America. Graduate school where every teacher who shaped her was a man, and the slow realisation that the images of powerful women she needed simply didn't exist - so she started a company and made them herself.

At 58 she wrote a memoir while her marriage ended, both her parents were dying, and menopause arrived at the worst possible moment. She calls it the triple storm.

What Nancy understood somewhere along the way is that nobody was coming. Not a teacher, not a partner, not anyone. And she has thoughts about what you do with that.

We talk about the gifts our parents give us that don't feel like gifts at the time, why perfectionism is the fastest way to never start anything, and what it takes to genuinely change your mind about what you're capable of. She shares something an art teacher told her fifty years ago that she has never stopped carrying. And she tells me what

she is still figuring out - at 78, with more ambition than most people half her age.

If you've been waiting for permission to begin, Nancy has something to say to you.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Starting something new in your seventies
• Why nobody is coming to rescue you
• Creativity and how to overcome creative block
• Perfectionism and why it stops you starting
• Growing up in a difficult home and finding your own way
• Women in art and creating what doesn't exist yet
• Writing a memoir during divorce, grief and menopause
• Building confidence in your own creative voice
• Ageing, ambition and staying curious
• Finding teachers and mentors when you least expect them

What found us - Links & Mentions

Daisy:

• Jitters- Britney
• Ele Mckenzie
• Harriet Richardson

Nancy:

• Frida Kahlo and Tracey Emin at Tate Modern
• Nancy Azara - the artist who taught her that her story belonged in her work

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Instagram: @thedaisychainpod
• TikTok: @thedaisychainpod
• YouTube: @TheDaisyChainPodcast

Follow Nancy Blair:

• Nancy Blair Instagram
• Free Creativity Guides for TDC listeners: How to Stop Killing Your Creativity
• Free Creativity Guides for TDC listeners: The Witty Wise Creativity Journal

Know an amazing guest? [email protected]

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a 5🌟 review - it helps more women find their way here. And that's the whole point. 🌼

Guest: Nancy Blair

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 finale has none of that. What it has instead is something rarer — a host sitting with everything she has built, trying to make sense of what it actually means.

This is the season one finale of The Daisy Chain. No guest. Just Daisy.

Over eight episodes, eight extraordinary women passed down something real. And in this solo episode, Daisy reflects on what a season of honest, unscripted conversations actually taught her about wisdom, about the metrics we use to measure a life worth listening to, and about why the chain exists in the first place.

The Daisy Chain began with a belief: wisdom isn't inherited. It doesn't belong to the most credentialed people or the loudest platforms. It lives in unexpected places — in a conversation you nearly didn't have, a song that arrived at exactly the right moment, a person the internet would never think to google. This episode is Daisy's attempt to name what she has found there.

In this episode Daisy reflects on losing her mum at 14 and what it taught her about finding guidance in unexpected places, why everything she consumed online made her feel behind, and what she did about it, the guest who moved her most this season and why the metrics are wrong, what it really means to witness someone rather than fix them, and why The Daisy Chain is not a podcast but a way of moving through the world.

This one is for anyone who has ever felt behind and wondered if that was the whole story. It isn't.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode I discuss:

• Why wisdom doesn't belong to the most credentialed people
• Losing a parent young and finding guidance where you least expect it
• Why consuming more self-help content might be making you feel worse
• The people no algorithm finds - and why they matter most
• What it means to feel truly seen rather than fixed
• How a song or a film can change your life in a way no podcast ever could
• Building a life from scratch when nobody handed you a blueprint
• What a season of honest conversations taught me about wisdom and myself

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Follow The Daisy Chain on Instagram
• The Daisy Chain's TikTok
• Know an amazing guest? Contact us at [email protected]

Enjoyed 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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 adversity
• How to be strong even when you're terrified
• Why nothing you learn is ever wasted
• The zone of proximal development, why you're not as behind as you think
• Giving yourself permission to stop doing things you've always done
• Why we're all just ordinary, just trying
• Intergenerational wisdom, what the elderly can teach us about being alive
• Building a life and career from nothing
• The importance of friendship during parenthood
• Caring for an ageing parent and what it teaches you about yourself

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Follow The Daisy Chain on Instagram
• The Daisy Chain's TikTok
• Know an amazing guest? Contact us at [email protected]

Enjoyed 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 & Mentions

Holly 'What found me this week'

• Mob Fresh Cookbook

Sue:

• Quiet by Susan Cain
• Come On Over by Shania Twain
• Conclave — Edward Berger

Guest: Sue Cook

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are consuming more than ever and feeling less equipped than ever. More advice, more opinions, more noise. And somewhere in all of that, the signal gets lost. This week's guest has spent most of her career asking herself exactly what she lets in, and why it matters more than most people realise.

Joanna Christie is the CMO of Moonfare and one of the most compelling leaders I have ever had the privilege of working under. She has built an extraordinary career across some of the UK's most recognisable brands, and has never once applied for a job. What makes Joanna remarkable isn't her title or her track record. It's the fact that she got here while openly battling people pleasing and imposter syndrome, asking stupid questions on purpose, and admitting what she didn't know in rooms full of people who expected her to have all the answers.

In this conversation, Joanna and Daisy talk about what it really means to back yourself in your career, the difference between people pleasing and genuine kindness, and why curating what you let into your brain is one of the most powerful performance decisions you can make. Joanna opens up about losing her mother suddenly and the unexpected way grief handed her the most important lesson of her life. She shares her philosophy on work life balance, why she thinks suffer porn is a red flag not a badge of honor, and her simple formula for taking back control when overwhelm creeps in — clear the day, make the list, check it off. She also recommends Tuesdays with Morrie, a book about a man running out of life but not out of love, passing down wisdom every week to someone who needed it. Sound familiar.

This one is for anyone who has ever felt lost in their career but still carries huge ambition. Joanna has something to say.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• People pleasing and where it comes from
• Imposter syndrome and career confidence
• Why not knowing everything is your greatest professional asset
• Signal vs noise- being intentional about what you let into your brain
• How to curate your feed and take back control of the algorithm
• Grief, loss and the wisdom that only comes from having really lived
• Work life balance and the truth about being a working mother
• Why busyness as a badge of honour is a red flag not a flex
• Self awareness as a leadership skill
• How to take back control when you're feeling overwhelmed

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Follow The Daisy Chain on Instagram
• The Daisy Chain's TikTok
• Know an amazing guest? Contact us at [email protected]

Enjoyed 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 & Mentions

Daisy:

• Walking pad

Joanna:

• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
• The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*** by Sarah Knight
• HAYU
• Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
• Southern Charm
• Romeo and Juliet - Baz Luhrmann
• Love Story (1970)
• Ancient and Brave electrolytes
• Calm app - sleep stories
• Sauna blanket
• Bio Effect skincare
• NuFace

Guest: Joanna Christie — CMO at Moonfare

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of us have had someone tell us - a parent, a teacher, someone who should have known better - that the thing we love most isn't a real thing. Not a real career. Not a direction worth following. That moment doesn't leave you quickly. The question it plants - am I allowed to trust this? - can follow you for a very long time.

Colette Woods is a painter and ceramicist living and working in Bruton, Somerset, whose art has been described as whimsical, instinctive and luminous. She spent decades working her way back to what she always knew she wanted - through family discouragement, through the practical realities of building a life. Last year, she was so seriously ill she couldn't lift her head from the pillow. She's only recently started working again. And she has never been clearer about what matters.

Daisy and Colette talk about what happens when you spend your twenties following other people's maps, and what it takes to eventually trust your own instincts over the noise. They explore the art of saying no without explanation, and why Colette's morning ritual - an Italian percolator on the stove, the sound of the bubbling, the smell, a mug she made for herself, toast with marmalade is as close to meditation as anything she knows. Colette also shares her recent rediscovery of John Singer Sargent, whose paintings of fabric she finds so extraordinary that she looks at the cloth long before she ever reaches the face.

This one is for anyone who was told their passion wasn't practical, and has spent years quietly wondering if they were right. Colette has been there. And she has something to pass down.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Being told your creative ambitions aren't a real career
• What it means to finally trust your gut over other people's advice
• The power of saying no without explanation
• Life after serious illness and what it strips away
• Protecting your creative process from commercial pressure
• Creating beauty and ritual in the everyday
• Finding your artistic identity later in life
• Why emotions in art aren't a weakness - they're the energy
• Social media noise and why it's a lie
• How to start making art again when you've been away from it

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Follow The Daisy Chain on Instagram
• The Daisy Chain's TikTok
• Know an amazing guest? Contact us at [email protected]

Enjoyed 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 & Mentions

Daisy:

• The Prado Museum, Madrid

Colette:

• John Singer Sargent - artist 
• Hieronymus Bosch
• Three Colours Blue (dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski)
• Manon des Sources - French film 
• The Other Bennet Sister - TV series
• La Bohème, Puccini - opera
• Édith Piaf
• Grace Jones - La Vie en Rose 

Guest: Colette Woods

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grief has a way of finding you twice. Once when it happens- and again, years later, when you're standing in your twenties and you just want to pick up the phone.

Ruby Jenkins is a hairdresser and entrepreneur who lost her mum suddenly at fifteen, there one day, gone the next. Daisy lost hers at fourteen, after years of watching cancer take hold. They met three years ago over a bad blow dry, two weeks before Daisy's wedding, and have been in each other's corner ever since. What they didn't know until they sat down to record this was how much they'd never said out loud.

In this conversation, Ruby and Daisy talk about what grief actually feels like when the funeral is over and everyone goes home-  that hollow feeling nobody prepares you for. They talk about why grief doesn't get easier with time, it just gets easier to carry, and why for both of them it hit hardest not at fifteen but in their twenties, when the little things started to sting. They talk about the embarrassment of grief that nobody mentions, what it means to stand at a crossroads after loss and choose who you become, and how losing her mum gave Ruby the biggest empathy battery she's ever had - something she'd never give back. Ruby also shares the wisdom her mum handed down that she still carries: there is always something to be glad about. You just have to find it.

This one is for anyone who has ever lost someone young and wondered if the weight ever lifts. It does. You just get stronger at carrying it.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Why grief doesn't get easier, it just gets easier to carry
• What nobody tells you about losing a parent young
• Why grief hits harder in your twenties than it did at fifteen
• The embarrassment of grief nobody talks about
• Growing up without a mother and finding guidance elsewhere
• Life after loss, choosing who you become
• There is always something to be glad about, even when you have to look hard
• How losing a parent young shapes the person you become

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Follow The Daisy Chain on Instagram
• The Daisy Chain's TikTok
• Know an amazing guest? Contact us at [email protected]

Enjoyed 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 & Mentions

Ruby:

• Ray's a Laugh - Richard Billingham (photography book)
• Martin Parr (photographer)
• Hot Fuzz (film)
• Everything I Know About Love - Dolly Alderton (book)
• Vienna - Billy Joel (song)

Daisy:

• Project Hail Mary (film)
• Kacey Musgraves - Oh What a World (song)
• About Time (film)

What found me this week:Charlotte’s pick:

• Baz Luhrmunn- Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen

Guest: Ruby Jenkins @byrou_

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some of the most important things anyone ever told you about creativity, confidence and finding your way weren't said in a classroom or a therapy room. They were said in a kitchen, at a piano, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon by someone who had already figured it out the hard way.

Natalie is an actress with decades of BBC productions, theatre and film behind her - Calendar Girls, Pride and Prejudice, The Importance of Being Earnest, and this summer Shear Madness at the Sonning Theatre. She has spent nearly thirty years teaching the STAGE method to everyone from children to corporate boardrooms, helping people find their voice when it matters most. But she also happens to have known Daisy since the day she was born - and long before any of the credentials, she was the person who sat her down at a piano and told her to just play.

In this conversation, Natalie talks about what it really means to use anger as fuel rather than letting it consume you, and why the fire you felt at fifteen never actually goes out - it just needs you to look for it. They talk about creativity and why boredom is one of the most underrated tools you have, about letting go of what you cannot control, and about gratitude as something you practise rather than feel. Natalie shares what a hypnotherapist gave her in two words that changed everything, how watching David Bowie on Top of the Pops in 1973 cracked something open in her, and why nothing you have ever learned — even the things that didn't work out - is ever truly wasted.

This one is for anyone who has ever felt lost, poured everything into something that didn't go to plan, or needed a reminder that feeling behind is not the same as being behind.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Using anger as fuel, not fire
• Why nothing you've ever learned is wasted
• The two words that changed everything
• Boredom as a creative tool
• Letting go of what you can't control
• Gratitude as a daily practice
• Natalie Ogle's STAGE method and public speaking
• Why the fire in your belly never really goes out

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Follow The Daisy Chain on Instagram
• The Daisy Chain's TikTok
• Know an amazing guest? Contact us at [email protected]

Enjoyed 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 & Mentions

Daisy:

• Give it a grow by Martha Swales
• Joshua Tree by Demi Lovato & Rose Gray
• Is This Thing On?

What found me this week: Ella's pick:

• The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Natalie:

• Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
• The Rocky Horror Show
• Suzi Quatro

Guest: Natalie — Shear Madness at the Sonning Theatre

The Daisy Chain is a weekly podcast where every week, someone who's already been where you are passes down four pearls of wisdom to those of us still finding our way.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.