Three conversations on the challenges of trying to move on from a troubled past - friends who met through charity work talk about helping victims of domestic abuse obtain legal aid; mother and daughter on mother's long history of drug taking and rebuilding their relationship after her release from prison; and a retired couple coming to terms with a history of financial fraud and a prison sentence, by devoting themselves to helping others.

The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject.

Producer: Mohini Patel