Alice Draper: “My dad’s dementia changed me”

Note: This is a rough transcript, and there might be typos.

Alice Draper (00:01)

Hi, I’m doing something a little bit different today.

So I wanted to do something a little bit different today. We are 11.

I wanted to do something a little bit different for today’s episode. We’re 11 episodes into the show. I have learned so much. I’ve conducted think 16 or 17 interviews so far. It’s been so much fun. I was just explaining to someone the other day that it feels more like a hobby than it feels like running a podcast or work, which is probably the most sustainable thing because it has.

I’ve put a ton of hours into this, so I’m like, well, thank goodness it feels like a hobby and not like work because otherwise I don’t know if I’d be able to sustain it on top of everything else. But yeah, so the reason why I’m jumping on in full transparency is because I have a series of interviews that all need to go together. So in the future interviews, it’s going to be…

I’m speaking to an author who self-published so that you guys can get a sense of the self-publishing model. I’m speaking to a literary agent who shares sort of what it takes. She’s an agent for nonfiction books. So she shares a lot of kind of behind the scenes of what makes her choose books and what makes her reject books. And then I’m also talking to two people who run hybrid publishing companies to talk about what that model looks like. So I want all of those to go together, like not together, but consecutively.

And then next week I’ve agreed to release an interview where I’m being interviewed and talking about rejection. so I had this little gap and then there are other interviews in the schedule, but, I, yeah, don’t, I think that my editor needs some more time to see if the audio is fixable. if I don’t know if we’re going to release them just because of like audio technical problems. So then I thought, well, this could be a chance for me to come on here.

and talk to you a little bit about me and my rejection story. Cause a couple of people have asked me, you know, why did you start the podcast? And we kind of want a little bit of background on that. And what is your story? And yeah, I mean, my goal for this podcast is to, you know, there’s so much about rejection that I want to explore as I’m sure you’ve guessed, but

A big one is also to get to the heart of people’s, I guess, hardest points of their life and understanding how those shaped and informed the next things they make because, and I mentioned this in the kind of like description of the podcast, rejection is universal. We all experience rejection. We all experience setbacks. I think that the difference between people who live very

fulfilled lives, whether that means external success or internal success, is that they have chosen to use those rejections, or they’ve been able to, I wouldn’t even say chose, I think they had the tools and the ability and the support and the self-awareness to use those rejections as growth tools to move forward and to inform whatever they did next. And that’s not the case for everyone. And that’s not what rejection does.

So next week, I am going to be releasing an interview that Diane Wingert did with me where she interviewed me about rejection and something that she asked me about, which no one’s ever asked me before. So listen to that episode if you want to hear about this more in depth, but she, I spoke about rejection as being like a muscle. So almost like when you go to the gym and you’re doing reps, you’re probably not going to, you know, in the first time you go to the gym, do the deadlift.

with like 100 kilos or whatever, you’re probably going to start with some dumbbells and build your way up to eventually being in a place where you can do the deadlift. But she asked me a question, which is, would you ever recommend someone goes straight for the deadlift or the metaphor she offered was not knowing how to swim and jump straight into the deep end. And

My response to that was that like one, I’m not a human expert, like human behavior expert. can’t give a concrete answer, but this is what I would guess based on all the interviews I’ve done and how much I’ve been researching, rejection and speaking about it. And that is that it is entirely a case by case basis. And when I, what I would say when you’re kind of measuring that case by case basis is literally like.

It’s literally like jumping into the deep end of a pool. I think that some people would drown and some people would learn to swim a lot quicker than they would have if they were swimming from the shallow end of the pool. So on the case by case basis, when it comes to building that rejection resilience, I kind of look at it as like, how resilient are you right now? What is your self esteem like right now?

So an example I gave is my best friend who said I can share this. And she went through a major burnout after working in corporate law and that burnout wrecked her self-esteem for a long time. And so when I think back to kind of like what advice I would have given her back when she was in her burnout, because she’s in a very good place right now.

I would not have told her to go for the deadlift. So if you’d think of that in terms of like building rejection resilience, that could be like knowing that you have this really big dream and you really want to, I don’t know, let’s random example, become a talk show host on this big show and you have this opportunity to go and pitch the producer of this big show. And then you go and talk to them. Like that’s a pretty big bold ask to make.

And I would advise so many people to do that because what’s the worst that can happen? They can say no, but I wouldn’t have advised her to do that back then because if she gets the no, which odds are you would, if you’re making such a big ask, it would have been such a knock to her self-esteem that it would have, it would have just added to that lack of confidence that you have post burnout, post.

being in a very traumatic work environment that I would rather kind of be like, you know, maybe you should start small. Whereas the position she’s in now, which is in a very fulfilling career, a job she loves, coworkers she loves, really getting to do her best work and be in an incredibly supportive environment, I’d say go for it, like jump in that deep end. So I guess that that’s also to say it’s all about the place in your life. And

That aside, which is kind of, think, segueing into my conversation about my own rejection resilience, is how I look at my life pre my big T trauma. I don’t know if you call it trauma, but the event that shaped me versus post-it. I was terrified of rejection before I was…

say like 22 years old. So Alice before she was 22 years old was very different to Alice post 22 years old. If I had to define like put a line in my life of when things really changed it would be that year. I was 22 years old in the year of 2020 and 2020 was an extremely defining year for me.

And then 2021 was like my year of like growth. felt like a butterfly coming out of the cocoon. And I think back to myself pre 2020, which was when I was, before I was 22 years old. And every decision I made was rooted in fear of rejection. And I think if those of you who read my newsletter, you will see I’ve kind of shed a lot of my rejection stories on there, but.

One of the ones I wrote about was like having this huge crush on someone throughout my university career. And the thought of admitting that I had a crush on someone was absolutely unfathomable. Like I would never ever admit it. And when I think back to that version of myself, I understand why I wouldn’t have because I had such a fragile sense of self.

that I wonder, I mean, I don’t know, you can never go back in time, but I just wonder if I knew innately that that rejection, if I said it and got rejected, would have been something that was more net negative than net positive in a way, because I didn’t have this kind of resilience and confidence in other areas of my life that I have now. So yeah, what happened in 2020?

And how did that change the way I approach rejection? A lot happened in 2020. As some of you guys know, the pandemic happened in 2020. Just before the pandemic, I just graduated. So I graduated, I left university at the end of 2019 and I moved home. And I moved home because my dad has dementia. And at that time,

He had what would probably be mid-stage dementia. So he was living, like still managing his affairs. I use the term managing loosely, but he was in charge of his affairs. So he was getting a salary every month. His job had to put him on like a extended leave because he could no longer perform. was university lecturer.

but they were still paying him. He was sort of paying his own bills, but things were becoming very untenable. his, yeah, his affairs were not, he was struggling to manage his affairs. I’ll just put it that way. And so during my university, my last years of university, I kind of noticed things regressing every time I went home to see my dad. And…

In many ways, I felt like I was the only person that could really get his affairs in order in a way. I have a very supportive grandfather, grandparents back then, but now it’s just my grandfather, who are my dad’s father. But this… Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a lot for someone in the 80s to kind of manage. And I also…

didn’t think he at that time, know, my gran was very frail and my grandfather’s time needed to be spent looking after her. And I think she couldn’t leave the house for very long. And she couldn’t be left alone for very long. So that and that was kind of the only support my dad had his partner of 12 years left, which I understood her reasons for leaving and that he had a lot of major personality changes. And my brother was in another city like

12 hour, not like 20 hour, 16 hour drive away and had his own life. And there was me. And so I returned home quite delusional about what dementia meant. My father was very young. So he at that time was in his fifties and medical tests had told us that

He’d been diagnosed with a brain injury, maybe signs of CCE, which is the brain damage that you often hear football players having. It can’t actually be diagnosed while someone’s still alive. And so I thought, you know, he’s having problems managing certain areas of his life. So if I just come home and help him get his affairs in order, help him set up a budget for him so that his finances can be managed.

just like put some systems in place, then everything can be okay. And I thought it would just be sort of stable. And that’s not what happened because his situation continued regressing. It regressed every month. He got worse and worse, literally, constantly. So he was not able to live alone. And so I ended up having to move in with him in that year of 2020.

And it was probably to date the hardest thing that I’ve ever gone through because obviously it’s confronting the loss of a parent and it was becoming a parent because the roles completely reversed. I ended up being the parent to my parent, which broke my heart constantly.

Every time I had to, he had come sort of ask me questions like he was a child and I had to manage him like he was a child and I was only 22 years old and he was in his 50s and that was heartbreaking and so that year was filled with a lot of heartbreak on that side. I just remember

A lot of things happening. I remember the day I was supposed to move in with him. I packed my bags into my car, my little tiny car, and I was driving to, he was 45 minutes away from where my mom lived. And then I stopped at the shops to just buy some food to cook that night. And I got a phone call from his neighbor. And his neighbor told me I should

him over very quickly because there’s police on the property and my father’s walking around with a bloody bandage on his head. And so I jumped in my car and I was only like five minutes away at that point and got there and my father had spent three days in a holding cell in jail because he pickpocketed vitamin B pills from a local shop and no one

knew and at that point he was still driving, which you know, this was all I kind of hadn’t realized that these things needed to change. I just knew his situation was untenable and that’s why I moved back home and you know, probably was going to consult the family on getting his car taken away from him. But at that point he was still driving and so he drove himself to the shops and pickpocketed and got taken to a holding cell and

I don’t know if he didn’t advocate for himself or if no one gave him the opportunity to call someone or what happened, but he had what was incredibly traumatic three days for him based on everything I could observe. so I, that was the start of me living with my dad. And there was a lot that happened in that time. And so I remember that period of my life.

as feeling completely hopeless. I was isolated for the first time in my life. I mean, I’d always been in close proximity to friends in some way or another, and now I was in this very rural area. And I had friends back in my hometown, which was only 45 minutes away, but it was 2020 and it was a lockdown.

So I was locked down with my dad with dementia and I couldn’t even have a conversation with him because there was no two-way conversations happening at that time. He was still verbal, but he talked at me. He didn’t talk with me. So I felt like I was kind of losing my mind too because that was my company. did, my mom did visit and sometimes stay with me so that really helped. And she also let me keep her dogs, which…

Sounds funny, but like they really did help my sanity. But I left university with this dream of this life for myself that I was going to travel the world and be extremely ambitious. And at that time I thought, you know, maybe go live in New York and try get a job at like Buzzfeed or something, you know, I this like big city journalism dream for myself.

And I couldn’t see a way out of being my dad’s caregiver in 2020. So I felt hopeless. I lost my ambition. I didn’t want to rise anymore. I did read a lot of books and I went for a lot of walks and it was not only isolating, but it was like the last of everything I’d

thought I could have for my life. just didn’t know if I could. I didn’t know what to do because my father was mentally astute and aware enough to be very connected to certain things. He was very connected to where he lived. He was very connected to his animals. He was very connected to

place, which was his home and his city, the little town he lived in. And so I could not imagine, you know, ripping that away from him and putting him into institutionalized care. One and two, he was still too like there to even be someone that could be put in care. I think he, he would have been very, very difficult for anyone to like look after.

And I just knew like I can’t take my dad away from his, his, his way he lives and his animals and this life. And so at that time it was like, well, the only option, the only person that could be there for him is me. And so this is my life now. but like most things in life, nothing stays the same. And it wasn’t as bleak as I’d thought it was in 2020 and

Actually a few months later, know, once I’d kind of resolved some of the other urgent things, because finances, and generally his living situation, we, my, family kind of put out a call to find out if anyone would be interested in basically taking on a role of what I was doing, which is not caring. Like it’s not caring in the sense that you’re like feeding him and like that sort of thing, but it’s kind of managing like.

Being his driver, because we took his car away, of course, after he spent a few days in holding cell, so he stopped driving. So yeah, kind of being the person that helps him like get his food, his groceries, because he was still preparing food for himself back then. And just generally managing his life, you know, being there to drive him places, being there to keep him company, because he was no longer able to live fully independently. And we found someone.

someone who basically became part of the family. he still visits my grandfather regularly, even though my dad is now in a care facility. and he was just amazing. His name is Derek. and he just, we met with a few people and I got a bad feeling from just my gut said no to the first two people we said so, but then we met Derek and I just like, yeah, he was empathetic.

warm, a little bit eccentric himself. Could go with the flow because nothing is predictable about being in a position like that. And just really kind and warm and that’s more than we could ask for. so Derek set me free.

no longer felt burdened with guilt and shame to not be there with my dad all the time. I did feel a lot of guilt and shame because of that time my dad was still verbal and my dad loved, like my dad just loved me, like that’s one of the best gifts he ever gave me but my dad really loved me and so because he was still verbal and because he also had dementia so he was

I don’t think he would have said this if he didn’t have dementia, but he used to often ask me to come move back with him and he used to text me and say like, where are you? You should be here. And so obviously I felt a lot of guilt and shame, but I also had an intrinsic desire inside of me to live my life and to not, to not put my life on hold, to not be a savior or a martyr.

I don’t think being a martyr was ever muddled for me and I’d never viewed myself as a martyr, but I also never viewed myself as someone without compassion who was just gonna let their parents suffer. I, which is why at that time before we met Derek, I thought that this would be my life, but it wasn’t my life because I think that Derek offered that kind of segue. But that, living with my dad.

confronting the fact that I was losing him to dementia. Losing my sense of identity for that period in 2020 is the thing that had the most profound impact on my life out of everything I’ve ever been through. And I view my life into two parts. I view me before that and view me after that.

Because the me after that is the me that builds a business. It’s the me that has the most audacious approach to life. It’s the me that started dating after that. That’s how I met my partner. I started solo traveling. I started pitching clients and landing big contracts and I moved to a new city and I just met up with people and became friends with them. I let go of.

toxic friendships. the first time, everyone I was friends with were people who brought me nothing but pure joy. And I recognized things like I had a history of being in friendships that were not that fulfilling. And I recognized that that came from a place of insecurity because I was too insecure to think that I could…

go out on my own and make my own friends that I actually needed. I thought that I needed people who didn’t always treat me kindly because they offered me some kind of social security. in the sense that I always knew I, you know, I can tolerate them and a lot of people can’t tolerate them and, I will always have friends in my corner. And so I felt like the me.

after that year so me in 2021 was the me that kind of

became more authentic, more true, more real than I had ever been before. I didn’t live with fear and I didn’t live with fear of rejection. And fear of rejection is there. Like I’m not saying like that’s gone, you know, and I still get it and it still comes back and I get surprised. But I…

was ruled by my fear of rejection before that. And now it just became like a probably like a healthy emotion that comes up at certain times. But man, I couldn’t even recognize myself. I truly couldn’t recognize myself. I remember in 2021, I hosted a writing workshop with my friend Lauren, who was an Instagram influencer that I just messaged on Instagram and we ended up chatting and then she ended up.

asking me to partner with her to host a writing workshop in the Cape Town Vineyard, like a wine land in Salem Bush. And then she flew me over to Cape Town. And so I was doing all these things. just, it was so foreign to me because two years ago, I absolutely never, ever, ever would have done any of these things. So yeah.

It shaped something in me. And then I started my PR business, which I started end of 2020 and it really grew into a full fledged business by about March 2021, which is when I only had PR clients and I no longer was doing anything else because I was also like before that had social media clients and copywriting clients and a bunch of other things. And I.

of course, as a publicist became very invested in the stories of my clients. And so I would get on these calls with my clients and what I often back then is a lot of my clients, their messaging and then branding wasn’t where it is now, because now I often work with clients who have like perfect branding and stuff. But back then their messaging was often quite polished. So it’d be like, you know, I am

I help you do this, this, this, and this is my perfect resume. That’s like on their bio, their bar page. Like I have, you know, worked in this company and done this thing and done this thing. And so as a publicist, I always knew like we need something more interesting. we need your stories. We need to hear our adversity stories in order to really hit with the media. And so I would get on these calls with my clients and.

I would kind of try and unearth these stories for them. And it just, this theme kept playing out, which is that every single person I was working with had not only adversity stories, but that their adversity stories were why they were the way they are now, why they care so much about the mission they’re serving and their work, why they’re so good at what they do. And

It’s not like your kind of overhyped rags to riches story. It’s something as simple as like, you know, the fact that I grew up, not me, you know, for a client, like the fact that they grew up biracial and like never felt a sense of belonging and now are driven to kind of help other people find that sense of belonging.

or the fact that someone experienced massive workplace bullying at work and now is driven to help make sure no one else experiences that. These rejection stories are not just things we have to work through, but they also become our fuel, our ammunition that propels us forward. And I want to be very, very careful when I talk about it in this way, because I am not sitting here saying you have to go through hard things in order.

to be good at something. I think that we will go through hard things inevitably, like that is life. Like no one is gonna go through life and not experience something hard. Like I got to lose a, I am still actively losing a parent’s dementia, that happened very young in my life. But chances are stuff like that’s gonna happen to every single one of us because we lose parents, that’s.

generally the nature of life and death doesn’t always come in very palatable sweet ways. So I’m not sitting here and saying that, you know, go find hard things to go through, like absolutely not life is hard enough. And I’m also not sitting here and saying that these are things that you should be grateful for. And I want to be very clear about that because one, if you had to go to me in 2020 and say you should be grateful that this is happening.

I would have punched you and I still probably would because if I could go back in time and do something that would make me not lose my dad’s dementia, I would do that. Like, I’m okay with it taking me a lot longer to go through my personal growth journey. So absolutely not. And I just think that when these things happen, they can be things that really set us back in life or…

If we find the support and we have the tools and we do the introspection, maybe go to therapy, journal, talk to people, they can inform a lot of things and become the sort of arsenal we have under our board, the things that help us move forward. And on that, you know, again, like to, I think, expand on my point of saying that it’s not necessarily like…

We should look at them as all good. I was listening to a diary of a CEO the other day, Stephen Bartlett interviewed Trevor Noah and Trevor Noah was talking about himself being extremely empathetic in the context of having, he thinks that the context of that is having grown up with an alcoholic stepdad, the guy who, if you haven’t read his book, spoiler alert, you can skip this, click 30 seconds, skip if you haven’t read the book and you want to.

but his alcoholic stepfather who shot his mother in the head. and he talks about how growing up in that household, he, was constantly on high alerts for footsteps and rages and behavior. And that’s made him extremely empathetic. And in the interview, Steven Bartlett asked, you know, do you look at that as a superpower, your empathy? And Trevor Noah said something, that I think about now in relation to kind of

a lot of what I talk about, which is both. I never look at it as just one. It can be both my superpower and the worst quality about me. I don’t know if those are the words he used, but it’s a thing that has helped me so much and also set me back in so many ways. And I look at so many things and I look at hardships in the same ways. It can be both.

brutally awful and really beautiful, which is not always nice, admits in the case of, you know, losing someone. But in the qualities that I’ve developed, I don’t look at it as, know, it’s all good or it’s all bad. And that’s really also kind of what I wanted to get at with this podcast and my rejection story is objectively rejections are bad.

Like if you had to give me the option and if we look at it on just a tactical level of like, I want to pitch someone to do something with me. Objectively, if you had to give me the option of they’re to say yes or no, of course I will choose the yes. Like, of course. But with that no, some really great things can happen. And I mean, I witnessed that firsthand.

With every know that I’ve had, I’ve developed resilience. I’ve developed a kind of thicker skin to know I can survive these things. And often I’ve been grateful because with hindsight, I realized that’s not an opportunity I want or that that know led to something better. But my goal with this podcast is not to bring to you this very simplistic one dimension rejection is good.

Acceptances are bad or bad things happening to you are good and good things happening to you is Not what you want. Like of course not. I think that both the good and bad come with good and bad and I just hope that this podcast and listening to the stories of some extremely successful people can help you recognize That the bad can come with some good if you pay attention

and try to learn from those experiences and that the good can come with some bad. You know, we’ve had interviews, if you go back and listen, Geraldine DeRoyder, who is a bestselling author, has thousands and thousands of followers, is on tons of bestselling lists. She talks about how she’s still scared of rejection and that she will not meet up with someone for coffee because she’s scared she’ll get rejected. Which to me is crazy because you look at someone like that and you think, wow, like…

You’ve hit the milestone as an author, you should be so confident now and that’s often not the case. And a recurring theme that’s come up with our interview is talking to Joel Mansell, Elizabeth Freemantle, Kimberly Brown is that when you hit a certain level of success, your fear of rejection can sometimes increase.

because now you have something to lose and people expect something from you. Kimberly Brown put this beautifully where she said people put you in this quote unquote perfection box and they don’t see you as someone flawed in the way they might look at someone like you or me. I don’t know who you are. Maybe they put you in a perfection box too. But being on that other side, that other side of success comes with its own trials and tribulations and

Not sitting here and saying one’s better than the other. I just want us to have a more holistic view of both of them and choose to learn, listen, grow, keep moving forward. One of my long-term clients, Kelly Thompson, often says that confidence comes from action. So we have this idea that we need to be confident in order to make our first moves. Whereas it’s really…

No one ever feels ready usually. I don’t feel ready. I keep creating and sharing the stuff because I care about the mission. I care about the contents, but not because I think I’m the authority on it. But I’ve never felt like I’m the authority on anything I do in my life when I do it anyway. So that’s a wrap for the first solo episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you are still here and you support this mission.

I want to ask you if you would perhaps be open to subscribing to the podcast. You can go on any of your apps, Apple, Spotify. Apple is great if you have an iPhone, YouTube, and just hit the subscribe button. That’s the most important metric that all of the things care about. And I want to keep creating this content for you. I want to keep growing this show. So all of the support you give me just means the absolute world. And yeah.

Thank you for being here. hope you stick around. Next week, like I said, I’m releasing an interview that I did with Diane Wingett. This was on her ADHD-ish podcast. And then after that, I’m doing a four week series where I speak to authors about self-publishing, hybrid publishers, and literary agents about what it takes to get a book deal in the nonfiction genre. Thank you so much for being here.