In the summer of 2006, Helen Pidd met his fellow Guardian journalist Alexandra Garniture. It was “a bit like falling in love,” Lexy says, as the two bonded over their work, through chaotic parties and vacations together. Their similarities brought them together, Helen explains: “The two blond babies on the Guardian editorial staff, both from the northwest of England, both a bit gobby. » They told each other everything.
It was a friendship they both cherished, and it only grew stronger as their lives changed. They both fell in love and Helen left the country and returned. They prided themselves on their ability to tell hard truths, knowing that “the other person is not going to, you know, walk away and never talk to you again.”
When it came to having children, Helen was always sure she wanted them, Lexy was less so. But then Lexy had two and Helen struggled with IVF. Slowly, under Lexy’s pressures of new motherhood and Helen’s struggle with fertility, their unbreakable bond stretched and stretched. “There was a moment where I thought, ‘This is not how I want this friendship to go,'” Lexy says. They explain how it felt to risk losing such an important relationship and how they managed to cope.
Listen to our April 2023 episode Embracing a Child-Free Life, about Helen’s experience with IVF treatment and dating other child-free people, and read Helen and Lexy’s story about their friendship here.
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