Life Is Too Short To Hold Back
Elif in conversation with Tova Leigh
There are some women who make you laugh so hard you almost forget they’ve just told you the truth you’ve been avoiding for years.
Tova Leigh is one of those women.
A best-selling author, performer and digital creator with more than three million followers around the world, Tova has built a devoted audience by saying the things many women think but don’t always dare say out loud. Motherhood. Marriage. Sex. Ageing. Desire. The secret, messy, hilarious and sometimes painful truths of womanhood.
I first discovered her through her reels, which I have since sent to countless women in my life. Some I’ve even sent to my husband, especially the now infamous one about not putting a turkey in the microwave and expecting a moist middle. I laughed until I cried, but beneath the humour was something frighteningly true.
So many women were never taught how to ask for what they want.
Not in relationships. Not in the bedroom. Not in life.
We were taught to be good. Easy. Nice. Cute. Pleasant. To keep the peace. To perform womanhood rather than truly inhabit it.
When I asked Tova what happened, why a whole generation of women learned to fake pleasure, silence desire and shrink themselves to keep everyone else comfortable, she laughed, but only because the truth is so huge.
“Where do we start?” she said.
For Tova, the answer begins with the way society teaches women that their value peaks early.
“There’s this conspiracy theory,” she told me, “that women peak in their twenties. But actually, the older you get, the more in touch you are with who you are and what you want. And how convenient that just as women start waking up, society tells us we are irrelevant.”
Tova has just turned 50, but she says the real turning point came at 40.
She wrote about it in her first book, Fcked at 40*, when she found herself asking a question so many women secretly ask but rarely admit: am I still desirable? Is this it? Is that part of me over?
“It wasn’t really about wanting male attention,” she said. “It was more about wanting to feel a life force. Something in me had been switched off for a long time while I was having babies and raising children.”
For Tova, turning 40 brought a kind of liberation. She calls it the loss of “cuteness”.
“When you’re young, you’re expected to be cute,” she said. “Cute gets you the guy. Cute gets you the job. Cute gets you the compliment. Then you get to 40 and you realise, I’m not cute anymore. And actually, how freeing is that?”
It is a freedom many women recognise. The moment you stop softening your voice. Stop laughing when something is not funny. Stop pretending you are fine when you are not.
Tova even realised she had been using what she calls a “cute voice”.
“I didn’t even know I was doing it,” she said. “And then suddenly you hear yourself and think, this is what I actually sound like.”
There is a point, she says, when women stop performing. And often, that is the point at which society starts calling them difficult. Crazy. Too much.
But perhaps we are not too much. Perhaps we are finally enough of ourselves.
Tova’s own journey into truth-telling began not with sex or desire, but motherhood. She started blogging at 40, at a time when, as she puts it, everyone around her seemed to be presenting perfect motherhood.
She had three children in two years, including twins, and the glossy version of motherhood simply did not match her reality.
“I loved my children fiercely,” she said, “but I also really wanted them to fuck off quite often. I hated arts and crafts. I was bad at breastfeeding. I didn’t know how to bake. I wasn’t the picture-perfect mother from the magazines.”
What she discovered was that once she told the truth, other women breathed out.
“Oh my God,” they said. “Me too.”
That has become the golden thread through all of Tova’s work. She says the thing first, and other women feel less alone.
Comedy became the tool.
“You can say outrageous things when you’re being funny,” she said. “It starts the conversation. If you’re up at 3am with a baby who hasn’t slept, and you are leaking and exhausted and desperate, then you see something that makes you laugh at the situation, there is relief in that.”
Her children are older now, 12 and 14, and her work has evolved with her. These days, Tova speaks more about women after 40, female desire, sexuality and the refusal to disappear.
And yes, she does it with humour. But the humour is not there to make the subject smaller. It is there to make the shame smaller.
“Shame only lives in darkness,” Tova said. “When you shine a light on shame, it evaporates. If you say the thing you are most ashamed of out loud, and one person says, ‘Oh my God, me too,’ it’s done.”
That is why her work lands so powerfully. It is not just funny. It is healing.
She told me about touring last year and testing material that was even more outrageous than her online videos. Being in a room with women gave her wings. After one London show, women came up to her and told her how seen they felt. How relieved. How much truth there was beneath the comedy.
“Women were saying, they never let us talk about this,” she said. “But actually this is how I feel.”
Of course, not everyone responds well. Some people, often men, become defensive when Tova talks about women’s pleasure and communication. But many men respond positively too.
“A lot of men say, this helped me understand something,” she said. “Or, I watched this with my partner and we had a conversation.”
And that, really, is the point. Not attack. Conversation.
Because if women do not talk about what they feel, need and want, how can anyone else know?
This is something I feel deeply in my own work with women. So many of us are busy serving, fixing, helping, holding. We become wives, mothers, carers, business owners, friends, organisers of everyone else’s lives. We can forget to pause long enough to ask: what do I want?
Tova now runs women’s retreats, and she says the women who come are incredibly brave.
“Taking time out of your busy life to do something for yourself is a big thing,” she said. “Leaving your family, spending the money, travelling. Ninety per cent of the women who come on my retreats book on the spur of the moment. It’s a f*ck-it moment. And I love f*ck-it moments because they often lead to the best things.”
For Tova, five nights away from the roles and responsibilities of everyday life can be life-saving.
“Just to be you again,” she said. “Not the wife, the mother, the carer, the to-do list. Just you. It is such a gift if you can give that to yourself.”
Having run retreats myself, I know exactly what she means. I have seen women arrive one way and leave as someone lighter. Different posture. Softer face. Brighter eyes. As if, after years of holding everything together, they finally remember themselves.
Tova believes there is something especially powerful about women-only spaces. Some women arrive nervous, worried that groups of women will be catty or competitive.
“But that narrative has been pushed on women,” she said. “When women get together and there are no men in the room, something else happens. Sisterhood. Friendship. Wisdom.”
At the start of her retreats, Tova tells the women that the retreat is not really about her. It is about the circle. Every woman brings something. Different ages, backgrounds, stories and wisdom.
“I love the idea of generational wisdom,” she said. “We are all there to learn from each other.”
That image stayed with me: women in a circle. Not a hierarchy. Not one person above another. Just women sitting together, sharing truth.
In her latest book, Good Girls Gossip, Tova writes that if women can do only one thing, it should be this: sit in a circle with other women.
Simple. Ancient. Powerful.
When I asked Tova what lie about womanhood she has stopped believing, she paused. Not because there was no answer, but because there are too many.
“Women are lied to from the very beginning,” she said. “But I suppose one of the biggest lies is that ageing is awful. That your best years are in your twenties. Honestly, life gets better.”
She wants women to know that after 40 and 50, we are not going crazy.
“We are just unleashed,” she said.
That word feels exactly right.
Unleashed from cuteness. From apology. From shame. From the idea that our job is to carry everything quietly.
As our conversation came to an end, I asked Tova what she most wanted women to remember.
Her answer was immediate.
“Life is too short to hold back. I’ve just celebrated my 50th birthday and it is still young, but you do have that moment of, gosh, this is half a century. There is more past than future. So let’s go. This is your life. You are the main character.”
And perhaps that is the message so many women need to hear.
You are not here to be easy.
You are not here to be cute.
You are not here to disappear.
You are here to live. To speak. To want. To ask. To gather your women. To laugh loudly at the truth. To stop holding back.
Because life is short.
And it gets so much better when we finally stop pretending.
Bio Tova Leigh is a bestselling author, performer, and digital creator with over 3M followers worldwide. She champions gender equality and female empowerment through her books, retreats, live shows, and online content. Known for her honest, humorous content, Tova talks about motherhood, marriage, sex, and all things taboo with raw authenticity.
@tova_leigh www.tovaleigh.com
Photographer credit:https://kentonthatcher.com/
Pull-Out Quotes
“We were taught to perform womanhood rather than truly inhabit it.”
“Shame only lives in darkness. The moment you speak it, and someone says ‘me too,’ it loses its power.”
Content Page Blurb
A bold and deeply honest conversation with Tova Leigh on what happens when women stop performing and start telling the truth. From motherhood and desire to ageing and identity, this piece explores the quiet liberation that comes when we release shame, reclaim our voice, and finally allow ourselves to be seen.
