Lisa Faulkner has given a very candid account about her personal life, including her experiences as a stepmother and her struggle with infertility.
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The former EastEnders star, who is married to MasterChef judge John Torode, is a doting mum to her adopted daughter Billie, 14, and a stepmum to the celebrity chef's four children from previous relationships.
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Appearing on Magic Radio's new show the F Word, the 48-year-old surprised viewers by making a rare comment about her relationship with John's kids. "It's challenging and you have to bend and stretch and compromise and breathe and cry and be angry and be sad and be happy and hold each other," she explained.
READ: John Torode's career journey, relationships and children revealed
Over the years, Lisa has been open about her journey to parenthood. She adopted Billie with her husband Chris Coghill in 2006 after four rounds of failed IVF treatment, several miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy.
The actress got candid about her personal life
"I think I always thought it was just going to be really easy," she said on the show. "Got pregnant, so so excited and then a couple of weeks later I was rushed into hospital with an ectopic pregnancy.
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"You know, you need to get better because you need to try and get pregnant again. And so as well as the grief of losing my baby, because it was my baby for those ten days, it was my baby. I was then in this thing of I'm on a rat race, I've got… I'm in the hamster wheel and I've got to get pregnant really quickly, even though I've got to grieve the loss of this little love."
Lisa and John Torode met on Celebrity MasterChef
On deciding to go through adoption, Lisa added: "I realised my nieces and my nephew I love like they're my own. I love my friends, I love my husband, I love my ex-husband. Do you know what I mean? All of those people in your life that you love fiercely, why can't you love a child that's not genetically yours?"
"It's not like you're going to be handed a child and you go, this is a clean sheet, off you go, goodbye," she continued. "There is trauma and it is a lot to think about and it is an amazing journey to go on."
The F Word is a week-long campaign funded by the Audio Content Fund on Magic Radio raising awareness about (in)fertility.