'It controlled how I turned up as a person' Trinny Woodall opens up on overcoming addiction and IVF struggles

As one of the UK’s biggest beauty moguls, Trinny Woodall continues to empower women both with her products and through leading by example - showing what is possible when a woman turns everything she’s learnt in the past into a thriving second chapter after 50.

But her journey hasn’t been without blemishes. Trinny’s products might be about looking perfect on the outside, but she’s not afraid of going beneath the surface.

Speaking to Lorraine Kelly on Saga’s Experience is Everything podcast, Trinny opened up about overcoming a drug addiction after losing four of her closest friends to the disease, the 16 rounds of IVF she went through to conceive her daughter, Lyla, and how she chooses not to focus on the regrets of those struggles.

One of the tough chapters she faced was her battle with cocaine addiction in her 20s. What started as "a crutch, it filled a hole" became something much darker.

She shared, "I took cocaine and it made me feel confident. I was quite shy when I was younger and it took away that shyness. And then it starts to lead your life. You don’t lead it in your life. And then it was not recreational. It sort of controlled how I turned up for the day, how I turned up as a person."

She continued, "In the first two years of my being clean, my four closest friends died from the results of addiction. And I think it made it very clear for me what would happen if I picked up again."

From overcoming addiction to establishing herself with her TV career alongside friend Susannah Constantine, Trinny’s other defining milestone was becoming a mother - something which did not come without its battles.

Trinny, who has daughter Lyla, went through 16 rounds of IVF, admitting that "it takes over your whole life".

She added, "Somebody the other day said to me, ‘Why didn’t you have more children?

"I did many rounds of IVF and I lost some babies. I sort of hovered in this world where it would never happen, but I’d never not get pregnant. And then all through my pregnancy with Lyla, I had times when I bled and I did have times when I thought I’d lost her… The whole pregnancy was quite stressful."

Despite everything, Trinny wants the takeaway to be positive. “I don’t regret at all that I went through it. I regret things that happened, but I also don’t love the word regret.

"I don’t actually think it’s at all healthy to regret in life because then you’re mourning the loss of something where there’s nothing you can do about it and I think it’s an uncomfortable place to sit.

"You move forward, right? I didn’t always. I had many years of my life where I thought, if I’d done that differently or if I did this differently, and it takes up so much space in your brain when you keep going over."

As for what's next, the CEO of Trinny London is happy exactly where she is. Speaking about the journey to launching her company in her 50s, she said, "I felt it would happen, but because I couldn’t visually picture it really well, it didn’t happen until I was 51.

"I think you need to have such clarity. And also you need things not to fuzz your vision."