March 25, 2025 • 42 mins
Hello 465 Club!
You probably know Julie Goodwin’s incredible reality TV story. As the beloved MasterChef winner, cookbook author, and radio personality, she’s been a household name for years. But behind the scenes, Julie was always taking care of everyone—except herself. In this episode of our Gen X podcast MID, she opens up about her journey with mental health in recent years.
If you're discovering MID for the first time, you're in luck—we've just wrapped Season 4, meaning our entire collection of conversations is waiting for you. You can listen to more MID here.
If this episode brings up anything for you Lifeline is always there on 13 11 14.
Want to get yourself a copy of Julie's incredible book Your Tim Starts Now? Click here
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CREDITS:
Hosts: Holly Wainwright
Executive Producer: Talissa Bazaz
Assistant Production: Sandy McIntyre
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, four five six club. This is Holly Wainwright. I
am the host of MID and if you're discovering MID
Conversations for gen X women who are anything but for
the first time, you have a whole lot of episodes
that you can go back and listen to. And you're lucky,
if I say so myself, because some of them are
bloody great. In fact, all of them are bloody great.
(00:23):
While you might have stumbled across some MID episodes before,
the one I'm sharing with you today is the very
first one we ever recorded. It features the remarkable Julie
Goodwin you know of originally Master Chef fame, but many
other things since. And the episode is called don't call
it a Breakdown. It's a story that you probably haven't heard,
(00:44):
even if you've read a few headlines about it. It's extraordinary,
very relatable, and it's about how Julie, several years after
Master Chef and when she was apparently sort of living
the dream, running her own business, juggling a lot of
things at once, she had a full breakdown. How did
she recover, how did she rebuild? How did she discover
(01:04):
that she was taking care of everyone but herself? Does
that sound familiar. This is one of my favorite conversations.
Julie is warm and funny and very honest and vulnerable.
I absolutely loved it. People talk to me about it
all the time. So here it is where it all began.
Episode one of season one of Mid. Don't call it
a breakdown. You might know mid as an insult.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I guess there's no way to have a good mid
life crisis because it's gracious, an epidemic upon us of
men on the internet calling women mid means poor quality,
below average, not that attractive.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And for the longest time, that's how midlife women have
been seen and how we've been told to feel.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
The thing is, though we are.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Anything, but my name is Holly Wainwright, and I am mid.
By the time you've unlocked this seriously grown up level,
you've seen some stuff, through some things, understand some stuff.
You are wise and powerful, complicated and courageous, and yet
the world is trying to trick you into believing that
(02:10):
you're sad and small, uninteresting and unfuckable.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Excuse me, but no, one hundred times no.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Mid is a.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Show for gen X women where we share thoughts from
midlife and have the conversations that actually matter to us.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Over the next eight episodes.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
You're going to hear grown ups talking about big things
and little things and some serious, heavy shit, because there's
plenty of that in midlife, and some silly, stupid stuff too,
because we've worked out that sometimes that's exactly what we need.
We're going to be talking about our heads and our stomachs,
and our drinking, and our sex life, and our friends
and our job and our families and our divorces and
(02:51):
our dating and you get it, all.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
The good stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And today for episode one, we are talking about our heads.
One of the things about midlife is you're meant to
have all your fluffy ducks in pretty little rows.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
But it's not always like that.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Sometimes because of hormones, because of perry, because of stress
and health and life, and because often we've shoved some
tricky things from our pass away in hard to reach drawers,
those ducks waddle out of line and start tumbling over
each other and running for the exits. Mental health can
sneak up on you when you're mid and that can
have serious ripple effects because often by now we've got
(03:30):
a lot of people depending on us. We're meant to
be that steady leaning post and suddenly we're wobbling.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
And no one knows that better than the woman.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I'm having my first mid conversation with, Julie Goodwin. I
gave you a dish am.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Nine out of ten.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well, Julie Goodwin's infectious.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Proving to be one very strong lady. Julie is now
back in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
You know Julie, we all do.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
She won the first ever seas of Australian Master Chef
aged thirty eight and became one of the most famous
people in the country. There have been cookbooks and more
TV shows and appearances all over the place. And now
there's Julie's extraordinarily good memoir. It's called Your Time Starts Now,
and in it she explains how her ducks got so
very far out of their rows that she found herself
(04:20):
not wanting to live anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It's an extraordinary story.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But a familiar one too, because when Julie found herself
doing what many of us are doing everything and falling
apart while she was doing it, she had to start
making some serious changes, which for her started with a
stint in the hospital. Please enjoy the very first mid
conversation with the brutally honest, occasionally sweary, completely wonderful.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Julie Goodwin.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Julie, I want to start by reading a few words
in your book that you actually wrote about your school friends,
because when I read it, I was like, these are
the women who are listening to mid she wrote. Now,
through the magic of social media, I catch glimpses of
their lives. We are doctors, professors, lawyers, town planners, CEOs.
We are mothers and grandmothers, daughters and lovers. We are
(05:11):
cancer survivors and entrepreneurs, artists and activists and travelers. We
have lost parents, partners, friends, and children. We've strived and achieved,
struggled and grieved, worked and played. We've faced the whole
spectrum of what life has to give and to take
away and prevailed.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
We are fucking glorious. And I was like, that is
exactly who this show is for.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
People who have seen some shit yeah and are still
here and are fucking glorious. And you are one of
those people. Julie Goodwin. So thank you, thank you so
much for writing this book.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I was.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Hard. I bet it was.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Hard, because you've written cookbooks, right, lots of cookbooks.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Yeah, lots of cookbooks, and there are.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Recipes in here.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
I want to make sure everybody knows that every chapter
has a slightly adjacent recipe.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I feel like you need a little breather being too.
Some of these chapters, it's just like, you know what,
let's talk about piplots for a minute, exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, And that's real life, right some one minute we're
laying it all out. In the next minute, we're like, oh,
got to cook dinner. But I wanted to say how
I think that for a lot of women reading this,
although the details might be different of what they're going
through in midlife and what you've been through over the
past six years or so, they might not have been
on reality TV and had this massive life change at
(06:34):
about thirty eight is when you went on Master Chef, right,
But a lot of this would be really familiar, being busy, busy, busy,
putting everybody's needs above your own, committing yourself to work
a lot that then takes you away from the family,
and running, running, running.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Can you tell us a little.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Bit about what your life was like about six years
ago when you were still trying to do it all
in inverted commons?
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I'd never been very good at setting boundaries, so you know,
and I know that's relatable. I know because a lot
of my friends are the same. Basically off the back
of Master Chef that's fifteen years ago. I just was
frightened that if I didn't take all the opportunities they
would sort of disappear and that, you know, And I
even had someone say to me as the second season
(07:18):
started to go to air, well done, You've had a
good run, sort of like the years up. Your crown
is going to be passed on to somebody else. And
so I had this anxiety that the opportunities that had
come my way were going to evaporate. So I had
to take everything that came along.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That first season of Master Chef was so huge. You know,
you were one of the most famous people in the
country for a period of time, no question. So that
completely changed your life. So then there was this pressure yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, and lots of expectations and you know that good
old imposter syndrome and all of that. So I kind
of had to learn a lot of stuff as I
went along as well.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And about eight or nine.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Years ago, I just sort of thought, I've got to
get off this treadmill, and I was very much in
the wind, as in, if a food festival wanted me,
then I had a job. If they wanted somebody else,
I didn't have a job, you know. And so I
felt really at the mercy of the ebbs and flows
of the food industry and the exhibition industry and all
of that sort of stuff. So I thought I need
(08:22):
to take the rains a little bit, and so I
opened my cooking school.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So I opened my own business.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And I'd already run a business with my husband for years.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
You know, business, Yeah, that's right, build it.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And it was at a point of quite you know,
solid success and everything when you went off to do masters.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yet absolutely, so I thought I'll do something that I
love to do, and so I opened this cooking school.
And that was such a labor of love and it
was such a beautiful space and we had some amazing
times there. But it is a small business, and anyone
who's run a small business knows it becomes like a
toddler and it needs all your attention and it takes
all your energy and turn it back on it all
(09:01):
the time you do. And not long after that opened,
I was offered a job on the radio, and I
guess I must have still had that sort of fomo
going on because I just really loved the idea of
doing the radio, and I gee, I loved that job.
I loved it. But I guess the breakfast radio too. Yep,
four am, milarm, And then it doesn't end at nine.
(09:23):
When you go off, You've got to go meet clients,
you've got to film content's podcasting, There's all sorts of stuff.
This is how I calmed my life down by adding all.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
This stuff into it. Yeah, well it did, it did.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I was still writing for the Weekly and doing a
whole lot of other things as well. So what ended
up happening was, instead of having more time for my
family and being more available to the people I love,
I just wasn't there at all.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
I wasn't there at all.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I was less available to my family than when I
was traveling all over the place because I was getting
up at four in the morning, and when you get
up at four in the morning, you've got to go
to bed like eight o'clock at night. So not only
was I losing my mornings seeing my people, I was
losing that beautiful space after dinner where everyone collectively exhales.
I was losing that as well, because I had to
(10:11):
go to bed at night, and then on the weekends
I had cooking classes, so I was literally working seven
days a week and long days at that, and sometimes
there were weeknight classes at the kitchen, which then means.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
I wasn't getting enough sleep.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And it was just a recipe for disaster, you know,
and then of course just a whole bunch of processed
stuff from the past and some you know, there's some
brain wiring I suppose it was already in existence that
made that all really treacherous.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
You say in the book that you had this sort
of calendar mapped out after Master Chef, and then up
to this point, this calendar mapped out that was kind
of color coded of like this is work time, this
is family time, this is this, this is this, But
there was no time for you on that right, which
I think is something that a lot of women will
very much, very much recognize. And then you also say,
which is another very relatable point, at one point you realized,
(10:59):
I'm really wobbly. I know some of the things I've
got to do for my mental health, like exercise, so
I'm going to set my alarm for three am so
that I can get up and go to the gym
before work.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yep, Like, yeah, it's like it is insane, right, that's insane,
But it's the.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Way we think because we we go it's my fault
that I'm not coping. I've got to do more things
to be coping. And you, right, you're running, running, running,
And then when you'd be alone, you just felt hollow.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Absolutely, there was nothing left, literally to the point where
I actually I couldn't make my face do what it
needed to do, you know, to even look normal. So
sometimes I would just go away and find somewhere to
be by myself because the muscles of my face are
exhausted from trying to hold just an interested look on
my face or a smile or a just a I'm
(11:49):
a person who's coping face.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Because I wasn't coping, you.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Felt like a husk.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So what happens then when you realize that this life
you've built is untenable and you are wobbling. What happens
if you really just need to fall apart. We're going
to talk about that after this break. All of the
(12:21):
stuff about your early life is fascinating too. You've had
a very interesting life, Julie, You've done a lot of
different jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I have done a lot of different You're in there about.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
When you were basically almost like a prison guard in
a used attention center and dealing with these awful men.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yea, not the children, but the other guard.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, not the inmates that my coworkers.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I was the only female there and that was an
extraordinary time.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
You certainly have a strong work ethic, and I've done
a lot of things. But you write about there was
a time in your late teens when your mental health
is in trouble, but you put it in a box. Yep,
you wrote that that was most likely the result of
abuse that you've written about in here, just very top
we're not going into it, As you write very beautiful
in the book, You're like, this is what's happened, We're
not going into it. And then you put that away
(13:06):
in a box when you're like teens. And then when
you had your first baby, I think it was your
first baby, and you were struggling, and you went to
tresillian and which is a center that helps mothers who
a struggling with sleepless babies or collique babies.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
They got you to.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Fill out one of those questionnaires, and I'm sure would
be very familiar to a lot of our listeners about whether.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Or not you might be struggling with postnatal depression.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, and I just want to read out this bit
that you wrote because they got you to fill out
this questionnaire.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
So this is all the way back there.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
But I'm just kind of painting a picture of how
you're such a copra and pushing things down. They're like,
I think, make Maria, I have got personatal depression, and
you said, let me stop you there. I don't want
to hear the word depression. I don't have a thing
to be depressed about. I have a beautiful husband and
a healthy baby and a house to live in. It
would be ridiculous for me to be depressed. Give me
the questions a game.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
I wanted to pass the test.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And this is echoed later too, when you do go
to another healthcare professional at one point, but you say,
don't diagnose any depression and I don't want to talk
about my childhood.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Where do you think?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Because I think that this sort of denial, or rather
this insistence on gratitude can actually be quite toxic for
women sometimes. Where did that come from and how have
you learned to understand that?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
That kind of like, my life's great? What are you
talking about?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
You know, especially I imagine postmaster chef when you've been
handed the keys to the city.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Kind of Yeah, it comes from everywhere, It comes from everywhere.
So it certainly came from family.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
You know. My men grew up during the war.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
My mum was raised by my men, and rightly so
we're taught to be grateful and to countter blessings and
to see how lucky we are compared to how other
people are. The problem is that if you take that
on board so much, like I know nothing by halves,
it can become really crippling when it comes time to
actually say I'm not coping because.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
What right do I have? And I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Society, the Internet, Facebook, they all join in on that.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
That's all a pylon. If you say anything is.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Not right, people are like, oh, first world problems, and
how can you complain about that when this just happened
over here? And how can you complain about that when
you've got food on your table and you know you
can afford a phone to even be writing this on it,
you know what I mean? So there's that whole idea
that we should be grateful always and when you're not,
you should be shamed of yourself. Yeah, and you should
(15:37):
take a good hard look at yourself, and you should
have a cup of concrete, get up and keep going
because you live in this magnificent country and you are
lucky enough to have people around you, and you're lucky enough.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
To have a listen.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And that is all true, and it's all valid, and
it's all important to acknowledge. But we have to take
the shame out of saying I can't do this. I'm
not coping. Please don't ask me to put I was
seeing on my plate right now. I'm too busy, I'm
feeling sad. I can't make my face into an appropriate
expression anymore. You know, I feel like I want to die.
(16:11):
We have to be allowed to say these things out
loud without being made to feel ashamed about it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So there is the moment where you walk away from
a football game you're supposed to be going to with
me after this period of time where you're just feeling,
as you say, hollow inside. Every time you're alone, you cry,
but the rest of the time you're being mum, being
good employee, being wife, being friend, And I wanted to
ask you because you have spoken a bit about this,
(16:38):
so I don't want you to relive the moment entirely.
But you were seriously considering taking your life, and then
you met sitting by some water on the Central coast
where you live. You met Larissa, Derek and Bonnie yep,
who you thank in your book. Who are the strangers
who spoke to you and very likely saved you that day? Yes,
what I wanted to ask you, rather than about the
(16:59):
debt of that, was about how you found the hope
in that moment to go home to your It has
to be said, amazing husband. No, I don't say that.
It's like, oh, you look like you know you deserve
an amazing husband. But how did you find the hope
to go home and finally say to him I'm not coping.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It was an incredible couple of hours, you know, And
it wasn't a blinding flash. It was simply that these
strangers sat next to me and chatted about ordinary things.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
A young couple and their dog, right.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yep, young couple and their dog, and they just said,
you look like you needed company, So we decided to
come back and have a seat here, and we're just
going to hang here. They just chatted to me and
they told me about their kids and about their dog,
and I told them about my kids and about my dogs,
and just that ridiculously ordinary stuff. And I found in
(17:59):
the telling of a few of these things, and in
the hearing of a few of these things, I laughed
a couple of times, And at the end of that
couple of hours, it was like, I can laugh.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
I didn't know. I didn't know that was still in there,
you know.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And so then I rang Mick and I had him
come and pick me up, and that's when I told
him where I'd been and what I've been doing, and
he drove me to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I thought he said something really amazing, because a lot
of men, well not only a lot of men, but
a lot of people, would be like, we'll fix this,
but he kind of deeply understood that he couldn't fix this.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, it is a knee jerk reaction to be the
night in Shining Armor, but that's what he needed to
do to be my night in shining armor on that day,
not to say, you know, well, you're all right.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Now, let's go and have ice cream.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
You know, it was I am not equipped to deal
with what you're going through.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I need to call in somebody who is. And I
didn't want to go to the hospital. Come on, I'm tired,
it's going to be day. Can we go home? But
he wouldn't. He wouldn't take me home.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So that and that's that was the start of, you know,
trying to sort it all out.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You publish excerpts from your journal of when you're in
that first hospital that you're in, because you end up
being there for about six weeks.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
You're writing in your Jill. I just have to say,
as a point of.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Levity that what I particularly enjoyed about your journal entries,
which are heart wrenching in many ways, is you always
comment on what you're eating.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
So we're always.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
We're in a psychiatric hospital, but it's like cold toast
and beans, turkey.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
And mash ye yep, feel like the recipes in the book.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
You just got to punch right things.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And comes every day every day.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
He comes every day and sits with you, which it
must have been confronting for him because I assume that
you hadn't been in a place like that before.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
No, never, never, he he wasn't confronted. He's just so steady.
And I would say to him, please, don't come every day,
it's too much. And so he'd be getting home quite
late at night, having his dinner quite late at night.
But he just said, I'm not doing it for you,
I'm doing it for me, and he'd come. And by
the time I was ready to sort of go and
sit in the dining room with everybody else, he'd come
(20:18):
and sit in the dining room too, and you know,
just shoot the breeze with everybody. That's just who he is.
He's just a beautiful human being.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
That definitely comes across one of the excerpts from These
Early Days, You did right. I want to be strong again,
and I'm here to achieve that. I'm taking this time
away from my work and life so that I can
see a bright and happy future. I'm looking for different
strategies for coping, and i want to be the best
version of myself to those who love me. What I
really like about this book is there's this period and
(20:48):
then you come out and you do other things, and
then there's another period where you go back in, and
then you go to a rehab facility for a while.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
It's not linear.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
But when you read those words, now, do you feel
like that is what you've got?
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, like it's still not linear, the whole process.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And this is you know, this is why this book
goes It's just truthful. So there's no tying things up
with a bow. Still not still today. It goes up
and down, and it goes around around, and you go backwards,
and there's all sorts of stuff. What I am today
is so much, it's such a better place than I was,
but there's still still things come up. And I'm so fortunate.
(21:31):
And you know, if you've read about Heather, my beautiful therapist,
only last week, I saw her and I said to her,
I've had a couple of really sad days, and it's
pissing me off because I'm doing all the things. I'm exercising,
i haven't been this fit in a while. I'm eating right,
I don't drink it all anymore, I'm meditating, I'm doing
(21:53):
all the things. Why I've got the face thing going
on where I have to work to put the smile on,
and why do I feel sad and I feel like crying?
And she put it to me beautifully, she said, look,
sometimes it's appropriate to be sad, and sometimes it's appropriate
to be stressed and have anxiety, because that's your brain
responding to your environment. And you've got to look at
those things and say, is there a reason for it?
(22:16):
And sometimes it's not a reason for it, and that's
your chemistry. And she said, but what you need to
do is understand that these are hotels that you check
into for a little while and then you check.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Out and you go home.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So sometimes I'm allowed to check into the sad hotel,
but I know I'm just a visitor, and I get
to go home after that. I get to go home
to my family. I'll get to go home to the
things that bring me joy. I get to go home
to a life that is it's miraculous to me.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So you've put your hand up, You've said I'm not coping.
You might have got help. But what happens next? Because
the world just doesn't stop turning right. You still need
to money, we all still need to do all those things,
keep everything on the tracks. So can you really take
a step back from your life and what happens if
you do?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
That's coming up next.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's amazing that you've just talked about the things that
you do, because I wonder if a lot of women
who are listening to this, who are maybe not as
far down this path as you, but a feeling really
like there's something wrong if they're thinking about life.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
On the other side.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And as you say, it's not really another side, but
it's like a suite of things that you that you
know you can pull on.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Right one hundred percent. And it can sound overwhelming when
you list it all like that, But what I would
say to anyone who's struggling is the number one thing
is to speak. Okay, just say it, And the number
two thing is to get enough sleep and do whatever
you need to do to say the words I need
(24:09):
a hand or I'm not managing, and do whatever you
need to do to get out out of sleep at night,
because once you've spoken, and once you're getting enough sleep,
everything else seems slightly more possible. And I don't mean
that to sound flippant.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It is important. It's important.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
It's when you're tired, when you're exhausted, there is no
resource within you to deal with anything else at all.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So that's just got to be sorted out.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
And there's a bunch of things that you can look
up on how to you know, for people well I
just don't sleep well. There's a bunch of things to
help you to sleep well. There's a bunch of things
you have to do, and some of them are hard.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Set a bedtime, make sure you clock an in eight
hours every night, have a routine, have a ritual.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
I love my bedtime ritual now. You know.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
It used to be drink wine till your brain stops
working and then pass out in.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
The bed, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
But now I put on a little steamy, smelly thing
and I take my pills that I have to take,
and I you know, I put on cream and we're
pulling the sheets up to my chin at night. It's
just such a moment of bliss for me. And I
get to do it every day.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So yeah, I would just say, don't look at this
laundry list, and it's all stuff we know anyway. We
all know about nutrition, we all know about exercise. But
it's actually and it's really annoying because you don't want
to do those things and it's hard to do them
all the time. But I'll tell you what else is
hard is losing the will to live. It's you know,
choose your heart.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
So when you look at the Jewelie who was running like,
as you say, running on empty, do it. Because again
I think there a lot of women listening to this,
you think I need to drop some things too. But
I can't drop them because I've got all these responsibilities.
The family need me, and the perfect dinners need to
be cooked in and I've got, you know, I've got
to have this job and that job. And one of
the things I really love about your story is because
(25:55):
it was audacious, really to be thirty eight and living
on the Central Coast and have built this amazing life
and go, you know what, I want to go and chase.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
And chase a dream is such a cheesy phrase.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
That it's true, right literally what you did?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
You know, you went and chased a dream and then
you had all this excite, all these exciting opportunities. And
the story here isn't like that was a bad thing
to do that. But what sometimes we get ourselves in
a position where then we're like, well, I can't what
could I drop? You've had to simplify and what you
talk about from that terrible time, that terrible summer, which
(26:33):
was you also write so beautifully about how it was
that particular terrible summer on the East coast of Australia
when the skies were black and the fires were burning,
and the wood it felt at the end of the world. Anyway,
Yes it did, and then you were dealing with all that. Yes,
but people listening are looking at their list and going,
how can I reclaim myself?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Do we have to make those hard calls?
Speaker 4 (26:53):
One hundred percent, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
You're empowered by the realize that everything is a choice.
They're not all easy choices, but they are choices. So
I had to choose between the radio and the cooking
school at one point, And how do you give up
a radio show that's called the Rabbit.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
And Julie Goodwin Show.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Who's going to do the Rabbit and Julie Goodwin Show
if it's not Julie good One?
Speaker 3 (27:17):
And you loved it?
Speaker 4 (27:18):
I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
And then my cooking school, well, I's got my name
on the door as well. You know who else is
going to do it? And I did have a beautiful
coworker who ran it for a lot of the time.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
That I was unwell, and I was aware on.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Master Chef and all that sort of stuff that at
the end of the day, you know, she went and
had a baby.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
She had her life to live.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
She couldn't live my dro she couldn't live my life,
and rightly so. And I was really struggling with that
decision to let go of that because I'd already let
go of the radio. I'm surely if I've let go
of one thing, I shouldn't have to let go of
the other thing as well, because that's not fair. But
I couldn't start it. I call it long COVID. Our
business had long covid. We survived the immediacy of it
(27:59):
that we couldn't.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
We couldn't. We just couldn't operate if.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
You didn't take her meals and delivery packs for bloody
heart pivoted like netball players, we did. And again I
was saying to my beautiful therapist, I can't, I can't.
I can't close the business.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
I can't afford to for a start, because there was
all this money that I would have to find to
pay back all the people who hold tickets and giftouchers
and you know, all the bills, and it's not paid off,
you know. And she said to me, and how much it.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Is a funeral. Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that gave me pause.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And then a few weeks later she said, yeah, I
don't normally I'm not normally that prescriptive, but yeah, and
she said to me, and I said, all the people
are let down. And as I write in the book,
she very pragmatically said, well, it's not brain surgery, Julie,
it's cooking classes.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
They're not going to die, Like, oh.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
My god, I do you think I'm more important than
I really am? And can I tell you that that
is a huge lesson And this is something I'd love
for any woman to hear, because I think it's important.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
You think that if you stop doing something, it's not
going to get done, or it's not going to get
done right, or it's not going to get done this year,
you know. But what happens because I had to stop,
I stopped everything suddenly because I went into a psychled
so ideally, prior to that point when I stopped, my
sons didn't starve, my husband managed, my family was fine.
(29:36):
My radio show was taken on by somebody else, my
cooking school was taken on by somebody else. And what
happened was all these people in my life just stepped
into the breach, and what it allowed was for them
to bring their creativity and their love and their resources
and shine themselves. And I just thought, my god, I've
been trying so hard to make sure everything's perfect and
(29:59):
all all these plates are spinning in the air, and
actually I.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Didn't need to. I didn't need to.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
So my learning from that is I'm not as important
as I think I him.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
But I'm way more loved than I realized.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Your love for your family comes through so strongly through
every page of this book, and I have to say
there was a bit that absolutely broke me a bit,
which was, I know, a very hard chapter for you
to write, which was the night that you were stopped
do Ui. Yeah, Now this story has been in the
public and you know it's not a secret, but you
(30:34):
I could feel in the words on the page how
much shame you had in that moment that night you
were arrested. Yes, you had to go home and you
told your husband and well you had to tell your
husband's it came together.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
You told your kids.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, I must have also felt like a moment where
I'm going to lose their love and respect. And yet
it strikes me that your family, through all the things
you've been through, is still a very strong one.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Their extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
You know, it would be so easy for kids, you know,
in their early twenties at that time, that seven years
ago now and it still burns my god, would be
very easy for them to throw that my face. I've
been lecturing them their whole lives, you know, especially as
they become teenagers, about safety and about doing the right thing,
and about you know, being a good citizen and all
(31:27):
of that. And you know, in that moment, I became
a hypocrite, criminal, like all the things I've been trying
to teach my kids not to be. And yeah that
they were able. They gathered around me and just held
me tight. They knew how painful that was, and they
(31:47):
knew how far away from myself I had gotten in
that moment, how far away from who I believed myself
to be and what my values were and everything that
was important to me. It was just gone that night.
Gone because alcohol is part of your story. It's not
and you also express this very well in the book.
It's it's part of the story, and it was something
(32:09):
you knew you needed to address. Again, It wasn't in
a bow you didn't stop drinking after the Dui, but
you have now been sober for several years. That's also
a very common issue for midlife women that the wine
at the end of the day is their.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Treat, it's their reward. And you say this, I worked hard,
I deserved it. And when your mind is racing and
you need to relax, it feels like the thing you
need is sober life fun.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
That midlife women need to know. Can it be fun
without wine? Do you know what? It's more fun?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
And I know that's such a boring.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Thing to say, but it's just the truth.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You know. I was in the grip of I say
it a bit. You know, I could stop if I wanted.
I could stop, but I don't want to. I could
stop if I want to, but I don't want to,
and what should too? Until it it got hold of
me a little bit tighter, a little bit tighter, And
then I got to a point where I wanted to
and I couldn't, and it had become the only way
(33:13):
to settle things down. It was not fun. It was
not fun. It was awful and waking up feeling and
it wasn't even the physical after effects. It was the shame,
just feeling like such a loser because I couldn't get
a handle on this thing. Now, like I say, my
(33:35):
bedtime routine. It sounds so daggy. I get it, I know,
but it's your joy.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
It is my joy.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And I have a lot more fun doing other things
than drinking. And there's some things that I'm just like,
you know what, that actually sounds like hell to me
now because I know it's a free bar and everyone's
just turning up there with the intention of getting as
smashed as they can, as fast as they can.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
And that would have been I would have been who,
let's go what you wearing?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
And now I'm just like, I'll pop in and see
the people I need to see and say hello to
the people I need to say hello and have conversations
with people while I can make a real connection with.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Them, yeah, because they're lucid.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
And then I will be the boring one to check out,
go home and put my armies on, grab a good
book and a cup of tea.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
And get your creams on.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Yah.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
And you know what if that's if that makes me
sound like an old nanny idea of fun, then well
I am a nan.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
I am a grammar and I.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I have so much more joy in other areas of
my life now that I'll let go of that thing
that had me buy the balls.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
So just to talk a little bit to finish off
about what your life's like. Now you've talked a little
bit about you know, the suite of things that you
do and like, as you say, it's not wrapped in
a boat. But when you're so you're busy at the moment.
Right you've been on Dancing with the Stars, you're promoting
this book, you'll be traveling, so it's not like you
pressed off on life and now you only do self
(35:00):
care things.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Twenty four to seven.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
No.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
As lovely as that sounds, I love it.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Right, So how do you?
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Because I think people are often thinking about the practicalities
and they're like, but I will still have to work
and I will still have to do this in that
there's a bit in the book where you talk about
going back to Master Chef Yes, and how you said
when they did their Fans and Favorites Yes with Jock
and Melissa Andy, and you talk about how you had
to say to them, look, I'd love to come back,
(35:27):
but it's got to be different this time. Because can
you just talk a bit about the boundaries you have
put in place to be able to do the things
you do while looking after yourself. Well, you know, I've
never been great at it, but in that moment where
they rang and said we'd like you to come back.
So I was only three weeks out of hospital when
that phone call came, and it was a couple of
months before the season started, and I was so blase
(35:50):
about these boundaries because I didn't think they'd be able
to do it, and so it was just like, well,
this is what needs to happen. I need to be
able to swim, so I need my own space, contact
with my family, I need to see my therapist.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
I need eight hours of sleep at night. You know.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I need all these things. I'm going to need probably
some social media support I'm going to need, you know.
And I just said that. I just blew it because
I just honestly thought the answer would be, well, it's
not really going to fit in with this massive production
to sort of fit all your needs in, and they
just said we can do all of that, And it
blew my mind because I thought I didn't even think
(36:28):
I was laying down boundaries. What I thought I was
doing was saying, no, you know, I can't do it
because of all these things, and they just said, we
can do all of that.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Do you think we were all afraid to ask what
we need.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
One hundred percent? One hundred percent? And it's so like.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Even last weekend, you know, I was packing getting ready
to go on this book tour, and I had so
much anxiety in my guts. And part of it's because
putting this out in the world is not an easy
thing to do. So I was meant to go to
a football game, and I was meant to go to
a function prior to the football game, and I hadn't
finished packing, and I was just in a tis and
(37:03):
I was just kind of rushing.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I had to rush to the shop.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So I had to rush home to get ready for
this pre match function, which I knew was, you know,
going to be dream.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, you're beloved, My beautiful Mariners.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Love them, the men and the women love them. Mixer
have said you, what's up. You're feeling feeling anxious? I said,
there's just too many things to do today and I'm
not going to get them all done.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
And he said, so what's your priorities? And I said,
I've got a pack. I've got to you know, x
y z it.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
And he said, what, why are you coming to the
function then, and I said, oh, because I said I
was going to be there, and he goes, Julie, just
don't go. I said, okay, I said I might still
come with the game though I really like the games.
And he said, all right, well that that freeze up
two and a half hours in the middle of the day,
how does that make you feel? And I just said,
(37:56):
like a boulder just came off my shoulders. And I said,
why didn't I think of that for myself? And it's
just because don't want to let people down. I've said
I will of it. So A stop saying you will
to everything, and b if you then realize you can't,
you need to be able to say that too. So
putting those boundaries in places is crucial. And like you say,
(38:18):
you know, still got to make a living, so I've
still got to do things that require effort. Sometimes are hard,
sometimes are unpleasant, you know, sometimes are more physical than
you want to do. But it's still all choices, you know,
and sometimes those choices are hard. If your job makes
you horribly unhappy. For eight hours of every day, five
(38:38):
days a week, make some choices around that. They might
be hard choices. They might involve a drop in income,
they might involve having to commute further, they might involve
but it's still your choice, you know. And I'm well
aware that there's people that don't have those kinds of choices,
so acknowledging that. But for where I'm coming from is
(38:59):
I now choose to create space in my life for
things that bring me joy. It's my choice when I
wake up in the morning, if I'm going to have
a day ahead of me that I go, oh, I'm
excited for today, or oh, my god, I can't believe
what I've got to do today.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And obviously you can't have every day be a fist
pump day.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
You can't. It's life.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
But if you find that day after day after day
after day there's no fist pumping, there's no joy, there's
no looking forward to anything, that's when you go okay.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
And this is my whole goal in writing.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
This book is that people come to this realization before
they find themselves at the edge of Brisbane water.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yeah, talking to strangers. Yeah, although thank god you did,
thank God. What does bring your joy.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
My granddaughter.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
You've got a granddaughter.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
She is divine.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Are also grown up.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah, they're all grown up. They are extraordinary, beautiful young men.
I'm very proud of them. They bring me joy. I
love to paint. That's new.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I've always loved that. I love drawing and.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Stuff that I'm.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Painting now and I love it. And I love music.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I love going to a footy match on an autumn afternoon.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
You know, I still cook a lot. I do.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I do.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I'm still the main cook in the house.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And you know, when I'm not too learn off doing
things like book tour, I cook most nights. But when
I don't, my boys step in and do. I still
got two of them at home and lost I lost
that joy. I lost all the joy. But I lost cooking.
I lost everything. And yeah, just being with my people,
being near the ocean, those are the things that bring
(40:35):
me joy. And I'm allowed for that to be priorities in.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
My life now.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
That's I permit myself to make those priorities in my life.
And my life is you know, it's not perfect, and
there are ups and downs, and there's no doubt going
to be challenges ahead and grief ahead. As you know,
my parents' age and my things happen that are unexpected,
but I'm much better equipped now, I believe to deal
(41:00):
with those things.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Well, thank you so much, Thank you so much for
writing this book, because it is a lot of I
think so much in there for so many people, because
it is a lot of little pressures too that build
up ordinary things like your children getting poorly or your parents' aging,
money worries, all those things that we're all dealing with,
but when they compound and compound and pound, Yeah, it's
(41:23):
really relatable, and I want to.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Thank you so much, thank you, thank you very much for.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Oh I've been telling people about that conversation ever since
I sat down with Julie. So much of it has
stuck with me, and I find myself saying to people.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
You just have to ask for what you need. You'll
be surprised at how little they care. Or everything's a choice.
Some of the choices are just hard.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
And I've been thinking a lot about her point about
toxic gratitude and how if the bones of our lives
are okay, we're not allowed to complain about the bruised,
fleshy bits, not even for a moment I've been thinking
about the fact that her story, like mine and yours,
is not finished.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
It's not tied up in a little bow.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
It's not like, oh, well, that happened, but that she
and you and we are all still bound to wobble sometimes,
and that's okay anyway. Please share this episode of Mid
with anyone who needs to hear it. Mid is a
new show, so every bit of word of mouth will
help us, and I believe in it so deeply. I
want every woman who's ever sat around giving herself a
(42:28):
hard time to listen to this
Hello, four five six club. This is Holly Wainwright. I
am the host of MID and if you're discovering MID
Conversations for gen X women who are anything but for
the first time, you have a whole lot of episodes
that you can go back and listen to. And you're lucky,
if I say so myself, because some of them are
bloody great. In fact, all of them are bloody great.
(00:23):
While you might have stumbled across some MID episodes before,
the one I'm sharing with you today is the very
first one we ever recorded. It features the remarkable Julie
Goodwin you know of originally Master Chef fame, but many
other things since. And the episode is called don't call
it a Breakdown. It's a story that you probably haven't heard,
(00:44):
even if you've read a few headlines about it. It's extraordinary,
very relatable, and it's about how Julie, several years after
Master Chef and when she was apparently sort of living
the dream, running her own business, juggling a lot of
things at once, she had a full breakdown. How did
she recover, how did she rebuild? How did she discover
(01:04):
that she was taking care of everyone but herself? Does
that sound familiar. This is one of my favorite conversations.
Julie is warm and funny and very honest and vulnerable.
I absolutely loved it. People talk to me about it
all the time. So here it is where it all began.
Episode one of season one of Mid. Don't call it
a breakdown. You might know mid as an insult.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I guess there's no way to have a good mid
life crisis because it's gracious, an epidemic upon us of
men on the internet calling women mid means poor quality,
below average, not that attractive.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And for the longest time, that's how midlife women have
been seen and how we've been told to feel.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
The thing is, though we are.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Anything, but my name is Holly Wainwright, and I am mid.
By the time you've unlocked this seriously grown up level,
you've seen some stuff, through some things, understand some stuff.
You are wise and powerful, complicated and courageous, and yet
the world is trying to trick you into believing that
(02:10):
you're sad and small, uninteresting and unfuckable.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Excuse me, but no, one hundred times no.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Mid is a.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Show for gen X women where we share thoughts from
midlife and have the conversations that actually matter to us.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Over the next eight episodes.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
You're going to hear grown ups talking about big things
and little things and some serious, heavy shit, because there's
plenty of that in midlife, and some silly, stupid stuff too,
because we've worked out that sometimes that's exactly what we need.
We're going to be talking about our heads and our stomachs,
and our drinking, and our sex life, and our friends
and our job and our families and our divorces and
(02:51):
our dating and you get it, all.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
The good stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And today for episode one, we are talking about our heads.
One of the things about midlife is you're meant to
have all your fluffy ducks in pretty little rows.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
But it's not always like that.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Sometimes because of hormones, because of perry, because of stress
and health and life, and because often we've shoved some
tricky things from our pass away in hard to reach drawers,
those ducks waddle out of line and start tumbling over
each other and running for the exits. Mental health can
sneak up on you when you're mid and that can
have serious ripple effects because often by now we've got
(03:30):
a lot of people depending on us. We're meant to
be that steady leaning post and suddenly we're wobbling.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
And no one knows that better than the woman.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I'm having my first mid conversation with, Julie Goodwin. I
gave you a dish am.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Nine out of ten.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well, Julie Goodwin's infectious.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Proving to be one very strong lady. Julie is now
back in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
You know Julie, we all do.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
She won the first ever seas of Australian Master Chef
aged thirty eight and became one of the most famous
people in the country. There have been cookbooks and more
TV shows and appearances all over the place. And now
there's Julie's extraordinarily good memoir. It's called Your Time Starts Now,
and in it she explains how her ducks got so
very far out of their rows that she found herself
(04:20):
not wanting to live anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It's an extraordinary story.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But a familiar one too, because when Julie found herself
doing what many of us are doing everything and falling
apart while she was doing it, she had to start
making some serious changes, which for her started with a
stint in the hospital. Please enjoy the very first mid
conversation with the brutally honest, occasionally sweary, completely wonderful.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Julie Goodwin.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Julie, I want to start by reading a few words
in your book that you actually wrote about your school friends,
because when I read it, I was like, these are
the women who are listening to mid she wrote. Now,
through the magic of social media, I catch glimpses of
their lives. We are doctors, professors, lawyers, town planners, CEOs.
We are mothers and grandmothers, daughters and lovers. We are
(05:11):
cancer survivors and entrepreneurs, artists and activists and travelers. We
have lost parents, partners, friends, and children. We've strived and achieved,
struggled and grieved, worked and played. We've faced the whole
spectrum of what life has to give and to take
away and prevailed.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
We are fucking glorious. And I was like, that is
exactly who this show is for.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
People who have seen some shit yeah and are still
here and are fucking glorious. And you are one of
those people. Julie Goodwin. So thank you, thank you so
much for writing this book.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I was.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Hard. I bet it was.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Hard, because you've written cookbooks, right, lots of cookbooks.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Yeah, lots of cookbooks, and there are.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Recipes in here.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
I want to make sure everybody knows that every chapter
has a slightly adjacent recipe.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I feel like you need a little breather being too.
Some of these chapters, it's just like, you know what,
let's talk about piplots for a minute, exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, And that's real life, right some one minute we're
laying it all out. In the next minute, we're like, oh,
got to cook dinner. But I wanted to say how
I think that for a lot of women reading this,
although the details might be different of what they're going
through in midlife and what you've been through over the
past six years or so, they might not have been
on reality TV and had this massive life change at
(06:34):
about thirty eight is when you went on Master Chef, right,
But a lot of this would be really familiar, being busy, busy, busy,
putting everybody's needs above your own, committing yourself to work
a lot that then takes you away from the family,
and running, running, running.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Can you tell us a little.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Bit about what your life was like about six years
ago when you were still trying to do it all
in inverted commons?
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I'd never been very good at setting boundaries, so you know,
and I know that's relatable. I know because a lot
of my friends are the same. Basically off the back
of Master Chef that's fifteen years ago. I just was
frightened that if I didn't take all the opportunities they
would sort of disappear and that, you know, And I
even had someone say to me as the second season
(07:18):
started to go to air, well done, You've had a
good run, sort of like the years up. Your crown
is going to be passed on to somebody else. And
so I had this anxiety that the opportunities that had
come my way were going to evaporate. So I had
to take everything that came along.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That first season of Master Chef was so huge. You know,
you were one of the most famous people in the
country for a period of time, no question. So that
completely changed your life. So then there was this pressure yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, and lots of expectations and you know that good
old imposter syndrome and all of that. So I kind
of had to learn a lot of stuff as I
went along as well.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And about eight or nine.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Years ago, I just sort of thought, I've got to
get off this treadmill, and I was very much in
the wind, as in, if a food festival wanted me,
then I had a job. If they wanted somebody else,
I didn't have a job, you know. And so I
felt really at the mercy of the ebbs and flows
of the food industry and the exhibition industry and all
of that sort of stuff. So I thought I need
(08:22):
to take the rains a little bit, and so I
opened my cooking school.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So I opened my own business.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And I'd already run a business with my husband for years.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
You know, business, Yeah, that's right, build it.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And it was at a point of quite you know,
solid success and everything when you went off to do masters.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yet absolutely, so I thought I'll do something that I
love to do, and so I opened this cooking school.
And that was such a labor of love and it
was such a beautiful space and we had some amazing
times there. But it is a small business, and anyone
who's run a small business knows it becomes like a
toddler and it needs all your attention and it takes
all your energy and turn it back on it all
(09:01):
the time you do. And not long after that opened,
I was offered a job on the radio, and I
guess I must have still had that sort of fomo
going on because I just really loved the idea of
doing the radio, and I gee, I loved that job.
I loved it. But I guess the breakfast radio too. Yep,
four am, milarm, And then it doesn't end at nine.
(09:23):
When you go off, You've got to go meet clients,
you've got to film content's podcasting, There's all sorts of stuff.
This is how I calmed my life down by adding all.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
This stuff into it. Yeah, well it did, it did.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I was still writing for the Weekly and doing a
whole lot of other things as well. So what ended
up happening was, instead of having more time for my
family and being more available to the people I love,
I just wasn't there at all.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
I wasn't there at all.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I was less available to my family than when I
was traveling all over the place because I was getting
up at four in the morning, and when you get
up at four in the morning, you've got to go
to bed like eight o'clock at night. So not only
was I losing my mornings seeing my people, I was
losing that beautiful space after dinner where everyone collectively exhales.
I was losing that as well, because I had to
(10:11):
go to bed at night, and then on the weekends
I had cooking classes, so I was literally working seven
days a week and long days at that, and sometimes
there were weeknight classes at the kitchen, which then means.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
I wasn't getting enough sleep.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And it was just a recipe for disaster, you know,
and then of course just a whole bunch of processed
stuff from the past and some you know, there's some
brain wiring I suppose it was already in existence that
made that all really treacherous.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
You say in the book that you had this sort
of calendar mapped out after Master Chef, and then up
to this point, this calendar mapped out that was kind
of color coded of like this is work time, this
is family time, this is this, this is this, But
there was no time for you on that right, which
I think is something that a lot of women will
very much, very much recognize. And then you also say,
which is another very relatable point, at one point you realized,
(10:59):
I'm really wobbly. I know some of the things I've
got to do for my mental health, like exercise, so
I'm going to set my alarm for three am so
that I can get up and go to the gym
before work.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yep, Like, yeah, it's like it is insane, right, that's insane,
But it's the.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Way we think because we we go it's my fault
that I'm not coping. I've got to do more things
to be coping. And you, right, you're running, running, running,
And then when you'd be alone, you just felt hollow.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Absolutely, there was nothing left, literally to the point where
I actually I couldn't make my face do what it
needed to do, you know, to even look normal. So
sometimes I would just go away and find somewhere to
be by myself because the muscles of my face are
exhausted from trying to hold just an interested look on
my face or a smile or a just a I'm
(11:49):
a person who's coping face.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Because I wasn't coping, you.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Felt like a husk.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So what happens then when you realize that this life
you've built is untenable and you are wobbling. What happens
if you really just need to fall apart. We're going
to talk about that after this break. All of the
(12:21):
stuff about your early life is fascinating too. You've had
a very interesting life, Julie, You've done a lot of
different jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I have done a lot of different You're in there about.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
When you were basically almost like a prison guard in
a used attention center and dealing with these awful men.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yea, not the children, but the other guard.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, not the inmates that my coworkers.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I was the only female there and that was an
extraordinary time.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
You certainly have a strong work ethic, and I've done
a lot of things. But you write about there was
a time in your late teens when your mental health
is in trouble, but you put it in a box. Yep,
you wrote that that was most likely the result of
abuse that you've written about in here, just very top
we're not going into it, As you write very beautiful
in the book, You're like, this is what's happened, We're
not going into it. And then you put that away
(13:06):
in a box when you're like teens. And then when
you had your first baby, I think it was your
first baby, and you were struggling, and you went to
tresillian and which is a center that helps mothers who
a struggling with sleepless babies or collique babies.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
They got you to.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Fill out one of those questionnaires, and I'm sure would
be very familiar to a lot of our listeners about whether.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Or not you might be struggling with postnatal depression.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, and I just want to read out this bit
that you wrote because they got you to fill out
this questionnaire.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
So this is all the way back there.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
But I'm just kind of painting a picture of how
you're such a copra and pushing things down. They're like,
I think, make Maria, I have got personatal depression, and
you said, let me stop you there. I don't want
to hear the word depression. I don't have a thing
to be depressed about. I have a beautiful husband and
a healthy baby and a house to live in. It
would be ridiculous for me to be depressed. Give me
the questions a game.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
I wanted to pass the test.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And this is echoed later too, when you do go
to another healthcare professional at one point, but you say,
don't diagnose any depression and I don't want to talk
about my childhood.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Where do you think?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Because I think that this sort of denial, or rather
this insistence on gratitude can actually be quite toxic for
women sometimes. Where did that come from and how have
you learned to understand that?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
That kind of like, my life's great? What are you
talking about?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
You know, especially I imagine postmaster chef when you've been
handed the keys to the city.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Kind of Yeah, it comes from everywhere, It comes from everywhere.
So it certainly came from family.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
You know. My men grew up during the war.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
My mum was raised by my men, and rightly so
we're taught to be grateful and to countter blessings and
to see how lucky we are compared to how other
people are. The problem is that if you take that
on board so much, like I know nothing by halves,
it can become really crippling when it comes time to
actually say I'm not coping because.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
What right do I have? And I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Society, the Internet, Facebook, they all join in on that.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
That's all a pylon. If you say anything is.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Not right, people are like, oh, first world problems, and
how can you complain about that when this just happened
over here? And how can you complain about that when
you've got food on your table and you know you
can afford a phone to even be writing this on it,
you know what I mean? So there's that whole idea
that we should be grateful always and when you're not,
you should be shamed of yourself. Yeah, and you should
(15:37):
take a good hard look at yourself, and you should
have a cup of concrete, get up and keep going
because you live in this magnificent country and you are
lucky enough to have people around you, and you're lucky enough.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
To have a listen.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And that is all true, and it's all valid, and
it's all important to acknowledge. But we have to take
the shame out of saying I can't do this. I'm
not coping. Please don't ask me to put I was
seeing on my plate right now. I'm too busy, I'm
feeling sad. I can't make my face into an appropriate
expression anymore. You know, I feel like I want to die.
(16:11):
We have to be allowed to say these things out
loud without being made to feel ashamed about it.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
So there is the moment where you walk away from
a football game you're supposed to be going to with
me after this period of time where you're just feeling,
as you say, hollow inside. Every time you're alone, you cry,
but the rest of the time you're being mum, being
good employee, being wife, being friend, And I wanted to
ask you because you have spoken a bit about this,
(16:38):
so I don't want you to relive the moment entirely.
But you were seriously considering taking your life, and then
you met sitting by some water on the Central coast
where you live. You met Larissa, Derek and Bonnie yep,
who you thank in your book. Who are the strangers
who spoke to you and very likely saved you that day? Yes,
what I wanted to ask you, rather than about the
(16:59):
debt of that, was about how you found the hope
in that moment to go home to your It has
to be said, amazing husband. No, I don't say that.
It's like, oh, you look like you know you deserve
an amazing husband. But how did you find the hope
to go home and finally say to him I'm not coping.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It was an incredible couple of hours, you know, And
it wasn't a blinding flash. It was simply that these
strangers sat next to me and chatted about ordinary things.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
A young couple and their dog, right.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yep, young couple and their dog, and they just said,
you look like you needed company, So we decided to
come back and have a seat here, and we're just
going to hang here. They just chatted to me and
they told me about their kids and about their dog,
and I told them about my kids and about my dogs,
and just that ridiculously ordinary stuff. And I found in
(17:59):
the telling of a few of these things, and in
the hearing of a few of these things, I laughed
a couple of times, And at the end of that
couple of hours, it was like, I can laugh.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
I didn't know. I didn't know that was still in there,
you know.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And so then I rang Mick and I had him
come and pick me up, and that's when I told
him where I'd been and what I've been doing, and
he drove me to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I thought he said something really amazing, because a lot
of men, well not only a lot of men, but
a lot of people, would be like, we'll fix this,
but he kind of deeply understood that he couldn't fix this.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, it is a knee jerk reaction to be the
night in Shining Armor, but that's what he needed to
do to be my night in shining armor on that day,
not to say, you know, well, you're all right.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Now, let's go and have ice cream.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
You know, it was I am not equipped to deal
with what you're going through.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I need to call in somebody who is. And I
didn't want to go to the hospital. Come on, I'm tired,
it's going to be day. Can we go home? But
he wouldn't. He wouldn't take me home.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So that and that's that was the start of, you know,
trying to sort it all out.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You publish excerpts from your journal of when you're in
that first hospital that you're in, because you end up
being there for about six weeks.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
You're writing in your Jill. I just have to say,
as a point of.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Levity that what I particularly enjoyed about your journal entries,
which are heart wrenching in many ways, is you always
comment on what you're eating.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
So we're always.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
We're in a psychiatric hospital, but it's like cold toast
and beans, turkey.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
And mash ye yep, feel like the recipes in the book.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
You just got to punch right things.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And comes every day every day.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
He comes every day and sits with you, which it
must have been confronting for him because I assume that
you hadn't been in a place like that before.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
No, never, never, he he wasn't confronted. He's just so steady.
And I would say to him, please, don't come every day,
it's too much. And so he'd be getting home quite
late at night, having his dinner quite late at night.
But he just said, I'm not doing it for you,
I'm doing it for me, and he'd come. And by
the time I was ready to sort of go and
sit in the dining room with everybody else, he'd come
(20:18):
and sit in the dining room too, and you know,
just shoot the breeze with everybody. That's just who he is.
He's just a beautiful human being.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
That definitely comes across one of the excerpts from These
Early Days, You did right. I want to be strong again,
and I'm here to achieve that. I'm taking this time
away from my work and life so that I can
see a bright and happy future. I'm looking for different
strategies for coping, and i want to be the best
version of myself to those who love me. What I
really like about this book is there's this period and
(20:48):
then you come out and you do other things, and
then there's another period where you go back in, and
then you go to a rehab facility for a while.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
It's not linear.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
But when you read those words, now, do you feel
like that is what you've got?
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, like it's still not linear, the whole process.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And this is you know, this is why this book
goes It's just truthful. So there's no tying things up
with a bow. Still not still today. It goes up
and down, and it goes around around, and you go backwards,
and there's all sorts of stuff. What I am today
is so much, it's such a better place than I was,
but there's still still things come up. And I'm so fortunate.
(21:31):
And you know, if you've read about Heather, my beautiful therapist,
only last week, I saw her and I said to her,
I've had a couple of really sad days, and it's
pissing me off because I'm doing all the things. I'm exercising,
i haven't been this fit in a while. I'm eating right,
I don't drink it all anymore, I'm meditating, I'm doing
(21:53):
all the things. Why I've got the face thing going
on where I have to work to put the smile on,
and why do I feel sad and I feel like crying?
And she put it to me beautifully, she said, look,
sometimes it's appropriate to be sad, and sometimes it's appropriate
to be stressed and have anxiety, because that's your brain
responding to your environment. And you've got to look at
those things and say, is there a reason for it?
(22:16):
And sometimes it's not a reason for it, and that's
your chemistry. And she said, but what you need to
do is understand that these are hotels that you check
into for a little while and then you check.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Out and you go home.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So sometimes I'm allowed to check into the sad hotel,
but I know I'm just a visitor, and I get
to go home after that. I get to go home
to my family. I'll get to go home to the
things that bring me joy. I get to go home
to a life that is it's miraculous to me.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So you've put your hand up, You've said I'm not coping.
You might have got help. But what happens next? Because
the world just doesn't stop turning right. You still need
to money, we all still need to do all those things,
keep everything on the tracks. So can you really take
a step back from your life and what happens if
you do?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
That's coming up next.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's amazing that you've just talked about the things that
you do, because I wonder if a lot of women
who are listening to this, who are maybe not as
far down this path as you, but a feeling really
like there's something wrong if they're thinking about life.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
On the other side.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
And as you say, it's not really another side, but
it's like a suite of things that you that you
know you can pull on.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Right one hundred percent. And it can sound overwhelming when
you list it all like that, But what I would
say to anyone who's struggling is the number one thing
is to speak. Okay, just say it, And the number
two thing is to get enough sleep and do whatever
you need to do to say the words I need
(24:09):
a hand or I'm not managing, and do whatever you
need to do to get out out of sleep at night,
because once you've spoken, and once you're getting enough sleep,
everything else seems slightly more possible. And I don't mean
that to sound flippant.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
It is important. It's important.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
It's when you're tired, when you're exhausted, there is no
resource within you to deal with anything else at all.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So that's just got to be sorted out.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
And there's a bunch of things that you can look
up on how to you know, for people well I
just don't sleep well. There's a bunch of things to
help you to sleep well. There's a bunch of things
you have to do, and some of them are hard.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Set a bedtime, make sure you clock an in eight
hours every night, have a routine, have a ritual.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
I love my bedtime ritual now. You know.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
It used to be drink wine till your brain stops
working and then pass out in.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
The bed, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
But now I put on a little steamy, smelly thing
and I take my pills that I have to take,
and I you know, I put on cream and we're
pulling the sheets up to my chin at night. It's
just such a moment of bliss for me. And I
get to do it every day.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So yeah, I would just say, don't look at this
laundry list, and it's all stuff we know anyway. We
all know about nutrition, we all know about exercise. But
it's actually and it's really annoying because you don't want
to do those things and it's hard to do them
all the time. But I'll tell you what else is
hard is losing the will to live. It's you know,
choose your heart.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
So when you look at the Jewelie who was running like,
as you say, running on empty, do it. Because again
I think there a lot of women listening to this,
you think I need to drop some things too. But
I can't drop them because I've got all these responsibilities.
The family need me, and the perfect dinners need to
be cooked in and I've got, you know, I've got
to have this job and that job. And one of
the things I really love about your story is because
(25:55):
it was audacious, really to be thirty eight and living
on the Central Coast and have built this amazing life
and go, you know what, I want to go and chase.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
And chase a dream is such a cheesy phrase.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
That it's true, right literally what you did?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
You know, you went and chased a dream and then
you had all this excite, all these exciting opportunities. And
the story here isn't like that was a bad thing
to do that. But what sometimes we get ourselves in
a position where then we're like, well, I can't what
could I drop? You've had to simplify and what you
talk about from that terrible time, that terrible summer, which
(26:33):
was you also write so beautifully about how it was
that particular terrible summer on the East coast of Australia
when the skies were black and the fires were burning,
and the wood it felt at the end of the world. Anyway,
Yes it did, and then you were dealing with all that. Yes,
but people listening are looking at their list and going,
how can I reclaim myself?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Do we have to make those hard calls?
Speaker 4 (26:53):
One hundred percent, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
You're empowered by the realize that everything is a choice.
They're not all easy choices, but they are choices. So
I had to choose between the radio and the cooking
school at one point, And how do you give up
a radio show that's called the Rabbit.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
And Julie Goodwin Show.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Who's going to do the Rabbit and Julie Goodwin Show
if it's not Julie good One?
Speaker 3 (27:17):
And you loved it?
Speaker 4 (27:18):
I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
And then my cooking school, well, I's got my name
on the door as well. You know who else is
going to do it? And I did have a beautiful
coworker who ran it for a lot of the time.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
That I was unwell, and I was aware on.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Master Chef and all that sort of stuff that at
the end of the day, you know, she went and
had a baby.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
She had her life to live.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
She couldn't live my dro she couldn't live my life,
and rightly so. And I was really struggling with that
decision to let go of that because I'd already let
go of the radio. I'm surely if I've let go
of one thing, I shouldn't have to let go of
the other thing as well, because that's not fair. But
I couldn't start it. I call it long COVID. Our
business had long covid. We survived the immediacy of it
(27:59):
that we couldn't.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
We couldn't. We just couldn't operate if.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
You didn't take her meals and delivery packs for bloody
heart pivoted like netball players, we did. And again I
was saying to my beautiful therapist, I can't, I can't.
I can't close the business.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
I can't afford to for a start, because there was
all this money that I would have to find to
pay back all the people who hold tickets and giftouchers
and you know, all the bills, and it's not paid off,
you know. And she said to me, and how much it.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Is a funeral. Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that gave me pause.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And then a few weeks later she said, yeah, I
don't normally I'm not normally that prescriptive, but yeah, and
she said to me, and I said, all the people
are let down. And as I write in the book,
she very pragmatically said, well, it's not brain surgery, Julie,
it's cooking classes.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
They're not going to die, Like, oh.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
My god, I do you think I'm more important than
I really am? And can I tell you that that
is a huge lesson And this is something I'd love
for any woman to hear, because I think it's important.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
You think that if you stop doing something, it's not
going to get done, or it's not going to get
done right, or it's not going to get done this year,
you know. But what happens because I had to stop,
I stopped everything suddenly because I went into a psychled
so ideally, prior to that point when I stopped, my
sons didn't starve, my husband managed, my family was fine.
(29:36):
My radio show was taken on by somebody else, my
cooking school was taken on by somebody else. And what
happened was all these people in my life just stepped
into the breach, and what it allowed was for them
to bring their creativity and their love and their resources
and shine themselves. And I just thought, my god, I've
been trying so hard to make sure everything's perfect and
(29:59):
all all these plates are spinning in the air, and
actually I.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Didn't need to. I didn't need to.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
So my learning from that is I'm not as important
as I think I him.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
But I'm way more loved than I realized.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Your love for your family comes through so strongly through
every page of this book, and I have to say
there was a bit that absolutely broke me a bit,
which was, I know, a very hard chapter for you
to write, which was the night that you were stopped
do Ui. Yeah, Now this story has been in the
public and you know it's not a secret, but you
(30:34):
I could feel in the words on the page how
much shame you had in that moment that night you
were arrested. Yes, you had to go home and you
told your husband and well you had to tell your
husband's it came together.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
You told your kids.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, I must have also felt like a moment where
I'm going to lose their love and respect. And yet
it strikes me that your family, through all the things
you've been through, is still a very strong one.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Their extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
You know, it would be so easy for kids, you know,
in their early twenties at that time, that seven years
ago now and it still burns my god, would be
very easy for them to throw that my face. I've
been lecturing them their whole lives, you know, especially as
they become teenagers, about safety and about doing the right thing,
and about you know, being a good citizen and all
(31:27):
of that. And you know, in that moment, I became
a hypocrite, criminal, like all the things I've been trying
to teach my kids not to be. And yeah that
they were able. They gathered around me and just held
me tight. They knew how painful that was, and they
(31:47):
knew how far away from myself I had gotten in
that moment, how far away from who I believed myself
to be and what my values were and everything that
was important to me. It was just gone that night.
Gone because alcohol is part of your story. It's not
and you also express this very well in the book.
It's it's part of the story, and it was something
(32:09):
you knew you needed to address. Again, It wasn't in
a bow you didn't stop drinking after the Dui, but
you have now been sober for several years. That's also
a very common issue for midlife women that the wine
at the end of the day is their.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Treat, it's their reward. And you say this, I worked hard,
I deserved it. And when your mind is racing and
you need to relax, it feels like the thing you
need is sober life fun.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
That midlife women need to know. Can it be fun
without wine? Do you know what? It's more fun?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
And I know that's such a boring.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Thing to say, but it's just the truth.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You know. I was in the grip of I say
it a bit. You know, I could stop if I wanted.
I could stop, but I don't want to. I could
stop if I want to, but I don't want to,
and what should too? Until it it got hold of
me a little bit tighter, a little bit tighter, And
then I got to a point where I wanted to
and I couldn't, and it had become the only way
(33:13):
to settle things down. It was not fun. It was
not fun. It was awful and waking up feeling and
it wasn't even the physical after effects. It was the shame,
just feeling like such a loser because I couldn't get
a handle on this thing. Now, like I say, my
(33:35):
bedtime routine. It sounds so daggy. I get it, I know,
but it's your joy.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
It is my joy.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And I have a lot more fun doing other things
than drinking. And there's some things that I'm just like,
you know what, that actually sounds like hell to me
now because I know it's a free bar and everyone's
just turning up there with the intention of getting as
smashed as they can, as fast as they can.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
And that would have been I would have been who,
let's go what you wearing?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
And now I'm just like, I'll pop in and see
the people I need to see and say hello to
the people I need to say hello and have conversations
with people while I can make a real connection with.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Them, yeah, because they're lucid.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
And then I will be the boring one to check out,
go home and put my armies on, grab a good
book and a cup of tea.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
And get your creams on.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Yah.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
And you know what if that's if that makes me
sound like an old nanny idea of fun, then well
I am a nan.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
I am a grammar and I.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I have so much more joy in other areas of
my life now that I'll let go of that thing
that had me buy the balls.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
So just to talk a little bit to finish off
about what your life's like. Now you've talked a little
bit about you know, the suite of things that you
do and like, as you say, it's not wrapped in
a boat. But when you're so you're busy at the moment.
Right you've been on Dancing with the Stars, you're promoting
this book, you'll be traveling, so it's not like you
pressed off on life and now you only do self
(35:00):
care things.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Twenty four to seven.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
No.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
As lovely as that sounds, I love it.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Right, So how do you?
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Because I think people are often thinking about the practicalities
and they're like, but I will still have to work
and I will still have to do this in that
there's a bit in the book where you talk about
going back to Master Chef Yes, and how you said
when they did their Fans and Favorites Yes with Jock
and Melissa Andy, and you talk about how you had
to say to them, look, I'd love to come back,
(35:27):
but it's got to be different this time. Because can
you just talk a bit about the boundaries you have
put in place to be able to do the things
you do while looking after yourself. Well, you know, I've
never been great at it, but in that moment where
they rang and said we'd like you to come back.
So I was only three weeks out of hospital when
that phone call came, and it was a couple of
months before the season started, and I was so blase
(35:50):
about these boundaries because I didn't think they'd be able
to do it, and so it was just like, well,
this is what needs to happen. I need to be
able to swim, so I need my own space, contact
with my family, I need to see my therapist.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
I need eight hours of sleep at night. You know.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I need all these things. I'm going to need probably
some social media support I'm going to need, you know.
And I just said that. I just blew it because
I just honestly thought the answer would be, well, it's
not really going to fit in with this massive production
to sort of fit all your needs in, and they
just said we can do all of that, And it
blew my mind because I thought I didn't even think
(36:28):
I was laying down boundaries. What I thought I was
doing was saying, no, you know, I can't do it
because of all these things, and they just said, we
can do all of that.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Do you think we were all afraid to ask what
we need.
Speaker 4 (36:37):
One hundred percent? One hundred percent? And it's so like.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Even last weekend, you know, I was packing getting ready
to go on this book tour, and I had so
much anxiety in my guts. And part of it's because
putting this out in the world is not an easy
thing to do. So I was meant to go to
a football game, and I was meant to go to
a function prior to the football game, and I hadn't
finished packing, and I was just in a tis and
(37:03):
I was just kind of rushing.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I had to rush to the shop.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So I had to rush home to get ready for
this pre match function, which I knew was, you know,
going to be dream.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, you're beloved, My beautiful Mariners.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Love them, the men and the women love them. Mixer
have said you, what's up. You're feeling feeling anxious? I said,
there's just too many things to do today and I'm
not going to get them all done.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
And he said, so what's your priorities? And I said,
I've got a pack. I've got to you know, x
y z it.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
And he said, what, why are you coming to the
function then, and I said, oh, because I said I
was going to be there, and he goes, Julie, just
don't go. I said, okay, I said I might still
come with the game though I really like the games.
And he said, all right, well that that freeze up
two and a half hours in the middle of the day,
how does that make you feel? And I just said,
(37:56):
like a boulder just came off my shoulders. And I said,
why didn't I think of that for myself? And it's
just because don't want to let people down. I've said
I will of it. So A stop saying you will
to everything, and b if you then realize you can't,
you need to be able to say that too. So
putting those boundaries in places is crucial. And like you say,
(38:18):
you know, still got to make a living, so I've
still got to do things that require effort. Sometimes are hard,
sometimes are unpleasant, you know, sometimes are more physical than
you want to do. But it's still all choices, you know,
and sometimes those choices are hard. If your job makes
you horribly unhappy. For eight hours of every day, five
(38:38):
days a week, make some choices around that. They might
be hard choices. They might involve a drop in income,
they might involve having to commute further, they might involve
but it's still your choice, you know. And I'm well
aware that there's people that don't have those kinds of choices,
so acknowledging that. But for where I'm coming from is
(38:59):
I now choose to create space in my life for
things that bring me joy. It's my choice when I
wake up in the morning, if I'm going to have
a day ahead of me that I go, oh, I'm
excited for today, or oh, my god, I can't believe
what I've got to do today.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
And obviously you can't have every day be a fist
pump day.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
You can't. It's life.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
But if you find that day after day after day
after day there's no fist pumping, there's no joy, there's
no looking forward to anything, that's when you go okay.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
And this is my whole goal in writing.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
This book is that people come to this realization before
they find themselves at the edge of Brisbane water.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yeah, talking to strangers. Yeah, although thank god you did,
thank God. What does bring your joy.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
My granddaughter.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
You've got a granddaughter.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
She is divine.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Are also grown up.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah, they're all grown up. They are extraordinary, beautiful young men.
I'm very proud of them. They bring me joy. I
love to paint. That's new.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I've always loved that. I love drawing and.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Stuff that I'm.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Painting now and I love it. And I love music.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I love going to a footy match on an autumn afternoon.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
You know, I still cook a lot. I do.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I do.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I'm still the main cook in the house.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And you know, when I'm not too learn off doing
things like book tour, I cook most nights. But when
I don't, my boys step in and do. I still
got two of them at home and lost I lost
that joy. I lost all the joy. But I lost cooking.
I lost everything. And yeah, just being with my people,
being near the ocean, those are the things that bring
(40:35):
me joy. And I'm allowed for that to be priorities in.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
My life now.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
That's I permit myself to make those priorities in my life.
And my life is you know, it's not perfect, and
there are ups and downs, and there's no doubt going
to be challenges ahead and grief ahead. As you know,
my parents' age and my things happen that are unexpected,
but I'm much better equipped now, I believe to deal
(41:00):
with those things.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Well, thank you so much, Thank you so much for
writing this book, because it is a lot of I
think so much in there for so many people, because
it is a lot of little pressures too that build
up ordinary things like your children getting poorly or your parents' aging,
money worries, all those things that we're all dealing with,
but when they compound and compound and pound, Yeah, it's
(41:23):
really relatable, and I want to.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Thank you so much, thank you, thank you very much for.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Oh I've been telling people about that conversation ever since
I sat down with Julie. So much of it has
stuck with me, and I find myself saying to people.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
You just have to ask for what you need. You'll
be surprised at how little they care. Or everything's a choice.
Some of the choices are just hard.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
And I've been thinking a lot about her point about
toxic gratitude and how if the bones of our lives
are okay, we're not allowed to complain about the bruised,
fleshy bits, not even for a moment I've been thinking
about the fact that her story, like mine and yours,
is not finished.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
It's not tied up in a little bow.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
It's not like, oh, well, that happened, but that she
and you and we are all still bound to wobble sometimes,
and that's okay anyway. Please share this episode of Mid
with anyone who needs to hear it. Mid is a
new show, so every bit of word of mouth will
help us, and I believe in it so deeply. I
want every woman who's ever sat around giving herself a
(42:28):
hard time to listen to this
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