G'day, Gus Walland here, host of Not An Overnight Success podcast series, brought to you by
our mates at Shore and Partners Financial Services.
Today, it's Tara Rae Moss, a friend of mine for many, many years.
And this, well, this chat goes down many, many different ways, big journey for her initially
being a teenage model, and then being a successful author, and people doubting her being the
actual author, and then her terrible struggle with pain, her own health journey.
She's a wonderful Australian, wonderful person.
I'm sure you'll enjoy our chat with Tara Rae Moss.
Welcome to the podcast.
Oh, Gus, it's so lovely to reconnect with you.
I'm doing so well.
I'm toddler level enthusiastic about life right now.
There's lots of reasons for that.
But yes, you've caught me at a rather happy moment, I must say.
I'm really happy to hear that.
So you've been through quite a bit.
And for people to know that you and I met each other in a different life, at actually
Hugh Jackman's 35th birthday celebrations, he hired a couple of houses at Byron Bay,
and we had the best week.
How much fun was that?
And that's when you and I first connected.
It was so much fun.
Just like beautiful.
And Hugh is just one of those, he's just one of those people.
He's such a great human being.
And just, he's one of those people, for those who haven't met him in person, who will not
talk about himself.
He just immediately starts asking you questions.
You know, how are you doing?
He's really, he's really engaged.
He really loves people and their stories.
And yeah, he's one of the good ones, 100%.
No, I can absolutely vouch for all of that.
I wanted to talk about you, Tara, as a young child, where were you born?
What were you like?
What was your family situation?
Where did you grow up?
That's a great question.
Right now, I am speaking to you from Victoria, BC, the traditional territories of the Lekwungen
And this is where I was born.
So I was born on Vancouver Island, which is a kind of banana shaped island off the mainland
And I am currently back here.
So I'm an Australian and Canadian citizen.
I love both countries, they're both home to me, but I have been in Canada for much of
the past five years.
And so that's where I am now.
I was blessed to have awesome parents, beautiful mother, beautiful dad, a great sister Jackie
And we grew up in this really idyllic place where you could, you know, leave your tricycle
on the lawn and the front door unlocked and could wander off to the local beach.
And you know, it was cold because it's Canada, but you know, you could go and play on the
rocks and play in the tide pools and see fish and sea anemones and seals and eagles.
And it's a very special part of the world.
And so I feel very privileged to be able to be here and reconnect with that sense of my
What was so awesome about your mum, start with, we'll start with mum, mums are the most
What was so awesome about her?
Well, Janie Moss or Jannechen Moss, Jannechen Toft was her maiden name, her birth name.
She was born in Holland in Noemensdorp.
And she came across to Canada when she was about four years old.
My Oma and Opa came across after the war, towards the end of the war, after living through
the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
She was just an incredible human being.
She was one of those mums that you could talk to, that she could have fun with.
She was artistic, she sculpted, she painted, all of that was just for herself.
She was essentially a stay at home mum who sometimes did part time work to help bring
in extra cash for the family.
Very much a kind of lower middle class income group, you know.
And that was my life.
I always felt like I had, you know, I was safe at home, I had a roof over my head, there
was food on the table and there was a lot of love.
And as I became older, I realized what a privilege that is and how, you know, not every kid has
that, those simple things.
So yeah, my mum's sketches and paintings and things are still, and embroidery are still
very much in my world.
They're on my walls, they're all around me and she is all around me.
But sadly, she did pass away.
Her earth life ended at age 43.
I'm 50 now, so to give some context, you know, she was very young indeed and turning 43 myself
was a strange moment for me.
But yeah, she passed away from cancer, she had multiple myeloma and passed away when
I was a young person and that was one of my more difficult times in my life.
But she gave me so much gas, she really did.
I'm fortunate now to, you know, to have grieved for so long that the grief has sort of been
able to be, I've almost moved through it or pushed it to the side and I'm mostly in a
state of just joy and connection with her, the sense of her, who she is.
I actually don't feel like I lost her, if that makes sense.
I just feel like so privileged to have known her and to still sense her support even after
I need to see your face beamed when you talk about her.
My dad is amazing, Robert, Bob, we sometimes call him Father Bob, which he laughs at, of
I am so privileged now to be, you know, 10 minutes away from him.
He and his beautiful new wife, Louise, you know, they're at that age where they do need
a little bit more support.
They're sometimes having some health issues and they're, you know, working through those
things that all happen to all of us as we get older.
So it's very important for me to be here close to my dad.
He was a fridge and stove salesman at Eaton's, a local department store, sort of like a Meijer
kind of thing as I was growing up.
He was just one of those like dependable, nice guys who was, you know, would take the
bus home every day at the same time and we would be together as a family and he's just
been kind of that rock.
And when my mom passed away, when his wife, you know, love of his life for 25 years passed
away, he kind of had to become mom and dad to these two daughters.
So you know, what an amazing human being to be able to do that.
And I just feel like I'm at a stage in my life now and they're at a stage where it's
very important to be close.
It's very important to see them really regularly and particularly my daughter, Safira, she's
12 and you know, I want her to have that grandparent time.
She's the only grandchild in the family, in fact, which isn't necessarily something you
choose, but that's the way that it is and so important they have that time.
So that's another good reason for me to be here in Canada at the moment.
It's the right time for me to be really close.
Yeah, it sounds like that.
So we've got a few more people now we need to talk about.
So your sister next and then we'll go to stepmom.
So what was your sister like?
So imagine like me, but with platinum blonde hair, I was always a start, like I had dark
blonde hair when I was growing up.
Now it's gone all Maleficent on me.
So I'm like, I don't know what's happened there.
I've gotten fully Maleficent.
My sister is like Viking platinum blonde version of me, also with lots of tattoos and like
So she's like hanging off of frozen waterfalls with spiky boots on and that's Jackie.
So she's she's a whip smart honor student.
She loves the outdoors as I do as well.
And she's just a just like a wonderful person I connect with multiple times per day.
I mean, we like burn up the text chats like we burn up the WhatsApp all day long.
And she's she's living in Vancouver and just I feel again, very privileged to have her
She's one of my best buddies.
That is so cool to have that type of relationship and the fact that you still chatting so much
and so forth is great.
So your dad loses the love his life.
You lose your mom at such a young age.
How long until Father Bob found love again?
Oh, my gosh, I want to say a decade and probably getting that wrong, but it feels like about
was the better part of a decade.
Yeah, you know, and it was I just remember how much it broke my heart to have to feel
him alone, like his loneliness in the early days.
I've spoken to my dad about this before.
It's OK for me to say this because I've you know, that's private, it's personal.
And he's been OK with the things I say when I have my recollections about that time.
But I remember one of the things that really was heartbreaking for me was when I would
wake up in the night and hear him crying and he was I feel kind of choked up just thinking
about it now. But, you know, me as a young person hearing my father in the bedroom with
the door closed at night in the middle of the night, crying quietly, trying not to,
you know, disturb anybody and just crying quietly by himself in the bedroom.
It just absolutely slayed me.
And so I was very annoying Gus the first six months in particular.
I just took him everywhere.
I was like his shadow, like like we're coming over to my friend's house now.
Now I'm taking you to the pool.
I'm taking you to the local cinema or something.
And I was very annoying, I'm sure, just not wanting him to be alone for a millisecond.
But they were the kind of couple that were really closely bonded and connected and had a
very loving marriage.
And so when she passed of cancer, so, you know, so early, so young, it was very devastating.
And it wasn't the sort of thing they had a lot of time to process and transition towards.
So it was very, very tough for him.
And he's I'm just so glad that that he's doing well now and he's in a good place in his world.
He has love and support and that I can be close.
So the step mum comes in, you love her straight away.
It can be difficult being at times.
Yeah, look, I think we've all grown to love each other, but it's not instant.
Of course, you need a new person.
And I certainly never had the sense of like, who are you?
You know, trying to be my mum, it was never anything like that.
It was literally just getting to know a new person who I didn't know at all.
And that being hindered somewhat by the fact that I was living in Australia.
So I would be flying back, spending time with them for a couple of weeks and then, you know,
coming back and forth.
So now that I'm here full time and still traveling a bit, but here full time, essentially,
it's been a really great experience just to kind of not have the ticking clock when we're
spending time together and really getting to know each other better.
And they celebrated, I want to say, I see they got married in 97.
So, you know, they had a recent anniversary and it's it's how many years now, Gus?
I don't think I can do the calculation.
That would have been their 25th then, because they're in their 26th now.
See, that's wonderful and amazing.
And it's continuing to grow and deepen that love and the bond and the sense of family.
So we've had, you know, a lot of time in my being here for the past five years has has
helped that as well.
So one of the silver linings of the strange period that I've been going through.
Exactly. And we'll get into that more in a moment.
So you're growing up, it's idyllic, of course, but the way you describe the place and I
grew up in a very similar place in terms of leaving the bikes and wherever you found
yourself at about five thirty, that's where you wait that night, you know.
So you never knew if you were going to be at home or at someone else's house.
So you go to school.
What is school like for you?
Are you good at school?
Are you more sporty?
What are you like as a sort of a 10 to 15 year old?
I think I have too many limbs to be overly sporty.
I'll be honest, Gus, this is like you've got a lot of limbs.
Yeah, I got a lot of limbs.
I I went to public school here and that was really normal.
I know Australia, there's some other sort of conversations around different sort of
schooling environments. But for me, it was like a normal public local school.
I used to hop the fence to get to school and I heard the bell ring.
You know, like it was literally like just over a fence that I would scale and all the
local kids. So everybody knew each other.
It was, you know, it's that lovely, smallish town kind of feeling.
I was very good at art, English, social studies, you know,
very good, like, you know, a good student that would do well and grade well.
Right. Math, I hated and I still I'm like OK with math, but I still find math cold.
Some people talk about like it's like it's really alive for them.
For me, it's a little bit cold and hard and angular.
And I like I like softer lines.
I like, you know, I like language that sings and I like art that has shapes and movement.
And that's how I see things is sort of through storytelling and visuals and things like
that. So I wasn't great at conceptualizing mathematical equations.
My sister, on the other hand, she was a straight A honours student in everything.
So for me, it depended on the subject.
And there were like these report cards where it was like Tara is a very, you know, very
bright young woman and competent student when she wants to pay attention.
And it was, you know, it would be in like math that I would be in the back of the class
writing horror stories for my classmates in elementary school, like choose your own
adventure style, writing these horror like Stephen King style stories, and I'd be writing
them like on loose leaf paper in math class.
And I was getting called out for that a lot.
I was like, but I couldn't seem to help myself.
So I had my early reading audience that, you know, age 10 or younger.
But it meant that I was like solid C in math, you know, and I could be an A or B in other
subjects. Yeah, I'm with you.
I honestly believe subjects, the ones that you're interested in, you're going to be better
at. Simple as that.
You want to be well-rounded, but, you know, you can only push so far.
And leaning into the things that you're passionate about is generally a great idea in
life. So I've tried to do that.
I think this was some success, at least.
Definitely. So at what stage with your gangliness and your looks and so forth, at what
stage do you start thinking, oh, perhaps you could be a model?
Did someone come up to you and say, we think you could be a model?
How did that all start for you?
It's funny because I was a tomboy, which was a term that was very widely used at the
time. Nowadays, tomboy is a kind of a strange term.
I think it's always been a bit weird, like because I'm into Hot Wheels cars and climbing
trees and that makes me a boy, you know, like tomboy.
But I was called a tomboy.
I was very unglamorous.
I actually went to Navy League and began that was my way of having my parents kind of
help me with my extreme shyness, because I was very introverted, was to have me go to
the local Navy League.
So I was a cadet, you know, like saluting and stuff from age 10 to 13.
And that helped me to come out of my shell a little bit.
And I had some terrifying experiences of like being on the parade square and having to
like, you know, blow a whistle or walk across or whatever.
I would sweat about it for days beforehand.
So that was a really interesting transition when I had age 14 to suddenly have modeling
agencies saying, hey, you should be a model.
I mean, I wore pants, I hated dresses.
It's like the classic classroom photo, you know, whatever year it was where I was sitting
in elementary school, they'd have me seated because I was so much taller than everyone
else. And my mom would be like, you have to wear a dress because it's the school photo
day. Right. And I didn't know how to sit in a dress.
So I have my legs just open like I was wearing pants.
And you could actually see like the blueberries on my cotton underwear or whatever.
And I'm like, this is the class photo.
Like, no one say anything to this child.
Anyway, so I had no idea.
And to go from that and like marching as a cadet to doing the catwalk was like a weird
transition for me.
Suddenly people are putting me in makeup and, you know, putting me in dresses.
And then that was strange.
So I wanted to be a novelist, but people don't come up to young girls and say, hey, you
should be a writer. You know, we do often come up and say, hey, you should be a model.
And I was very fortunate to have a conversation with my mom.
I remember really clearly when I was being scouted as it were and told, hey, you know,
you should you've got this potential.
Well, we need to send you to Europe to become a model and stuff.
And I was 14 and quite, you know, I was a kid.
Really, I had a mullet and braces, you know, like, like I was, you know, like it sort of
imagine David Bowie's Thin White Duke days.
Like, I look like I look like that as a 14 year old girl.
Right. And these people coming up and going, oh, you should be a model and you should be
in Europe. And I went with my mom.
We left the model agency and refused to commit to anything.
Drove up Mount Tolmi, which is a local spot here and parked and kind of looked out over
the city and the sun was going down.
And my mom was like, Tara, what do you want?
Like, is this something that you want for you?
And I decided that it was I didn't really know what it was, actually.
I didn't know what I was.
I was agreeing to her asking for, but I was like, I'm this sounds interesting.
And I'd love to see other places and I'd love to go to Europe.
And and so she said, OK, I'll support you then.
We'll all support your decision.
So she really treated me as an adult, being able to make my own decision and consent to
what I wanted for myself.
And the next year we went that summer, actually, we went off to Europe.
And my braces were fresh off, you know, my mullet was growing out.
And it was a beautiful thing.
We were in a model's apartment, very unglamorous things that they are, where
you're like a cheap rental for models while they're trying to get work.
And my mom and dad were with me.
I was very blessed for that summertime in Europe.
They left the window open just a smidgen for airflow and an army of mosquitoes came
in, bypassed them, went all the way to me on the futon in the other room and bit me
over 30 times all over the side of my face.
There were bites inside my ear, like like inside the folds of my ear, like like on my
nose, everything.
So I woke up just disfigured with this this huge.
I mean, I was completely swollen and with an allergic reaction, which, you know, if
you didn't have an allergy beforehand, let's get 40 bites.
And you're going to so so the modeling trip did not go so well.
From the modeling point of view, there was no there was no work.
What there was, though, was an opportunity to be in Europe with my family, with my mom
and dad. My sister chose not to go on that trip.
I think she was 16 and too cool to be hanging out with us kind of thing.
And that trip ended up being really important because we went back to Holland to my
mom's birthplace, met some of her living relatives there, saw her birthplace and
the following year she passed away from cancer.
So we had that, you know, it wasn't about modeling, but it was about that ability to
get her back to Holland, which none of us would have ever done.
I mean, they they spent kind of like their savings to get me to Europe to do this.
Like it was a big deal and we would never have got her there if it hadn't been for
that possibility of this modeling that she was trying to support for me.
So that was the very unusual beginning for me.
And I guess a year or so later, after she passed away and I was my dad's shadow for
some time, eventually I was like, OK, I'm going to have to go make something of
myself. I didn't know what that was, but I was told I was supposed to do this
modeling thing. So I went off to Europe and that's how I began in that career was
just like, I'm here now.
Apparently this is what I'm supposed to do.
I have to make something of myself to make me worthy of my mom's support, you
know, for this so beautiful.
Just want to take you back to that moment when you drive up the mountain and sitting
in a car and she treats you like an adult.
You know, that's just beautiful.
And then you have that moment when you go to Holland, that is all wrapped into one.
Like you said, it wouldn't happen otherwise.
It wouldn't definitely not have happened.
I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting this wrong.
My dad said at that time that he had never been on an airplane.
And, you know, like it was a big deal for these lower middle class people from
Vancouver Island.
A lot of people don't leave the island or the province or the country.
Certainly at that time, like in the you know, this is like 1989 at that point, it
wasn't the sort of thing like travel such a casual thing to so many people.
It wasn't casual to us.
And so us getting there really was miraculous and important.
And I have such fond memories and, you know, photos to cherish and all of that of
that trip with me as a geeky looking at that point, just barely 15 year old, you
know, with my mullet growing out and my braces freshly off and a nice big gap in
the middle and then the then the mosquitoes and the mosquitoes.
Yeah, absolute nightmare.
So me trying to cover with my hair.
I was never I didn't get any modeling work, as you can well imagine.
I'm not surprised, but you have some trauma.
You go home, you lose your mom, you decide then to go back.
Yeah, and things start happening quite quickly for you.
What was that like for you?
Because I imagine you're getting on that plane solo at that stage, are you?
Yeah, I got on the plane solo and I started basically knocking on doors.
I went to London first because of the language barriers with other countries.
And really, I did the most work in like Spain, Germany, Italy.
So a lot of work in Milan, a lot of work in Hamburg.
And what models tend to do is they do like a circuit kind of, you know, you'll
spend a few months doing the castings in one place and then, you know, they want
fresh faces, you go on to the next city.
So a lot of us would get to know each other and we'd be incredibly transient.
Like if you spent more than three months in Milan, like all of the models there
would have moved on and it would be a whole new group of people.
And some of us would be like literally fresh off the boat, which is very much
what I was like when I first arrived.
And some would have been seasoned veterans, you know, and it was good, bad
and horrible. It was all of the things.
And I wrote about that to an extent in the fictional woman, my memoir that came
out 10 years ago, I wrote about some of my experiences, which included, you know,
sexual assault, which included punching a photographer unconscious,
throwing a man down an escalator, throwing another one out of a moving vehicle.
And none of this by choice was because that was a fun thing to do.
Looks great in the movies.
You know, Hugh Jackman makes it look wonderful when you throw people out of
moving vehicles. That was not what I was looking for on those days.
But it was, you know, what I needed to do for self-defense.
And gangly, though I was, I still had a pretty good right hook.
So unfortunately, I had to use it.
And my teenage years, you know, that those those years from when I moved
to Europe through to my early 20s were were not pretty.
Like I would not wish it actually on anyone.
I'll be completely honest.
You know, some lovely modeling covers beautiful experiences, being able to
just see the world, experience different cultures, go to great museums,
but also to be really fending for myself in a very serious manner
in an adult world when I was not yet really an adult
was was not something I would recommend.
No. So was that just men being awful?
Yeah, these guys are pretty awful.
Yeah. Getting predators and just, you know, thinking that they could take
advantage of a young, beautiful woman.
Basically, a young, beautiful girl.
I think they really saw, you know, there's a there's a predatory
aspect of the modeling industry that's become perhaps more transparent
over the years, you know, like even here in Canada, Peter Nygaard, for example,
very at that time, powerful fashion mogul.
You know, he's just been done for several counts of rape and he's being,
you know, they're trying to extradite him to the US for the same.
And it's people like that that will be sometimes attracted to the industry
because it will expose them to young girls, you know,
that they will try to victimize.
So unfortunately, the industry has that element to it
and certainly did at the time that I was working, you know, in the 90s
and Europe was like such a free for all that way.
It was, you know, like you could be on a professional photo
shoot and have the male photographer just do extraordinary things.
That was the reality of the industry.
So I was very unpopular for like punching people and running out of shoots.
And instead of having the agencies go like, oh, that's horrifying.
You know, let's call the police. Let's help you out.
It'd be like, you know, you silly girl, you'll never work in this town again.
And that was the reality at the time.
And so coming up against that, you know, when you're 17, when you're 16,
17, 18 years old, it's just criminal.
So anyway, I was pretty good at throwing people across the room.
Yeah. Well, I'm glad you did.
Did you feel at any time, you know what?
This is not for me. I can't make a difference.
I need to get back to Vancouver.
I need to get back to that sense of family and community.
What was that like for you to sort of stick with it?
It took me a while to kind of figure out who I was and what I was doing.
I had put my dreams of being a writer on the on the back burner
because no one believed in me or saw me that way.
You know, my family supported me.
Now, they'd support me in whatever I was going to do.
But, you know, whether that was going to work or not,
was not going to be like up to my dad and my sister, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Whereas modeling was, you know, this opportunity.
So I began quietly writing and was working on my first novel called Fetish,
which is really, you know,
Mckaydee Vanderwaal for those people listening who read the series, you know,
and there were people who were like, wow, she's such a psycho magnet.
That's so unrealistic. I'm like, OK, study.
That was literally what you're going through.
Kind of, you know, it was a slightly amped up version of reality.
Just that incredible ability to to survive.
You know, that's what I think a lot of readers identified with as well.
And what I loved about Mac is that she kept surviving
no matter what was thrown at her.
And that's why I loved writing her character.
So I began writing that first book when I was 23.
I was still modeling.
And, you know, I'd go on a shoot and people asked me what I was doing.
I'd say, oh, I'm writing a novel.
And they'd just be like, anyway, it changed.
The subject was like, right, writing a novel.
But it was what I'd done since I was a kid.
I'd written stories since I was a kid and have some of those stories.
No one will ever read, of course, you know, on loose
leaf paper with doodles in the corner.
It's always been my passion.
And so when I was 25, I published my first novel and decided that's it.
I'm quitting modeling. I'm out of here.
Soon as I was sort of able to afford to quit,
that's basically what I did.
So at the age of 25, you decide to do what you know
that you wanted to do all your life.
You've got the talent for and that sort of stuff.
Was it at all scary walking away from what I imagine was more lucrative,
at least at that time, modeling and going into writing novels?
I was very fortunate that I won the Young Writers
Scarlet Stiletto Award and that got me a agent.
By the way, that award is judged blind.
So I was so concerned about being judged badly from my writing,
like that, you know, outside of my family or whatever.
Someone would read this and go like, oh, she's she's rubbish, you know,
that I entered this contest that's judged blind and won this
short story Young Writers Award.
And then that got me an agent who said it was so Anthony.
And she said, you know, are you working on anything?
I said, well, actually, I'm writing a novel.
She says, great, let's see it.
And I thought, bloody hell, I'll have to finish it.
Because, you know, we're through it, right?
And so that book there ended up being a bidding war for.
And that was my beginning as an author.
And that's a very privileged, lucky start.
I mean, there's many elements that went into that, but is very hard to break in.
So when that book came out in 1999,
you know, what was then devastating for me because the book became a bestseller
and got this audience and that series was a hugely successful
series for me for about a decade, you know, around the world out in 18 countries
and 12 different languages or 14 languages.
But when that first book came out in Australia and people knew me as a model,
the initially it was just like, well, obviously it was ghostwritten.
There's no way that she wrote this.
Right. It was devastating.
Because for me, I was like, I've been a writer my whole life.
I have to pay my rent like anyone else just because someone takes a photograph of me.
It doesn't mean I I'm not a human being who can do things,
who string words together, can have passion.
So that was like a giant wake up call to
see myself through the eyes of others as the modeling industry.
Obviously, it's a it's a bubble.
And I was like, wow, people really think models are stupid.
They don't realize that they're trying to pay their way through college.
They're trying to keep food on their table.
And like most actors as well, actors are not airheads.
They're people trying to get by.
Some of them becoming hugely successful like Hugh.
Many writers also, you know, they're scraping by and frankly,
are sort of many models, I'll be honest with you.
You know, it's it's not stable work.
There's not a good model union.
So it was kind of it was a mixed bag stepping into that.
So what was scary was not leaving modeling, but suddenly
coming to terms with the fact that all these people thought I was an idiot.
You know, I shouldn't even use that term idiot.
They thought that I was fake.
They thought I was like a one dimensional, like a photograph.
And that was a really weird.
It's very objective.
I realized how objectified I had been through the industry
and how the industry, you know, with all the predators as well,
how it's like, wow, I was like really like a one dimensional object
to so many people for so long.
Coming to terms with that was very difficult in my 20s
just to have that realization.
Feels like another lifetime ago.
It actually is, I feel.
But that was that was what was scary.
Was going, oh, my goodness, look at the way people see me.
Yeah, people aren't as curious back then as they perhaps are today
about other people.
I love the word curiosity now and being curious about people.
It just puts me in a better place to be understanding of everyone
and everyone's journeys and how they've got to where they've got
and get out of your bubble.
I certainly have needed to do that over the years.
I love that about you.
But things have also changed as well.
We have social media now.
And yes, you know, I did a documentary on the ABC called Cyber Hate.
So obviously, I've put forward some of the troubles with social media,
but there's also many benefits, which is why I use it.
And one of the things for me was that, you know, people saw my image
and then so I put out a book, but they never heard my voice.
They'd never had any direct exposure to me or my thoughts
or the things I was doing.
And social media allows us to do that, to express ourselves
without any gatekeepers, without, you know, editing and all of that
for better or for worse.
It's like, here I am.
And once people could see who I was and I could get out and speak
and then I was blogging and doing that way back, you know, the 90s.
That's what you did blog.
It changed everything.
But initially, it was like I was this stranger who was a photograph.
And that was really disturbing for me to see what that meant to some people.
So breaking out of that was a challenge.
How long do you think it took for you to be seen as the person that you are?
Oh, well, I've been so many people, Gus.
That's it. I know. I know.
It took me maybe to the till the fictional woman.
I mean, that's part of what the fictional woman was about was addressing
the stereotypes that we have around women and girls.
You know, the kind of the boxes we like to put people in.
We put men and boys into boxes as well.
So some of those stereotypes were still hanging around then.
And that that was a moment of breakthrough for me personally.
Scary. Now, that was scary because I, you know, I was really
very open about I was becoming an open book in a true sense.
And that was 10 years ago.
So it's been, you know, a lot of transition.
And it's funny to think that's been a decade ago.
And I've lived about 50 lifetimes since.
But anyway, can we talk about how many books you've sold?
Oh, you know, I don't know.
I actually don't want to know tens of millions.
I wish. No, I haven't sold tens of millions of books.
I'm sure it's not that high.
I've had 14 bestselling books have been sold into,
you know, 18 countries and 12 or 14 languages or whatever.
But I'm I'm no J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.
If most writers are very successful or nowhere near
what you see from those big writers out of, like, say, the US, you know,
I was down in the US recently doing a wonderful panel with some of those
immensely successful writers like David Baldacci and all that.
And like just being next to them and going like, well,
Michael Connelly, who I've interviewed, you know, it's another stratosphere.
So I'm not going to put myself in that basket.
I've been I've had some success as a writer.
I feel really privileged to have 14 books under my belt of fiction
and nonfiction to be successful enough to keep writing.
That is the goal for me so I can continue to do what I do.
And yeah, the Mac Vanderwall series was just such a blessing for me
because that was 10 years that I got to live with that character.
And she was beloved by many readers around the world.
And I still get letters about her, even though I, you know,
finished writing that series quite a while ago.
That's so lovely for you.
Like you say, you've had many, many different lives over your journey.
One that people don't know quite as much,
but one that you've had to really, really work hard at is your own health.
Yes. Could you take us through that journey
and what that must have been like for someone like you?
Yeah, look, I had a life changing hip injury in 2016.
So I'm coming up to eight years because it was the start of that year.
Coming up to the eight year anniversary soon.
And I developed from that something called complex regional pain syndrome,
which is a rare disorder.
I hear from Australians every day who have this disorder.
It seems to me under diagnosed, actually.
But it's considered a rare disease to give some context to this.
And, you know, I'm a pain champion for Pain Australia.
I'm a pain champion for the Canadian Pain Society.
I'm very passionate about the fact that if you feel pain, it's real.
The pain scales don't tell me whether or not it's real or not real.
Don't let anyone tell you it's not real or it's in your head and so on.
But to give some context around CRPS,
I do need to mention some of the stats around it.
And that's that it's considered to be the most painful
or one of the most painful conditions known.
It rates the highest on the McGill pain scale above childbirth
without anesthetic or amputation of a digit without anesthetic.
It is like being on fire.
And for me, that was mostly a cold fire.
I developed cold CRPS. It's cold.
So it was like initially it was my leg.
It started with the hip and went down the leg as it spread.
And then it was like my full leg and hip were immersed in cold ice,
like burning ice that I couldn't get out of.
And it was it's constant.
That's one of the marks of the disorder is that it's extraordinarily painful.
And the pain doesn't stop.
It just keeps going and going and going and classically worsens as well.
And unfortunately for me, after about five years of that,
and I was trying everything, Gus, I was trying everything.
It spread as well, spread to the full right side
so that it was like a ruler going down the center of my body.
And there are neurological reasons for this.
It's why it's called complex regional pain
syndrome, because it goes into regions of the body,
usually starts with a limb and then will spread into that full region.
And it can spread.
For me, it was ipsilateral spread.
So it went upwards. For some people, it can go sideways.
And now it was the full right side.
So it was, you know, my scalp side of my face, my right arm,
all of me like a ruler going down the middle.
And it's marked by this extreme pain, but also there's changes in circulation.
There's changes in functioning of the limb.
There's internal organ changes that affects a lot of body systems.
And you get temperature changes and color changes as well
from the lack of circulation and so on.
Some people get hot CRPS, which is more common,
which is seen kind of like a swelling and sweating,
like they get a lot of edema and redness.
And some people have the cold CRPS, which is slightly less common,
which I had, which is shrinking and it goes blue.
And you have a lack of circulation.
And so half of me would go blue.
I mean, you could actually see it from the top of my head
all the way down through my body that half of me would go blue sometimes.
And there's a Norse goddess
or a Norse spirituality being, if you will, called Hella.
She's not the one from the Marvel movie,
not Cate Blanchett, bless her.
But Hella in Norse mythology is often shown as being half skeleton and half flesh.
And it was like that.
I felt that half of my body was was sort of.
And the other half was pink and normal and functioning.
It meant that I couldn't wait bears.
I couldn't tolerate weight bearing, and that just increased.
That got worse and worse and worse until I was using a wheelchair.
And I was housebound for most people don't know,
is housebound for quite some time.
It was another reason to be here in Canada because I had family support
and probably the lowest of the low points.
There were quite a few would probably be when we moved
my bed into the living room, because otherwise I'd never see anyone.
I wouldn't be able to have any contact with life
because I could not really get out of bed.
And I couldn't tolerate weight bearing of any sort.
I had a lot of dizziness, again, affects all these different systems.
So people see the wheelchair and go, oh, you've got a mobility issue.
It's like, no, it's all of the invisible things.
That's just the visible difference that you see.
So, yeah, a lot of nausea, passing out, brain fog,
vision disturbance, you know, inability to regulate temperature
and gastroparesis.
So a lot of people with CRPS, if it's untreated over a long period,
they're at risk of needing a feeding tube.
And I was starting down that direction as well.
So I'll leave it there. It's not pretty.
How did you get through it?
It was many, many stages of healing for me eventually.
So I tried like everything.
So I had a lot of ketamine infusions.
I tried a lot of different pharmaceutical drugs.
My condition continued to worsen.
I did an excellent program at the Royal Jubilee Hospital
here in my hometown at their pain clinic.
And one of the things they were teaching for self-management was meditation.
Now, it's really annoying when you tell people, oh, you're in lots
and lots of pain, wait and try meditating.
You know, it's really annoying. Right.
But what they were doing was trying to get us to engage
a parasympathetic nervous system more effectively.
So I actually was like, wow, they're teaching meditation.
Well, I'm terrible at this right now because I'm in lots of pain.
But I'm going to try.
So I began trying box breathing.
I began trying meditation and they put me into a trial with virtual reality
where it was a virtual reality headset.
It was Oculus one that we were using and it was meditation apps on that.
And it had a great way of like kind of tricking
neurologically, like tricking your system into calm
because you had more cues for calm than you can necessarily manage,
like just just sitting down and trying to meditate.
So I tried these various tools and eventually found that they were working.
They were helping to calm me.
And one of the things they say in the program, which is very true,
is that you need to learn self-management because if you've, say,
got like 100 percent pain, which it really feels like with CRPS,
and it's very, very high on the scale.
So let's say you're in 100 percent pain or let's say, no, it's not me.
OK, you get 90 percent pain.
You're a nine out of 10.
So you're barely able to function.
That was a lot of my life at that time.
If someone gives you a painkiller, that word is very incorrect
because it didn't actually kill the pain.
It just it does dull it, though.
So now maybe it's knocked off 30 percent.
So now you're in 60 percent pain.
Right. So then you're going to be like, OK, what self-management can I do?
Maybe you're going to use a heat blanket, absent assaults, meditation, box breathing.
You're going to do these things.
Maybe that's going to bring it down another 30 percent.
So now you just have 30 percent pain and you can function like at three out of 10 pain.
I'm like, at that point, at least I was like happiest person on earth if I could achieve that.
I mean, it was almost impossible for me to achieve it.
I'm like, get me down to anything below a five.
And I'm like, yes, you know, just just trying to get it down to that level.
So I began to take those self-management tools more seriously.
And that was important for me.
They'd been talked down a bit in Australia, I felt.
So I hadn't given them their due.
And as I continued to meditate, I started trying complementary practices.
And I use that term very carefully.
They're not alternatives to the other stuff, but they're compliments to it.
And that included Reiki treatments.
And again, Reiki and meditation and box breathing,
all these methods help the body to get into parasympathetic mode.
And the reason why that is such a key to healing is that when you're stuck in sympathetic,
which is so you've got the two, you've got fight or flight, which is sympathetic.
You've got rest and digest, which is parasympathetic.
If you have CRPS or PTSD or a very severe chronic pain condition,
your body is dominant in the fight or flight sympathetic mode.
You cannot heal in that mode, like on a cellular level,
your body needs to get into parasympathetic so you can sleep,
rejuvenate, recover from wounds, from injuries, from cellular repair, all of that.
So getting your body into that parasympathetic mode is actually a really important,
scientifically proven, vital piece of the puzzle.
And I didn't learn that until really I was in that pain program.
So getting into that parasympathetic mode worked.
And then eventually, after three years of research and saving,
we finally got down to the Spiro Clinic in Arkansas.
You might have heard of like Bella was a young girl, 10 years old.
She was on 60 Minutes in Oz and current affair recently getting down there.
She went to Spiro Clinic as well from Australia.
It's one of very few places in the world.
I don't actually personally know of any other places that specialize in CRPS in that way.
As a rare condition, it's very difficult to find
treatments that work to find care or even find doctors have heard of it.
And at that clinic, they have rehabilitated and gone into remission.
I don't know, many hundreds, probably thousands of people with CRPS.
So unfortunately, it's all out of pocket.
Insurance doesn't cover it.
And it was a matter of like, we're getting a caravan,
taking the whole family down, the pets and everything and living in Arkansas.
We're living in this town in Arkansas and I'm going to the clinic every day.
And after about 165 hours of dedicated treatment with multiple modalities,
some of which were very high tech and some of which were very kind of like holistic,
this range of treatments, I got into remission and my life completely changed.
And that was just like two months ago.
So I'm still adjusting, frankly.
It feels like a miracle.
The pain level right now?
Oh, I feel like a zero, yeah.
No, it's extraordinary.
As it started getting better in Arkansas, you started to believe and then all of a sudden
That headspace must have been incredibly fantastic for you after years of that pain.
Look, I always held a hope.
I was told multiple times that I would never recover and my condition would never improve.
And I was told that point blank by specialists and doctors many, many times.
And I personally just was like, I can't accept that.
I have to keep trying.
And so I tried a lot of different things.
And unfortunately, you know, I would have these moments even a few months before that.
I was trying transcranial magnetic therapy and I couldn't tolerate it because the CRPS
has spread up and it's cranial, the work they're doing there.
And I was like, I can't, I was actually just about throwing up.
And I was like, I can't do this.
And I was so devastated because I had held up hope that this TMS treatment was going
I'm probably getting the name of it wrong.
But I tried so many different modalities.
I tried so many different things.
I'd been in hospital getting ketamine and then had the CRPS spread.
I had some rough, really rough letdowns.
It was hard to keep holding on to hope.
But I always just kept trying to find new ways to keep moving, find ways to adapt,
trying to find ways like, okay, I can't seem to do, I couldn't do physiotherapy or Pilates.
I tried all the different experts in those areas, would give them all my medical files
and lots of consultations.
I would do it and it would make me worse and it would cause more problems and flares
and risk of spread.
And eventually I found, okay, so that's not working.
And water walking was one of the things that worked for me.
So getting in the pool, I could do water exercise if the water was the right temperature.
I had very bad alidinia, which is like sensitivity to touch temperature and all that.
That's completely off the chart.
That gives you a pain response to like, you know, a feather or a bit of hair falling across
your knee or a breeze.
Like, yeah, I would often, I'd have like a big, like a
sock and a stocking on one leg.
I had these gloves that like, like sort of warm, like warmer gloves, like kind of like
knit things that I would wear just like, just on the one arm.
People would be like, wow, that's a fashion statement.
I'm like, yeah, I'd have like one totally normal side.
And then this side was completely covered because it was going blue and it was freezing
cold and painful and that cold fire, you know?
So I just kept trying to find things that worked and I can't stress enough for everyone
listening right now who's experiencing pain or a condition of any sort, ill health of
any sort, mental health of any sort that is concerning, causing problems in their life
to just keep trying to find a way.
What works for you?
It's going to be different than what works for the next person.
And I was very fortunate to get to the Spiro clinic that we could save for years and afford
to do that and that it was successful.
And I'm still watching, you know, their online feed and seeing people that, you know, I was
doing the program with now graduating as well.
You know, I got to ring the bell.
I graduated after nine and a half weeks and rang the bell and it was miraculous.
And it's the little things like just having someone call my name and like turning around
without pain or like, oh, I ran across the lawn to go get something.
I was like, I just ran across the lawn.
Like, it's only a few steps.
But to me, it's just like, I haven't been able to do that in eight years.
It's a life changer.
That's just fantastic.
And knowing you like I do, I'm just so pleased that you're okay.
And the way you've explained it, oh, my God, the pain.
I just can't imagine how you got through it.
So were you able to do any real work through that?
Like how hard, like, could you get pumping out bestsellers?
God, I wish I was pumping them out.
My publishers would say something different.
Yes, I'm always about keeping that positive outlook, but it was extremely hard.
It took a lot longer.
I lost all my employment.
The thing is when you're visibly disabled as well, because by then there was no hiding
that I was using a wheelchair and I didn't want to hide.
And I wanted to be an ally in solidarity with the disability community as well.
Nobody hired me anymore.
No one would give me paying work.
And, you know, I wish that wasn't true.
And I know that's not necessarily true for everyone,
but that was my experience.
Thankfully, my publishers stuck by me, but they had to be very patient.
And, you know, my even my current book, it's way behind schedule.
The one behind that before that was also way behind schedule.
And that's not easy for them.
They have publishing schedules in their business.
And, you know, they just had to wait a lot longer because I needed to.
Like there was a long period where I was in bed and coffee isn't necessarily great for CRPS
because you're already in fighter, like your body thinks it's in fighter flight,
like that's fighting for its life, you know.
But you've also got brain fog and fatigue and everything
because it's exhausting being in that much pain all the time.
You're never feeling refreshed, like waking up ready for the day.
You're always, always fatigued, which is a completely different thing than being tired.
But I would have to like have a coffee and get like that hour, hour and a half of brain space
and try to do the work.
And then I would recover for the rest of the day.
But there was no other paid work that I was doing at that time.
And that was for quite a stretch.
And I think even like people in Australia, they haven't seen me for a bit.
So they probably don't realize quite how much time has passed, but it was a lot of years.
And I'm so lucky that I had that support from my publishers, HarperCollins
and Penguin Random House in the US.
I'm so lucky that I had the support of my close friends and my family.
But it was, you know, there were times that I really had to come to terms with the fact
that everything in my life that was before was gone.
And I had to grieve that, you know, I had to grieve at that point.
I didn't know if I would go on remission.
In fact, people don't really talk about remission when they talk about CRPS.
They don't even tell you that remission is possible.
Remission is possible.
It's far too rare, but it's possible.
Like what's happened with me is against the odds, you know?
And that shouldn't be the case.
Everybody should have access to the treatment that they need.
But yeah, there were long periods of time where it was just like
there's nothing of me left from what was before.
And I had to grieve that.
I grieved that for many years.
And now it's a new beginning for me and I feel so privileged to have this next chance.
And the world wants you to have that and the world's waiting for it.
That is awesome from our point of view.
So we could talk forever.
I'm very verbose.
I'm coming across to Vancouver for the TED Talk in April next year.
I'm going to somehow work out how to see you whilst I'm on that trip.
That would be great.
Let's do the fast five questions, which is sort of how we end our podcast.
So these ones should be simple.
Have you got a favorite quote, a quote that you live by?
There's a Dr. Seuss one because I grew up on Dr. Seuss,
which is don't cry because it's over.
Smile because it happened.
And that for me, I had to really stick with that.
Don't cry because it's over.
Smile because it happened.
It's all it's a privilege to be able to experience life, you know?
Now, that's beautiful.
Favorite holiday destination.
It's really hard to pick because it's like everywhere in Australia right now.
I want to be in Connect.
Tofino, BC, I'm going to say, because we got ourselves this caravan to go down and
The medical journey was like the whole family living out of this little caravan.
But taking the caravan now on a holiday when it's like about a holiday instead of medical
treatments, we like to go to Tofino, which is like the far west coast of the west coast.
It's the wild, wet west coast.
And it's one of those places where you're going to see blue whales and humpback whales
I've been going there since I was a kid and it's very special to me.
Are you much of a reader?
I know you're a writer, but do you read other people's books?
Do you like being a reader or do you listen to the audiobooks?
For quite some time during my illness, I was unable to read because I had visual issues.
Now I finally can read again.
Like I read a book the other day and was like that was the first time in eight years.
So I love audiobooks.
I listen to them all the time.
I also love books.
I'm a voracious reader and have been since I was a kid.
And favorite one?
So this is going to get me in trouble because if I pick a fiction book, then all my friends
will be like, you picked so and so and you didn't pick my book.
You're going to get me in lots of trouble.
So I'm going to go with nonfiction because although I write some nonfiction, it's more
fiction that I'm known for.
And then it's not so much of a fraught territory.
So I'm going to go with two books that helped me in my healing.
Breath by James Nestor.
Deceptively simple topic.
Really vital information in there and he does it beautifully.
And Putting Out the Fire by Dr. Katinka, who's the head doctor at the Spiro Clinic.
It was the book about CRPS that was the most helpful for me in my journey.
So anyone out there with complex regional pain syndrome or who suspects they have it
or their friend or loved one has it.
Pick up a copy of that book.
Hard because I love movies.
Princess Mononoke, the Studio Ghibli film.
It's probably my favorite.
I mean, the Ghibli films are just so famous for having these strong female protagonists,
like central figures.
And there's two amazing kick-ass women in that one, sort of the villain, if you will,
But Miyazaki is just so good at creating those characters and bring them to life.
And it's such a great story about kind of the problems with the war machine, industrial war,
you know, complex, if you will, and the beauty of nature.
So definitely a fun movie and one the kids can watch too.
And favorite charity because Shoren Partners, where I'm sitting in Sydney today,
have been a great supporter of my charity, Gotcha for Life,
but also a wonderful supporter of this podcast.
So every guest gets 10,000 to give away to a charity of their choice.
So who would you like to give that money to?
And what will that charity do with the 10,000?
This was really hard for me because I'm involved as a volunteer ambassador
for a variety of really worthy organizations.
But I'm going to say Pain Australia is who I am nominating
because I'm so passionate about this area of pain.
There's millions of Australians living in pain, not getting the support that they need.
And that's what Pain Australia does and strives for.
And they connect in again with the government and legislation to try to roll out,
you know, more support on the ground for people with pain
and living with chronic pain conditions, including CRPS and all sorts of pain conditions.
So, yeah, I'm going to nominate Pain Australia
and just hope that there's a better future for people living with pain in Australia.
Well, I'm hoping that 10 grand will give them a little lift
and we'll make sure that we get that to them and let them know that that's from you.
It's been a lovely just over an hour chatting to you.
I'll see you again in April back in Canada.
That'll be so fabulous.
Thank you so much for the privilege of this chat.
It's really been an honor to be able to speak about this,
especially being on the other side and being in remission.
It's a dream for me just to be able to have you shine a light on this.
I'm feeling a bit emotional talking about it.
You shining a light means a lot.
What you do means a lot.
And I know you do a lot for suicide prevention.
I want to thank you for that.
And I also want to point out that CRPS, unfortunately,
has the tag of being called the suicide disease
because of the difficulty people have living with this.
So thank you for all that you do.
I really appreciate it.
And it's been such a pleasure.
Well, what a journey that Tara Ray had to go through.
I hope you enjoyed the chat as much as I had bringing it to you.
Her $10,000 going to pay in Australia,
and you can understand exactly why she did that.
Next week, another wonderful guest.
Hope you're enjoying the podcast series.