This big summer book club episode is all about mental health. You know how passionate I am
about getting rid of the stigma that surrounds mental health and sharing our stories so we can
feel less alone and feel that there is a way out. I'm a huge believer in travelling hopefully,
and being hopeful that we can get through it. And why I talk in that way is because of my own
experiences of depression and anxiety. As many of you would know, I had terrible postnatal
depression after the birth of both of my girls. And I still grapple at times with my mental health.
I love my antidepressants. I share that with you all. Of course, it's a very personal thing
whether or not you decide to go on medication. But I know for me, it's helped me to stay me
and it's saved my life. And do you know another way I get through is by reading people's stories.
And what I want to share with you is a number of books that have helped me enormously,
that they've really touched me and given me inspiration and hope at times when I haven't
felt very hopeful at all. First of all, Brooke Shields wrote an extraordinary memoir called
Down Came the Rain. And I didn't realise until I read this book that Brooke Shields had terrible
postnatal depression. And she writes about what she went through in such a raw and at times
confronting way. And I remember when I read her story, I found it incredibly comforting.
Because at the time, I hadn't been really open with anyone else apart from my husband
and those closest to me about my own experience of postnatal depression. I had felt enormous shame
that I had postnatal depression. Wrongly, I had thought I'm a failure. I realise now, of course,
I'm not a failure. But it was through reading Brooke Shields's very confronting book that I
came to terms with what I had been experiencing wasn't me being a bad mum.
It helped me see that I had an illness, an illness that I needed help to get through. And I got that
help by not only sharing my struggles with those closest to me, but by going to a psychiatrist,
and then by taking medication. But it was through Brooke Shields's book, Down Came the Rain,
that I found I had permission to talk more widely about my experience. Because what happened was
that I realised if I didn't share my experience, I was doing other mums, other women a disservice.
Because before I shared my experience, I'd spoken about my family's experience
of growing up with a mum who has bipolar disorder. But it wasn't until I myself had a mental illness
that I realised the shame that you can feel. So once I was well enough, and thanks to reading
Brooke Shields's book, I realised I had to also share my story because I would never ever want
to think that there is another mum out there thinking that she is not enough. You are enough.
And if you need help, please reach out. Another book that has helped me enormously is one that's
called Sane New World, and it's written by Ruby Wax. Some of you may be very familiar with
Ruby Wax. She is a comedian, a journalist and a very, very funny woman. She had a series on
British TV where she would interview famous people and got them doing really quite extraordinary,
quirky and out of the box things. She was very brave in what she would do. But at the same time
as she was doing this, she was grappling with her own terrible depression and anxiety. And she
had a breakdown. And she's someone who doesn't do things by halves. And part of her recovery
was actually doing a degree in understanding her brain and brain chemistry. So she wrote this
remarkable book, Sane New World, about that. And in it she shared her experiences of mindfulness.
And I know that a lot of people now know about mindfulness, but for me it was something that
I'd always sort of struggled with. I was like, what do you mean? It's not as simple as that.
I can't get my head around that. But it was really through reading Ruby Wax's book that it helped me
distill what being mindful was all about and how there might be different techniques
that work for you, mightn't work for someone else, that you find effective. And so I now still,
when I find myself feeling overwhelmed, as I know so many of us can, I think about my breathing.
I drop my shoulders. I think, what are my feet doing now? So as I talk to you, I had my legs
crossed, but I'm putting them on the ground to really ground myself. So if you're looking for
some techniques, some practical tools, but also some laughs, I really recommend Sane New World
by Ruby Wax. The final book on my list, and as you can tell, this is something I feel very strongly
about talking about mental health, but that final book for me is Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig.
I am a massive fangirl of anything that Matt Haig writes. He has this very clever and beautiful
way with words that sum up enormous emotions, but he does it in such a simple and moving way.
I want to recommend all of his books, but why I've put Reasons to Stay Alive
is that Matt introduces himself to us when he talks about how he managed to stay alive,
how he endured the most terrible depression, and at times didn't want to stay alive,
but he talks about what that looked like for him, and by him opening his heart in that way,
it makes you feel less alone, and it's a book that I come back to time and time again.
I also love following Matt on Instagram because often he'll put his quotes and thoughts there,
and I find I get enormous solace in those, and if I could share one with you before I go to
the guest whose book I really would like to share with you finally,
this is a quote from Reasons to Stay Alive that I just love.
Once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive.
You won't even be sure in fact whether the storm is really over, but one thing is certain.
When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm
is all about, and I'd like to thank Matt for holding my hand as I have walked through the
storm and offering me hope that even though we come out as different people, we're actually
even better people because we realise we are flawed, but we are beautifully flawed and
imperfectly wonderful in every single way. So now that brings me to someone who I think
is wonderful in every single way, and that is Julie Goodwin. I spoke with Julie earlier this year.
We cried together, we held hands as I often hold people's hands on this podcast
as they open their hearts to me, and Julie shared her story in her remarkable memoir,
Your Time Starts Now, and many of you know Julie as the first winner of MasterChef Australia.
She's warm, she's honest, and she has this chaotic way of cooking, but there's so much
more to her story, and in case you missed it, here is this conversation with Julie. She opens
up about her own mental health diagnosis, overcoming addiction, and so much more.
It was such a special chat, and just a heads up, we do talk about some heavy topics.
Julie Goodwin, what a treat to have you in the podcasting studio. Congratulations on your
extraordinary memoir, which I inhaled over a weekend. Oh, wow. Wow. Oh, thank you.
I absolutely loved it. It's called Your Time Starts Now, and for me, there were so many moments that
I was so moved reading it, and my daughters were looking at me. They're like, Mum, because I'm very
expressive. They're like, what's happening? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with that.
Yeah. They're like, what's going on? And for me, what it was is you are so honest in this book
about mental illness and addiction, and they were things that really resonated with me.
Yeah. Well, I think they resonate with a lot of us, but they're really hard to talk about,
really hard to talk about, and you've just got to reach a point in your life where you go, well,
you know what? I'm either going to own it, I'm going to put it out there, I'm going to let
daylight shine on it and stop feeling ashamed of myself, or it's going to live inside me and
keep me sick. And those are my choices, really. Yeah. But what a choice you've made, because you've
very much put it all out there in the daylight. And I think that point you make about if you
don't put it out there, it does make you sick, doesn't it? It does. And I actually think, and
talking about this mental health, honestly, we're all using those words more. We've got corporate
responsibility around it. There's TV commercials about it. There's days dedicated to it. But I
actually think that what we have to address is within ourselves. So I don't think there's
very many people in the world who wouldn't want to reach out to someone else who's struggling,
but I think that so many of us, and whether it's generational, I'm not sure, but I do know
that a lot of us are raised with the idea that if you say, this is hard, or I can't manage this,
that you're weak, or you're ungrateful, or you're unable to put things in perspective,
or that there's always somebody worse off than what we are, and therefore we have no right to
complain. That was the messaging I had internalised. And so when things got hard,
when I wasn't coping, when I'd taken too much on, I didn't want to let anyone down. I didn't
want to appear incapable, or like a flake, or like an irresponsible person, or an unreliable person.
So I just kept taking it on, and taking it on, and taking it on. And we've just got to be allowed
to say, this is too much. This is too much. And I think so many of us don't. And so all that
mental health messaging doesn't mean anything if we don't examine our own lives and say, well,
you know, I'm prepared to help whoever needs help. Almost all of us, I think, would be that person,
but so many of us would go, but I won't do that. You know, I'm grateful for everything. There's
nothing wrong in my life. We've got to forgive ourselves, and allow ourselves, and just have
that part of the conversation. And that's what moved me so much about your message.
Why it resonated with me is because I had terrible postnatal depression,
especially after the birth of Allegra, who's now 17. And initially, for me, it was very much that
same kind of messaging that you're talking about, that I was like, I shouldn't be feeling like this.
I finally got this baby, this healthy baby, this beautiful family. No. And I kept pushing that away.
And I hadn't fully appreciated shame and the shame that I felt. And that shame kept me silent,
not forever, but it did silence me. And I think what you're doing is saying, no, let's,
if we can, push through that shame. Yeah. We're going to help each other do that too.
You know, I find that dismissive kind of first world problems, eye roll is really damaging,
actually, because, yeah, sometimes you use that phrase to sort of say, oh, come on, you know,
oh, you dropped your second iPhone and chipped the screen, first world problems. But also,
it's used to put people down when they say, actually, I'm finding this really hard. You know,
I find it hard to be a new parent. And people go, oh, but it's so much harder for other people. And,
you know, you've got a roof over your head. And, you know, I've even had it post this book coming
out, you know, some of the commentary on interviews. People who haven't read it,
I might add, oh, well, that certainly sounds like she was in a private mental hospital. Lucky her,
she should have tried the public system. It's like, you know, I did try the public system,
not by choice, but, you know, this idea that we're not allowed to say something was hard,
unless it was absolutely the hardest, worst thing that a human being can go through,
means that there really should only be one person on earth at a time who's allowed to complain. And
that is not human life. Sometimes we struggle, and we've got to be allowed to say, this is hard.
I'm struggling with a lack of sleep. I'm struggling with overwork. I'm struggling with
guilt that I'm not doing everything perfectly for my new baby. You know, I'm struggling with guilt
because I have a roof over my head, and I have a partner who's helping me in this. And I have a
perfectly healthy baby that didn't take me years and years to have. And I still have this thing
going on in my brain and in my body that is making me depressed. We've got to be allowed
to say that without being shamed for it. And that is what, again, I think is so beautiful
about your memoir, Your Time Starts Now, is that you give us permission to have these sorts of
conversations. You write about that you felt you probably did have postnatal depression,
but you weren't going at the time to say that because you were doing that sort of messaging of,
no, no, I'm fine. There's nothing wrong with me.
Oh, the poor nurse who did the questionnaire and basically told me, it was like, how dare you?
How dare you call me that? You know, and that was pretty much my reaction to a number of practitioners
over the years who said, we need to look at this. And I'm just like, no, I will not. I will not. I
will not have that word applied to me. That is not the case. I'm a grateful person. I'm optimistic.
My cup is always half full. You know, I mean, my cup had a massive hole in the bottom of it.
As many of our cups do. You can fill your cup as much as you want, but when it's cracked,
you've got to mend the cracks and then you can fill the cup.
And what was it that you think you were afraid of?
Oh, just my whole idea of who I was being thrown out the window. You know, if I'm depressed,
then how does that sit with all the things that I've tried to be my whole life? And I've worked
so hard towards my whole life and the personality that I've built for myself, some of which comes
from unresolved trauma, some of which, you know, we are the sum of all the things that we have done
and that have been done to us and all the experiences that we've had. And I've very
carefully constructed things to protect me, including being, you know, shiny and competing
all the time, doing well with everything I tried. And just to be diagnosed with a mental health
condition did not fit. It didn't fit, rejected it, gone out. No, it was as simple as that.
I'm not a person who does anything by halves. I was frightened that if I got a diagnosis,
that that would become my world. And it did for a while because I wouldn't address it.
And you live and you learn. And now I understand that experiencing depression,
experiencing anxiety, that's something that I guess will crop up every now and again
in my life. And that's what it is. But my beautiful therapist, who you would have read about,
Heather, who I love, said to me, and this is something she only said a week ago to me,
just over a week ago, because I was cranky. You know, I'm doing all the things, Jess,
I work really hard to be well now. It's its own form of discipline. And I'd had a couple of really
flat days, you know, where my face was doing that thing where I had to arrange my muscles into
appropriate expressions. And it's exhausting, you know. And I just said to her, I feel really
ripped off because I'm working really hard to not be depressed anymore. Is my medication not
working? What's gone wrong? What's gone wrong? And she's like, depression, sadness, she said,
it's appropriate sometimes. We feel grief. We feel stress. She said, look at what you're about to do.
You're about to release this book into the public. It's going to be taken out of your hands.
It's appropriate to be stressed. It's appropriate to have these emotions.
But what we're going to do is think of it as a hotel. And you're going to check in. And then
you're going to check out and come home and come home to all the things that make you happy,
to come home to love and come home to creativity and compassion and come home to your granddaughter.
And, you know, so you can check into that hotel as long as you understand that you can check
out. And that is an analogy that I can carry with me for the rest of my life.
And it's an analogy that I'm going to use. And I know our listeners, because I hear that and I
think, yes, I almost feel a lightning on my shoulders. Like it's sort of like, ah, it is okay.
And you talking about feeling cranky, just as of last week. Also, that's, I think, almost part of
your makeup and mine too. And for many women, I think of our age and generation, that we sort
of have to wear these masks and we have to be perfect. And if we're going through depression
or anxiety, we have to be the perfect patient and do all the right things and-
Five-row at every group session.
Yes. And tick all the boxes. And so therefore that will make us well. And that's not life, is it?
No. And it's irritating.
Because I like things to be tidy. And it's just, there's nothing tidy about being a human being.
It's messy. And I, you know, I just feel like maybe we've got to embrace that a little bit,
sit in it a little bit. And yeah, occasionally check into the sad hotel and eat the crappy room
service and have a shower with the water that's hot enough. But while I'm there, I can go, well,
you know, at least I get to go home.
Yes. And also, and you're right about this, be compassionate on yourself and be gentle
with yourself because that is difficult.
Oh, that made me really cranky too. Just your compassion is not complete until you
use it on yourself. I'm far out. I thought I was compassionate. I thought I was a compassionate
person. But do you know, some of these things that I've gone through and that I've put myself
through and that I've put my family through and some of the shame that I've had to really
chew on and digest and live with inside me has made me a more compassionate person.
I'm far slower to leap onto that high horse and gallop off into the sunset. You know,
I'm far less likely to judge other people because I know what it's like. I know what it's like to
feel that way. And I know what it's like to be in the grip of something that makes you feel that way
every single day and to not know what to do about it.
And the thing is, as many of us do, we keep going. We put the band-aids on. And you also share
part of that band-aid for you was alcohol, was that glass of wine at the end of the day.
And sometimes then that can get out of hand, can't it?
Well, totally. It became the thing, the only thing that would slow me down enough to sleep.
So my brain was just on overdrive and that's because I was working far too much and I had a
whole lot of all this underlying stuff that was unprocessed. And that literally at the end of the
day, if I didn't slow my brain down, I could put my head on the pillow and not sleep. And it would
just fizz and skyrocket around my head all night. And, you know, after a while you get a little bit
bit resistant to it and so you need a little bit more. And then, you know, I'd done that on and off
throughout my adulthood. And because I could do it on and off, I thought, well, it ain't a problem
because whenever I need to, I can stop. But I reached a point where I couldn't. I reached a
point where I wanted to and I couldn't. And in the past, I'd always been able to like, okay,
obviously I'm pregnant. I'm not going to drink. I'm breastfeeding. I'm not going to drink. I'm
on the radio. I've got to get up at 4am in the morning. I'm not going to drink. I won't drink
through the week. I won't drink through the week. Or at one point I stopped for two years. I thought,
this is, this feels a bit problematic. So I stopped for two years and I did that, you know,
but then this last time around, I'm like, okay, I've got to stop. I've got to stop.
I'll stop next week. I've got to stop. Next week rolls around. Well, and I couldn't, and I couldn't
loosen its grip on me. And that's where I thought hell, whole hell, whole fresh level of hell.
And that became just another bloody thing that I was sick about and ashamed of and felt like crap
about, you know, and needed to be addressed. I hope though, that you don't feel that shame now
because there were times when I was reading your story and I just wanted to give you the biggest
hug and just say, no, stop being so hard on yourself. There's a section there where you
write about drink driving when you were pulled over and how that was the worst thing in your life.
And understandably, yes, it is an awful thing, but you were so, so hard on yourself about that.
And I really wanted to take you and say, Julie, it's okay. Yeah, but it wasn't okay. And I will
always carry terrible guilt and shame about that thing, trying to work on the shame because, you
know, that's the, I am bad as opposed to I did something bad. I'll never lose the, I did something
bad because I did. But what that did was I just realised in that moment, how far away from who I
am I had gone. And, you know, like I say, quite often in this, it's not a fairy tale. It's not
a Hollywood movie. There's no tidy story arcs. Wouldn't it be neat and tidy if I just went,
well, now I've hit rock bottom. I'm not going to drink ever again. And we all live happily
ever after. It just didn't work that way. It took a lot longer for me. And it, you know,
and I went through really, really bleak stuff before I could start working my way back towards
light. You know, but in that moment, that was the worst thing I've ever done in my life. It was the
worst night of my life. I'm working at getting past it, but it just remains there as this terrible
thing. And the good thing is that I know that will never happen again. I don't drink anymore at all.
And I've changed my life. The parts of me that needed that alcohol have been nurtured back to
health and brought out of the dark into the light and are now an integrated part of who I am and how
I go about my life. So I don't actually need to slow my brain down like that anymore. I don't
crave that anymore. I just don't need it. It took a lot of work to get there. A lot of work to get
there. It was hard, but it gets easier every day. And I would say to anyone, and I don't preach,
Jess, I do not preach because I'm not in a position to. All I can talk about with any authority is what
I went through. But I have been asked, how do you know it was a problem? I would say anyone saying
to themselves, maybe it's a problem. If you've even had to ask yourself the question, maybe just
examine it a little. Maybe just examine it a little. And if it's not, then it's not. And if it is,
then maybe nip it before it gets you by the balls and won't let you go.
Because as you know, addiction, alcohol, drugs, whatever it might be, often is hand in hand
with mental illness because it's a way of self-soothing, dealing with symptoms, numbing
things. But it comes hand in hand with that. It totally does. And I think there's a sort of
a chicken and egg thing going on there. And if you're in AA, a lot of those organisations say
you become mentally ill because of your addiction. And I would say I didn't take up drinking
for many, many years after I was diagnosed with depression or attempted diagnosis with depression.
For me, there's no chicken and egg question. I know that I had mental health issues before
I ever had alcohol issues. And I do talk in the book about trauma, about childhood trauma and
complex PTSD and that sort of thing, that there's the saying that not all dogs are German shepherds,
but all German shepherds are dogs. So not everyone who's experienced trauma ends up with an addiction.
But in my experience, and I've met a lot of addicts through this whole thing, everyone with
an addiction has a trauma. Everyone. I did not meet a single person with an addiction problem. And
the thing about that is that when we're talking ordinary people, you know, we're talking ordinary
people who found themselves in a position where they are hurting other people, they're spending
money they don't have, they're engaged in behaviours that they don't see as what they
want for their lives. Nobody chooses that. Nobody goes, you know what, today I want to
piss everybody off. I want to make my beloved partner hurt. I want to not be there for my kids.
I want to, you know, leave my colleagues in the lurch. Nobody wakes up with that as their
intention for the day. But when you're addicted to something, that's quite often what you do.
And the reason that you do it is because there's unprocessed crap that needs to be dealt with. And
I'm just here to say that for me, processing that and the bloody painful it is to do,
but processing that moved me through that addiction out the other side.
You talk as well there about childhood trauma. And you touch on in your book that you were abused,
sexually abused when you were a child. And you don't talk a lot about that.
Why is that? Well, partially because it's really bloody awful to think about. It's really awful to
write down. Partially because, you know, I think that in relating some of these experiences,
it's more important that people see the similarities between us, not the differences,
which is the reason why I didn't write, well, this is how many glasses of wine I had at night.
Because I don't want anyone to go, oh, wow, that's way more than me. I'm fine. And I don't
want anyone to go, well, she calls that a problem. That's not a problem. You know, this is a problem.
It doesn't matter. What matters is what you were using it for and how it impacted your life and
what you were doing. The reason I don't put detail around that was partially because it's hard to.
And secondly, because really the only reason I put it in there is, well, first of all,
because it gave me some context for the stuff that happened subsequently, which I actually had
never put together until I wrote this book. I didn't see the timeline until I wrote it down.
This happened at seven. I remembered at 16. This happened at 17. Oh, do you think that's connected?
And then, you know, my life kind of went a little bit to hell in those couple of years.
And I didn't even realise that it was at the time that that memory came back,
that the wheels fell off my life then. And at 17, you attempted to take your life.
Yes, I did. Because of now, as you say,
you put the pieces together because you were sexually abused when you were seven.
The memory came back and I, with that memory, was just, oh, my God, so much shame and just this
feeling of being filthy dirty. And so the other reason to write about it at all,
like it was so easy, I really very nearly didn't. But then it wouldn't have been true.
The other reason to write about it is just because of the therapy that I've done since,
is internal family systems. And it talks about the different parts of yourself and how they
step up to help you in certain times of your life. And my seven-year-old
was stepping in in ways that were unhelpful at the end of the day.
And I needed to bring her back in from the cold and say, this is not your shame.
This is not for you to bear anymore. You're going to be okay. And I want anyone else who's
experienced anything like that to understand that that part of yourself shouldn't be banished from
you. That little child, you wouldn't do it if a little child came up to you and said, I'm hurting.
You wouldn't say, I don't want to think about you. Get out of here. You would say, this isn't your
fault. And that was a process of such lightning for me that I just want anybody who's holding
onto something like that that's making them sick inside. Or you might not even know yet
the connection between something that happened in your childhood and what's going on for you now.
If what's going on for you now is not your best life, then find someone who can help you do that
work because it could really be the difference between life and death. Thank you for sharing
in that way. You're an extraordinary woman, Julie. You really are. You are so brave and
beautiful. And for you to be vulnerable in this way, it helps so many people. Thank you. I hope
you are aware of that. And when you have cranky moments, because I'm such a believer in what you
do in terms of sharing our stories, it's how we make sense of our place in the world. It's how we
can understand not only ourselves, but help other people. And you are doing that by what you do.
So many people know you from MasterChef and this beautiful smile that you have and that sort of
exterior. But I think even more so what you're doing now is so much more powerful for people.
I thank you for that. I really do. Thank you. That's my hope. That's my hope. And
actually in trying to figure out what the hell's the purpose of all of this, what did I go through
this for? And I think it's important for me to find a silver lining, to find a purpose,
to find a reason for things. If talking about it does that for someone else, then that's enough.
That's enough reason. That's truly my hope is that there's a way through. There is a way through.
Just let yourself say it out loud. And that is the very first step towards healing and all the
things you have to do, the physical things, whether it's medicinal things, therapeutic things,
exercise things, nutrition things, addiction, resolution, whatever it is, it feels hard to do
when you start. But my God, it's nowhere near as hard as going all the way to the bottom of the
well. Nowhere near as hard. And also as well, I think what's so powerful about your story is
you make the point that we are still works in progress. It's not as if suddenly you're better
after doing the work, the medication, going to hospital. It takes time. And that there are
moments when we are back at that bottom of the well. And if I can talk with you about another
moment that you share when the kindness of strangers kept you going. Yeah. Yeah, that was my,
that was a really terrible day. It was a really terrible day. And I just,
I just sort of looked around at the wreckage. I was leaving all over the place and I couldn't
bear it anymore. And I came to what I thought was a realization. It was like a dawning on me.
Oh my God, my, everyone would just be so much better off if I left them alone. And
so I set off to make that happen. And it, you know, I can say, I can see now that this was
an illness talking to me. It was not the truth talking to me because
my family wouldn't be better off without me. I know that now, but in that time, in that moment,
that was my, it was pure belief that that's what needed to happen for my family to move on and
have happy lives. My son, my husband, also he deserves someone who doesn't bring this
chaos into his life and ruin everything. You know, it was a realization and it came to me
fully formed like that. And so I thought, well, that's what, that's what's happening.
And so I took off for a walk and yeah, this beautiful young couple spotted me. There was
no one else around, not another soul around. And I was walking through the sort of gates of a park
and they spotted me and they, you know, I was, I was crying because I was saying goodbye in my heart.
And she gave me a hug. She said, you look like you need a hug. She gave me a hug
and I sort of tried to rein everything in and she said, are you all right? And I said, yes,
really what I wanted was for them to be on their way so I could go and do what I needed to do.
And, you know, just sitting there by the water and they popped back and just said, well, you
look like you need some company. And they just sat with me and they didn't ask me what was wrong.
And they didn't ask me what I was thinking of. They just talked to me about their little kids
I told them about my kids. They told me about their dog who was with them. Beautiful dog was
giving me good pats, you know, giving me lots of cuddles. And I told them about my dogs. And
in the space of that couple of hours, I actually laughed a couple of times. And by the end of that
two hours, you know, my more healthy voice had chimed in along with the illness and just said,
you know, they made me promise I was all right. I rang Mick and from there I went to a hospital.
That moment for people to have come up to you I think is so powerful too that we never know
what someone is actually going through in the moment. And for that woman to give you a hug
and to sit with you along with her partner and her dog and to talk about those small,
seemingly small things. But they're the things that matter, aren't they?
They're the golden things in our lives.
Yes. Yep. Yeah. I'll always be thankful to them. And because, you know, I don't think that would be
an easy thing to do, to walk up to a stranger who's in some distress and just say, oh, I'm
just hanging out here. Because I could have been somebody who turned around and told them where to
go. I told them not to interfere. It takes a vulnerability on their part to do that as well.
And, you know, I just, I'm very thankful. And my family is very thankful.
Let's talk about your beautiful family. Mick, your husband. We all need a Mick in our lives.
Yeah, we do. Well, you can't have mine.
What a man. And your love story. I mean, you met, what were you, 19?
Yeah. Not long out of high school when we met. Yeah. You know, some Vincent de Pauls,
like Vinnie's youth group. And he was just one of a bunch of these ragtag, rough fellas who,
you know, they were so far outside my circle of experience. I went to Hornsby Girls High School.
I had a very sort of matriarchal family. And so to walk into a room with all these rough blokes,
it was a little bit intimidating. But they were just hilarious. And they just had hearts of gold.
You know, they were doing all this charity stuff. You know, some of my best times were spent with
those guys. And they're still my friends now. But, you know, we'd drive down to the city together,
go to Matt Talbot Hostel, load up their van with sandwiches and a big urn of dreadful coffee. And
we'd go around to, you know, people sleeping rough around King's Cross and Central and all that.
That was what we did on our weekends, you know. And I just, you know, I fell in love with Mick.
I fell madly in love with him. He's just calm and gentle and all things I'm not.
Well, you're a good, you balance each other out.
Absolutely. We balance each other out. We always have. And, you know, he's tall and I'm short and
he's skinny and I'm not. Those are all those things. And he has just been so steadfast and
faithful and just everything I've needed in my life. And, you know, you talk about strangers who
got between me and Brisbane Water. He's got between me and the edge over and over and over again.
And the moon. There's that beautiful story about the moon. And that was when you knew.
That was when I knew. So we'd been going out for a little while. And, you know, to paint the picture,
he played in a band. He had a mullet or was wild, had a pierced ear, you know, had his own car.
And I was just this straighty 180, you know, good student type, you know, good girl. But I fell for
this boy. And one night he dropped me home from, we'd been out and he dropped me home and he lived
about 15 minutes away. And my phone rang and I picked up the phone. It was, you know, pre-mobile.
Thank you very much. I am that old. And I picked up the phone and he's just gone. This real cool guy
who's never presented himself as cool. He just was because he didn't care, you know. He's like,
you've got to go outside and look at the moon. You should see it. It's an awesome colour.
I'm like, okay. He goes, go, go now. And I hung up and I went out and I looked at the moon and it
was an awesome colour. It was huge. It was rising. And I just thought, oh my God, this is him. This
is him. He's my human being. Here he is. For all our differences. Oh, I love the moon when it rises
and the colour it goes. And the idea that he did too, I just knew. And I have been knowing that
for 35 years. I loved as well a story about when you're in the midst of MasterChef and
it was four and a half months that you're away from home. You hadn't, didn't realise that that
would be the length of time. And they gave you a pass out for your Nan's then 90th birthday. And
Nick organised something special yet again for you, Julie. Well, he had previously said,
because we didn't know we were going to be apart. And he had previously said,
in frustration one day, it'd be easier if you were in prison because at least then we'd get
conjugal visits, right? Well, we drove a van. We had a van. And so we all met at my Nan's nursing
home. And he said to me in the middle of my Nan's 90th birthday, he said, I've got some clothes for
you out in the van. Just come on out and we'll see if you want to take them back to the house with
you. And I went out and he'd folded all the seats down. There was a mattress, a mattress and pillows
and a dude. I was like, oh my God. So, you know, five minutes later we were back inside the party,
puffing and panting and trying to look smooth for my mother and my grandmother and my dad
and all my children. Oh my God. It was so funny. I couldn't stop, I could not stop laughing. And
that's just, you know, just a little illustration of how we are. We laugh a lot.
And that's so important, I think, laughter. And as you say, you're such a team because you're
different, but you balance one another out. And you've got your three beautiful sons who you write
about so lovingly. And now your granddaughter, Delilah. Oh my gosh. She is so beautiful. And
it's so funny because now I'm looking at Facebook, you know, only this morning another one of the
girls I went to school with has just become a grandparent. And I'm just like, oh, you grow a
whole other heart. It is divine. You wait. It's just, it's just next level. It's next level.
Having children is the most profound thing. Having a grandchild, it's like having children,
but without all the stress and worry that you're going to accidentally break them when you touch
them or lose the roof over their heads or, you know, that people won't like them. I like her.
Nobody else needs to because I will like her enough for the whole world. But I don't need
to because she's just so lovable, you know. And the special gift too is because Mick was
a teenage boy when I met him. And he became an adult and a working man. And then he became a
father. And now I get to fall in love with him all over again as a grandfather. And it's just so
special to go through those stages of life with somebody like that. See, we all need a Mick.
We all need a Mick. And you all, I mean, you pay tribute to him in such a beautiful way when you
share that you thank him for loving you back to life. Yeah. Well, you know, that's how it went.
I don't know too many people who would stick around for what he stuck around for, you know.
I think a lot of people would have run for the hills when we were still teenagers,
but he did not. He's such a sure person. He just knew I was his person too. And so there was no
question ever in his mind of finding someone else, of finding an easier path. It was whatever path
we were on as long as we're on it together. And he said that to me over and over again,
we're better together. And that's what made MasterChef so hard, is that we were apart for
that long. And that was harder than either of us anticipated. But yeah, he has stayed with me through
all the hard stuff. He stayed with me through all the great stuff as well, you know, and loved that
as well. And taken everything in his stride, you know, this quiet sort of introverted guy who's
suddenly getting, he gets recognised in his own right. It's hilarious.
And how does he cope with that? He's taken a back bite every time.
But you know, he's just taken it all in his stride, all of it, the good and the bad,
and he has held me through it all. But again, I think this is why people
love you, Julie, is that you share that. You share that life isn't about our highlight reels. Life is
messy and painful and hard. But we can do the hard stuff.
Yeah, we can do it. We can get through it. There's times when you don't feel that way. But
you've got to make sure there's something in you that holds onto that shred of this is going to
get easier. Because when you lose that shred, that's when you find yourself in dire need of
intervention. You know, if you can do that for yourself, if you can even find a single thing
in my story that resonates with you, where you think, actually, maybe I am working too hard.
Actually, maybe I do need to have a look at something that happened a long time ago. Actually,
maybe I do need to let go of some shame. Or I do need to do things a bit better in terms of my
physical health or my mental health. Anything. Any one thing. If any one thing resonates with
you, act on it, please. And talk to somebody about it. And that could be the thing that makes a
difference. It could start you down a whole new path. Julie, your story has made an enormous
difference to me reading it. And I know it's going to make such a difference to so many people.
I thank you for your bravery and beauty and vulnerability. And I really urge our listeners
to get a hold of your extraordinary book, Your Time Starts Now, because you are quite a woman.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Isn't she just the best? And you know what? Julie is also
recommending that I do some crochet. She finds craft and those sorts of things really helpful
because at the moment I love doing my cross stitch embroidery. But she sent me some YouTube
links about how to start crochet. So perhaps there's some craft or things that you're also
finding is helping you through apart from reading some wonderful books. And we have so many incredible
guests for you on the Jess Rowe Big Talk Show podcast. And it would mean so much to me if you
subscribe to the show. It's free and it means all of these great conversations will be quicker for
you to access in the app so you'll never ever miss an episode. And if there's someone in your
life who is always looking for a good recommendation, why not share this conversation
with Julie Goodwin with them? All you need to do is to tap the three dots on your screen.
And if you enjoyed this chat with Julie, I think you'll love my conversation
with Grant Denya. We'll put a link in the show notes for you as well.
And I just, my shoulders just relaxed. I took a deep breath and, excuse me, it was, yeah, I did it.
I made it. So it was, yeah, it was cool. It was nice. It represented the end of an exhausted
act that I was tired of playing and I didn't have to play it anymore because
the first time in my life I felt like I was enough.
The Jess Rowe Big Talk Show is hosted by me, Jess Rowe, executive producer Nick McClure.
She's a wonderful leopard lady, audio imager Nat Marshall, supervising producer Sam Kavanagh.
Until next time, remember to live big. Life is just too crazy and glorious to waste time
on the stuff that doesn't matter.