You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and Welcome to but Are You Happy? The podcast that asks the questions you've always wanted to know from the people who appear to have it all. Laura Byrne is a podcaster, an author and a business owner who entered Australian homes when she won The Bachelor in twenty seventeen, ending up
with her now husband Mattie Jay. I wanted to talk to Laura because she's just been through the stage where I'm at now when you desperately want to be in two places at once. You want to be at work and you want to be with your child or kids, and there's a part of you missing wherever you are. She has two little girls, Marley May and Lola, and the balance between being a mother and leaning into your career is impossible.
It's probably the biggest pinch point in my relationship with matt because he often will be like, when is enough enough for you? You take on so much and the pressures that that can sometimes put on us or on him because he has to pick up the extra parenting load. He sometimes questions me about it and it's definitely been a big conversation for us over the last six months.
We talked about Laura's traumatic first berth.
And I was like, I can feel it though, and he was like, no, you can't, and I was like I can and he was like, it's just pressure and I was like, no, I can feel it. And then he started cutting me and that's when he realized actually I could feel it, and the epidural had completely stopped working, and so I went into shock.
And the experience of finding love on television, waiting for the moment you can finally celebrate it, and then getting a response.
You didn't anticipate.
Here's my chat with Laura Burn. Laura Burn, you're a business owner, one of Australia's most successful podcaster, is an author, you have a radio show and you're a mum.
To two little girls.
You became a household name when you appeared on the Bachelor and met your now husband, Matti J, who I refuse to call anything other than Maddi J. He's a friend of the podcast and people all over the country tune in to hear you speak or see you live on stage with your co host Brittany Hockley for lifeun Cut, but putting everything aside that we can see, what is your life actually like right now? How would you describe it? Oh?
It is chaos.
So I just walked into the office and I realized I had my shirt on inside out, so that I think that that kind of sums up the person.
That I am.
I am very lucky that I have Matt, who I think, by default has become the organized one in my life. So he kind of organizes the chaos that happens around him, and then I just happen around him. I don't know if he's thrilled with that, but he's still okay. Life is great. Life is very busy. It is a constant juggling act between the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, whether that's the parenting or whether that is the businesses.
And also because my businesses are so different, so having jewelry and then having podcasting like they could not be more worlds apart. So sometimes it's a challenge flicking my brain between the two different or three different jobs that I feel like I have to manage and the things that need me the most. It's often like one thing's excelling, so then you focus on the one that isn't, and then that one falls behind, so then you focus on and it's just this constant juggling act.
You just seem to do so many things. It overwhelms me to just look at You've talked about this a bit before, but there's one theory of happiness that says that in order for us to be happy, life should follow like an upwards trajectory, Like basically, if we're getting happier, if things are getting better, that makes us have a happy life. And you've talked before about your childhood and how you had a challenging childhood in some ways. How
was your childhood tough? And do you think that having been through some of those experiences makes you grateful and experience greater joy now by comparison.
Yeah, I was going to say when you said it makes things better, I was like, what's the definition of better?
But then when you have that comparison.
So for me growing up, I always want to preface this because I did have a great childhood in a lot of ways. My mum is incredible, my grandparents were absolutely phenomenal. Couldn't have ever asked for better grandparents. They kind of stepped into real parental roles for me. And then my dad, even though he was away a lot, he was in the army, so he was constantly away. When he wasn't away, he was very plugged in as
a dad. But just because of the tyranny of distance and his work, I guess he wasn't able to be his hands on as what I think now when he reflects back on our childhood, he wishes he could have been.
But my parents got divorced when I was three, and then we moved in and lived with my grandparents, and shortly after that my mom met my stepdad, who was her second husband, And when I was like a teenager, I would reflect on that period of my life, I felt really resentful of my mom for even marrying him,
for ever bringing him into our life. But then I think about it and I'm like, Okay, Well, she was in her late twenties with two children, and she lived with her parents, and life was really tough for her, so I think the dating pool probably wasn't particularly kind. And he was this man who showered her with attention, and he was also just a really toxic guy, and so he was able to kind of hide a lot
of the behaviors from her. And yeah, so he was actually a heroin addict and really abusive in lots of different ways. So I think they were together for eight years in total, And it wasn't until my mum had my brother that really just the wheels fell off the wagon and he plunged mom into a lot of debts. So they had started a business, a landscaping business together,
and he was embezzling money. But because that company was started the two of them, and then once he was out of the picture, my mum was like left with all that debt and so she did such a good job of hiding it from us. But he was just he was just a really scary guy. And I spent a lot of time in my childhood terrified of him.
Does it make you look at the childhood you're giving your girls now and the house that you're raising them in and feel a sense of pride and joy that you're able.
To do that?
It's almost sometimes because Matt also had quite a challenging childhood with his father as well, and they have a fractured relationship now and we often look at each other and we go these kids have.
No idea how good they have got it.
They got no idea like how do you build like resilient children who were grateful and aren't just like mum, I want another lol.
Now.
So in some respects, you know, I do look back on my childhood and I think, okay, on paper, that kind of start, But I also feel really grateful for the resilience that it had and it created in me, for how close it made me to my mum and also to my grandparents. And I think as well, I had this resentment in my teenage years, which I didn't really realize that that's what it was. But becoming a mum myself really made me soften towards my own mum,
and it really gave me the grace of forgiveness. And I've realized just like how challenging parenting is, and how you know, most moms are just doing the absolute best that you possibly can for the children that you have with the tools that you have around you. So there's no part of me that feels any of that resentment anymore.
Yeah, I think when you become a mum, you realize you're still just a person, and you're still just an idiot.
Like, what twenty year old that's got two kids, Like, no one knows what they're doing. I don't know what I'm doing, you know, And I'm so fortunate that I have a partner that's plugged in who does fifty percent of the work, Like I could not imagine doing that completely on my own. So yeah, if anything, it's given me so much more appreciation of admiration for my mum and for everything that she was able to do with three kids on her own.
You are clearly highly ambitious. Before you became a media personality, you already had your jewelry business, Tony May, what's it like running a business? And I imagine there's parts of the business that you love and are really passionate about, and surely there's parts of the business that you're like,
I would happily never do that bloody job again. How do you balance those in terms of leading a happy life and having joy in your life and trying not to let the stuff you hate kind of infiltrate your life.
So I think it's a tipping point, right, because when you start a new business yourself, you're everything. You're the tax person, you're the creator, you're the content developer. You're literally any type of work that needs to get done. You are that person when you're a small business, and then as you grow you have to try and find a way to outsource the things that you don't like doing, or even if you do like doing them, if you're not good at them, you have to find someone else
who can do them. So for me, I had Tony May. I've had it now for fifteen years, which is crazy. I was in my early twenties and I was working in corporate and I remember having this moment where I saw an article about Samantha Wills. It was just detailing like her rise, her meteoric rise to success and how she'd started Bonde Markets and how she had this jewelry brand, and I was like, I did Bondey Markets.
I have a jewelry brand.
I could see the path, and I think sometimes you need to visualize those people who have done it before you, and so I was like, oh, this is actually something that could be a career. And going back to my mum. My mum was a jeweler and she had always done it as a hobby, even though it's what she studied at university, and it was her passion, but I think I kind of grew up not thinking that you could make a career out of it. I think it was
something it had to be a hobby. So that's why I had these two different things running at the same time. My full time job and then my hobby is jewelry. And it wasn't until things started to scale and started to get a little bit busier that I realized, well, I'm a really creative person and that's the thing that I love to do. I love the making, I love the content. I love the creative aspect of the business.
But I am so bad with logistics, and going back to that whole, I am chaos personified and my sister is the complete opposite. So my sister is the organized one. And it was really fortunate. So after The Bachelor finished in twenty seventeen, when I was in the house for that three months, my sister took on board all of the logistics side of the business. So I had one person who was doing the creative and just managing the stores and everything. And my sister was like, don't you worry.
I will make sure that things don't hit the fan, like shit is okay while you're gone and I would just manage it and see what happens. And I came back and she was like, cool. So I organized her one hundred thousand unread emails. I've cleared out your inboxes. He's all of like the ordering, and she just had everything systemized and like systemized even a word. It was like there was systems in place. It was amazing. And then she came to me with the proposal and she
was like, I want to be your business partner. I want to buy in on the business. And since I did that, since I was able to give up a part of what I had created and give that to her, we have grown like fifty percent year and year and year, and it's been an incredible growth. And that is absolutely because I was able to say, Okay, I'm not good at doing these things and I need help. Her name's Alicia. She's going to be like, stop referring to me as your sister and give me a name.
You had Tony May. Then you go on The Bachelor. What's it like to watch yourself on television? And were you received the way you thought you would be?
I mean, even doing the show in the first place was weird, right, because part of me, I was like, oh, I suck a dating.
I've had a really really bad.
Run with men, and I feel like I dated majority of the pool that was available to me at the time in Sydney and had had a really like wow anyway, and then I signed up for The Bachelor partly because I thought it would be a good way of getting back at my ex boyfriend at the time, who I
still was quite annoyed at. And I think part of me was worried about people thinking that I was just doing it to promote my business, because everyone who did it had like literally every person who does that show has a secret motivation, right, whether it's to get Instagram followers, to grow their business, to hock their fitness program, like we've all got something that's up our sleeves. And if you say that there was nothing about it other than
just the experience, like, it's probably not true. Most people either wanted to get into media in some ways or genuinely wanted the experience and also thought it could be a cool way to meet someone.
If that was the case.
Now, for me, I had this real fear around because my name was so intertwined in Tony May. I was so worried that I would do something negative that would impact my business. So it wasn't that I thought it was going to help grow it. I was like, I'm going to fuck this up. I was like, I am going to end up doing something that people don't like, and then no one's gonna mind my jewelry, and then I'm going to be destitute and have to go back and work in a nine to five that I hate.
So I think I was really cautious, and I think the version of myself that I was on the show, which there's no part of me that watches it back and I don't enjoy it. It's how I met my husband, Like, it was an incredible experience, but I think it was very reserved. And I also thought at the time that if you showed vulnerability, if you leant into being in love, because I was like, you're a loser if you fall in love on a reality TV show and then cry
over some guy. So I was very reserved, and I think sometimes when you come across as reserved, people misinterpret it as either not caring or that you are a bit harder, a bit cold.
So yeah, for me, I watched it back.
And sometimes I felt a little bit disassociated for my body because I was like, Wow, I was really upset in that moment, but watching it back you wouldn't know, or watching it back, you wouldn't know how much I got to like that two month mark, and I was like, I'm.
A loser that fell in love on a reality TV show.
And I was crying at nighttime, but then when the cameras came on during the day, I was like, Nah, you will not cry for this man. Get your shit together, Laura, and like, you will just be strong. And so sometimes I think women who come across as strong actually come across a little bit unlikable, and reality TV sometimes coming up.
Laura and I talk about one of the times she thought she'd be happy and she wasn't, which was when she was watching her finale.
Episode of the Bachelor.
She also talks about how this led to her starting to scrutinize herself and her appearance. You'd say that one of the moments the world told you you'd be happy and you weren't was watching that finale episode.
Yeah.
So watching the finale episode, I mean, it's so long ago now, but twenty seventeen, Matt and I are sitting in a hotel room together, and it was pretty torturous that day, so you wake.
Up really early.
I think it was like we got picked up at two thirty in the morning or three thirty in the morning. It was Elise, who was the girl who also was at the finale with me. Alisa and I got picked up in a car. We hadn't spoken to each other since the show had finished, so that in itself is just horrible. We've got to go and do every breakfast radio station across the country and we have to sit there being like, ooh, who could it be? Which one of us? And it's so weird, but it's.
Also so cruel.
Like Alise genuinely loved him and like fell in love with him in that process, and her feelings were very real, and so I'm sitting there having to pretend like I'm not happy. She's sitting there pretending like she is happy, and it was just such an emotional mind fuck. And I remember we had this one interview and it was with Osha at the time, he was on a breakfast show and it wasn't live, thank god, but halfway through
Alise just burst out crying. And then it was like she didn't want to be in a room with me.
Why would she?
Of course she did it, and there's no hard feelings about that, but I also didn't want to be in that room. I was like, get me out of here, what are we doing? So then I got taken to a hotel room with Matt and Alisea's like four doors
down from us. So we're in a hotel room watching the final episode, knowing that a Lisea's just down the hallway with her friends, and the final episode plays out, and we were sitting there thinking that that was like a moment where we were finally after because it was filmed and finished filming in May, and that was in September, that the last episode, so we'd been like doing long distance.
It had to be a big secret. And then we were sitting there in bed and I remember the show finishing and opening up social media and the absolute onslaught of people hating us, and we just looked at each other and were like, Okay, good night, Like I guess
that's like let's just worry about this tomorrow. And it was like quite unaffectionate because both of us felt so anticlimactic, and in that moment, I thought, this relationship is never gonna last, Like, there is no way in hell that he's going to stay with me if Australia doesn't want him to be with me. And the stuff that we
were receiving across social media was so cruel. It was such mean, Like a lot of it's like around the way you look, like you're not attractive enough, or that he should have chosen the other girls, or and I was saying to you clear earlier. It's really funny how much the public don't remember, because at the time, I would have said that people were like less than fifty fifty.
I would have said it would probably have been in that evening, like sixty forty sixty percent of people didn't want us to be together and forty percent were supportive. But now if you asked anyone, every article that's written, any person would go, oh my god, it was so you from the start.
We always knew when we love you together, But it was not like that when the show finished. Yeah, it was.
It was a really sad period and it really rocked my self confidence and also the way that I felt about the way I look. Yeah, it really made me hate the way I look.
Because I think about that a lot. Whenever I have done to a far, far, far smaller degree, anything that's like in front of a camera or a little photo shoot or whatever, it seems like this really exciting moment, and then you see the photo on your.
Own confront you, Oh my god, is that what I looked on? Is that what I sound like? Okay? Like that half of my face and not that half my face? Yeah.
You scrutinize yourself, and you can be really cruel to yourself, especially when people start pointing out things about you that you never realized you didn't like, and then you start hating them yourself. So for me on it was so many things. It was me having thin lips, it was me having bad skin, and I got really fixated on it. And afterwards, like I'd never had botox before The Bachelor,
I'd never gone and gotten filler. Afterwards, I went through this period where I was like obsessively looking up things I could do to fix my face, which sounds crazy now. I remember this one thing I booked in and this is back in twenty eighteen. I got filler in my cheeks, I got botox in my jaw, and I got filler in my lips all of that in the space of a couple of weeks, and it was awful, Like.
It looked terrible on me.
I looked horrible, and I knew I looked horrible, and even bat was like, please don't, please, don't do that again.
It's interesting though, that as a woman, you're kind of damned if you do damned if you don't like people. I think people look at women who have had things done and they're like, well, you know, why did you do anything, And it's like, because.
The world told me I was ugly since.
I was born, literally, But also it's funny on the flip side, like I've not had anything since that day, and I'll see articles about me on daily mail and I have wrinkles. Hello, everyone, wrinkles under my eyes. I'm okay with it. It's the aftermath of an expressive face. But I see a photo of me that we put on daily Mail and the comments would be like, oh my god, look what she's done to under her eyes
with all that filler, And I'm like, bitch, these are wrinkles. Yeah, this is what a forty year old woman looks like, Like this is normal.
I'm thirty eight, but you know, almost forty.
But then on the flip side, because so much of my insecurities were coming from people during the conclusion that Matt and I shouldn't be together, and it was often that I was like, oh, cute mum and sun vibes, that's what I would get. So I felt like I looked older in comparison to Matt, which, you know, whatever, I'm two years older than him. I can look older
than him. But that's what made me insecure. So it made me not just insecure about the way I looked, but insecured about the relationship, like why would he choose me? When he is so handsome and he could have anyone? Why did he pick me? And so then I kept thinking, or maybe he's going to change his mind and I'm not the person that he's gonna want to be with. So then I got insecure about the relationship a little bit.
But he he was always so real, assuring of me, and it was his like his commitment to our relationship, his always showing up, his consistency, not just commitment, but the consistency of a commitment. He was the same person every day, unphased by it. And maybe he was phased in some ways, but he never made me aware of it. That is what was the reassuring thing that made me feel okay with myself again.
After Bachelor And you're in this new relationship and you hadn't been together that long before you got pregnant.
No, are the alay together like maybe a year or just under a year? It was pretty quick, yeah, speedy.
And you now have your two little girls. You wrote a while ago about your birth with Marley may being traumatic.
Do you still think of it as traumatic?
Yeah?
I do, but I also it's a funny one because I don't like to talk about it as though it was traumatic because I hate the fear that that creates for other women who are about to have baby. So I've always been very careful how I speak about it. But what happened to me was I felt as though I wasn't being believed by my obstetricians. So I had had an epidural and.
It was very effective. It was brilliant. I was sitting in.
Bed doing work on my laptop and then the pushing started and the epidural stopped working.
Vibes hard, relate, hard, relate.
Okay, wow, it's ft, And they kept being like it's.
Just pressure, and I was like pressure.
So yeah, so I had a block.
I hadn't been topping it up, I think, because the thing is it works so well for me.
You're so in that moment, there's a lot going on, and they're like, you haven't topped it up, and You're like, I was distracted by the fact that I'm giving birth.
Can you top it up for me? Totally?
Well, I don't even think anyone told me that you had to top it up. So just to kind of like my birth with Marley in a nutshell, I didn't really have a birth plan and I just kind of was like, whatever happens happens, and I had to be induced. But she was also the wrong way round. So posterior, which is a more painful pregnancy as it is.
Yes, like a pain in your butt. It's like, is it just in your butt? I thought it was like a full body pain.
I kept being like, it feels like somebody has a fire poker in my butt, in your ass, yes, the posterior not okay.
Yes, it's like when your spine. Their spine is against your spine basically, And so I started having contractions because it was induced, and it was all very quick, and the pain was so so strong for me that I was vomiting every time I had contractions. So I went to have an epidural, which at the time I was like, I'm not going to do drugs, and then twenty minutes in I was like, give me all of them.
But anyway, so the drugs.
Had worn off, and there was also a little bit of panic in the room because Molly had gotten stuck. She wasn't coming down the birth canal fast enough and I was dilated. I was pushing, and she just was not moving anymore. So they were tossing up whether to get me into have a cesarean or whether they were just going to try and four steps her out. So
she was stuck. You could tell, you know, and you can tell that there's panic happening around you, but everyone's trying to pretend that they're not panic.
There's suddenly a lot of people in the room.
Yeah.
Well, they also had all these students in the room, so they'd come earlier and asked if I was okay with some medical students coming in. There was about twenty people in this room, and I just remember having this out of body experience and I.
Was like, what is this? Like, this is crazy.
Anyway, I didn't even care anymore, but the obstetrician was like, oh, we have to give you an a pisiotomy. We're going to try and cut you and to get her out with four steps. And I was like, I can feel it though, and he was like, no, you can't, and I was like I can and he was like it's just pressure and I was like, no, I can feel it.
And then he started cutting me and that's when he realized actually I could feel it, and the epidural had completely stopped working, and so I went into shock because I had been cut with a scalvel. It was reflecting back really messed up. And at the time, the nurses kept saying, oh, you've had a traumatic birth, and I was like, was that what that was? But I had
nothing to compare it to. And so now that I've had a second baby and that was really easy, it makes me go, oh, okay, that really wasn't supposed to go the way that it went. But yeah, I think after she came out and I was all stitched up and the stress and panic had kind of gone away, I just was overcome with this, like, Okay, this is still pretty amazing.
It is interesting that you say that because I have the same thing where you don't want to scare other women. But there's a weirdly positive side to it, where it's like you can have a traumatic birth and be okay exactly and actually be okay.
That is exactly it, right, because I think a lot of us have been told that if you have a traumatic birth, you're never going to get over. It's going to affect you for forever and you're going to be like psychologically changed by it. I think, yes, it was traumatic, but it wasn't traumatizing. I am completely fine, and I was completely fine a week later. I wasn't thinking about
not being believed. And you know, I really feel for some women who do go through that experience and have a different outcome, because that's very very real, But that wasn't my experience.
Yeah, but it's good for people to know, like, because I think after that, I don't know if you had the same thing, but it's sort of like, oh, am I going to be traumatized? Am I going to be thinking about this in year? And it's good to know how quickly our brains can make sense.
Of it, And yeah, I mean, but also I think it's important to say. As I mentioned two kids now, and the second one was a dream. I remember going into labor and the obstecution was like, cool, You're just going to cough her out, And.
I was like, what does that say about the damage? The first one about what you like? Just cough, don't even push, just cough, And I was like, okay. I coughed out Lola like literally.
With Maley May and Lola, they were quite different babies. Yeah, And the period once Lola was born, your partner was doing Dancing with the Stars and you were on your own. Do you think it made it harder that you had this happier experience to compare it to.
I remember even before Matt was doing Dancing with the Stars, I just had Lola. She was two days old and we were home. It was our first night home and Matt was in the kitchen with Marley and I was sitting on the side of the bed and you know, you like massive pads and pillow booms her everything. You're just like, oh, I haven't slept in two days. The
emotions really hit you. And she was in the little bassinet next to the bed, and I remember sitting there looking at her, and I was like, we have ruined our lives?
What did we do? I regret everything.
I was so sad, and I was like, this was a terrible decision, which it wasn't, of course, you know, and I feel like every parent always has to preface like, Laula is incredible.
I love being a mum's two girls.
But in that moment, I had a real moment of like, wow, is this regret?
I reckon?
Hormones do that?
I think that those few days afterwards, when your hormones are crazy, I reckon.
So many women have that.
You're just scared to say it because you're like, you're never meant to say this, But I think it's how a lot of people feel.
Well, life was so easy.
We had everything dial Like Maley was like she was nineteen months, I think twenty months. She was really young still, but she was great. She was walking, she was talking, she was communicating. We could easily get out of the house, like life was just easy. And then we would throw
into the second child. And if you've listened to the episode of that I had you with Maddie J, he sort of detailed that Lola was a really different child, and at the time we didn't realize, but she had some neurological things that she was dealing with, and so I think that that also added to the fact that she just didn't sleep, cried continuously, and yeah, we went from having a unicorn baby to having the most challenging version of a newborn and so it was a really full, long.
Time after the break. Laura gets a bit emotional when discussing why one of her biggest fears is that she doesn't spend enough time with her kids and that feeling that's very familiar to parents of mum guilt. On r UOKDA last year, radio duo Will and Woody did this segment where they asked radio and TV and podcast host to say to someone else some of the cruel things that they say to themselves.
I remember I cried, but I can't remember what I said. Oh, don't bring it back up.
No, yours is always stuck with me because you said you're a bad mum because you don't have enough time for your kids.
Oh, I'm gonna cry and you were crying.
Can you talk me through that internal dialogue and is it something you've been able to deal with?
Oh?
Will cry again. It's not true, you know. That's the thing.
The thing is is I have so much time for my kids. I pick my kids up from daycare every day at four thirty. I sacrifice me time to make sure that they have me time. So I work until really late in the evenings. I get up really early and do work when I can before they wake up. If that's you know, something that I have to do. And usually Matt and I both work quite late into the evenings. And that is all because when they finish daycare, I am there. I pick them up like as I should,
like I'm their mum. I'm not asking for an award for this, That's not what I'm saying. But I just want to make sure that I don't have children that look back on their life and go, oh, yeah, we were really privileged, like we had all the stuff, Like mum worked hard and we earned money, but like I did, never saw my mum. And I think about my relationship with my dad. You know, my dad was away for work so much, like physically away. He was in Somalia,
like he was away, but it damaged our relationship. It really put a halt to the connection that we could have and both Matt and I really have aspirations for the type of parents that we want to be, so we will never ever sacrifice that. But at the same time, absolutely there's times when, especially when Matt pulls me up and says, you sure you want to say yes to that, because you know what that means. If you say yes to that, then this is going to have the flow
on of X Y Z on our family. And I remember when we had that discussion with Will and Woody and work had been really busy, not because I had control over it, but factors had meant that my work had increased. And Yeah, I just had a moment where I was like, you give so much of yourself to work sometimes that you need to be more for your family and whether it's not just for the kids, it's also for Matt though as well.
Yeah, having a child is the first time I've been aware that time is finite in a weird way, like I don't think I was aware of that before, and now I'm like everything that I do, yeah, I am aware that that is time that I'm not with my child, and I don't It might be different in your family, but I feel like men don't necessarily have the same mindset.
Yeah, but also men don't have the same pressure, like what dads are at work, being like I feel guilty being at work totally. I mean, I understand why I'm not saying that. I want to be a person that doesn't feel that guilt. I want to feel that because I want to spend time with my children. You know, I don't go to work and then be like kids, what up? Like, I don't need to worry about you. I think about them all the time. They're the most
important thing to me. But also I am somebody who gets a lot of sense of my worth from being at work and from achieving my goals in life as well. And I've always had the goals of I don't even know if I fully realize what they are, but I've always had big aspirations for work, and I never ever had the aspiration for being a mum until I became a mum. So for me, that's a whole new identity that once I discovered it, I was.
Like, this is the best job ever.
But I never had those typical feelings of like I was built to be a mum. I simply didn't. And also I think I look at my own mom, like I don't ever remember my mom sitting down and eating dinner with us as a kid. She never stopped. My mom worked full time, she made leotards, she was always cutting my sister to gymnastics. She had seventeen other small
businesses on the side. And so I think that it's been her drive and seeing her always kind of moving forward in life that made me want to do the same. In some ways, that's been my blueprinter of what parenting is.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think it's amazing for daughters to see. I've always thought that, Yeah, and I think that about my own mum. You have one of the most listened to podcasts in the country, and because of that, you're obviously going to get commentary and feedback and criticism based on what you say. And there's times where life uncut and you, for whatever reason, have been called out online.
I want to talk.
About how that feels, because I don't know if people can often understand. And it's the same with The Bachelor actually that there's a bit of dehumanization that goes on. You kind of see somebody and you think I'll put stuff on them because I can't imagine that they have their own inner world and their own stuff that they're dealing with. How has that felt when it's particularly intense.
It feels awful.
It's a horrible feeling being at the bottom of a pile when there's a pileon But for multiple reasons though, and not every situation is cut the same. I think sometimes when you feel as though you've been misrepresented or misunderstood, that's really challenging because the first thing you want.
To do is you want to explain yourself.
You want to be like, no, I'm not the person you're making me out to be, or the facts aren't right, or you told this part of the story but not this part of the story, which actually means that the outcome is different, So you kind of want to I guess there's this feeling of like, I want to make everyone know that I'm not the person that I'm being made out to be, but I've learnt there's no point in doing that because people, when they're angry online, there's
nothing that you can say that will ever be enough. It's like, oh, well, because you did this one thing that I don't like, even if it was true or isn't true, that is proof that you're a bad person, even though you've shown me it's like, ah see, you are the person I tell you. But I think at the very start it absolutely broke me. I was so humiliated, and I thought, oh my god, maybe everyone thinks that I'm this horrible person, Like maybe everyone thinks these things
of me. And then you realize ninety nine percent of normal people are not on the Internet yelling at each other for starters. The other end of that, as well, is is that it's just kind of knowing how to manage those situations. And I think it makes you tough and it makes you resilient, and you have to really kind of step back sometimes and go, Okay, was I in the wrong? Did I do something that is warranting an apology? Have I been misrepresented? Does someone have a
hidden agenda? And then once you've answered all those questions for yourself, it kind of outlines how you can progress forward, I guess, and like, what's the best path for you to deal with it? And often I think it's just logging off the Internet for a little while and then you know, coming back on and just resuming business as normal.
Yeah, yeah, And I think when that sort of stuff does happen, it's interesting. I've watched a few instances recently where people are getting called out and it's sort of you need to apologize, you need to say this, you need to say that, and you might not know, like the reason somebody isn't putting anything else out there is because they.
Know putting something else out there is just going to fuel it.
I remember many many moons ago, and I don't actually remember the exact instance of what it was. Because when you are a podcast and you have opinions, there will be times where your opinions don't align with people. So a little piece of information will be taken out of context, and or you'll listen to a ten second grab of something and that gives you an impression, but when you put it in context of an hour episode, it's a
very different conversation. Those things are all very true, but when the mob comes, the mob feels fierce, right, But the mob also moves on. It really does, and sometimes you just have to not give it fuel. Because the way that the media system works is that one person will write an article, then you say something else, so then they write an article of the thing that you said, and then they say and so then you're just feeding the beast, right, So that's often a reason why people
don't say anything or respond. Also, sometimes it's because they can't because they work for companies who don't allow them to. So there's many, many reasons why people don't respond and act in a way that we might expect them to. And of all the things that you could be controversial about, we talk about sex and relationships. We're not a controversial podcast,
so it's very infrequent. But also I think it's interesting that it happens mostly to women in Australia, And I would beg you to question what was the last big outrage that you witnessed happen on social media? And I would say that ninety nine point nine percent of the time it surrounds women, and when it doesn't surround women,
it surrounds extremely problematic men. Men only get taken down in the same way that women do if their views are absolutely fucking vile, whereas like a really normal woman will get taken down for saying something that's just like a little bit left of center and that's kind of gross to me.
Exactly have you ever, on your podcast or in media shared something personal that you regret?
I had an experience where what I have shared wasn't well received, and that was more so from family. So when we wrote our book, We Love Love, I have a very religious auntie who we're very close and she's been close to us for our whole lives. And her response to that book and also because I spoke about abortion in there, I swaw, I wrote, I wrote fucking there.
She was very unimpressed. And I think that for me, I had a moment where I was like, oh, maybe some of the people who were closest to me don't.
Actually know who I really am in that way.
And I think that me talking about abortion was something that was quite triggering for people in my immediate network, and especially even my mom. I sat my mom down and I spoke to her about that what happened and why I made that choice and everything, and she never knew, so I kind of felt as though I wanted to tell her that before she read it in a book that's still sitting by her bed. And Yeah, that was
probably an interesting period. Was almost like explaining to people the choices and the reasons why I felt like I wanted to talk about the things that I that I have experienced.
It's weird how it can sometimes be easier to share things on a mass scale, but really the people intimately in your life.
Even recently, we talked about it on the podcast last week. My stepdad he's in palliative care for prostate cancer and it's been a really hard time for my family, and I talked about it, but I also am super just that it's not my story to share. It's happening within my family, but it's not happening to me, even though
I love him dearly. But he has two biological children, and so we spoke about it on the podcast as like a real awareness piece to try and get us as women to speak to our husbands and our dads around prostate cancer, speak to them and ask them. I mean, what thirty year old has ever sat their dad down and said, Hey, dad, have you had your prostate checked?
Because it's a weird. It's a weird chat.
But that was the conversation we had, and then I had to think about it afterwards, and I was like, Oh, his kid's going to be okay with me talking about that. So sometimes it's being aware of the other people who are involved in the stories that we share that we have to take into consideration.
Yeah, your wedding day looked so beautiful, and on that day there were some paps who came in and filmed some of your vowels.
Yeah, and in the bushes, Yeah, literally in the bushes.
And we were just still like photos, so fucking world.
Yeah, so we even hired a security guard.
So we got we got married at QS in Mollymook is beautiful and yeah, we didn't know until directly after the vows and then we saw it in daily mail. We saw that the vows had been published, and like, yeah, it's just funny but also very invasive.
Wasn't funny at the time?
Is now when that happens on Obviously, your wedding day is kind of one of those days. It's meant to be the greatest day of your life and you meant to be euphoric the whole time. Was there part of you that was angry that that had stolen that moment?
I think there was a part of me that almost expected that it was going to happen. And that's because Anna Heinrich had gotten married i think the year prior, overseas in Italy, and they had gone to Italy to get photos of her so like the fact that we got married in Mollymook, like they're going to travel three
hours if they're going to travel to another country. And also like the whole thing was not just photograph but it was video recorded, they had audio, and then to be told that that was all for people to think that that's something that we would set up, I was like, so humiliating. Guys w doing fine for money. I don't need someone to take photos of my wedding. Plus also I want to post those photos on my social media first.
That's better for me and for my engagement than having some dude doing it for the Daily Mail and anyway.
Yeah, and it's like we've got it.
Was infuriating.
Yeah, So I think that's probably the thing I struggle with the most, and that's even going back to outreach culture. It's being misrepresented. It's having things written about you that aren't true. That can be really really infuriating, but you just have to get over it and get on with it, because what are you going to do? Fight everyone, try and prove that you're not the person that they're saying
you are. And it takes a really tough skin to get to a point where you're like, that's a really stupid headline.
I don't feed my child dog food, you know, But they just write what they write.
Yeah, Laura, you have a beautiful family, you have a glamorous and exciting career. You fell in love in front of all of us, and you have people all over the country who listen to your opinions and interviews and stories and read your words.
But are you happy?
Yes, I am happy.
I feel incredibly grateful for the life that I have with my husband and with my girls. I feel so incredibly grateful every day that I get to go to work and work with my friends, my sister, and also with brit Like that part of it is like living a dream, actually having a job that I love, and also just being able to have and as you guys know, like with mom and me, I like having a community of people who care about you, genuinely care about the
things that you have to share. It's been a really interesting journey these last sort of seven years post bachelor. I am so aware of the privileges that that has brought me, and so much of that has made me happy, especially when I compare it to the shit show of my twenties.
I I feel really really.
Grateful, And also I think, yeah, when life is good, you have to have that gratitude because there will be times when life is not that good. So if you don't appreciate it while it's like it now, then you're going to be in a real state of sorry when something goes wrong.
Yeah, it's funny, Well it's not funny at all. Really, what we think it's okay to say to someone who happens to be on television, particularly women, that it's okay to tear apart her appearance directly to her, even though we would never ever do that to someone in our own lives. And speaking to Laura really crystallized the impact
that online commentary can have on an individual. Women with media careers are stuck because they're criticized no matter what they look like, and that's after being socialized to believe our worth comes from our appearance. There's the impact on the individual which Laura has shared, But then you think about the impact that that commentary has on all the other women who are seeing it. If she's being abused for her appearance, what does that actually say about me?
I selfishly got a lot out of this conversation. I think I really needed to chat to someone about traumatic birth and how it's possible to experience a trauma something you never thought you'd go through, and be okay, and perhaps even feel stronger because of it. Join me next week for a conversation with Rob Mills about standing on stage and feeling your lowest.
I was having a really, really tough time. If I'm being brutally honest, I had suicidal thoughts for the very first time in like seventeen years, wow, on stage during a show. I was exhausted. I was so tired. I miss Georgie, I miss life.
Last week on the podcast, I spoke to reality star and chef cahn Ong about family tragedy, the brutality of being cheated on, and what it's like to get your own TV show and then focus on all the wrong things. There's a link in the show notes to listen.
To that episode.
If you enjoyed the podcast, leave us a review, share it with friends. We love more people to discover these conversations. If you'd like to suggest someone for the podcast, we also love hearing your suggestions, so you can email us here at podcast at mommeya dot com dot au and my Instagram handle is Claire dot Stevens. Lots of the people we've had on this season have been suggestions from our listeners. This episode was produced by Tarlie Blackman, with
audio production by Scott Stronik. See you next week.