We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was produced, the Galligle people of the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present. This episode contains discussion of suicide. If this raises any issues for you, support is available through the links and phone numbers in the show notes.
It's twenty twenty two and Julie Goodwin's phone is ringing. It's the producer of Master Chef inviting Julie to come back for the Fans and Favorites season, thirteen years after winning the first Australian season. Julie is utterly terrified at the thought of returning to where it all began. You are first Master Chef. This show completely changed her life. Her win catapulted her into the spotlight and with it came book deals, a cooking school, radio show and hosting gigs.
But in twenty twenty everything came to a grinding holt. Julie couldn't cope with the pressure any longer and didn't want to be here anymore. Her despair reached crisis point, resulting in a five week stay in a mental health facility. Two years on, she's in a much better place. Despite being terrified, she says yes to the opportunity, a far cry from the woman who couldn't step into a kitchen just a couple of years prior. Julie is back in
the pressure cooker. I'm at Middleton and this is Headgame today. Julie Goodwin on the conversation that kept her alive. Julie, we first met on Dancing with the stuff.
We are dancing buddies, aren't we.
We are dancing buddies, and we got on really well. I really enjoyed your journey. I really enjoyed your your presence, your aura, your energy. Have you always been like that?
Oh god, I don't know. I don't know, I've always I don't know. I just love new experiences and getting to sort of chuck myself into something completely different. And always the best part of those things is the people that you meet, isn't it, And what you get to do with the people that you meet. And you know, I really loved I really loved seeing you sort of
progress through that competition. But your acknowledgement, because obviously such a sort of physical beast specimen, your acknowledgement of the dancers and how fit they are, and what what a different kind of discipline ities and that you can you can be really at the top of your game in one area and still have no dear about other other things, and you know, things you're unfamiliar with. It was so interesting.
Yeah, I sort of swapped out my army boots for dancing shoes, and you swapped out your spatulate hand for dancing shoes. Let's go right back before we get into the nitty griitty of master chef and your life and you know where you are today, Let's go back to how where it all started as a youngster growing up? How did life look for you?
I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, blue collar family, sort of fairly fairly normal, I would say, you know, Mum and dad both had a working ethic. I was raised by my stepdad, who is still my dad. Like mum and dad had been married for coming on fifty years now, and so my biological father left when I was very young and what age just I was three?
Oh wow, do you remember your biological father?
I do?
You do?
I have? It was like one of my earliest memories as.
Well, your early memory.
The first thing I can attribute to that time in my life was the memory where he had left. Mum was pregnant when he left, and he popped back to collect some of his things, and I was so excited to see him because I hadn't seen him for ages. You know, little kids get excited. And Mum said, I must have been so excited. I need to go to the bathroom. And when I came back, he had gone again. And yeah, and I didn't see him again until I was, oh, gosh, coming out for fourteen fifteen years old.
Wow, So that memory was it was a positive one in the excitement, but ultially a super negative one because when you came back, he'd obviously popped in, grabbed his stuff and left.
Yeah. I don't think he wanted to do the goodbye. I don't think he wanted to tell me that it was goodbye.
And for that to be one of your first memories as well, so obviously in plant as he does, right as it does. How did that affect you sort of moving forward with your let's say, your your your new father, your your stepfather, and your mom did was there any sort of hurdles there where there was resentment or anything like that or age. I suppose you're quite multiple, aren't you.
Totally? And when my stepdad dad came on the scene, I just loved him and he loved us, and so he like he just stepped into that role and has maintained that role. He took me to band practice, and he, you know, loved my mom and he we're a family, you know, So I'm I adore him and he adores us. So you know, I don't feel like I missed out on having a father figure in my life because they got married when I was six, So I had this
beautiful male role model in my life. But now what I've just been unpacking through all this psychological journey I've been on for one of a better word, is that that early leaving it does shape how you interact with the world, and so my persona And when you ask if I've always been like that, I guess what I've learned is that that always trying to be really shiny, do really well at school, make everybody happy, never let anybody down, all of that really comes from a terror of being left.
Wow, And that makes complete sense because when that gets snatched away from you, I suppose it sort of lived as you you know, it's like, what did I do wrong or how could I do things better to make sure that this doesn't happen again?
Absolutely, yep, absolutely, And you know I didn't know until recently how much that shapes you, you know, because I've always thought, you know.
And when you say recently recently as in the last couple of years, or recently as in your adulthood, past past four years, past four years, yep, Wow, when did that sort of trigger and when did that sort of click in?
Well, it clicked in when I started having pretty intensive therapy for a complete mental breakdown. So that's all been unpacked, all that and a bunch of other stuff that happened. And yeah, it's traumas that happened in childhood that aren't acknowledged or resolved. They don't go away very similar they do, and you can paper over the cracks all your life, but it'll find a way out. And so that was all part of the cumulative process towards completely falling apart.
Did that affect your school where you're a good kid, were your cheeky kid, were your naughty kid?
Was super good?
You're super good, super good? Yeah?
I believe that that sort of had an impact on it, so to be hard to swallow. You know. It's like, well, I worked really hard at school. I did well at school. I was a real goodie two shoes. I would have been of pain in you.
You know.
I was the school captain at Hornsby Girls High School. Like, achieving was really important to me, and it upset me to find out that that might be because I was frightened of being abandoned. That's how I learned that that's how you make people happy with you. And if you make people happy with you, they stick around. So I go, well, hang on a minute, if I'm just a set of reactions,
who am I? Who am I? So you've got to sort of tease out what's your natural state and what came about because of what happened to you and all that sort of stuff. So it's all a bit of a tangleballer wall.
Do you come from a big family or you an only child? No?
So I have a little sister. She was the one who was in the oven back when my father left, and for a while I had a couple of step siblings. But I was pretty energetic and active, and I a round a lot, and I loved sport hyper competitive, but my schooling was more geared towards academic and musical, So that's sort of where I leaned into study and music, choir and band and all those hyper cool things.
You were roper goodysues. If you could fit the persona of a goodye SSU school, it's bad, it's it's in love.
That massive.
Going into sort of your later education, was there any sort of career that really really excited you? And I'm obviously going to get into cooking, but before that was did you have a have a good idea of what you wanted to do and were you It sounds like you were very settled and very structured in your life. Was there a career path that you decided to take before obviously you got whisked away onto master chef. Oh?
Yeah, When I was at high school, I wanted to be I was tossing up between criminal law and journalism. So those were the directions I wanted to hit in. Those were both you needed, like good marks and all that sort of thing to do those things. In year eleven,
I had a bit of a thing happened. I had a memory resurface, a suppress memory from childhood which was a trauma and that I didn't really know that that set me off the rails until I sat down to write my life story in an autobiography and then the timeline just was there in front of me.
And that was that was that recently that you wrote your book last year, because you're exactly the same as myself when I started writing my memoir. You sort of go back and because you just go back and you sort of break down those memories and you go really into your find a detail of it, you start to you start to learn so much about yourself. You start to learn so much about what happened. You start to rely understand what were the triggers for here, the things
that you never knew that you would do. Unless you really dig in. It's extraor memoir.
It's extraordinary, isn't it? And I would actually recommend it to anyone, even if you just write your life out chronologically, if it's not for publication. The learning in the understanding that came from that process was quite mind blowing. I actually needed a bit of therapeutic help through the process because it was really hard, and I remember I sat down to write I'm not sure at what point the wheels fell off these ambitions. But as I'm writing it,
I thought, look when it happened this. The wheels fell off just after I had this memory resurface, and all sorts of stuff started to go wrong after that, you know, that's when everything changed. I was a skinny little kid. That's when I started to put on weight and eat in an unhealthy way. That's all sorts of stuff.
Went wrong from this memory.
And now I know it's I didn't know it then because I shoved it, shoved it straight back down. I wanted it, but it you know, it's like trying to unring a bell, you know. And so from going to wanting to be a criminal lawyer to a journalist to I just kind of gave up a little bit, and so I didn't I knew I wasn't going to get the marks I wanted. So then I thought, well, I'll be a teacher, which was lower a lower entry score into university. And then I went to university. I only
lasted eighteen months at university. I turned into a ghost.
And was it. Do you think that that memory that you had in year eleven is that you like your exams? That's quite a critical year. How old. Are you at that stage? Yeah?
I was sixteen. Yeah, when the memory came back, I had completely suppressed it and then I remembered it, and it was not a welcome memory, and it wasn't there wasn't a big light bulb moment. It was almost like it was like a book on a bookshelf that I hadn't looked at for a really long time. It had always been there, but on this one particular day, I just took the book out and looked at it and went, oh, oh,
that's right, there's this book on my bookshelf. And as a sixteen I didn't know what to do with it. So I stuck it back on the shelf and I put my back against it, and I braced my legs against it, and I held it there as hard as I could. I didn't want to know. I didn't want to know that book was there. That's that's as n close as I can get to describing what happened.
Yeah, that's a great analogy, and that's what we do, you know, especially when we can't face it, and it's something that did you have it? Did you have a support network that you could have spoken to or I suppose at sixteen. You don't. It's a case of you do, don't you shove it away.
It was the nineteen eighties, exactly. It was the nineteen eighties, and it just wasn't spoken about enough. So it wasn't spoken about, you know, and that led to actually in year twelve. And see again, this is stuff I hadn't thought about for years until my world fell apart nearly five years ago. Now I hadn't thought about any of this, but that that was I had an attempt on my own life in year twelve.
So the domino effect of it. Was it the domino effect of this memory, yep, and you.
But I didn't know that's why I did that, and didn't know it until I wrote it all down. I went, oh my god, that's why that happened. Oh my god, that's why that happened. I now know that when I went to university, I was severely depressed. I would go
whole days without speaking to anybody. I didn't have friends, and went from being, you know, the school captain of my high school and involved in every extracurricular group you could think of, and in this leadership role to go to university where I would not speak for whole days at a time.
You're well just flipped upside down ultimately.
Completely, and I just never knew why until recently. Yeah. Yeah, So it was a big, big thing to come to terms with.
And you mentioned just in year twelve there that you that you wanted to take to take your life. Was that planned? Did it sort of escalate into right, going to plan this, so I'm going to do it? Or was it just right? In this situation, I don't want to be you anymore.
There was so much pressure, And this is why every year when those exam results come out, I reach out to everyone I know who's waiting on them, and I say, this is not the rest of your life. This is one moment in your life, and it will only determine what you do next. It will not determine what you
do for the rest of your life. So whatever happens, don't worry, because I know the despair I felt as And it was the day before I had a trial HSC exam and I was left on my own in the house to study, and I just decided I could not face that exam the next day, and so that's what I did. And the response then and again it was the nineteen eighties. There was no support. It was there was quite a sort of sneering attitude towards kids
and their cries for attention. So it was decided, and you know, with all great love to my parents, their belief was they were doing the best thing for me. It was kind of decided that we would just keep it to ourselves because stigma. Because of the stigma, they'll take the school captaincy away from you. You'll never get over this. Your reputation will be destroyed, you know.
Into the family as well.
Shame, the shame of it, and so you know, the hospital can't talk about it because they're bound not to. And we decided as a family that we would never to speak of it again. And so I had no there was no unpacking of that. There was no psychological support. I'll never forget the social worker who came into the hospital after a few days I've been in and she says, well, are you going to do that again? And I said no,
She said all right, then she signed me up. That was That was the extent of the mental health support that was available to me.
So after that moment when you decided to take your life, did the dominoes keep on falling thereafter, or did you decide to sort of get your life back on track. How did you manage to do that, because ultimately you had to do it by yourself.
Yeah, well, like I say, I didn't really the idea of depression was not a part of our family vernacular. That's actually people feeling sorry for themselves. That's what that was defined as people who can't pick themselves up by their bootstraps and put a good face on it and all that sort of all that tough talk, you know, which you know, my parents were raised by people who went through the war and the depression and all that sort of stuff, and it just flows on and I
understand it. I completely understand. There are eras where you know, that's what you have.
To do, or situations that were lasted so long, i e. The wars that you had to you had no choice.
You would know you can't be talking about depression when you're in the middle of the battlefield. It's like, let's go. But you also have to leave the battlefield on the battlefield, right and bring compassion into other areas of your life. So I didn't know that that's what was happening, and I didn't realize that that's what had happened until I wrote down my story and when the light bulbs were
going on all over the place. I left Ginnie and I drifted through a few sort of not very important jobs, and I was trying to find my place in the world. I met the boy who I fell in love with and I'm still married to decades and decades later. So I really landed on my feet with the right person, my life partner. And you know, eventually I found my way into youth work, and that's where I found a real affinity. That's what I loved to do.
Oh, youth work helping others. Ultimately, did that give you a great sense of achievement of purpose?
It can be. I don't know. I think I was always looking for purposeful things to do. You know, where I met my not yet husband was in a some vincent de poor youth group. So we used to go out and do dawn patrol in King's Cross and handout sandwiches at three o'clock in the morning and stuff like that. So I was always looking for purpose.
Home meat sandwiches, Oh.
Yeah, no, we'd pick them up from the Matt Talbot hostel. Whether our made in dreadful coffee and earns and stuff. So yeah, youth work really gave me a sense of purpose. And I ended up at Frank Baxter Juvenile Detention Center after I got married and moved up the coast. So I was working up there in detention with those lads. And that was thirty years ago now and I'm back there now. So I'm back there, but I've developed a cooking course which I go in and teach the boys
how to cook and we sit down. The cooking is and you wouldn't think you'd hear me say this, but the cooking is actually secondary in this course. So the most important thing is the act of doing that together and then sitting at a table together and having a family meal. So instead of being served food onto their plate which they eat and go back to their cell, we sit at the table. It's all served family style. So they've got to share, they've got to communicate, you.
Know, to work together. And it's got a problem solve.
Yes, absolutely, And they've got to look to left and right and see if everyone's got enough, and they've got to you know, and there's table rules, family rules, you know. And I've been the mum, I'm just like, well, you know, don't go I don't like that. I don't like that.
And I say, well, you know family dinner rules. You don't have to like it, you don't have to finish it, but you have to taste it, and you know, so they're trying new things, and so it's been a beautiful full circle to actually go back into youth work and to be able to bring the cooking along with me.
So cooking. Have you always been a sort of a chef? How did the love for cooking which ultimately changed your career and changed your path in life? When did that sort of become serious? When did you know that you were the chef extra half?
Well, I still don't know about that, but I think Matt Preston described it really well once during Master Chef. He said, the greatest cuisines of the world come from that country's poverty. So you know, you think about patai in France, Well, let's liver. When you don't figure out that taste good unless you're really hungry, I'm sorry, So.
Unless you're using everything, every.
Single thing, because there's nothing you can't afford to waste anything. That's how I started cooking. So I didn't cook a lot growing up because I'm messy, so Mum didn't let me messing up the kitchen too badly. But I think watching the way she cooked and my nan and everything. When I moved out into my own home, I love to eat. I'm greedy little person, and so I wanted to eat nice food. But we had no money. We had no money. With you once you've got a mortgage
when you're very young. We're only twenty four. If I wanted to eat nice food, I'd to work out how to make nice food. And so I learned how to cook things that tasted nice with zero budget, like just a few bits and bobs in the pantry and have to put them together nicely. And we couldn't afford to eat out. So if we wanted a special meal, I had to be able to cook it because we just couldn't afford it.
And it just wasn't you just grabbed what you try this with this. I've got a bit of this, let's not waste it.
Yeah, some of that. And sometimes I'd eat something nice at someone else's house and I'd ask them how they did it. Back then this is pre internet, you know, so you couldn't google something, so if you ate something nice, you had to either work it out by trial and error find out the recipe from whoever made it. You know, there were a couple of cooking shows on TV, not a lot, but I watched what I could when I had the time. But it just became a real passion of me.
So it was an underlying passion that you didn't realize was a passion until you started doing it, and then you became really good at it. Did anyone ever egg you? Because I know my brother's a great cook, right, and we always say to them, you should open up a little care or a little restaurant. Was that ever sort of mentioned as you were growing up with your cooking.
Kind of not as I was growing up. When I was a grown up, it was, you know, and I have my little kids, and their happiness with what I cooked made me really happy. But you know, and I always entertained friends, so I always had people over on the weekend, and I love to cook for people. And but anytime anyone said, oh, you should do a little catering business, or you should do parties or whatever, I'd be like, oh god, no, it's far too much hard work.
I love doing it for joy, but I would never want to do it for work, you know, until you know the contestant call came from us today.
Take me back to that moment. Did you apply for it? How does that happen?
Well?
I loved and what you egged on with people going you should do masters, the show called Masters.
Yeah yeah, it was my best friend that did that, my best friend Tash. So I've been watching the British one and I've been telling her all about it. Oh my god, they made this and they did that. You should have seen it. And so when there was a contestant call for Australia, she said, oh, you ought to try out for it. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that'd be fun. But I kind of kept putting it off because I
was busy. We had our own it business by that point, Mick and I and and in the end it was like the day before applications closed, and she said to me, if you don't put in that application, you're never allowed to talk to me about food again.
Got a figure you don't really love cooking? Yah?
Yeah yeah yeah yah yeah yeah yeah. So I did, and you know, I forgot all about it and a few months later, I got the phone call just saying we want you to come in and audition, and I did.
Wow. And at this stage you said you and your partner had an IT company. Yeah, yep, and the life was good, life was heading in the right direction. Was this quite a scary, scary change to go on on to TV and you know, having to take time out of work, time away family, You know, there's a lot of sacrifice there, right.
Well, yeah, but I didn't even know what it was going to involve. So I went and did the audition. Yeah, we were running our own business, three little boys, beautiful life, busy life, you know, take them to sport and do their homework with them, and working in the business in the daytime. And so going on to I sort of in my head it was a cooking contest. It wasn't
a TV show, So that flipped pretty quickly. I didn't know I would have to live out a home to compete until I was days away from moving into this other house. I didn't know I'd have my phone taken away from me, I wouldn't be able to have my computer with me, I wouldn't be able to see my family. You know, I didn't know i'd be restricted to two phone calls a week. You know, this is sixteen years ago, so I know label laws are being upheld a bit
better these days. And I think contestant welfare is Contestant welfare is far more important now than it used to be. It wasn't a thing back then. It just wasn't now. And I know, because I've been back now, I know that it's a much It's number one priority really. So I didn't know any of that when I signed on. And if I had known that, it's good that I didn't know, I wouldn't have applied. I would have said, well, that would have been fun. But I've got three little boys,
I've got a business. I can't just disappear for what turned out to be five months.
That's what I say. On says Australia as well. If I'd known what was never would have done it won for there. But you so you take on master Chef. Not only do you take on Master Chef Judy, but you you know, the nation falls in love with you, live, you become this mother to everyone and then you go and win it. What was that feeling like? Were you ready for the aftermath of being projected? Into the limelight.
No, no one can be ready for that.
That was.
It was such a it was so weird. I mean, if you sort of start with the premise that we've been locked away for five months, over five months not out in public, not really seeing little bits of what was going on in the newspaper and stuff when we managed to have time to look at the newspaper and so forth, but until we got out of that house, and it was two weeks between the finale being filmed and it going to air. It's a lot longer now,
but back then it was only two and a half weeks. No, I had no idea what was waiting for me on the outside, had no idea, And it was quite surreal. It was quite surreal. And I'll never forget the day when I kind of had a feeling of something, something really quite big and oddest happening here is. I was walking down the street and I just heard joy and I turned around and it was a road crew. It was these big guys in high views. And then you know,
my kids were coming home. My oldest son, God love him, was coming home from school and he had had this meticulously kept handwritten list that he showed me, and he said, these are all the people who want to come over for dinner, and it's like every person who'd made a joke to him. There was teachers on the list. I'm just like Jo, I can't have all those people, and he's like, oh, but they really want to come. So it was just it was so surreal.
How did you prepare on the move and how did you manage on the move or did you manage on the move? Well, I think we did.
We like to think we do. You know, maybe over time I could look back and see that I didn't didn't always make the best decisions. So there was a lot coming at me fast, a lot of opportunities, a lot of and like, I want to preface this by saying that the things that have come out of Master Chef have been ninety nine point nine percent amazingly positive and beautiful, and I will never stop being grateful or
pinching myself that that happened, because it's been wonderful. But there were things that I didn't manage as well as I should have, And one of those was the decision making around what to take on and what to not take on because I had fear and.
You're talking of opportunities here.
Yeah, So if I don't take this on board now, I mean in twelve months time, this could all be over. I need to make hay while the sunshines. I need to take it while you can, take it while you can, and then I I can live out my days in some kind of peaceful you know, bliss and think, gosh, wasn't that an interesting time? Well, sixteen years on.
I've had that mindset.
Yes, so you know exactly what I'm saying. So I took on way too much and you can only do everything for so often. And again, in the writing of this book, I look back at my calendar, like my Outlook calendar from that time, and how the days were broken down into these tiny little chunks of all the different deadlines and the recipes and the columns, and the appearances and the interviews and the travel and all those things. There was no category for self care, there was no
category for downtime. Family barely featured in that calendar. It was get from here to there, do this, do that?
That family element. All of a sudden, you know, they come and it's called a spade. They come second best, don't they. It's like it's all of a sudden, it's like, take it was, it's there. Take it was, that this is going to benefit.
They'll always be there, So you take them for granted, Yeah, you take them.
It's a tough one, isn't it. And a lot of people don't realize that is that you are actually know the sacrifices that you make, right or wrong, in order to have this successful life can be at the difference sometimes well.
And the truth of the matter is that at the end of those days or those weeks when I've been away and certainly further down the track when I opened a cooking school and I was on breakfast radio all at the same time, what I had left at the end of the day when I went home to my family was nothing, nothing, whatsoever. They got the least of me, They got the worst of me. I couldn't smile, I
couldn't make a joke. I couldn't provide for them anything that I was supposed to provide because I had nothing left. There was nothing left in my tank at the end of each and every day. So you know, for me, now, I'm back to color coding my calendar and I look at it every day and make sure that there's balance
and the categories in there. My mental health and my family are the two most important things in that calendar, and if they're not dominating that calendar, then I start dropping things off.
And when did you realize after this Master Chef moment, you've got all these TV shows, you've got a cooking school. When did When was the moment you realize that you were taking on too much and that you know you were close, if not to burn out?
Oh I hit burnout. I wasn't great at re the signals that my brain was sending me that it was all too much. I eventually went to a GP who you know, I got a diagnosis of anxiety and depression, went on medications.
There a moment that you came back and you thought I need help.
Oh yeah, there was, But it wasn't. It wasn't me that recognized the moment. It is no, it wasn't me.
That was so engulfed in this world that you can't see outside of it. You don't not until someone.
Well, you know, I guess I found myself back where I was in year twelve.
And talk about doing the full circle, so you've done it in the reverse this time. You know, you've done it in a full time to be where you are today. So you felt yourself going back to you don't want to be here.
I had nothing left. I just had nothing left, and I had in my head because it's sickness, right, severe depression is a serious illness, and it's a life threatening illness. And my life was threatened by it. And I couldn't stop what I was doing. I couldn't stop because in my head, well, who else can do the Rabbit and Julie Goodwhen radio show if I don't turn up every morning? And who else can run Julie's place cooking school? I mean, my bloody name was on it. What a mistake. And
you know, so I was going home at night. The only I could shut off my brain late at night was to drink wine. So I was doing too much of that. So I was self medicating. And that's a terrible, terrible way to sleep, because you wake up with your heart hammering and it just all becomes this massive, you know, self fulfilling prophecy. And I went, I went right down
to the bottom of the well. And I had made a decision that everybody, everybody, my colleagues, my children, my husband, my family, everybody would be better off if I just racked off and let them all be. And that was the decision that I made, and that was the action I was taking. And I was stumbled upon by a couple of strangers who recognized that I was a person that needed some company, and they sat with me, and I was executing a plan. If it's no, it's okay.
This is why you know. This is why I wrote the book, and because what I want is for people to recognize the earlier signs before they get to this point. So when you say, when did you know? I was nearly dead when I found out that I needed help, I was sitting on the edge of Brisbane water and I was ready. I was just trying to figure out
what to do with my shoes. I didn't know what to do with my shoes, and I was trying to figure that out when this young couple came up and recognized how distress I was and said, do you look like you need some company? And they just sat with me for a couple of.
Hours, really just passed passing by, not you didn't say.
Hello, passed me by, and they turned around and came back and said, you look like you need some company. And so they just sat with me for a couple of hours and took to me. They had their dog with them, you know dogs.
They knew, they knew that, they knew, Yeah, they absolutely knew. They thought, if we leave this lady alone, she's not going to be here. Yep, And you weren't.
And eventually I said, I'm going to be all right now, I'm going to call my husband, and when I told him what had happened, he took me straight to the hospital. And then I became a client of the mental health system, and that's what I remained for quite a long time. I was in and out of hospital five times.
So you're you're you're in the height of your career. You've got everything going on for you. Anyone looking from the outside in be like, she's made it, she's a successful But they can't look at the inside out, can they?
Anyone listening to me on the radio would have had zero idea zero because that was the strength of some parts of my brain, was to be able to completely compartmentalize. And I've been doing that my whole life. I don't I and I used to say to my colleague, you know, because we used to say, six or nine is the show zone, and nothing enters the show zone. And so I would say to him, Oh, got some stuff going on, but I'll put it in the box. I'll put it
in the brain box. And when we went on the Christmas break in twenty nineteen, it all just fell apart. When it was time to go back, I was I was in a mental hospital, and I just I said to him, I'm not going to be able to come back when I thought I was coming back, And he said, what happened? And I said, the box broke and he knew exactly exactly. He knew exactly what happened. And they held my job for as long as they could, and
then they had to give it away. And I also had to acknowledge that that job was part of the downhill spiral because it's they're not hours that are conducive to also running a full time hospitality business, which has you up late at night and working weekends. I was literally working seven days a week and I had been doing it for four years. It is not a.
Sustainable Candles from both fans and and yeah, wow, so how did you manage to recover and what was what was the recovery like and the support that you.
Got recovery is ongoing. Because when I first went into hospital, I kind of thought, well, it's like, you know, if you break your leg, your leg heels and you run away, you know. And so when I when it didn't work and I had to go back, I was so angry. I remember going in and just being so angry and saying to them I did all the things, all the things you said, and I'm not better, So get me better drugs or get me a better doctor. But essentially
it was like it was like they'd failed. But what I didn't understand was it's not like a broken leg. What it is like is your car. So you can't put petrol in your car and go, Okay, job done. I never have to do that again. You got to keep putting petrol in your car. You've got to keep taking it to the mechanic and keep it running, you know, and if you don't, it's going to fall apart. Well, your brain is like a car, and there's a lot of there's a lot of practical stuff that needs to
be done, physical stuff. It's a laundry list of things that I absolutely have to do to stay well. And that they involve physical activity, all the stuff we know. But once it becomes literally life or death, it gets a lot easier to do because it's like I will not compatient with it. I will not go back there. So what I need to do is physical activity. I need to do meditation, I need to see my psychologist. I take medication, and I know not everyone agrees that
you should do that, but it has helped me. And while ever I'm in a good place, I'm sticking with what works. Time in nature, time with family, creativity is important to me. So there's there's a whole bunch of things that I need to do to stay well. And I don't drink anymore. I've stopped alcohol. It's coming up for four years now. And that was one of the hardest parts of the whole bloody thing.
Probably one of the main contributing denominators to your mental health. Like you said, even if you have a glass of wine or two at night, you wake up and there's still that tiny bit of brain fall, your heart's still beating, you know.
But I got to a point where a glass of two never wasn't cutting it. So I just I had to make a very clear decision, and it's the lifestyle and the habits hardest part to break actually, but you know, and now it's easier. And I would say to anyone who's questioning whether or not they should maybe he's up a bit on it. Well, if you're asking yourself that question, the answer is probably yes. And b it gets easier.
It gets easier. And I can make that promise because you know, I've interacted with now hundreds and hundreds of people who are on that same path, so it does get easier. And now I like, I'm completely happy. I'm so happy that I don't have to have that to worry about, as well as all the other crap.
You said that your memoir helped you as well, let's finish on your book. How has it helped you and how is it going to help other people?
Well, it helped me by shining a light on some stuff that you know, what do they say, shamed eyes in daylight? So I brought out all the things that I was ashamed of and I exposed it all to the daylight. There's really nothing left, you know, And there's nothing left. I've brought it off, I've put it all out there, so judge me. If you will, and as you will, it's out, it's there, and it does die in daylight. It lessens because actually, now I've got ownership
over all of it. Nobody can expose me for anything. It's mine and it's there. And what I can say to anybody else who's got shame over anything at all, just work through it, you know, talk through it, get whatever help you need. So the way I want it to help other people is by recognizing the early signs of mental decay and that downhill spiral. Recognizing those signs. If you're a perfectionist, if you're a people, please it. If you're the person who everyone says, I don't know
how you do it, that's not a compliment. It might sound like one, it might be meant as one. That's a warning. That is a warning. If people are looking at you saying how do you manage? You probably shouldn't be managing all of that, And there's probably stuff going on underneath as to why you think you need to be managing all of that. Please take those signals that your brain sends you before they become life or death, you know, please get some help. Talk. Let's keep this
conversation going. Let's keep being open about it and lose the bloody shame of you know, all the shame I saw in the people who were in that mental hospitals. The five hospitalizations I had, there wasn't a single one where there weren't people who were just so ashamed of themselves that they'd landed there. Forget that you're there trying to get well. You're the hero in this story because you are here trying to get well. Let's make people heroes for acknowledging that they need a hand every now
and again. You know, you're the people that are making it easier for me to talk about it. And you know, I think we need to raise people up, approach other people with compassion, and approach yousselves with compassion as well.
That's how I hope it'll shame dies in daylight. And I suppose when you acknowledge your shames and you bring them to the forefront, no one can use them against you either, because you know that you've already exposed them.
And I've told that story. Bro go find a different one.
I love that. I love that. Julie, thank you ever so much for coming on my podcast. Great to see you once again. And who knows you meet on another shows every time. Soon you know SA Australia.
Do you know what smash that? Thank you?
Julie has written an extraordinary memoir, so if you enjoyed this conversation, I urge you to pick up a copy. It's called Your Time Starts Now. I'll link the details in the show notes. Thanks for listening to this episode of Headgame. If you like listening to the podcast, please leave me a review. I'm Att Middleton. You in the next episode.