You're listening to a mother and Mia podcast. Mama Miya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Hello, it's me a popping into ears because I wanted to reshare one of our most downloaded episodes of No Filter ever. It was an interview that I did with Sophie Dalzzio and twenty twenty. She was a name that many people knew, and you'll hear a little bit about her experience in a second from her. But the update is that her personal life has taken
a really beautiful turn. She reconnected with a man called Joseph Soileno, who was a friend that she'd known since she was six years old. They got engaged in twenty twenty three, and in September last year, Sophie and Joseph had a little boy called Frankie. Here's my conversation with Sophie Dalzsio. It's one of the most extraordinary stories ever been told on this show. Hi.
Yes, Yes, Elbot.
You for having us. You'll remember her name, and if it just rings a bell but you can't place it, you'll remember her story. On an ordinary day in two thousand and three, an elderly driver crashed into a Sydney childcare center, pinning two toddlers underneath the burning car. It was right before Christmas and all the kids were having nap time, excitedly waiting for Santa to visit. Two year old Sophie Delizio and her little friend Molly Wood were horribly injured and for a time it wasn't known if
Sophie would survive. She had burns to eighty five percent of her tiny body. She lost both her legs below her knee, her right hand and her right ear. She survived, though she left hospital. Her family and it seemed all of Australia celebrated a miracle. And then, unbelievably, less than three years later, Sophie was here by another car whose driver had a seizure, just as her nanny carefully pushed her wheelchair across the pedestrian crossing. This time the car
through Sophie more than eighteen meters from her wheelchair. She had a broken jaw, broken ribs, fractured collar bone and a punctured lung, as well as bleeding on her brain and a heart attack. Again, she nearly died, and again Australia prayed for Sophie. But after all of that, Sophie lived and how she lived today, she's one of the most remarkable nineteen year olds you could ever hope to meet.
For me, and my prosthetics are my main type of freedom. I'm happy to use my wheelchair outside the house, but I need my prosthetics to drive my car. I need my prosthetics to, you know, if I'm out of place with stairs, to walk up the stairs. So I think the hardest days are the ones where I just have to do nothing.
From Mamma Maya, I'm Meya Friedman, and you're listening to No Filter, a weekly podcasts with people like Sophie who tell their stories very candidly and aren't afraid to be all kinds of vulnerable. Today I am speaking to that little girl, Sophie Delizio and her mum Caroline Carolyn. What's that? It's just such a funny interview because I'm saying, what's the best way to talk to you about it? Because I guess in another situation I would say, so tell
me about the day. But I just feel instinctively that I don't want to make you relive it in that way. So I want to ask you about the first couple of years of your life, of which you'll have no memory of it. See what was family life like?
Well, it was pretty chaotic because we were told when the exitent version that we've been living in hospital was so for a year, and we made it out after six and a half months, and that to me was a testament to her true grit and equally the team of medical practitioners and support people we had around us at the time that allowed us to get out the
doors of the hospital. You don't want to spend any more time in hospital than you can because there's sick people, it's infection, there's a greater risk in hospital than being out of hospital. So the time was to come and we moved home and had round the nursing care for the remainder of the year, so twenty four our care nursing care to support us support.
So it's so funny I asked you about the first two years, and you went straight to after the accident. I actually met before the accident, the first two years of her life, not the first two years. After day, because I keep thinking, I'm sure you've read Lee Sales is an incredible book. Any ordinary day about how when big traumatic things happen, life is pretty ordinary until that moment when it happens suddenly it is really so what was your ordinary life like?
Well, Ron and I were both running our own businesses. It was that juggle of parents managing work and little kids, little babies.
And two and four with Mitch four and you were to.
Two and four and finding the right daycres. And we'd moved from Erskine where we lived, and we had built a house and see fourth and it was kind of like, you know, we don't have we haven't been on our list for long enough for daycare. You go into the card of the oh, no, I failed as a parent because I haven't kind of got.
There maybe when that was your biggest problem, you know, daycare because of splash school.
You know, that's sort of focus.
So if I don't remember being two or three, or I think my first memory kicks in around four, but that's because my childhood was fairly unremarkable. What's your first memory?
I honestly have no idea. My brain's like some things I don't know if they're memories or like things have just made up in my mind, or being told stories that you've heard, Yeah, for example, yeah, exactly. So I think my first memory is at a Christmas tree. I can't remember if I was injured, like disabled or not. I have no recollection of that. I just remember Dad lifted me up and putting the still on top of the Christmas tree. So I think that's my first memory.
But again, Christmas comes about every year. It could be any of those years, and you could have seen it in a photo exactly, because I know this photos around that tree.
Do you remember hospital the first time? Nope, I don't hospital the second time.
Nope. I have no recollection of hospitals at that time, but I have, like, I get these feelings whenever I go into because I went to Children's Hospital at Westmead and there's this one room where I remember the feeling of being in when I had one of my accents or a major surgery, and I just remember ufter pain. I can't remember the moment or anything, but I can't go into that.
Room still to the state a specific room in Yeah, it's.
One room with a silver bath tub in the middle where i'd get cleaned and they'd strip all my bandages down. Yeah, that was not my favorite room in the hospital. But that's the only like feeling I have from the early days of.
Hospital, because I imagine it would all have just blurred, like the.
Operations as the and the high amount of medication I was on kind of dulled it in my brain, and the protective mechanisms like blocking it out of my mind sort of thing.
So how about you have got very strong memories? Yeah, in different ways.
And it's interesting because I'll talk to friends and they go, well, remember that, Oh, yes, I do now now that you've reminded me. And it's not from necessarily blocking things out, but you move on to some of the specifics of the events. And it was four and a half months before we were told whether she would live or not, so you kind of live every day knowing that that could be her last and so your focus is just
on that day. Some of the small, you know, things that happened slip away in the memory bank.
I've heard Sophie talk about the fact that you were asked whether you wanted to turn her life support off. Was that one conversation or was that sort of a series of conversations over that time when she was critically ill.
It was when she was in intensive care. She was an intensive pier about two and a half months, so we were given We're given the option twice actually in the first week.
How does that work? Does someone just sort of sidle up to you and say, this is a hard conversation.
Yeah, just the nature of the catastrophic injuries. In fact, I recounted this after the Undau show to doctor Peter, Sophie's surgeon, who remains her surgeon to this.
Day, from day one to really and.
I said, Peter, I recall the words, and he would say to me, Carolyn, because we'd go answer that, and he'd look at me in the eye and he'd say, Carolyn, how much can a kohala bear? I mean, it's just such a nice way to go.
That's a beautiful way to say the most.
And he has the most amazing knack of saying in that sort of extreme environment something where you can actually connect to what he's saying because of the intensity of what's.
Happening and the shock I imagine.
The shaku and I often count, you know, explain to people it's like being dropped intoors and and all this going on. We're on around you in a foreign country because you don't know the language and it's the medical speak too, which sort of compounds. I just don't get what's going on. And over time you acclimatize and.
You become fluent and in this language you never wanted.
To learn totally.
But he's always been good with that. Like the amount of procedures I have, I just know basic words of what they are. I have no idea what the technicality of stuff behind it is. I just know, like i'd go to my doctor. I'm like, I'm having this done. He's like, yeah, sure, and so simple to me. Like it's just like we make up medication I had when I was young. We called wobbly medicine. We have no idea what the actual medical.
Don't like that.
He sounds like he had an amazing bedside manner.
Oh wonderful. He's great.
He's specializing kids burns in kids. Is that his specialty?
Yes, he's a plastic surgeon. He have plastics at Westmead, but he had done a lot of work in America Shriners, and so it's an expert in burns as well. And because of the requirement of all the specialists, literally at Christmas was pulling everyone back from Christmas holidays and so we looked out with doctor Penn and you know, the burns unit generally the stuff, all the stuff and the burns unit. Because we had dealings with everyone. It's fantastic.
But we just have had Peter stay with us all this time.
And thankfully he works at adult hospitals as well.
So I was going to say transitioning now, are you nineteen? Yes, I am, so when you're eighteen. Yeah, From what I hear, it can be quite a jarring experience to be put into that adult system.
One of the best things was that my hospital from children's to adults was literally just down the road from each other, so it wasn't like a whole new atmosphere and all that. And I had the same doctor. My doctor has anistus that works with them at multiple hospitals and we've met before and basically my doctor and anisotus are the most like important to know my needs because I have terrible veins and certain medications don't work on me and all of that.
You want that continuity exactly.
So having doctor Peter know everyone was the simplest thing.
It was to explain what wobbling medicine was exactly.
You didn't have to Yeah exact, I didn't have to say anything, and the nurses changed no matter how many times you go to the same hospital, so it wasn't really that big of an issue. I enjoyed the bigger rooms and no crying babies done the hall, so yeah, yeah, it was really for me. I was very grateful for it to be such an easy experience transition. It's all thanks to my doctor just for making it so simple.
Caroline, What about for you and your husband the transition out of the children's hospital system and into the adults.
One, Yeah, that's really it's difficult transitioning as a parent when you've been there for sixteen years essentially, and you know the ots and you know the canteen stuff and the canteen stuff. Still out about Mitch. How's Mitch going?
You know, it's becomes a family and although we were told very early on, don't let this become your second home or anything, but in many ways, the connections you make at the time is what makes it manage well and what gets you through, and that familiarity in extreme circumstance and certainly ongoing medical care, takes an element of stress out of the mix because you have a reliance on these people whom you've known for years, and so
therefore you trust them implicitly with the care of your child. And I was grateful for that. So when transition was taking place and still is okay, so how are we going to do that? Now? We know we could go back and call anyone of those specialists for advice. That's a good thing. We know the families who've transitioned, so you talk to them about how they've gone about it.
Do you get shut out as an.
At Yeah, you do. Actually, I mean you don't.
Legally you can make whatever decisions you want now, right.
Yeah, Yeah, there's certainly that too. So when you transition to an adults hospital, it's kind of like, well you can come, you know. Yeah, the conversations up with Sophie and not with you.
And especially with COVID because I had a surgery a few months ago and that then being like only you're not allowed to have a certain amount of visitors, So having mum in with me was a risk they had to consider taking.
Yeah, and we usually had a bit of a rotation in the past, but doctor Bittot was really good about involving Sophie in the discussions around his surgery really from when you're about twelve.
Yeah, I would decide a few months in advance. I'd have my physios recommend certain skin releases and sky releases that I needed, but ultimately my doctor would come up to me. It's like, what do you want? So it all be my decision.
What would your choice be between? Because I would have thought that surgeries you needed wouldn't be discretionary.
The ones I had to have probably up until I was I think fourteen was my last one was my bone trimming on the end of my legs, So that one I had, you know, so it's literally when my bones are growing, but my skin is too the scarring, it's too bad for it to stretch at the same pace, So they'd have to trim the bones every year to maintain my skin, basically not let my bones break through my skin.
But does that mean that you're what are these bones called your upper leg bones, you know, thigh bones. Are they the same size they were when you had the accident at age too?
No, No, they've grown, but it's at a much slower pace to what.
Stretched.
Yeah, yeah, it just sweat stretches a lot slower, and with the skin releases I have to have and assessed with it. Oh yeah, I remember. It used to be excruciating pain and I'd growing pains like everyone does, but Mum would have to sit with me for hours and be massaging my legs and I'd have to have heat packs, ice packs, everything on them, taking so many painkillers. It
was terrible pain. But that stocks you stop growing. Yes, so I might get the random one once a year or something like that, but it's not as major at all. They used to be every two weeks or something. I start drinking, I know, my prosthetics heightened, so.
Yes, exactly. So you had to get the bone trimmed. Was that a very elaborate process? And did you have rituals about when you went to hospital?
The biggest ritual was always to go out for dinner before surgery, just because I had to fast and I don't eat breakfast anyway, Like I'm not a breakfast person, but when you don't have the choice about eating breakfast, bread exactly. So we would always go out for dinner beforehand, and I'd make sure to get really full so i'd be fine for the next twelve hours, and then I'd
go to surgery. In the morning, and only other traditions are really we have a little surgery bag that we pop at the end of my bed and we still do with a photo of me and cross and a few other little bits and bobs from my time. And when I was younger, there'd be traditions with my mum or dad whoever came in with me, Like Dad would say you're a big strong girl and make me say it, and Mum would be go to your happy place. So
there'd be little traditions amongst us. But now that I'm older, I go in alone, so it's more lonely.
But what about you.
That's your first time this year because of COVID restricting as yes.
What surgeries do?
You still have to have some skin releases, so they take skin from a place that isn't burnt, So for me, that's my right thigh and then they remove scars and
pace the skin on top of where they remove the scar. Yeah, so that's my thing I'll have to have for the rest of my life because it's not that my bones are still growing, it's that movement is always different, Like I might not be in my prosthetics as much, so that might and some of my thigh scars and I might not move my right arm up as much, so
that's going to tighten natska. So it's all about, you know, moderating with my physiotherapist each week, and when I go to the gym and exercise, moderating all the scars that could get worse.
What do you do at the gym?
Go on my phone, listen to.
What everyone does. You pretend to exercise while looking Yeah.
Exactly, Just it depends on the day. Usually I stick more with weights and try and build up my muscle because I've spent quite a few months off gym because of surgery, so it's usually trying to recover from that and build up my muscle because my muscles get weak very quickly. So yeah, just trying to build up that muscle mass again and things like bike and I try not to do treadmills and stuff where I'm standing because
it puts pressure on my wounds. But yeah, just whatever's really available and it's free, so I just take it.
Carolyn, when you were having those how much and acquire of our conversations, what do you take into account when you answer that question?
Quality of life? And that was really tricky because no one has survived her injuries before, and so no one could guide us about what quality of life would mean.
So you go through this process of well, doctor Peter again was sort of guide that time, where he introduced us to young children who had lost limbs, trem and chicocle actually and became amputees as a result, and the families of them, and that was sort of a baseline, I guess, talking to other parents and families of children have been burned, which is difficult because of the significant amount of injury that Surfa sustained.
And also the double whammy of being an amputee and having burns, which seems very unfair.
So, you know, trying to get some guidance around that information pooling I suppose conscious at the time, No, she was intubated and in a coma, and yeah, because the injuries were so extensive, it was really just she was on life support and really she could have gone any minute. We were just grateful for another thirty seconds with her in the early time at that time. So it just sort of grappling with all of that and going, well, what is quality of love? What does that mean? What
could she achieve when no one really knew. So we thought, well, I'm just giving a shot, and we told so that if if it got too hard, Mary McKillop was going to look after you up in heaven.
Yes, Mary mckilla comes into play at this point. I remember praying for you, and I'm not even really just I remember everyone praying for you both times. You know, you really seem to harness that universally. Are you and run of faith? Obviously you're a faith we are. How were you particularly religious before?
I wouldn't say overly religious. I have a belief, a spiritual.
Belief that there's something out there.
Absolutely, and I harnessed that and I just happened to feel for me it was a Catholic faith that resonated
most sin sintly for me. And I happened to be working in nor Sydney at the time, all Blues Point Road, and I just wanted a quiet place and I found the Mary Mickillip Chapel one year when I'd had a couple of miscarriages and was wanting to have children and was trying to grapple with that this may never happen for us kind of conversation, and I found the Mary McKillop Chapel, and I walked in there, I thought, this is my place, and then I would just get a
little tap on the shoulder and someone would just check on me. You can go up and do this, what you could do. It was just such a gentle environment, and I just felt so good there. Anyway, I prayed on Mary mcallops tomb and various things like that, and ended up having Mitchell and then so.
And so when she was in hospital after the first accident, it just came back to you.
Yeah, absolutely, so if she was going to go to heaven, she was going to go to heaven with holding Mary mcgillips.
And yeah.
And I had a belief also in the power of prayer, the power of community, and the power of that higher order, that high being, and just the immensity of the universe that could help us with this situation that seemed extraordinary, catastrophic by some people's words, but certainly greater than I could manage on my own.
And it did feel like there was a universal like a lot of people who might not ordinarily otherwise pray. We're all focused on one thing and you shouldn't have survived really in terms of your injuries and odds odds against you, and something bigger than you happened. I want to ask about Mitch too, because when I've looked at some of the old interviews and the footage, there's Mitch in the background of photos. There's Mitch sitting next to you on the couch. And you were from when you
were sort of five or six. You seem to quite love like, you were good at the spotlight and the cameras, and you are naturally very outgoing as a vescent girl, and you still are now a woman. And he's always sort of hanging back. And I often thought about how you and Ron felt about Mitch during that time, because he was only four. How did you bring him up alongside Sophie when there was so much understandable focus on her.
It's a really tricky The siblings of children with ongoing medical editions or disability have a rough time and they're an underrecognized group. I joined him up to Siblings Australia straight away, and it's a charity of foundation that was set up by a women in South Australia. It's the only one I could find, but I wanted to show him that there was support there for him. I always made sure that he had access to all supports that he would need from a counseling point of view, and
that he felt as involved. The staff of the children's hospital really looked out for him. As I mentioned, the ladies and the canteen still ask after him when we go in, so he was as loved a member of the community. What we did when we were living in the hospital for him because of the intensity of the week and I guess the rawness of n and our emotion, my emotions. In order to give him some normality and routine in his life. My parents moved over from New Zealand.
We had previously lived in Australia, so it was an easy transition for them. But they came and lived in our home for a year and my mother became his principal care Yeah, so she would get him to take care and you know, teach him to walk numbers down the road and look at the side posters.
So you could really relax that side and go that sorted. I can really just focus my energy.
And he would come in for the latter half of the week and the weekend and it was awful. We would have friends pick him up on a Sunday, take him out and do something special and take him home. And he was always very distressed by.
That, having to leave or having to be there.
Having to leave, Yes, and it's tough, but we knew ultimately it would be better for him to be at home in his own bed for some of that time.
And he was always very protective of mom and Dad and myself, Like when I first lost my legs, he told mom and Dad that Sophie's legs will grow back like a lizard's tale, like trying to make a situation very like a lot better.
He's always been incredibly protective of so innately he just can read it, you know, have this enduring image and I've spoken of it before of walking into the Australia Museum and he's sussed out of the room, looked at where the parents and the children are, and he's seen someone and he's seen the children look and so he's grab his prap and turned her around and taken her to an exhibit over there. So that he's always averted. And he was four, no, sorry, he would have been five,
It would have been quite early. One of the things that we'd tried to do for sofa is not cotton wool wrapper and cotton wool. It's like if she was well enough to go out, she was well enough to go to the museum or to the aquarium, or for a walk on the beach, whatever, And as soon as she could have all her bandages off and her pressure garments off, she was not one to cover up. If it was hot, she would strip off and her legs would be out and loud and proud she will. That
was her, that's innately her. And you need to be pushing this little little t shirt and little shorts, you know, quite when she was young. That's very different for children in particular to see someone without legs, like where did legs go? Well, let me tell you a story.
But you all guys were also famous, like super famous. Everybody in Australia recognized your faces. So that's a whole other level of staring and attention that how do you live with that? Because it's a funny kind of celebrity where everyone feels that they know you. Right.
Yeah, I think that's best dancewered by Sophie, But for me it was well, I can either have people stare at her or they can say hello and send her love, and as a parent, I thought, well, I know which one i'd prefer, so I think we'll just go down this path. And yeah, so I've got a lot of love from people. The other side to that was that I know that Sophie. In fact, I was talking to
a friend of mine about it. Yesterday. We were at the Australia Zoo and this woman came up to you and she said, oh, I'm so pleased you love this place too. This is my sanctuary. I'm going through cancer treatment. And she said, and it's made doubly special for me today because I've seen you here. And then there was another incident where you someone had written and said I had been thinking of suiciding and I've read your story. I now realize what I have to live for. It's
incredibly powerful stuff. So if by Sophie having a public image because so many people loved and cared about her, and the story continued, because there was just this continuance, a natural continuance. Everyone thought it would end, but it continued. It was important for me to know that if the story was a public one, as it was anyway, and it helped people to change their life for better or live a better life. Then that was some important legacy.
It's a lot, though, like you're still like at nineteen you kind of I don't know, you want to maybe drink and dates and people and make some mistakes and maybe not drink. But like that's a lot to take on everybody's feelings about you and everybody's you've saved my life or changed my life or I'm so grateful, Like is that why you wanted to go to the UK?
Everyone thinks that, but honestly, for me, it was just to see if I could manage my care by myself. And I felt like if I stayed in Australia.
Couldn't you have just moved out of home? No?
I mean yes, but everything was set up for me, Like my physio was a pharmacy that set up for me. I've my doctors, everything are set up, and I wanted to see if I could just go to another country, start where, yeah, where I knew no one, and just try and see if I myself could do it. And that's why, like my mom and dad and everyone wanted a care to go on the plane with me, and I was like, no, they can come a week after.
Like I understand I said yes, for my mom's sake and my dad's sake and everyone's sake.
But I was like, throw mom and dad a speaking on behalf of mom's and dad and I throw us a bone, and at least come and carry the bags. See.
I think they wanted it to be them, but I was like, no, my friend can come instead.
Proxy she was.
She's a nurse, so I mean, it's okay, there we go. She was my care so yeah, so she came like a week later. So I just wanted to see if that first week I could just take that big step myself.
How was that first week? Oh?
Hell, it was horrible.
Was it hard?
I imagine it was.
I binged like most of the seasons of Friends. I thought you were gonna say I nailed it was. I was just very shocked by it all. Like I love traveling and I love London, but just I had no idea and what to expect. I thought I'd get there straight away and it would be my dream. But it got there and I was like I'm alone and just trying to figure out.
I thought that path through it exactly, you can't do exactly.
I had no idea what i'd feel and like saying goodbye was one of the hardest things and still is. I hate saying goodbye. So like, once I got there and just realizing I have no appointments, I have no one to see, I have nothing to do, like it's all up to me, there was an overwhelming sense of
freedom that terrified me. Not that I never had freedom, I have so much freedom here, but to know that I get to choose everything for myself, Like every choice I make is mine, no one else's, And that just was so overwhelming.
How long ago is this?
That was my last year.
And then what happened? Did COVID happen? Well?
Yeah, then I went to university in September. I moved into a student hall some of the best people of my life, and I finished my UNI degree well almost, I had two weeks left of union or something. I was doing social anthropology and development and then yeah, just stop. But the weirdest thing was.
You finished your degree or COVID heat and you decided you had to come home.
Yeah.
So the weirdest thing was we had four weeks worth of strikes at my UNI for something or ever.
It was like this year.
Yeah, yeah, that was in February and that was like seventy universities in London were doing so it was a massive thing. So I had UNI off like odd days. So it was two weeks worth of strikes, but over four weeks that all happened. And then we had a week back at UNI and two of my classes were canceled anyway because the lectures weren't there. And then UNI was shut down. So I have hardly attended university.
I had a whole year, you had a whole another year to go.
Yeah, that was on my first year of my degree. So then I was coming back anyway for medical legal reasons. And then I decided, well, I couldn't go back really, And then I decided that for now, at least, I'm just gonna defer UNI for a year, stay here and just appreciate what I have here instead of going back to so much uncertainty where if something happened here and I couldn't get back in time, or it just was too much. So I decided to be here with my loved ones and.
A compromised do you have to be extra careful.
I probably should be, well, like I don't let anything stop, like if I want to go out to like shops. I want to do that, like global pandemics locked down. No, when I first got here, I legally had to because I was quarantine. Thankfully, I just missed the hotel. I was the week before the hotel quarantine got in. Yeah, so I stayed inside for those two weeks in my room.
And then I want to see my friends. I hadn't seen them in almost a year or something, so I just slowly went out, Like coffees and shops and all that were still closed. So now I'm just go out to like an empty cinema or like things. Well, like I'm not in huge crowds anyway.
Like everyone. I guess.
Yeah, exactly when you were in the.
UK, what was the biggest difference that you noticed.
See. The weirdest thing is I still got recognized over there, did you? I got recognized. The weirdest one was in a gym changing room by an American woman and I was so confused. And her Auntie or Nan was Australian and raised her like when she was young, told her about me or something, but this woman was mid late
twenties or something. I was very surprised, and it was the weirdest thing that was only a few months into me being there, and I've had people from Australia who've moved to the UK or were visiting the UK be like, oh, that's sleepe easier then come up to me, which was very lovely of them.
Is it lovely?
Yeah?
Or can it be a bit intrusive when you're just trying to get on with your life?
I don't know any different. Yeah, I guess so. Which is the weirdest thing because.
I watch everyone project, you know, preparing to meet you. Today, I watched a bunch of interviews and I watch all of these older people, you know, around my age and older projecting onto you. Oh I remember when this happened, and it's like everyone has to work through their own emotions about it. And like I was watching sixty Minutes this morning and I had my little cry, but that's nothing to do with you and nothing to do with your life now, and you were just a bit like yeah.
Yeah, pretty much because I had enough.
To happen to you.
Well, like exactly what my mum said before. It's the fact that my story has helped people and has I know this is weird, but I don't like the word inspired because I guess.
Yeah, some people with disabilities hate that way.
Yeah, and like I'm okay for it low to like it. Yeah, Like I'm okay if people use it on me, but I don't like using the word. But if I've helped people change their lives in some way, that's all I care about.
I don't be very invested in you.
Yeah, exactly. And if they can find any bit of hope or courage from it, yeah, I'm happy to give it. I am not going to shy away from my story or the spotlight because I want to like hide from it, because it's my life. I can't do anything about it. I'm just going to create as much change as i can while i'm here.
When you were a teenager, did you rebel against your parents because you seem to love them and they love you?
Obviously, I was a hard teenager to do it what we like as a teenager, bossy, controlling a chatter box, my way or the high.
Them away though? Will you like a bit?
Well, I did suffer from a lot of mental health illnesses when I was in my early teenage years, so I naturally did because of that, which is both to do with my disability and just life.
And you know, and being a teenage girl exactly.
Everyone suffers from something or another at some point in their life. I think that period I definitely did. But like every teenager goes to a phase of no, like say no to their parents and wanting just their own space, So I think mine was just pretty natural for at least from my perspective. It was like I hear sories mum's friends who has a kid who's fourteen, She's complaining about her daughter doing this, and I was like, I
did that, Like, yeah, Mitchell did that. We all did that, Like, yeah, it's true, it didn't.
I suppose it's just the difference in how protective you are and how because injuries and disability can be in fantializing in a way, can't it, in the sense that you need care and you need your reliance, Yeah, your reliance on other sides.
And I think it's we were so proud of Sophia when she went to the UK, because it's like, I done my job, She's got there on our road.
Do you cry so much?
It's funny, you know, at different times, I would certainly not at the airport, not to show SOFI know, dad anywhere currently got the Sopha's getting the PIC talk right after the get.
I'm crying like the entire twenty six hour flight.
There, because that's natural pushing away, which a mother has to really respect in the sense that it's a very normal part. But you also still have this caretaking role.
And yeah, you know it's the juggle of Sophie as her care has changed as she's aged in terms of giving her some more opportunity to negotiate her own pathway forward. And you know, we know that she needs to keep mobile, and you know, when swimming wasn't working out, we had to look at other options. That's where rowan.
Cans otherwise gets tired.
It gets tired definitely, And so so it's really good about managing her physical strength now through various means. I think she's overall done a really good job. There were times we really feel sorry for Jenny her physio on Saturday mornings.
I was physio because it was stretching that I liked. Right, Oh yeah, I think.
Morning.
I was not a morning person as a teenager. It was more the fact that I didn't see the need for it. It might have had, it might not have, but I was like, why, Yeah, and I think as you get older, every teenager comes to an appreciation of their parents and the role they play.
Like at that age, does that happen. Yeah, my daughter's fourteen, my.
Brother's twenty one, and I still don't think he realized it. I definitely it took me time. You know, during those middle teenagers fourteen to sixteen, I didn't realize that, like how much everyone has done for me, whether it's my physio, my mum or whoever. Especially once I moved to England, like that appreciation just doubled in size because I realized how much everyone, like my parents have built stuff for me.
Whether you're disabled or not, you value how much of your life is to do with your parents, and they shape you, whether it's good or bad. They're gonna shape you no matter what. And so that appreciation definitely came to me, even more so when you moved to the.
Uka, Carol in the first time. The first accident, you could speak quite fatalistic, I imagine, and say this was terrible luck it was a driver had a seizure. The second time two years later, How the hell do you reconcile that.
I don't think you can, other than you think there's a divine purpose. What is it?
Ye? Come on, Mary, but are you really trying to test my faith here?
And then it's like that's never going to be answered park it and for us was more of a continuance because our biggest gap from a hospital visit was only a couple of weeks at that point anyway, So it's just like we just clicked into an automation on an eye of we've done this before, we know what to do, pulling these teams do it this way, the same thing. Friends came around, they were sorting the mail, they were doing this, you know, and everyone just clicked into.
The same jobs before.
It was kind of weird. It was surreal. Certainly, one of the.
Most beautiful things about the second accident was that we had even more people around, like people who were my rehabilitation swim teachers, who worked on my second preschool. They lived around the corner for where Mitchell went to school when he went to primary school, so they'd pick him up after school. So people that we never knew before the accident in the first accident were then around for
the second accident to help with that. We had all the people before, plus all these other wonderful people in our lives who had the knowledge of disabilities and all of that turst of stuff with that as.
Well, with the injuries very different and the type of thing that you were dealing with very different.
Yeah, it was actually because she was not hit by the car in the first accident, so there was no blunt force trauma. And with a second it's a very different things where there's broken bones and a head injury.
And most of my first accident injuries were external. We're a second accident it was all internal, so it's complete opposite.
Why did you tell Sophie about it, Well.
That you got hitched on a crossing with Tar, but Tar was okay.
My assistants dock at the assistant dog.
I've was seen your beautiful assistance dog.
She was a door a special dog.
Did you have more assistance dogs after her because she died early? Didn't she? Yeah? Fair, I mean, honestly, it.
Was tragic and she was like the top of the class assistant dog. You could not get a better one. And then we decided to take up break for a little while because we were so upset about that and we didn't want to feel like you could just replace an animal like that. We now have our second assistant's dog who's not at all the top of the classes. And I put it nicely, she barely graduated us is
her more hundred percent? Like the best thing about Willow that's her name, is she thinks she's trying to help. So like she sees her shoe put in the corner room and she'll carry around the house for the entire day and then you go to take it off her and she'll be like nope and turn ahead and walk away from you the last minute.
You're her assistants human really.
Like she accidentally eats my dressings, my bandages and things like that, like.
From tidy up the bin. I'm disposed of the evidence. I'm just gonna eat it.
Yeah, but she is the best house pet. She is the worst assistant girl said say that. There's no doubt about that. But she needs Yeah literally, she's the emotional support. Yeah, she'll be at my door crying, and you know, I'll just open the door and sit on my bed and just lie there for like two minutes and then walk away. Again.
It's so much better.
I would like a snack, literally.
Wonderes she not well food? But yeah, so she's I call her an emotional support dog, yeah, rather than a self retired assistant's dog. And from the day we got she never really passed.
I let her graduate, though we get.
She got a little like graduation certificate and everything.
That's cute. How do you have any faith in cars and in the world and in walking down the street? You know, like having that shaken for you? I imagine that's for you because you don't have actual memories of it.
Look, you can't live your life in fear.
I mean you can, well many people do.
No, No, that's right, But I'm suggesting cost bad stuff happens to good people. You can either just pick up and keep on, or you can let something bad consume you and living a life of fear or regret. It's not a happy life. It's not a life that necessarily is going to fulfill you as a human. And I think you pick yourself up and you keep going, and you know that's incredibly tough some days. And so will be the first to admit that not every day is a fabulous day.
What does a bad day look like?
So? I think for me at this point in my life, it's when because I always have pressure wings on my legs because of my prosthetics. So it's when they're beyond painful that I can't put on my prosthetic. And for me, my prosthetics are my main type of freedom. I'm happy to use my wheelchair outside the house, but I need my prosthetics to drive my car. I need my prosthetics to you know, if I'm out of place with stairs,
to walk up the stairs. So I think the hardest days are the ones where I just have to do nothing. And I'm the type of person I like having plans. I like being busy and always having things to do, because when I don't, then I'm not brought out of my mind. But then those days come about and I hate nonetheless. No matter how much things I have to do on my computer or whatever.
Do they happen off of those days?
Yeah, I go through periods at least once a month with them. I'm prone to infections, then a million other things, and like sometimes my wounds just get deeper than they should or I get more irritations. Then I would.
Normal use your prosthetics more than you're meant to.
When I was in high school, my guy who makes my legs, my processis made sure that. I Well, he told me I should only wear my legs three hours a day. I did not go up to plan.
How often do you how much to do it?
You were twelve to fourteen hours a day.
Yeah, right, and then you suffer the consequences, which is.
Yeah, But for me, I don't care. Like I've had points in my life where my doctor's like, Sophie, you need to stop wearing your legs otherwise next week you'll be in here for emergency surgery to get like the wounds cover it up. I did not stop wearing my legs, and it naturally healed itself. I'm very proud of that moment.
Yeah, Caroline told me about body image in your teenage years. I mean, it's tricky for any girl.
I definitely struggled with weight management and all that, and that I like perception of like seeing these girls and you know, just freely walking onto the beach and going for a swim, where I had to take my prosthetics off and take my dressings off and then put them
back on and do all of that. And I think for me it was especially hard because when I had my second accident, I had to eat a lot of high fat foods to gain weight because I was so malnourished and my body needed more food and energy and all that. But I think everyone's going to suffer with it at some point. Like that's the horrible part of society is that there is such a stigma about the perfect body image. But it's just trying to find a
piece with yourself. Whether that's not a certain size or weight, but knowing you're doing what's best for your health, whether it's exercising once a week or at least eating a somewhat of a balance, it's died. I don't think it matters how you look, but how you manage your life around healthiness and all of that. But as a teenager, I definitely like covered up a lot more. I'm very modest.
I'm not gonna wear like a crop top where you can see my like half my stomach and all of that, and like short shorts when my butts hanging out and whatnot.
I just was naturally because when I went to high school, I didn't wear my prosthetics for my first few years, So I just naturally covered up anyway, because I when I was going through that dark phase in my life, didn't want people to see certain things about me, and I think just as I've grown older, as I've gone into sports and gained muscle and all of that and built that confidence in the athletic area, i think it's just gone away from me and I've just now like
I still everyone still stuffers with it, no matter how old you are. I still suffer it that individually myself, But it's just coming to acceptance that I am doing what's best for my body. I can't overwork myself. I can only do so much, whether that's you know, someone would work or like you know, you can't go to the gym ten times a day because you've got you know, full job and a full time job and whatnot. So I'm just, you know, doing what I can to help
with my health and fitness. And I think that's all you can really do in your life.
Sport seems to have really flipped the switch from what your body is limited in doing as to what your body can do because you're an incredibly successful roa.
Yeah, I think.
What was it like being out on the water.
Yeah, well it all started for me with swimming. I my rehab when I first came out of hospital was swimming like to build all my muscle was straight. They put me in the pool straight away, like I was always a water baby. I loved swimming all of that before my accident, and so they just put me back in. So sport has always been my rehab no matter what.
So when I was competitively swimming so much and then I got a rotator cuff injury reoccurring, then they were like, Okay, you've been swimming too much, let's try a different sport.
Then I went into pattern here, yeah, pushing to the limit. Oh yeah, you moved high schools a few times, Yes.
I did. My first time was more for personal reasons and the fact that I never felt like I fully belonged. It was a wonderful school, and every school I've been to has taught me something completely different and has given me support in such a different way. There was a lot of changes going on at the school at the time, and I just felt like I needed to change myself
and move somewhere else. And I had a best friend from primary school who went to another school and was still close friends, and I thought I wanted to give out co ed learning go So I moved there and it was wonderful, but it didn't feel right, like perfect for me. So then a very good family friend of mine, the one who came to England with me the week later. Yeah, she went to my final high school, like graduated five
years after that before I did. And she said from day one it was a senior school, so you could only go for year eleven and twelve. She went, said since day one of me leaving my first school, you would love the school. And I went and it was the complete opposite. Each three schools were completely polar opposites. I went from an old girls school and then to a co ed, then to a school where you called their teachers by their first name.
And that was the one that suited you the best.
It was so you got so much freedom and you were allowed to grow individually.
I felt.
I feel a lot of schools try and compress the child's individuality and creativity, except in the creative subjects. And I felt this school because you could wear whatever you wanted to school. We had a common room where it wasn't just for one year, it was for both years. And you could go out at lunch if you wanted to go up to chats what it.
Want, So you were treated much more like an adult exactly.
Yeah, it was an adult learning environment. Yeah. And I know people I went to school with it didn't suit them. They moved schools or they ended up going to take for apprenticeships and whatnot. But for some of my best friends still to this day, it was the best thing that could have done for them. It just so happened that we met the people that changed our lives for the better. Like my best friends I met on the first day and were still best friends. It just worked
for me. It was what I needed in a school. I needed that independence and that opportunity to let me grow. And then I moved to England to get more independence independence.
There was another little girl that was endured that day as well, Molly would Molly. She sort of disappeared from the public ice quite quickly. I suppose everybody wanted you guys to sort of stay friends and all of that was her experience very different to yours or you've lost contact.
She her family wanted to shy away from the media a bit more. We're completely their decision, no judgment there for that, but I think they took a different approach to the trauma.
I mean, most people aren't still friends with someone they were friends with it too exactly.
They ended up moving to the UK, so that.
When we were quite young, like they moved around ten years ago. Now I still remember saying goodbye to her. But yeah, to that point to yeah, Molly's mum, Caroline was British and then she wanted to go back for a family. So yeah, there was the type of thing that we just naturally split apart. But we're Facebook friends. We haven't been in contact as such, but.
We Facebook friends will do it.
Yeah, exactly, it doesn't for now like COVID's Yeah, like otherwise may have seen each other, but it's to explame it on COVID.
Post Traumatic stress syndrome is something that I thought everybody got after they experienced a tragedy or a catastrophic traumatic event since talking to a lot of people, but also in Leis sales book One Ordinary Day, she talks about how what you don't hear about is post traumatic growth syndrome as well, that a lot of people have the light in their life turned up, not down, by a tragedy or a catastrophic trauma. I get the sense that's the case with you. I don't want to pollyannerate but
you seem to I don't know, is that true. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Well, I think it is in the sense that I felt our lives became more enriched by the experience and because of the people, the inspiring people we met, stories of people who've risen to challenges beyond anything we've experienced. They're just great stories of inspiration. Well that word inspiration, but they do when you're in this situation, they do
inspire you to keep going. The people who've reached out to us that had no connection to us, who felt that they could offer us something to help us through, and the support that we've had as a family from the community. You know, so I said it was bigger than we could manage. We reached out and we were supported by the community, which allowed us in turn to support a broader.
Community through the charity millions of dollars.
But also through the gifts that we were given from the community. If we couldn't use the gifts, we would find people who could use the gifts. If it was food, or if it was clothing or whatever was sent. If we didn't have a need ourselves, we knew where it
could be best used. And so we were in a fortunate position, certainly living in a children's hossible for the length of time that we had to meet people who needed more and organizations and other charities that touch I think of the Steve Wall Foundation that touch on the rarest type of syndromes, you know, so we can sort of like a club.
That no one wants to join, but once you're in it, you meet some pretty amazing people.
Do meet amazing people.
Sophie, Is it weird when you've got the media speculating on whether you've got a boyfriend or got a boyfriend?
I found when I first moved to England. It was a bit shocking because I think.
That's like we were in the gossip column Suddenly.
I was very confused about that, especially because people I was speculated to be dating were gay. But there were photos of me with their boyfriend and my older friend, and like it was immediately like they have to be together because my entire life, some of my closest friends are guys I've always had.
So they're scanning your Instagram and trying to make stories around the pictures exactly. I mean, that must be It's funny in a way. Carolyn when you think about all those dark knights of the soul that you must have had in hospitals, and just think, one day the gossip is going to be like Sophie Delizia's new boyfriend, Like you would have loved to have that as a problem right back then when you were thinking about Kohala's bearing exactly do you kind of just laugh?
Yeah, My friends and the ones who've been speculated that I'm dating, we love it. Like whatever, there's a gossip article that comes out, we always cried around a phone and we're like reading it, like, oh, I think there's that's hysterical.
Like Sophie gossip bingo exactly exactly's gonna get called?
Oh, it's so funny, Like the guy went to formal with outat a girlfriend and like we'll just photographed together as like a here's my formal date sort of thing, like here's my best friend.
I think it's part of everyone just feeling so invested in your happiness. Yea, And that's not necessarily what happiness is, having a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whatever. That's not necessarily what happiness is, but it's everyone just wants, you know, no happily ever after but it seems to me that you've got that in just who you are and the relationship you have with your family exactly.
And I think my friends have such a big part to do with that as well, Like I don't need a boyfriend to be happy.
You sure don't. Yeah, what extraordinary women you both are.
Thank you.
Your relationship is just beautiful to behold as well. The care that you have with each other is just so beautiful. I hope you feel the love that everybody has when I tell them that you're both coming in. Oh. I was so excited to meet Sophie and her mum. I feel like their faces are sort of etched in to my mind and my heart in the way that they
are for so many people. And it's really interesting when you meet people that you feel you have watched through the media for so many years and who you've sort of rooted for behind the scenes. They were just so Caroline had like a real sort of solid I don't know, she just seemed very grounded, and Sophie was just more grounded and more delightful than your average nineteen year old. She was just joyful. She has a real lightness and cheekiness in her spirit. And I was just so buzzed.
And when I told people that I'd interviewed them, they were like, oh my god, oh my god. Like everyone's got a real connection, which must be kind of weird if you're Sophie and her mum, but yeah, they are such such beautiful people. To find out more or donate to Sophie's charity Day of Difference, which has helped so many people, please head to the link in our show notes. Side was produced by Leah Porges. The executive producer of
No Filter is Eliza Ratliffe. I'm Meya Friedman and I'll see you on momamya dot com dot au