You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.

Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on two types of people, they say, the ones who have lost a parent and the ones who have not.

A club no one wants to be in, one that grows as the years pass, tipping in its balance from fewer to most as time ticks on.

But the members of that club they know things that those outside in.

The queue do not yet.

How everything you remember saying to everyone it happened to before you was ever so slightly wrong.

That the world can change with a phone call, the ground beneath you shift with a diagnosis of fall, a rupture in the way things have always been, That memories of that hour, day, week, or months do not fade like a bruise, but stay like a stain.

That it's like being cast loose into a world that looks different now the foundations have shifted.

That you can't have that argument again or that hug, That your memories are pain before they are comfort, And that the littlest things, the smell, the song, the show, the taste, will sneak up on you and make you cry before they make you smile and hold you closer, just for a moment to the person you've lost.

It will happen to everyone, but it changes everything when it happens to you.

Hello, I am Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife, midfamily, mid crisis.

Mostly today I'm talking.

To Paula Joy.

Now, there are a lot of reasons I could be sitting down with Paula.

She is one of the most recognizable faces of jen.

X women in Australia.

I could be talking to Paula about style, about fashion and home, or beauty or skincare, or red lips and nails, the empowering boost a bit of glow gives a not so young face.

Or I could be talking to her about her incredible career because as one of those iconic Australian magazine editors when magazines were really it, Paula Joy, best friend of Mia Friedman, founder of Mom and Mia of course, launched two massive mastheads that defined Ozzie women in the noughties, Madison and Shot Till You Drop.

And this was also while being editoral director of Cleo and Cosmo.

She's also been the national fashion editor and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, and the fashion editor of the Today Show.

This woman has partied with supermodels and sat front row and knows how to look great in denim and sequence, all of that stuff, right, But I am not talking to Paula about any of that today, although if you want to find out about it, go look at her Instagram or buy her beauty book Glow Up, or go look in our show notes for the links to those things.

But today I'm not talking to paul Joy the fancy mag Icon.

I'm talking to Paula Joy, the person who lost her mom.

Two years ago.

Paula got a call lateish on an ordinary week night that changed everything forever.

Ever since, she's been trying to quietly work out how to live without her mum.

There is nothing extraordinary about Paula's story.

This is a loss that every single one of us will face, if we're fortunate enough to have not faced it yet.

But that's exactly why I wanted to talk to her on mid This is the era of loss for many genex's juggling caring for family or kids with all kinds of needs and issues as they grow out.

In a way, these are often the years when this most ordinary but devastating loss will swipe us.

Perhaps we'll see it coming from far away, getting ever so clearer and bigger over time.

Perhaps it will be as it was for Paula, a sudden ring of a phone when it's usually quiet.

Whatever, it's going to change everything.

And I wanted to talk to Paula Joy about it, perhaps as helpful wisdom, perhaps as comfort, perhaps as preparation, perhaps just to make an episode that you can share around between you when you need it the most.

And although I said there's nothing extraordinary about Paula's story, that's not entirely true.

Just like every family, Paula's has its stories and its secrets, like that time Paula saved her little sister's life literally.

So please sit down with us, get a coppa, and join us in this very vulnerable conversation with Paula Joy about losing your parent.

Paula, thank you for sitting down with me.

Holly, I'm a fan, so I'm excited.

I'm a holy fan.

Oh, thank you so much.

Listen.

I read a beautiful interview that you gave a couple of years ago to Caroline O, not.

Longer after you lost your mum.

And She opened the piece by saying there were two types of people in the world.

There are people who have lost a parent and know what that's like, and there are people who haven't.

And I wanted to start by asking you, what do that latter group know that the former group?

Don't that that there is It's a club that you never wanted to be part of.

It really shook me when I became part of the group that have lost a parent.

I thought I was compassionate and understanding, and I'm certain that I was.

But until you've gone through it, you actually can't.

You can't give any advice.

The words that you say are wrong, it really is.

It's really sort of only when you've lived it that you can help or understand a little better.

And isn't that interesting because it is going to happen to everybody if you're lucky enough that it hasn't happened to you yet, I guess.

And yet we're clueless, Really, we.

Are really clueless.

It's a total It is in the brochure, but it's part that you gloss over.

You know it's going to happen to all of us.

My mom used to say, oh, we're in the front rows of the church.

Now, you know, you move up the church, it's like getting closer to the funeral, and I's to sort of not know what that meant.

And now I am in the front rows of the pew church.

You know, that's something we can all count on.

Tell me a bit about your family, because you come from quite a big family, don't you, And what the dynamic in your family is like, and what your adult relationships with your parents were like before you lost your mum.

That's a really hard thing to talk about, kind of from a seagull perspective.

But I am one of four, the eldest of four, three girls, one boy, Paul and Anthony, Jane and still Tephanie, Mum and Dad, your eldest daughter.

I'm the eldest, eldest alpha text book you are child, Yes, definitely, so they would all agree with me, and Mum and Dad and I spent the first part of my life in America, living in Boston, and my brother was the only other one born.

Then we're sort of a split of about three years apart each, except for Stephanie, who I'm twelve years apart from and very close to.

We kind of bookend the siblings with similar sort of natures, I guess, but we are all very close, sort of have always been.

Mum and Dad were never they sort of never really asked anything obvious in terms of time.

It was never, you know, you must come over for Sunday lunch or that sort of thing.

They were always very much you know, we raised you to go and see the world and live lives and you know, report back when you feel like it.

Sometimes I wish they had been a little bit more you must come over for lunch.

Yes, I would advise everybody to go over for Sunday lunch.

Do you do that with your girls?

Now?

Like?

Do you know history has repeated?

So have you done the same with yours?

Fly f really?

Oh no, I've done fly freely.

But I have not told them to come for Sunday lunch.

And I must give myself that same advice.

Yes I have.

I have done that.

I have done that.

I think you that that is she parented and my dad parented for really capable, successful humans.

So I think you know she was a great mum.

So I try to emulate as much as I can.

They live in Sydney and you live in Sydney, so you were close proximity wise, because do some of your siblings live overseas or.

They've lived in different places.

But yes, Sydney was the family base, but my father's job took him to different places, including Fiji at one that was a bit fun.

When Ella was born.

My brother's in Byron, my sister is in Canberra.

But my greater family, which includes Saxon's family, because I have been with Saxon for so long, since you're a childhood yes, I mean you need a whiteboard for that part of my family.

And there is Hong Kong, there's London, there's America, there's the Bahamas.

So yes, we are far flung and there are millions of the collective blend of family.

And although, as you say, you were raised very much like go off have your adventures.

You don't have to come for Sunday lunch, but it'd be nice to see you.

Are you a family person?

You know?

I always think with my friends I can almost invite them into like family people and not family people.

Do you know what I mean?

That they're very big part of your family and your connections and your routines and rhythms.

Yes, yes, I think so, and now very much I'm so conscious of all my family members.

I sort of always have been.

I think the eldest child has that belief that they have a role to play within the family, whether they do or not.

And you know, I have some dynamics.

I saved my sister's life when I was sixteen and she was ten.

That's my sister, Jane.

Has saved her from drowning full resuscitation, and that gave me a very matriarchal feeling towards her.

Did you know what to do?

I had just done my bronze medallion.

Also do your bronze medallion?

Yes, but she wasn't allowed to swim on supervised and she disobeyed mum, as every kid does.

Climb the fence with a friend and the friend thought she was playing dead, but she was not God and she was on the bottom of the pool when I got there.

I was supposed to be not there, but I was.

And you know, I said to my mum, you call the ambulance.

I will do this, And I think, now, my goodness, now I have children.

How did my mom at she leave a child with her effectively dead child.

She had no pulse and no breathing, So it's a pretty intense I sort of look at that now from my mother's perspective and think, gosh, what was going through her head to actually leave me, to do that and go and call.

She must have had faith that you knew what you were doing, like on some primal level, Like because do you also look at your daughter's I think older than this now, but like do you think look at a sixteen year old girl and go, Wow, that's a lot.

It's a lot.

And I think so I had that sort of feeling with my sister Jane, and then Stephanie was twelve years younger than me, so I had that little other mother role with her too, because I would give her a bottle or whatever.

So I've always sort of had that very nurturing sort of feeling towards, you know, my siblings, probably less towards my poor brother, who I probably gave more.

Hell, do you say to your younger sister, all the time I saved your life, you should be nicer to me, give me better presents for Christmas?

She should I still give her all the presents.

No, I haven't said that.

It's a weird thing.

When you save a life, you really you don't dwell on what you did, you dwell on what you might have happened if you hadn't.

It's a really odd thing.

I'm also part of that club, and that is a funny thing.

You would think it's the other, but it isn't.

That's so interesting.

Yeah, it's a weird thing.

So your mom Carol had Parkinson's She did, yes, And how long was she living with that?

From forty eight roughly and she died at seventy five, so a long time.

And it was slow moving because she was female and she got it later, which is the best scenario for that disease.

But that disease is, you know, a shopping disease, and there's no cookie cutter plan for it.

My mother was so brave, never complained.

She had the open brain operation, which was sort of extraordinary in the fact that it took away all of her shaking, so that was really great.

And the thing that was probably affecting her the most, apart from the fatigue of you know, the drugs that you need to be on, the just the tiredness of the disease it makes you very tired, was some falling.

You know, she had some falls that weren't her fault.

That were, you know, the disease doing it, and that knocked her around.

But Parkinson's doesn't kill you, really, that's the thing.

It doesn't.

So and that you know, she didn't die of that.

She died of a heart attack.

Blessedly, she died of a heart attack.

And she'd been at a wedding dancing two nights before, so so she was well.

And she was because I guess living with Parkinson's for that long too, that you guys had adjusted to that and what that condition was in your family.

We moved around it.

But she didn't really ever want to be identified by it.

She was really sort of raged against it till the end.

Really so independent my mom always you know, when she couldn't they wouldn't give her license.

That was a terrible time for her.

It was just like taking away something that was so important to her.

But she was so smartest woman I've ever met.

She could talk about any period of history in every part of it, the royalty, the art, the architecture, of the philosophy, the geography.

It was quite a crazy brain that she had, and that was with her till the end as well.

And I think if that had gone really would have troubled my dad intensely, all of us intensely, because she was just always so sharp.

Yes, yeah, your parents have been together for fifty seven years, I think, is that right?

Yes, they parents have been together nearly that long.

You say it was a great love story.

Great love story.

And I my dad when I turned up to the house after Mum passed and the paramedics were their.

My dad used to work for a company the early days of the internet, and it was one of a T shirt that was printed with almost like a dot print, like a pixelated black and white picture of my mom's face.

At the time, it was this invention, and it was a yellow T shirt with a black and white picture of her face.

I remember it as a child in America, so it was a company in America, so it would have been from about nineteen seventy seven, this T shirt.

And when I turned up to the house after I got the call from the paramedics that she passed, he was wearing a T shirt.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

And then later when they said what do you want to what should she wear?

What should we put her in?

Is there anything that you want to put her in?

In the coffin?

And I'm like, this is just just stupid question, like she doesn't need anything, and then I was like, no, she can wear that T shirt.

Yeah.

So I felt like I put the love star and they were a really great love story.

Great friends had obviously had adversity, you know, of their own with my aforementioned story of my sister abso my little baby sister also nearly died at one point.

My brother also oh me also, so they had they had their fair share of sort of traumas, but also great luck and great privilege too, and they traveled everywhere together.

I think we worked out that there were about four countries only that mum had not visited, and every road, you know, she would turn down every single street.

It'd be that it took so long to get anywhere because she would just say, let's just turn down there, let's just turn down there.

And she was She's right, she should turn down there, you should just turn down there.

My conversation with Paula continues after this break when she tells me how to throw a really really good few.

I think that as your parents' age, and as you say, although your mum was living with Parkinson, she was, well, there are like two camps or most people who are preparing for they know, like even if they're not sick, that they want to talk about it.

They want to talk about this is what's going to happen, this is what we'll do.

And those who are like, absolutely not, we will ride it as if we're still in our best days till the last minute.

Is your family talk about health and sickness and death family?

Yes and no.

Mum had a death draw she did and it was called the death draw and it had very detailed how I want my funeral to be.

That's great.

She really sort of knew the music and stuff, even though we did take some license, and she would always talk.

There was no taboo around any sort of conversation of any physical nature, so it was always talking about whether it was periods or sex or check this.

If you know you're bleeding out of your nose, it means this.

So we always sort of discussed it.

There wasn't shying away from it, but there wasn't sort of definition around.

We were all sort of brought up to not take necessarily take panadob, but to kind of soldier on like she was tough.

She was pretty never complained, pretty tough, so that's a hard question to answer.

Have I answered it.

Now you have?

I think the death drawer is a good answer, because we recently did a segment on out Loud about this idea that you should ideally for your parents or for yourself as you get older, like keep somewhere all this information.

But for some people it's just very confronting, you know, to even think about it, or to ask your family to do it or And I think it probably makes a big difference in a way afterwards to have that information about, like at least you know what you loved one wants.

I think nothing prepares you for organizing the funeral of your mother.

This is the other thing that I've come to work out.

They're going to be different feelings mother and father, and I love them both equally, and my relationships with both of them were very good and robust and good relationships, long relationships.

But I know that they're going to be different feelings.

But nothing prepares you for that, for just doing it for your mother.

If you have a good relationship with your mother, and I can't even imagine if you have a bad that would be even harder.

You've touched very briefly on your mother's death happened quite suddenly.

You rushed over to the house.

I've had friends who've been through similar sudden losses, and they say that they feel almost physically changed by that experience.

Yes, it was eleven twenty nine on a Saturday night.

I was folding washing, which is sort of a miracle.

I was up because usually come nine o'clock, I am in bed, and also we have our phones off, right, so I was sort of we'd watch a movie.

We were waiting for a child to, you know, get home, and she had and that was why I was up.

And so I got the call from the paramedics saying can you come?

And I could to see your dad crying in the background, and it is a surreal, surreal, out of body experience.

I knew that she was probably going to I was waiting for her to have a fall.

I was waiting for something to happen.

So I was waiting for the shoe to drop.

I didn't expect it to be to be death.

But I'd spoken to her twice that day about the Barbie movie.

And I feel very lucky that I had done that.

I really don't know how I would be if I hadn't spoken to her that day.

It changes you, for sure.

I don't think I'm completely changed yet.

I have definitely found the whole grief process very tricky, but yeah, you are changed.

I mean it was your first home, right, Yeah, and it's gone.

I wanted to ask you about that.

You said in that interview with Caroline.

You said, beautifully, you only have one mum.

You're like, and you're supposed to have one, you know, and you obviously have two daughters.

So this is a relationship that you're very intimate with.

Is there a way of coming to terms with that or do you think it's just you know, it's not a gap that's going to be filled, is it.

It's it's not.

No.

I wish I could say it is.

But for me, it will be a forever whole.

I think it's probably my duty to work out how to make put something else in its place.

That won't be her.

It won't be the relationship, it won't be earthside.

But I'm starting to learn that, you know, I just stopped talking about her.

Even as I'm sitting here talking to you, I realize that I haven't really been talking about her, And I think that's one way to keep her with me and keep her around is to is to talk about her or think about her, even in those ways some people talk to their moms or their dads, you know, yeah, and actually have a lot of success with that.

I haven't done that yet.

But I never thought I would go to the grave.

I never thought I would go to the cemetery.

I just was like, the whole industry of death kind of appalled me.

And I've always thought that it's like you're gone, You're gone, that's it.

And oddly I have found myself that on her birthday, I take flowers.

I want her to have flowers, and I go there.

I think I'm the only one in my family, like we haven't talked about it, so you don't discuss that, or we haven't, you know, And I think I am the only one.

But I want her to have flowers on her birthday.

I've only had two birthdays, but I think I will always do it.

And I think that that's something that I've learned about grief, is that rituals are important because they're just little breathtakers in the in the whole sort of chasmic, wide open, desolate, wuthering heightsness of it that little rituals are quite helpful, whether it's carrying something with you or or doing that or And this year I went to be I thought, I'll bakery cake and then I'll take the flowers.

And this year I baked your cake in and the oven exploded on me.

And I was like, that is there's probably a metaphor in here, somewhere.

There's a metaphor in here somewhere made laugh.

Maybe that you know you said how you said that you don't know if anyone else in your family does that, but maybe that is like a private moment between you and her almost And there's beauty in that too, you know.

I think.

So there's a reason I haven't I haven't sort of talked about.

It or made it an open invitation to everybody to go or yeah, you.

Know what, I wouldn't do that.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I would definitely just go by myself.

Yeah, right, you said at the beginning, and this is what I want things I wanted to ask about.

Obviously, a lot of people who listening to mid right now are going are either in that sort of double caring phase or living through the loss of their parents.

And you say that until it happens to you.

You know, as you said, you say the wrong thing, you think you're being caring.

But because this is the natural order of things, and because if your parents reach a certain age, we kind of go, well, it's going to happen.

You know.

Do you think people can be a bit dismissive of the loss of parents, Like what would you like people to understand about that?

Now that you've been in the club for two years.

I think what happens is people are amazing.

People are incredible in the first instance, I'm talking about myself in this as well.

There are casseroles, there's texts, there's flowers, there's compassion for days, and then life moves on as it should.

Yeah, it's not their mother, it's not their father, so life moves on.

I think I've learned that just checking in on even if it needs to be something like as simple as holidays like Christmases or Father's Day or Mother's Day.

If you have a friend that's in that situation, just check in with them on that or ask them randomly when you're having a walk or whatever, or sharing what just to remind them that you haven't forgotten.

Because I think that that is the thing.

There's the death, and it's the tragedy in and there's the funeral, and then there's the aftermath, and then there's just life.

But for so many people, it's life with a huge hole.

And I didn't know that until two years ago.

You thought it's like, Okay, it's been you know.

You just don't think about it.

You've got your own life and you still got the relationship with your friend is sort of the same.

At least, it hasn't been my experience that other people that have had parents past talk about it all the time.

I don't think it's something that it's funny.

It's you just sort of keep it to yourself.

But I think just asking because it is actually really seismic and huge and monumental.

And I've found that I've reached out to people who are going through it, and I've found I found that even the text messages that I would write to somebody that's, you know, going through it, I just am like, gosh, so different how I would have handled it?

Really?

Yeah, in what way?

I think the best thing is just to be gentle with yourself.

And I think it's impossible to be gentle with yourself in that kind of free for all, drain, circling, just revolting life moment and I just think it you get so overwrought and overstressed, and just to be gentle, just to actually just be gentle with people around you, with yourself is sort of very good advice because gentle is hard to do.

You have to think about it, and it's actually a verb that you actually have to stop and think about.

So I think gentle is really good because it's tricky.

Yeah, it's not like be kind or whatever.

It's just like gentle.

And I'm like, what's gentle?

Like?

Self care is not selfish in grief, it's essential, you know, actually taking a moment to either bedrot, whatever it is you need to do, tea, beach housewives, whatever it is you need to do, whatever you need to do to get through.

In the immediate aftermath, you said, I read in that piece again that you said you gave your mum an amazing funeral.

Yes, now she had the death drawer, as you've discussed, Because I guess the stage is as you just explained when you were saying, the immediate phase afterwards is a whirl of activity, right.

It must be a very draining, awful world of activity, but it's a worl of activity.

Was it almost helpful to have that to plan and hold on to?

Was it important to you that you did it the way that she wanted.

Yes, she just wanted a great funeral and she died very young, really, And I will say the one benefit of that was there were no seats upstairs downstairs.

There were people outside watching it on.

We had it broadcast like a royal wedding, and I was in the chapel.

I was like, you know what this could do with this could do with a little bit of Foantom of the Opera, and I had friends bring We had rose petals everywhere in candles, and I was like, it can't be too over the top, because well, you're good at that stuff too, right.

I think that's what our friend Mia tells me, At what point you wanted to be a wedding planner after your wedding or her wedding.

I love doing events.

I love setting a table.

So I do love that.

You knew you could do it for her, Like that's something that you bring yourself to, you know.

Yes, and my sister as well is from that world.

You know done, you know, events for major, major brands, and so we both sort of really threw ourselves into that.

One of the things that I did that I was really enjoyed doing and loved doing.

I had massive, massive easels made.

When I say massive, I'm talking like three meters by five meters and they were collages of photos and then I had them put on easels like a gallery in the space for the wake, and it had every single person that was there was there in some space on and it dominated the space, but it was they were all joyous memories and I'm really glad that I did that.

And they now are in my dad's house and he goes and visits them, and that was a really nice thing.

So your dad, I mean, this is one of the many complications, I guess is you're dealing with this loss.

But he's dealing with the loss of his partner of fifty seven years.

How do you help him?

And you and everybody at once?

What was that?

Like?

An ongoing It's hard and I think I've failed.

And at times my dad about twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, got cancer and they said that's it, it's really you're really not going to live.

And then somebody looked at it and said, actually, there's one thing I think we can do, and let's give that a go.

And they did, and he's cancer free, so that is miraculous.

I do believe he sort of was like, I have to live for her, and I know that sounds a bit no, it doesn't, but I think it's true.

I think that that was the secret source in excellent medical treatment.

I think that that was the secret source.

So as part of that, he has to undergo an operation multiple times a year.

And he nearly died after Mum died because he got very sick and he got sepsis.

Effectively got through the funeral.

We had him in hospital, as I said, one sister in one state one day.

So it was my sister and I hear in Sydney that were really trying to manage that, and he was free, just didn't know right from left.

But he's a very pragmatic gentleman man and smart, very intelligent.

He's taken great comfort from the fact that he said that, you know, the day that she died, they'd had every conversation, they'd said everything to each other, even though they certainly didn't know that that was going to be her last day.

But he has a lot of peace in that, and they took a lot of pride in their family.

So there's just no way that he's not going to try and make them most of this without her.

I think that I just can't even fathom it.

I can't even fathom it.

And also males versus females, it's different, but it's hard, Ollie.

It's really hard because it takes time.

It takes up time, and it's hard to juggle it and manage it.

And siblings can get resentful.

You can get resentful of siblings.

And there's a lot of machinations within it that is all new territory.

Like every day there's a new thing to learn about the grief process and the dealing with collective grief process and also wanting my dad just to have a great whatever this last adventure is.

To have that adventure.

It's a lot of pressure on you.

And this again, I'm sure there are lots of listeners to this who are in a similar situation because you have young adult daughters right twenty three and twenty yeah, making their way in the world, but still need you.

Of course, you have your own business effectively in your job, so you're working, Yes, and you're dealing with all these things and as you say, the complexities.

I know this is a silly question because you just do and women just do.

But what helps, like, how are you getting through this time and making you know, doing the best that you can in all these different situations?

Like what helps?

Well, you know, I think all the usual things help structure exercise, laughter, dancing.

It's very difficult to sort of necessarily do them.

But anything that gives you actual joy, if it's playing an instrument, if it's baking, whatever you sort of before that, you know, before the death, gave you joy, try and revisit them.

I've found that I've dropped a lot of hobbies, a lot of things like that I've really noticed have gone by the wayside.

Do you ever feel guilty, like in the early days in particularly, like because you've got to fine pockets of joy not pun intended?

Is it difficult to do that at first?

Does it get easier or is it, like you know it does?

I mean, listen, when she died the night before the first day of the hsc oh for my youngest and so it was the English paper the next day, So there was a whole momentum of the trials, So there was a whole momentum of the death, the funeral, my daughter Lulu making the decision to go and sit that paper, which I still look at is so extraordinary.

My other daughter was overseas and I couldn't tell her she was coming home.

But so then there was the momentum of that, and honestly, the focus of it being Lulu's moment was actually a huge anchor and crutch for me in the first instance.

But you know, I think you have to be careful of things like wine, things like not X sizing, things like sleeping pills, things like you know, all those crutches.

Because it might feel good in the moment.

Absolutely, I think that you know, there's a moment for them, like if you're not sleeping and you need to have a whatever.

But I think you have to be really cognizant of that and your relationship with things like that, because I've always had a very like normal, manageable relationship with that sort of thing, and I definitely could feel like you know that I could have the pool.

Yeah, definitely the pool for sure.

So I think you have to be really having a conversation with yourself about that and just try and keep structure and try and try.

I think exercises like I honestly think the older I get.

Yeah, I think exercise is the answer to everything.

I really do, I really do.

It's sort of maybe you end up just shuffling, but I think if you stop moving, you're fucked.

Yeah.

Absolutely, What about your I mean, as you said, you and Saxon have been together for a very long time.

You're on the track that your parents were on.

He enormously helped.

It's hard for partners to support.

Oh, he was there.

He came with me, so he was part of it, which is sort of very fitting.

She loved him and he's known her for so long, and he was really he was extraordinary and he has been really extraordinary with my father as well.

I actually should say it hasn't just been my siblings.

My in laws have also been really terrific.

And that's a testament to Mom and Dad and sort of the family, the greater family they created.

But it puts tension on everything.

I have not been my most gracious self, my most joyous self.

I have definitely cracked many a time.

And you're also in this stage of life where you are a looney tune yep as well Allmond's yeah, and my anxiety, which has always been not great, has been hyper and you know that's for sure.

Shades of depression is probably too strong a word, and melancholy is too soft.

Somewhere in between, because it's not melancholy, it's worse than that.

And it's probably grief.

Yeah, it's grief.

It's grief.

It's probably grief.

But that you know, there's been plenty of times where I have tested everyone around me, friends, husband, children, Scout, the dog, my.

Friends, one of my great friends who's been through this, she said in people say the year after a significant loss, you shouldn't make any big decisions.

That's why I look like Rapunzel.

You're not chopping your head.

That is why I look like Rapunza.

Sometimes it shifts something in you that makes you go, what's it all for?

All that kind of no almost cliched stuff.

But people blow up, marriages, people change jobs, people move house, people do like do you understand that desire?

Like?

What have there been times where you haven't wanted to sit in this?

Yes?

I'm sort of like that in life anyway.

So I've actually probably had the reverse feeling of just needing to make things very very small.

And I am an introvert.

It's really exact, and people just are like, no, you are not.

I am here to tell you that I am the Uniboma without the explosives.

I am really like I love to be home at home.

So that has really kind of I've found my made my world very small, too small actually, so I understand people wanting to blow their lives up.

I do.

I've blown mine up sort of in a different way.

I guess I'll be back in a moment when Paula tells me some of the nuggets for wisdom she's learnt to say or do when her friends suffer loss she couldn't imagine for so long.

Tell me it's two years.

It is two years, just two years.

Are there parts of your mum that you see in yourself and maybe your girls and around you that bring you happiness rather than sadness?

Or is it still very difficult when you want to think about her.

I found it very difficult to connect to any memory.

Definitely, I would say, as long as it's the first year and a half, I had no memory.

I couldn't think of what she looked like, what she felt like her voice, you know anything like that.

It's so weird.

It was just a complete white out.

But then a photo would pop up in my phone, or i'd see something, I'd get this absolute sort of crazy.

It's a pull in your stomach.

It's a very wild sort of feeling.

I think I've worked out I can see myself her in me as my parent.

And this is a weird thing too, as I've gotten older and my physicality is changing, like I think I'm shrinking, and I have this feeling sometimes when I'm walking down the hall.

It's almost like I've shape shifted with her, and I can sort of feel my physical presence being what I saw when I looked at her, like had this crazy moment.

Joni Mitchell, both sides now.

The song.

I remember when my mom played it for me, and I remember how I felt about that song when she played it for me.

And then Ella, my daughter, sang up for the HSCCE in front of the whole school, and I could see when she was singing the words what I saw in them when I was her age when my mom played it for me, and I saw when I looked at her with the wisdom of life and everything that had happened what my mom felt when she played it for me, and it was such a crazy kind of thing.

Those things, and they're the best kind of things.

I think, Yeah, those things are the things that I sort of am searching for.

I guess, do you look like her?

I think people would say yes, ask me or that.

I think so, yes.

And there's some weird things, like weird things.

So when I saved Jane's life, we were on the front page of the Telegraph because we were you when that happened.

By the way, your backyard, backyard, And they will burn me.

And this is as a member of the media.

I do look back and think, God, they threw us back in that pool for the photo of the paper, and they did it because to promote bronze medallion and drowning and everything, So that was why we did it.

But I found that front page of the paper the other day and it had the Daily Telegraph and now they have the two headlines.

So it was asked.

And then my mom's name that she was called by the grandchildren was Nonny.

And above our heads, next to theograph was the first word of the headline was Nonny.

Isn't that spooky?

It is that's really spooky?

Are you into woo woo as we would call it, or have you found yourself wanting to be?

Yeh?

Look, I think that there the Joan Diddion book, The Year of Magical Thinking, apart from being a Joan Didion book, is the premise of that is very important.

And you do lose it because after the like the year is said, so for twelve months like there is, so you want to try and keep that alive, but you will lose it.

So I think everybody should read that.

Of course there is woo woo.

Is it a white butterfly?

Is it a bird that comes?

It doesn't matter.

I've always believed in something more than myself, so whether that's magic or whatever.

I think that you have to believe in that.

I think if you don't, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, I think you're better off to believe in it.

But I highly recommend that book.

Is there any other piece of you, as you've already said to anyone listening to this, who's back where you were or where you still are?

Like it's not as we've just said, this is not like done a couple of years done.

It's not that I no it's still very raw.

Yeah, that you would say to them, like in terms of advice or anything that I mean, you've already said be gentle, be gentle with yourself, be gentle with others.

But is there anything else that helped or that you would you wish that Paul and new.

I think I think you just need to really take it a day at a time in the beginning, hour by hour, and a day at a time in the beginning, be thankful for the family or the job or whatever you have around you that gives you a reason to get out of bed and gives you stock.

Add structure to that structure, whether it's starting to cook again or meal prep or exercise scheduling, walks with friends.

That really sort of helped me read.

There's some wonderful podcasts like yours, which you know help, really can help.

And I don't know, it's like, it's the scar wound thing, isn't it.

I think you know you can't.

You can talk about a scar, but you can't talk about a wound.

So you've got to work out the way to stitch yourself back up.

And everybody's got a different way of doing that.

Therapists, healers, whatever it is that you need hiking like Risk Witherspoon, whatever it is that you need, It's really not easy.

I just don't want to sugarcoat it in any way.

You know, I haven't coped.

I haven't and I've done a really, really lousy job at grieving, which is probably why I can't give you a lat no.

But that's exactly how to you know I'm and I should do.

I've had fabulous people, have been so kind, and I've taken a nugget of wisdom from every nice person that's taken time out of their day to write to me.

It always astounds me when people take time to actually put pentophone and write.

I think it's just so kind and definitely that kindness absolutely boyed me and put, you know, a wind at my back when I didn't have it.

So it's interesting because I think sometimes back to the thing of people don't know what to say, how they say the wrong thing.

Sometimes that means you say nothing.

But I think what I've learned as I've gotten older is it's always better to say something.

Say something, yes, say something absolutely.

Because even when people see you in person for the first time since a loss like that, sometimes you don't want to feel like you're opening a wound every but it's already open, right, So.

And I also think that I was compassionate in kind before i'd lost my mother.

And you don't know, just because you're not saying the right thing doesn't mean you're not compassionate in kind.

So I think always always check in with and always say something.

It's a huge loss, and we're scared of death.

I think we are scared of death.

I don't think we do a great job with looking after the elderly in this country either, and sort of giving them space and sort of even normalizing things like funerals and things that just we just don't do enough of it.

So I think the more you talk about it, the better prepared you'll be, and then hopefully we can change it for you know, the next gen.

You've already said that you feel most likely you feel like your mom sometimes when you're parenting.

I know it's a bit of a pat question, but has it changed your mothering losing your mother like you, has it given you even more of an insight into how.

Important that role is?

Yes?

And So my mother lost her mother when she was twenty seven years old to cancer, and actually, I will give this little bit of advice.

My mum always used to say, the one good thing about cancer is that it gives you time.

It Actually it's terrible because it was terminal and they knew the outcome, but they had time to have the last conversations, to prepare things to talk to get ready for, you know, that great loss.

So she lost her mom so young, and now I've lost my mom not nearly as young.

I might.

Wow, that must have been hard, and how did you learn to even parent?

And it's made me realize how important having a mother shapes you as being a mother, just remembering in the little things and the lessons and the way they were and the way they were was a grandmother.

It's such an important role in every human's life.

So I probably do do take it more seriously now because I also realized that it has an ending to it.

And you know what, My mom's mum's name was Joy, oh, if you can believe it, and it was Joy spelt j o y ce, but the cea was silent.

Oh.

And now everybody tries to put a C in my last name because they can't believe that it's felt that way.

But isn't that crazy?

It is?

Isn't that wild?

And I never changed my name after I got married.

And then about four years after I got married, I had a dream and my grandmother came to me in that dream and she said, why haven't you changed your name?

You're crazy person.

Haven't you realized that my name is that name and you should do it?

And I did.

Oh, that's beautiful.

Thank you, paul I've being so open and vulnerable.

I know it's not easy.

I didn't cry.

I didn't cry.

Was my one thing I didn't want to do.

Haven't cried, but you shepherded me.

Thank you.

But I think a lot of people listening to this will feel very seen.

I hope, so thank you Ford.

Thank you.

Paula's aim in that conversation was to not cry.

That's what she said when she came in.

Because as vulnerable and beautiful as that chat was, Paula is not the kind of person who is happy to spray her tears everywhere or is happy to sort of lay all her emotions out.

She's very private.

I think you probably heard that in that whole conversation, is that it wasn't easy for her to talk about something so vulnerable, and I think that just makes it, in a way even more of a special gift for us all because I know so many of you are going to feel seen by that, and so many of you are going to want to share it with people who you know need it.

And I want to thank Paula enormously for coming on and talking to us.

Just before we go, though, I'll read you a few words from the post that Paula put up about her beautiful mom Carol, when she passed two years ago, almost exactly two years ago now, in twenty twenty three, Paula wrote, it is with unexplainable despair that I share the passing of my extraordinary mother Carol, an unfathomable sentence.

Really, I loved her so very much, heartbroken and forever changed.

I will be back when I can, with deep love, PJ.

She did come back, Paula, of course, from that quiet, grieving time.

But as you've just heard, it's not like it's all over and tied up in a neat little bow.

And I want to send enormous love to any mids who are going through what Paula has been through.

Anyway, if there is any more help that you need, with this difficult time of life.

I want to point you to an episode we did in season one that I've told you about a million times because it is one of our most popular, one of our most downloaded, even though it's about something that so many people would be oh, that's two dark.

It's with Jackie Bailey, and it's about grief, and it's called Grief Has No Time for Your Bullshit, and it's about facing loss, preparing for loss, all that stuff.

It's really extraordinary, and a lot of people message me and say, I wasn't ready to listen to this, but now I've listened.

Or my friend's going through something so I've sent it to her.

And nothing would mean more to me than for me to offer a little bit of comfort times like this.

So go well, we'll see you next week.

And I want to thank our incredible team.

The senior producer of Me and is Charlie Blackman, the group executive producer is Nama Brown, and we've had audio design and production by Tina Matterlov