It’s a beautiful spring morning in Byron Bay and Turia Pitt has just dropped her young boys, seven-year-old Hakavai and five-year-old Rahiti at their school, only a few minutes’ bike ride from the place they’ve happily called home since February this year.
“We came up here for the winter holidays and we were like, let’s just move here,” Turia tells Woman’s Day of leaving Ulladulla, where she and her husband, Michael Hoskin, grew up.
“Let’s have a go, and if we don’t like it we can go back to Ulladulla with our tail between our legs.”
TOUGH TIME
That hasn’t happened, but not just because of the “great weather, great people” and idyllic scenery in the popular beachside town on the far north coast of NSW. While the boys have settled into their school community and extracurricular activities, and Michael’s keeping busy in his role as a helicopter pilot, Turia has also been putting in the work to make sure she wasn’t the same “really depressed” person, just in a different place.
“We’ve really liked it [here], but I’ve also changed,” the 38-year-old says over a coffee at Crystalbrook Byron. “I’ve been kinder to myself this year with parenting and not putting that unnecessary pressure on myself, particularly when Michael’s gone [for work]. We don’t have any family up here so it’s hard with both of us working, but I’m also not expecting myself to do everything and do everything really well.”
This is a big thing for Turia to say, having come out the other side of a tough few years, which saw her delve into depression and reach burnout from the mental load of parenting and general life stress.
It started with a reluctant move to Cairns when her sons were two and four, followed by a move back to Ulladulla, and in between all of that, she was overwhelmed from trying to do it all – working, solo parenting, social obligations – until she came to the realisation that something simply had to give.
“I really struggled with [Michael] being away so frequently, with no notice. The kids were little and I made things harder for myself than they needed to be,” she explains. “I was like, I’m going to do everything – dinner has to be made by me, every night, I still have to be working full-time, I can do it all, I’m superhuman, and it turns out that wasn’t the case.”
STARTING TO UNRAVEL
As it all started to unravel, Turia was already two years deep into writing her sixth book, Selfish. It’s an exploration of the often frowned-upon word and how women, mothers especially, are taught to be selfless, but ultimately, how they can flip the narrative and choose self-care for their own wellbeing.
Turia came up with the idea for the book on an otherwise ordinary night in 2022, when she paused the chaotic dinner-making to pour a then-four-year-old Hakavai a hot chocolate. When she made it with the “wrong” brand (a disaster that parents of toddlers will know all too well!), and requested Daddy fix it, her young son insisted it was “her job”. And thus unleashed something significant in his “feminist” mum!
“I did a survey and I got around 1000 responses, about the mental load, what people found most challenging, if they ever spoke about it with their partner and there’s this cultural expectation for woman – you’re held up as a really great example if you’re selfless and put others before yourself, and I also bought into that story,” Turia admits. “Couldn’t complain, couldn’t make a fuss, say yes, be agreeable, don’t rock the boat… and that led me to being burnt out and really badly depressed. So I don’t think it’s a sustainable long-term solution for any of us.”
NOT ‘ON BRAND’
Some family members Turia showed the book to were cautious of the subject matter, her mum – who Turia recalls raised four kids and kept an “immaculate” home without any complaints – telling her, “It sounds like you’re just whingeing a lot, it’s not really on brand for you.”
But in this day and age, Turia sees it differently, “If it sounds like I’m complaining, well maybe it’s just so we can have this conversation. And maybe if you find some things hard, you’re allowed to say it’s hard.”
Though the book looks at the often uneven work-family life balance for women compared to men, Turia’s partner of 16 years is always her biggest supporter.
SETTING BOUNDARIES
“Michael has a different lived experience to me – he’s a white Australian man and I’m a woman of colour who lives with a disability,” she says. “But he is my main support, he is my rock. I don’t think I would have been able to write this book if he wasn’t so supportive.”
With her writing, motivational speaking commitments and rapidly growing running program, the busy mum of two acknowledges that the pressure and expectation to be able to take on so many things can often come from herself.
“It’s hard because you want to do everything and you want to do everything well, but there’s these constraints on me so I can’t do everything. That’s a really hard pill for me to swallow,” she says.
Setting clear boundaries with work obligations and life admin, and carving out time for herself has helped her improve her wellbeing, as has seeing a psychologist.
The whole of Australia knows Turia’s incredible story of courage and resilience, having been badly burned in an unforgiving grassfire while running an ultramarathon in Western Australia back in 2011.
She sought professional mental help during her recovery, but for a long time after that she convinced herself it wasn’t necessary – she’d already conquered the worst life could throw at her, hadn’t she?
“I just kind of expected myself to be able to cope with [everything] and looking back, that wasn’t a realistic expectation,” she says.
“I used [therapy] when I went through something catastrophic, so comparatively I’d say to myself, it’s not really that big of a deal. Everyone runs a business, everyone has their partners working away, suck it up. Now I realise even if you think it’s not a very big deal, you’re still allowed to talk to someone about it. And hopefully get some really great strategies from them.”
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