Instagram
Dressed in an ensemble by Enesa The Label and sporting a bold red lip, Weekend Sunrise star Sally Bowrey prepared to take to the stage for a cause close to her heart on October 10.
An ambassador for Rio’s Legacy – a charity raising funds for children with life-limiting conditions – she was co-hosting a gala dinner with the aim of raising money to make Western Sydney’s first paediatric palliative care hospice a reality.
Sally – a mother-of-two herself – has long been a supporter of the cause, giving her time to push the charity’s important message.
And yet despite her public persona and long-running role on Weekend Sunrise, the Channel Seven star remains coy about sharing too much about the health struggle that impacted her own life.
It first came up in February 2025, when Sally told Wish magazine that her then 10-year-old son, Archie, had needed to let paramedics into their home after she collapsed on the floor.
“My blood pressure had dropped rapidly to a critical level and big drops can be life threatening,” the star revealed.
“It’s a condition that I’m susceptible to and there wasn’t much I could have done. It’s happened before, and that time it took hours for my heartbeat to return to normal.”
At the time, Sally divulged that she’d been wearing a health tech device but had ignored the warnings it had given her in the lead-up to the collapse.
“Could I have changed everything I was doing in the lead up to that event, if I had paid attention to the data my wearable was giving me? Most definitely yes,” the star admitted.
“It had warned me that my body was under high stress. I had a fever and my resting heart rate was abnormal, showing signs my body was fighting an illness.
“It should have also told me to stop using the sentence ‘I’ve got this’, because between a full schedule of work, sick kids, and solo parenting … I did not.”
Sally shared that after her medical episode she had learned a lesson – to prioritise herself a little more.
Indeed, Sally – who also has a daughter Willow Rose, nine, – has shared that she now embraces “the power of no”.
“[It] is only something that I’ve learned really in the last year or two,” Sally admitted, in a November 2024 episode of the 10:10 Be Well podcast she co-hosted with clinical nutritionist Sarah Di Lorenzo.
The star added that for a lot of people saying no “feels like being sort of rude, too assertive”.
“I’ve realised now saying yes to everything does no one any favours,” she went on, saying that that attitude played into an anxiety about needing to be “here for everyone”.
“Actually saying ‘oh no, thank you for thinking of me’ is not a dirty word but it’s taken you 40 years to realise that,” she said.
Certainly, Sally has a lot to juggle, what with family life and media commitments – and in a December 2025 interview on her podcast with parenting expert Lael Stone, she discussed the concept of mum-guilt.
“Sarah and I… talk about [this] more than any other topic we cover, and that is parenting, and really how to be a parent that is present, that doesn’t feel strung out,” Sally shared in the chat.
“For me… [a parent who] doesn’t feel guilty all the time that I’m not getting it right. How to really find that balance? It is hard in modern life to find that balance.”
Sally went on to say her son Archie has been “really emotionally intelligent” since the day he was born – and it was a trait she wanted him to keep as he grew.
“Even at age two, if I ever burst into tears, which I did a lot – when you’ve got a newborn and two-year-old – and he would stop what he was doing, and he would come and just put his hand on me, and he would say, ‘Are you okay’
“As a mother of a son, you always think how can we maintain that in a young man as he grows and as the world tries to often take it out of them?”
Now an insider tells Woman’s Day that Sally is committed to giving both her children everything they need to thrive.
“Whenever Sally speaks about her kids to people, she does it with such genuine pride. It’s clear that seeing them grow into thoughtful, emotionally aware children means a great deal to her,” the source shares.
“For Sally, her greatest achievement won’t be what they do in life, but the kind of person they become.”
The insider goes on to explain Sally wants both Archie and Willow to grow up understanding that strength “isn’t about hiding your feelings”.
“It’s about being kind, having empathy and treating people well,” the source adds.
“Sallyhas a demanding career in television, but being Mum is the most important thing to her.
“She is very measured about what she shares publicly when it comes to her family. But every now and then, you get a little glimpse of just how proud she is of her children. Those small moments can say more than a hundred social media posts.”
