Layne Beachley - Surf’s Up… And Down | The Imperfects

The following episode of The Imperfects contains references to suicidal ideation and a discussion around rape.

If this is something you don't feel like you can engage with at the moment, then perhaps skip this episode for now but when you feel ready please come back because this is a really wonderful conversation.

My name is Bella and I'm the assistant producer on The Imperfects.

I'm the descendant of Russian and English migrants who journeyed to Australia during the Second World War.

I grew up on the border of Watarung and Eastern Ma country, inspired by their care for the natural world as I explored the land near my home.

Here at The Imperfects, we acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation as the traditional owners of the land where our podcast is recorded.

We extend our respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

We're all imperfect and on this podcast I'll be chatting with a variety of interesting people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable by sharing their own struggles and imperfections.

And when my dad said you're my baby girl, I love you, you've always been part of this family, the minute he said you're adopted I stopped tuning into anything he was saying and I just started tuning into my stories in my own head.

Oh okay, so my own mother didn't want me, I've been abandoned, I've been rejected, I'm worthless, I'm undeserving of love.

I know if I become a world champion everyone will love me so I have to become a world champion at something and that's the only way that I can prove to this world that I'm worthy of love.

I'm Hugh Van Carlinberg from The Resilience Project and I'm Ryan Shelton from My Mum.

And I'm Josh from Hugh's Mum and this is The Imperfects.

Well if you'd scheduled a day at the beach Lee, today you're in luck.

Or walk down the lane?

Yeah, no no no yeah walk down the lane or strange thing to schedule.

See, my calendar I gotta do it.

We can't find a lane for you but there is a few streets and roads.

I've promised myself a lane nothing else will do.

Lane beach Lee, she's a legend.

Yeah, she's a great surfer and the best surfer.

She doesn't think she's better than that.

She's a great surfer.

As if you would know.

I've seen her get in the green room many times and I appreciate it.

Yeah, a great surfer.

I appreciate it. A great entrance and exit.

Okay, great. Before we get into Lane Beach Lee, if you will, you know how right you often say like my life is just like a sitcom?

Your life? Yes, yes, yeah.

Well here's something that just happened that absolutely would be in a sitcom without question.

You know how we've been really enjoying going to a gala, the cafe near here for we've been, lunch and coffees and it's a lovely place to get some work done.

Ethiopian cafe and the guy Daniel, I don't know if you guys, I just really like him.

Yeah, lovely man. I was there a couple of days ago and I just bought the t -shirt to the cafe.

I was like, oh, I just wanted to, I was like, I like this man.

So I'm trying to buy one of his t -shirts.

All right. And then today I walked in there and I sat down and this might surprise you guys, but I had lost my laptop bag.

Just the bag that I kept the laptop in.

Yep. Anyway, I sit down today in a gala and Daniel comes over and he goes, oh, I've got an early Christmas friend for you.

I went, oh, okay. And he walks over with the laptop case.

Oh, but you lost. I was like, no, but I didn't recognize it as mine.

And I just forgot. I didn't know I lost it.

And I went, are you serious?

I thought he'd got me a laptop for Christmas.

A laptop and so your, your gratitude was through the roof.

No, I was like, I can't, I can't, I can't take this.

And he goes, Oh, it's yours.

And I went, no, no, no, absolutely not.

Like that is ridiculous.

And he goes, no, no, you have to, I'm not, I'm not taking it.

I'm not taking this.

And he goes, Oh, okay.

What should I do? I don't know.

But that is way too much.

It was so obviously my laptop case, but I just wasn't thinking.

So he's giving you your laptop case.

Yeah, I left it there the other day.

And your assumption was he's bought me a laptop.

Yeah. You are so strong.

With all due respect.

I mean, we're all a bit strange, but that's so fascinating.

It was a new laptop case.

In my defense, I didn't, when I saw it, I was like, I didn't go, Oh, that's my laptop case.

How long did you had it for?

I want to say I knew it's like probably a year, but like a year.

You've, you had that every day for a year.

Actually, when I was handed back to you, you were like, don't recognize that.

Okay. Extra detail.

It's actually not mine.

It's Penny's. I took Penny's.

Okay. So Penny had had it for a year.

Yeah. I've seen it around the house.

It's yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I don't really know how to, what's the make of this?

Well, maybe it wouldn't make the sitcom because I think it's been too confusing.

Well, it's just, I think what it needs for the sitcom is it needs a little bow tied on it.

Like how, what, how does it end?

Like what happened when you realized that it was?

Okay. I tried to explain to him my mistake and that made him so much more confused.

Yeah, great. So just, it just ended.

I said, Oh, I think I know what's happened here.

That's actually my laptop case in the years.

Yeah. I'm giving it back to you.

Let's have a funny end.

What a both. Actually, that's mine.

Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah, I know.

I gave it to you back because it's yours.

Bomp, Bomp, Bomp, Bomp.

It's one of the lesser watched Kabir and D's, the other episodes.

Anyway, Lane Beachly.

Yeah. The perfect introduction to Lane Beachly.

Oh, and also before a day at the beachly, very, very important reminder to anyone in Melbourne or would like to travel to Melbourne, Josh, your gig.

Oh yeah. Well, there's still, if you can, if you can believe it, there are still tickets available.

We shouldn't have rented out the MCG.

No. Just for clarification, it's not at the MCG.

No, it's not. It's at the Northgate Social Club.

And if you still want to get tickets, the second date, Tuesday, the 17th of December, tickets still available.

We've put a link in the show notes.

This is you, Josh, playing brand new original music that you've written just for this huge act.

Yeah. So we're recording this like nine days out and I only finished, I nearly finished lyrics to one last night.

One of them doesn't have lyrics and never been played by a band.

It's very. Okay. So it's gonna be a raw, it's gonna be a raw performance, but like, it's like, we'll all be there and it's gonna, I cannot wait to see this.

And if you love Josh as much as we do, then you should definitely come along.

Oh, thank you. Anyway, day at the beach Lee, I do.

And I loved about this one was that I, I think for me, I'd always just seen line beach Lee as just the most accomplished surfer of all time and just kind of assumed that surface for me, surface are the most relaxed and chilled out.

And I always thought like collegial and just like they're all mates, they're all friends.

And if I win, that's great.

But if you win, I'm also stoked for you because we're surfers and we're just stoked all the time.

And so to hear that she was anything but that.

And then she owns that.

And I think she says I was a beach.

I found that fascinating, but also the work she's done since to kind of rectify that I think is just so amazing and so admirable.

Well, day at the beach Lee starts now.

So this is probably about to talk.

It's okay. No, it was just really just a public service announcement.

Yeah, just for just for anyone who's tuned in, not wanting to hear from a legend.

This is not going to be a good episode.

I like this episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Do not listen to this.

If legends is not what you like.

Well, then they wouldn't listen to the show because you've got three around the table already.

That's kind. Let's delve into that a bit more.

Interesting. When I think of, and this is the way my brain works and has interacted with sport over my lifetime.

When I think of icons in Australian sport, I think of Don Bradman, I think Dawn Fraser, I think Kathy Freeman, I think Andrew Gays.

But you don't think Lane Beach.

Please say Lane Beach Lee.

Who doesn't? This is a weird intro.

I think of all those people and then about three rungs below that Nick Fanning.

I'd finish it. Absolutely.

I think of Lane Beach Lee yesterday who is a seven time world champion.

Did it six times in a row?

Yeah. Only person ever to do that.

Yeah. The only surfer in the world.

Whoa. Yeah. King Kelly won five in a row.

Oh yeah. He went to win 11.

Show off. But I got six in a row.

Six in a row is wild.

Yeah. I know. It's insane.

Double three -peat. Yes.

And I reflect on that period.

I go, how did I do that?

And I know there was a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of struggle.

And yeah, we may dig in that today, but it wasn't the way I went about it was not a sustainable way.

So I won seven, I won six in a row, but I won five in fear and two in love.

And we can, we can break that down.

It's very tempting to jump into right now, but can I, this is just a question which really, I'm fascinated with the analogies you can draw from certain sports into life.

What do you learn from surfing that helps you with life or how is surfing similar to life?

Surrender. It's the, it's the greatest equalizer, the ocean.

It doesn't discriminate.

It's the people in it that do.

And the ocean is a very powerful force that you can't control.

So it's a perfect sport for control freaks because you have to learn to surrender.

You can't go out there and dominate the forces and every time you're pushing against something, it's, you know, as you know, what you resist, persist, if you continue to resist what's coming for you or what's coming at you and you don't have the energy to match the energy, then you're just going to

get mowed down no matter how small or big the waves are.

I guess there's so many sports, it's about control.

Controlling as many elements as you can, but the biggest element almost is uncontrollable.

The biggest element is uncontrollable.

That's why it's one of those really challenging sports that you can never really master because you're up against the elements all the time and you have to adapt to the changing elements, which change every minute.

It could be the wind, could be the tide, could be the swell, could be the currents, everything's changing all the time.

So you really have to learn to adapt to change.

Yeah, there really aren't that many sports like that.

Like, especially individual sports.

Oh, yeah, true. There's probably heaps actually.

There's two. That's an enormous amount.

I love the insight into the analogy you draw from surfing to life.

And I think that's incredible.

And it's obviously, I mean, probably a small part of the Awake Academy, which if we want to talk about today, it's kind of like everything that you've been through in your life, you have put all that energy in towards this incredible thing that you do now, helping people to live a more fulfilling life,

I guess, which we will talk about today.

And I can't wait to do that, because I think from the lessons from that, I've had to look through all that you teach.

I think it's such important stuff.

So we will get to that.

Thank you. But I'd love to go through your life, I suppose, to what got you to the point where you're in this incredible position to help other people now.

So, I mean, your childhood was, well, how do I describe it?

Not normal, it's not the normal childhood.

Oh, I mean, what is a normal childhood these days?

So it was challenging.

And that obviously helped me become the character that I am today.

And I don't know how far you want to go back, but I was adopted into a beach loving family with the last name Beachley and became a world champion so far.

If we can just slow that down, I feel like there might be more to get.

I was adopted into a beat.

So you were adopted so straight after you were born, your birth mother put you up for adoption?

Yes, so she was advised by her parents that she was to put me up for adoption before I was born.

So how old was she?

She was 17. So she was an unwed Scottish young, sprightly energetic woman who lived in Surrey Hills with her parents.

And she went out on a date with an owner of a modelling agency and ended up in a situation where she was feeling very compromised and very scared.

She was raped and I was conceived.

And of course, she wanted to keep me, but her parents thought she was not ready to raise a child.

So she knew before I was even born that she was being forced to put me up.

And in some respects, look, I've done a lot of emotional work and there's an aspect of me that knows that I was deprived of joy in the womb because there was very little joy around the conception and the gestation period.

So when I was born, I was actually premature.

I think there was an aspect that must have believed, look, just get me the fuck out of here.

I don't want to be in here anymore.

Get me out. I'm ready to go and find a home that is where I feel like I belong.

And so a six weeks premature, I was thrust into a humidity crib from the moment I was born because otherwise I wouldn't have survived and my mother wasn't allowed to hold me, touch me or breastfeed me.

So maybe that also...

Is that because you were premature?

No, because I was adopted, because I was going to be put up for adoption.

I didn't want to create that connection.

So she would stand behind the glass and look at me, but she was unable to.

Oh my God. That must have been a very hard thing for her.

Especially for a 17 year old.

Yeah. Yeah. Really hard for her.

So my dad, Neil, and my mother Valerie, who had my brother Jason, she had complications giving birth to Jason and was unable to give birth to another child.

So that's why they applied for an adopted child.

It only took 10 months.

So the system back then was a lot more high functioning than it is today.

And after... So after you were 10 months old when...

No, no, no. So they applied and within 10 months.

Oh my gosh, I'm sorry.

Yeah. So they basically came and picked me up from the hospital when I was six weeks old.

So I spent six weeks in a humidity crib.

So basically I had tubes and all the machines around me just to help me stay alive.

And then it's just...

It creates this really safe environment for the baby to either thrive or die.

And fortunately I throw, I was a thriver, a survivor.

Wow. Yeah. So I'm very fortunate that technology was around when I was born.

So I spent six weeks in there and then I was adopted by the Beechley family and taken home to Manly and grew up with my mother Valerie, my father Neil, and my older brother Jason and found my happy place.

And then my brother is a surfer.

My dad was a surfer.

He's been part of the Surf Life Saving Movement his whole life.

And any girl who grows up with an older brother wants to be doing what he does.

I just do it a whole lot better than he does.

Have you ever told him that?

Yeah. I don't need to tell him.

Yeah, it became apparent.

Yeah. I'm the only one in the family with a trophy room.

Just hands up around the table, who's won six world champions?

Jason, you haven't.

Catherine, my other sister, no you haven't.

And so I started skateboarding when I was three, surfing when I was four.

I actually started on the Manly Ferry side, the Harbour side, waiting for the ferries to come in and out.

We all hone our craft somewhere.

That would create the wave.

So I just practice my balance.

And then by the time I was five, I was on the Pacific Ocean side, the beach side, surfing with all the boys out at Manly in front of in the flags, dominating the flags.

You're four years old.

Yeah. I've got a four year old at home.

I'm like, when we go near the beach, I'm like, don't wait till I'm there.

You're actually in there.

One of those helicopter bears.

And we have a control for him.

So surfing is your game here.

Give it a go, mate.

And you go out there with him.

So you're finding on surf the waves made by the ferries in the Harbour, but do not go anywhere else.

That's the one safe spot.

That's the safe zone.

Yeah. So then by the time I'm five, yeah, I'm out the back.

And dad was always on the surf club deck, you know, with a beer and a sausage sandwich, making sure I was out there and the rest is history.

Did you know that you were adopted?

No. When I was five, I'm surfing when I was six.

Um, no, seven, actually.

Valerie went into hospital for cosmetic surgery.

My mother went into hospital and it was late in like 1979, late in the year.

And due to, I'd say probably low staffing levels at that time.

And she had undetected high blood pressure.

She went in to get a nip and tuck in her stomach because they had complications in the C -section when they gave birth to Jason.

I, uh, we lost her on the operating table.

She died of a brain hemorrhage of all things on the operating table.

Can you remember that?

I just remembered dad coming home telling like his eyes were puffy and red and saying, your mother's gone.

And I was like, Oh, and I remember feeling so, of course distressed and sad and overwhelmed.

And I remember putting my head in my pillow and bawling my eyes out.

And then I thought, I thought about, well, I became aware and maybe I've kind of condensed the series of events because that's what we do as kids.

Um, I remember feeling just so distressed and not enjoying that feeling.

And I grew up in a tough love environment.

So it was okay to make mistakes, but it just wasn't okay to be hurt or feel anything other than happy to a degree.

Just to sort of express your lower emotions.

Yeah, exactly. I wish the movie Inside Out was a childhood film.

And I was a kid. And, um, so I just thought I've got to get out of this environment.

So I jumped on my skateboard and I ran to the top of the hill and I just kept running down it on my skate as fast as I possibly could just to break that sadness and break that feeling.

And I remember having nightmares and, and breakdowns and, you know, feeling really sad and lost a lot.

Um, but then that was exacerbated about over 12 months later when the kids started asking questions around the street, why I looked so different to the rest of my family.

Because my brother's quite tall, my dad's tall.

They're both got pasty white skin and I'm Boliv.

They've got brown hair and I had, I used to have bright blonde hair.

Now it's bright gray.

And, um, and so when kids start asking questions and you know how brutal kids are, I started asking questions of myself.

And so that's when dad decided to have the chat.

And he sat me down in our big couch and said, you know, you're my baby girl.

You've always belonged to this family.

We love you like our own, but you're not a blood relation.

And that shattered my sense of self.

How long after your mum passed away?

About a year. About a year after that?

Yeah. Wow. It's a big year.

It was a big year. Yeah, it was a lot.

It was basically business as usual, get on with it.

And that was the, that was the, the times I think that was the way that we all dealt with things, which was actually not dealing.

Suppressing, burying, moving on.

The very common at the time.

Very common at the time.

Yeah. In that moment, you said it, floored you and shattered you.

But what, what did it do to your sense of feeling loved and?

Well, yeah. The, the story that I subscribe to, cause we know now, well, I know now how our brain waves change in those first five years.

We're narcissists, right?

Everything's happening and we're just absorbing it all.

And then our brain waves shift and we now have the capacity to judge, to analyze, to criticize, to wrap stories around things, to establish that meaning and that and start building that sense of self.

And when my dad said, you're my baby girl, I love you.

You've always been part of this family.

The minute he said you're adopted, I stopped tuning into anything he was saying.

And I started tuning into my stories in my own head.

Oh, okay. So my own mother didn't want me.

Oh, I've been abandoned.

I've been rejected.

I'm worthless. I'm undeserving of love.

I know if I become a world champion, everyone will love me.

So I have to become a world champion at something.

And that's the only way that I can prove to this world that I'm worthy of love.

You thought you thought you wanted to be a world champion or something.

How quick was it? That was quick the way you did it then.

But how quick do you think that was?

I don't know. I just remember sitting in that couch and I felt like Alice in Wonderland.

The couch got bigger and bigger and I felt smaller and smaller.

I thought, how can I improve or increase my sense of self?

I don't know. If I become a world champion, I'll be worthy.

And so I didn't realize that my whole sense of self -worth was wrapped up in what I did.

Do you think, is there a specific person that you were trying to, I don't know, get validation from or was it a general sense?

It was everyone. Yeah.

Oh, actually it was myself.

That's all I wanted.

And I had defined success as becoming the most successful surfer in history.

So to achieve that, I had to beat Kelly's record.

Kelly had five in a row.

So I was not going to be worthy until I won six in a row, but Kelly Slater.

Yeah. Sorry. I'm speaking...

Slats. Yeah, slats.

Exactly. So when we go back to that eight -year -old girl, I had defined self -love as being validated externally by others.

And at the time, I was playing a variety of different sports.

So tennis, cricket, soccer, hockey, and surfing.

And surfing wasn't, that wasn't the avenue that I was seeking.

I was just seeking it through any sporting endeavor.

Gosh, what a painful thing to go through.

Yeah. And I was just, you know, I reflect on it and sometimes the grief catches me off guard.

I'm like, that was intense and that was hard and that was painful.

And I get overwhelmed with emotion and I go, okay.

And then I reconcile it by thinking about what it has enabled me to do.

I don't justify it.

I just reconcile it.

And that's how I deal with grief.

I reconcile it. And I go into moments of gratitude and go, yes, it was tough and I'm not going to pretend it wasn't.

I did as a kid, I pretended everything.

Good. I'm fine. You know what fine stands for, don't you?

What does it stand for again?

Fucked up insecure, needy, and emotional.

That's right. Yeah, I'm fine.

But. Oh, you can use that.

It's amazing how quickly we can disassociate and wrap some sort of protection around us that enables us to carry on.

Did you want to, did you have any, any yearning to add at the point that you found that you adopted to get in touch or be with your birth mother?

With my biological mother.

So when I was eight, I didn't.

And then my, and when I was 14, my dad started dating his secretary.

So cliche. But she was a beautiful.

Says the eighties. She was a beautiful woman, but we had a tenuous relationship because my dad was my rock.

And I saw her as taking him away from me.

And I started to become the agitator and she fought back.

And then she moved in with us.

And that was like the biggest change in my life.

Like she's now completely disrespected my needs and now she's just honoring her own.

And it wasn't until I was about 20 and I won my first event when I was 20.

I'd been on tour for three years.

I won my first event and she and dad got remarried later on.

She had already had, when I was 18, she had my younger sister.

So my younger sister is 18 years younger than me, Catherine.

So her and dad, her name was Christina.

Her and dad had started their own new family, their own new unit.

My brother was living overseas in Europe and I felt like this little black sheep that didn't belong anymore.

And I felt so rejected and so abandoned and so fearful.

I was like, right, I'm going to take charge of this.

So I decided it was time to move out.

So I moved out of home.

But long story short, I found myself after being out of home for about four years, I found myself homeless and I was squatting in the back bedroom of my personal trainer's house.

And his wife asked me like, are you ever moving out anytime soon?

And so I rang my dad and I said, I need to come home.

And she said, no. Oh, wow.

No, they rock my world moment.

I was like, hang on.

I've just been rejected by my rock.

And you're saying to me, I can't come home.

Was there a reason given for what?

No, not really. So that shattered me.

But so I was sitting out the backyard and head in hands going, I don't know what to do with myself.

And then Judy, who was my personal trainer's wife, said, have you ever thought of investing in real estate?

I was like, I'm a professional surfer.

Who's going to lend me money to buy a apartment?

And they're not winning a lot of prize money at this point.

Well, look, I was on tour for 19 years and I won half a million dollars in prize money.

What? Yeah. You're joking.

No. That is fucked.

That's women surfing, that's because equal pay didn't come in 2019 2019.

Anyway, I'm 20. So this is 1996.

I'm 24 years of age.

I'm homeless. Can I before you go into?

Yes. So I my perception of being on the surf tour.

Oh, yes, I'd like to hear this in like the early in your early 20s.

I feel like it would just be parties.

It was a lot of partying.

Yeah. Yeah. So what what was that?

Because especially if you're, you know, you've you've found like kind of a little bit of success and you're competing with all these like, I imagine really fun, interesting people on surf tour.

Some of them were. Yes.

What was what was that like?

Rambunctious at times.

I mean, it was it was sometimes soul destroying.

There was moments where I felt like I belonged and there was moments where I felt like I didn't at the time.

And the reason I say that is I belonged when I was losing and I didn't when I was winning.

Women surfing had a real scarcity mentality.

We dragged each other down.

We beat each other up.

But when I was losing, I felt like I was back in with the cool kids again.

Yeah, and and look from your career, you weren't one of the cool kids very much at all.

Well, look, I competed in over 450 events and I won 29 of them.

Okay. There was a lot of cool kidding going on.

That's amazing. Yeah, I know.

How does that work if you're winning so many World Championship?

I was consistent. When I was mentally consistent, I was physically consistent.

But there was many years, the first seven years of my professional tour life, I was super inconsistent.

And that was because I refer to myself as a classic victim.

It was everyone else's fault for my misgivings.

It was everyone else's fault for my losses and disappointments.

It was the judges. It was the it was my peers.

It was the conditions.

It was my board. It was my wax.

It was everyone else's fault.

And then I realized the common denominator to all my suffering was me.

And the six inches between my ears was very inconsistent.

So I had to start again.

And I went and did a rebirth thing, which you may not have ever heard of.

Essentially, it's a breathing process that you go through, where you lie down on the floor or sit up if you've prone to falling asleep a lot like I am when I do rebirth things.

And I do them regularly.

And this was the first one's usually the most eye opening and and I would say, emotionally draining.

I basically found a facilitator, you have to trust your facilitator because you're in a pretty vulnerable place when you're you're liberating stored years of stored emotional pain that you're not okay with.

I don't like to just talk it out.

I like to feel it out.

I often I often say, you've got to feel it to heal it.

Right. So I love to feel my emotions.

And I had suppressed them.

I'd buried them. I'd put on this mask.

I had I had years and years of shop fronts, years and years of masks that had just been applied one after the other.

And I was starting to break down internally.

I had chronic fatigue syndrome for the second time.

I was in a debilitated state physically, mentally and emotionally.

I was depressed. I was suicidal.

I had all sorts of issues going on.

And I was second in the world.

And I was hating myself and hating my life.

And, and I don't use that lightly, because I don't like to say the word hate very, very often.

And, and that made me go and do something really empowering, which was this rebirthing thing you go into just a it's almost like a circular, even hyperventilation in and out through your mouth.

And it's just and you're doing that for 45 minutes.

And as your emotions start to stir up, if you stay with the breath, you liberate them.

If you go into your head and you fear it, you suppress them again.

Layers and layers and layers of emotions appeared.

And that's when I became extremely aware and awakened to my fundamental fear, my deep seated, incredibly ingrained and rooted fear of rejection.

And that all stemmed back to being adopted.

So this fear of rejection was driving my behavior, it was driving that victimised mentality, it was keeping people at a distance, especially the ones who wanted to come close.

I behaved in a way that gave people reason to reject me, or I rejected them first.

Either way, I was in control, I was right.

Therefore, I'm happy.

And that made my life very challenging.

So I pushed people away a lot, because I didn't trust them, which adoptees tend to have that common denominator.

Makes sense. Yeah, we don't trust very easily.

We reject we have a fear of rejection.

We keep ourselves at a distance, we keep others at a distance.

And we've always got this self protection mechanism wrapped around us until we become aware of it.

And then you can change it.

How old were you when that happened?

So I was 25. That was the year prior to winning my first world title.

So it was a lot to process in 18 months, you know, that all started in probably around 1996, when I started to notice the symptoms again.

And that's when I just had to go through all these different layers to to get to that awakening where I was like, okay, fear of rejection is actually holding me back and stopping me from embracing this opportunity.

There's a lot to go into there that we should talk about.

But I've been wanting to ask something.

And it was a while ago, before we get into all this stuff.

And it may sound like a somewhat cliche question.

But I had the chance, and I've talked about this before on the podcast where I found old videos and watched these old videos of myself when I was like 12 and the family.

And at that point, we were going through some pretty traumatic stuff in our house.

And I told this story about me and who I am, that was really unfair, and really negative and very critical.

And I've watched this video, and I was really taken aback at how little I looked.

And that I was just a little kid and doing the best.

And it really was a freeing moment for me.

It took a lot of weight off that I'd been caring for a lot of my life.

And I'm sorry if this is too cliche of a question, but I was wondering if you looking at yourself on that couch when you ate, if you were able to say something to yourself then, what would you tell that little girl?

That she's loved. Because she obviously instantly believed that she wasn't.

What is really distressing, and I'm deflecting a little bit, but I think about kids today who are left with parents who have suicided.

And I just go, how are these kids going to survive?

But you know what we do?

That's the resilience of children.

And I think we all want what's best for our kids, and we want to wrap them up and protect them and nurture them.

But we all have had our fair share of shit and challenges and trauma, and we've turned out the best that we can.

Look, I'm not grateful for it, but I feel for that little 8 -year -old, and I often have to go back to her and go, you're okay.

You're safe. You're loved.

You're safe. Your basic needs are met.

And you belong here.

Yeah. Can you feel that now, that you're loved?

I know you said you've done like a lot of work.

How recently has that happened in your life, where you can truly believe that?

Look, after I won my sixth consecutive world title, one of my friends said, are you enough yet?

One more. Yeah. I did say that, yes.

But then my body broke down.

I had to take a couple of years out.

But then I came back for one more.

And it's still an evolution.

I still have days where I fall out of love with myself, but I think it's also the nature of getting older.

We become more self -accepting and more open and more nurturing and more self -aware.

So I now am more aware of the love that I have for myself than I have ever been.

And also that's a part of reaching my 50s.

And just as we get older, the decades that you go through, I think in my 30s, when I turned 30, I was like, I know nothing.

I thought I knew it all, because I'm a 20 -year -old, I know everything.

And I hit my 30s and went, I know nothing.

And then I hit my 40s and went, this is a good decade.

I've still got the energy and the vitality and the strength to do all the things that I love to do.

Then I hit menopause in my mid 40s.

I've been in that for about eight years now.

And that's really taught me the nature of self -acceptance and self -love, because everything changes.

It's a whole new ocean.

It's a whole new ocean to navigate.

Yeah, it's a whole new world.

So the only thing that pulls me out of that self -acceptance and self -love state is my reflection in a mirror at night.

Mm. And I know that's my trigger.

So I don't look at myself in a mirror at night.

Really? Yeah. So what happens then when you do it?

I pull strips off myself.

I tear myself apart.

I highlight all the flaws and the weaknesses and the bits where I'm getting soft or I've lost tone or I just start piece, I just start pulling it apart.

And I'm like, my body doesn't deserve that.

It's amazing what it's enabled me to do.

So love it, protect it, nurture it.

And our bodies and our minds are a reflection of what we consume and how we treat them.

So I just have to be more self -loving and self -caring.

Is there also an acceptance of, like, I could be getting this wrong, but I find the older I get, like, in the stuff that I'm dealing with, that it's not just sort of getting past that, but also going, it's okay to, with what you've experienced in your life, that's okay to feel like that sometimes.

A hundred percent. I think it's okay to feel how you feel.

What's not okay is if you stay stuck there for too long, especially if it's a really deep sadness or depression or something that you know is negatively impacting your basic way of functioning.

If that's interfering with your capacity to be a human being and to be just, I don't know, present, then that's something that you need to address.

And as I mentioned earlier, you know, I grew up in that tough love environment that that resulted in me being a silent sufferer.

I suffer in silence because when I hurt myself, my dad would be like, harden up, get on with it.

You know, I almost broke my neck surfing when I was nine.

I hit the sandbag and I came in.

I said, dad, I've hit my head on the sand.

I think I broke my neck.

He's like, lie down, rest, you'll be all right.

So I never honored the pain.

And that prolongs the pain because I buried it.

And the same thing happened to my body when I was competing.

Every time my body broke down, I saw that as something I had to get over and get past.

It was just another challenge I had to overcome.

So I had a wave that was ceiling height, land on the back of my neck at Chopu, herniated a disc.

My left arm went numb.

And I competed with that for the next five years.

I had atrophy. I've still got atrophy.

I've still got tingling sensations.

I've still got neural degeneration.

And I literally won the contest, went in, celebrated it, and then literally surfed in immense amount of pain and discomfort for the next five years to the point where there was times when I woke up paralyzed, like there was a blunt, hot butter knife being wedged and twisted slowly between my shoulder

blades. I couldn't turn my head.

I went to Alaska on a surf trip in 2005.

So this is five years after the injury.

And in 2004, maybe 2005, one of those years, I had to put, because the wetsuits are so thick and cumbersome, I had to put a foam wedge in my wetsuit under my chest to help me keep my head up.

Oh my God. I was that flat in denial.

So you weren't getting, the severity of the injury.

You weren't getting treatment.

Yeah. I was getting treatment just to manage it, not to actually address it.

So you weren't going to a doctor and saying like, this is a real problem.

I need to. No, that's a sign of weakness.

And potentially it would mean that you couldn't compete.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah. You mentioned before the looking in the mirror as a, as a, uh, trigger.

Trigger. Yeah. For falling out of love with yourself.

Has like physical appearance, body image, self image, has that always been a trigger for you or is that a developing thing?

That developed when I turned about 19.

Um, when I, when I was a teenager, I had zero body fat and zero body image.

I was a very active, hyperactive teenager that could eat anything.

And I was always outside playing.

So I knew nothing about diet.

My dad was the cook, so I'd go into the kitchen and he'd be like, Oh, the kitchen.

So when I went on tour, I destroyed my health because I had no idea how to cook or prepare anything for myself.

And then I met a guy who I fell in love with my first love.

His name was Jeff. And, um, and I went on the pill and my body just went, and I was like, what the fuck just happened?

What happened to my body?

And I got boobs and I got cellulite.

And I was like, Oh my God, I don't know how to address any, I don't know how to deal with any of this.

Um, that's not like I asked my dad, dad, what's going on here?

He didn't have a good track record for opening up.

Yeah, not really. Yeah.

Especially when I got my period for the first time, nevermind.

So, um, okay. I had to sort a lot of things out for myself.

Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm very street smart.

So my, um, my body changed and so therefore my relationship changed with it.

And then as we all know what we focus on expands, right?

So I was constantly focusing on fat, cellulite, boobs, all the stuff that I don't really like.

And the aspects of ourselves that we don't like, we tend to focus on and tend to pull it apart and wonder why am I like that suck?

I hate that part of myself.

And all we're doing is projecting all of that fear and hatred and lack of compassion to ourselves, but also we're focusing on it.

So it's expanding it.

And today, I know my trigger, you know, I talked about standing in front of the mirror for like, especially at night, especially if it's been a big night, the last thing I can do is look at myself naked because I will find those bits that I don't like and strip myself apart.

But I'm also very aware now that that's an indication that I'm exhausted.

So when I go into that self loathing or I go into self doubt, or I'm craving stuff that I know is not good for me, I'm depleted.

And when I'm depleted of energy, my go -to response is to criticize, compare and crave stuff.

And that's to me is like, okay, I'm tired, walk away.

So I've just set that back with myself.

No four legs mirror at night.

And then be aware of what's the dialogue?

What's the narrative?

What's the story I'm telling myself?

I wish I'd learned that in my 20s, because we, well, women, or maybe I'm projecting to just my generation, we're looking for how we fit in and how we belong in especially in our 20s or in our teenage years, they're kind of awkward, but in our 20s.

And the mainstream media and marketing and advertising are constantly reassuring us about where we're falling short.

If you're not successful until you wear this brand, or you're not healthy and happy enough until you can look like that person.

And so the constant comparison and analysis feeds inadequacy.

And I was super inadequate.

And I was going to extreme lengths to get my body back to the teenager, but that was never going to happen.

And when we're yearning and striving for something, we are in pain and suffering and it prolongs the pain and suffering.

And I was yearning for my teenage body.

I just wanted it back.

So I went to the most extreme lengths you could possibly ever go to thinking that I'd explored all our other avenues.

And I went and got liposuction.

How old were you? 23.

My body still hadn't completed forming itself.

I mean, it was the dumbest thing I've ever done.

And I didn't tell my dad because his wife died from cosmetic surgery.

The last thing I'm going to do is tell my dad, I'm going to go and get cosmetic surgery.

So even with that knowledge in the backyard, you're like the...

Didn't even consider it.

Having that keyhole look in my legs was way more important to me than potentially ending my life.

Like I was so focused on just getting that beach bae body.

Geez. I mean, the pressure to look a certain way just...

I mean, it just must have been so intense.

Like to go to those lengths, you obviously, well, it seems like at least that you're really, really hard on yourself.

I was wondering if I could ask you about your relationship with success because people in your position want to be the best.

And it feels like if I'm the best, then I'm enough.

And that's like a very common thing.

But at what point did, because clearly now your relationship with success, I'm assuming very different than it was, what changed and when did that change?

Great question. So I mentioned earlier how I'm a seven times world champion, five in fear, two in love.

The love baseball titles were number one and seven.

So right after that rebirthing, the change happened.

I fell in love with a guy in Hawaii called Ken Bradshaw.

It looks a lot like Buzz Lightyear.

I married Woody, because he's a more sensible one.

But Buzz, Ken, he was a big wave surfer, larger than life character, a lover of surfing and he was a great shaper.

And so he taught me the importance of focusing on the little things to achieve the big things, such as I spent too much time on my heels.

So he would say, pretend I've put a razor blade slate in your heels, and you need to walk around the house all the time on your toes to make sure that those heels don't touch the ground.

So he incorporated all these processes into my approach to surfing and competition.

And I understood now that the importance of process is what improves your performance.

And by doing so, when I won my first world title, I actually didn't know that I'd won it, because I was so in love with the process.

I was in love with being a better surfer, a better competitor, knowing more about my nutrition, my mental state, my physical state, prioritizing sleep, like doing all the little things right.

And then when I achieved the goal, now all of a sudden I'm placing this unrelenting expectation on my shoulders to do it again.

And to be deserving of it, I have to be twice as good as what I was.

So now I've gone from process driven to outcome driven.

Now that I'm outcome driven, everything that I do defines me, every result defines me.

And therefore, if I'm winning, I'm winning.

And if I'm losing, I'm a loser.

And there was nothing in between.

So I was on this emotional roller coaster all the time.

I'm up, I'm down, I'm up, I'm down.

When I was process driven, it was more like speed bumps.

And when I wasn't winning, I was learning.

I'm winning, I'm learning, I'm winning, I'm learning versus I'm winning, and I'm a loser, and I'm winning, I'm a loser.

And then after I won my sixth one, and my friends said, what's driving you?

Do you think it's because you're adopted?

I was like, actually, yes, you're 100 % right, but I've still got it.

I'm in adrenal fatigue.

My body's broken. I've had a crushed lumbar spine, I've had a fractured rib, I've got a herniation in my neck that I haven't actually got a scan for yet.

So I don't know how severe that is.

Found out that it was severing 80 % of my spinal cord.

And I was given two options to retire or get surgery.

That means slitting my throat, going in and messing with my anatomy.

So I'm like, no, I'm good with that.

Thanks. So in those five years, I was tagged as having the compassion of a tiger shark.

So fierce, so ferocious, so driven, poor loser, my peers, they thought I was a poor loser.

They didn't know. And not was I really aware that my self worth was wrapped up in whether I won or lost.

When you said you were eight years old sitting on the couch, I was picturing a girl who looks nothing like you.

I was like, why am I not picturing?

I just pictured someone I had a very clear face and hair and everything.

And I realized a few minutes later what it was.

And this will lead to a question, but I went to a funeral last year for a friend of mine, a guy my age.

How old are you? I'm 44.

I came out of corner and drove past the pub as I left, I saw everyone in there still.

And there's a laneway out the back of the pub.

And I saw his eight year old daughter out there by herself, looking very lost with her hands on her head, looking extremely confused.

And there's a lot of tears.

And when I say by self, there was someone there was an adult sort of nearby but not with her.

And her face, I think about her a lot.

And I think about what she's still going through a year later.

The look of utter confusion on her face and heartache and hands on her head just looking completely lost.

And I was picturing her when I was seeing you on the couch.

And I think this weird thing of wanting to ask you what the next couple of years was like, because I think about her a lot and how she's going right now.

The next couple of years were traumatic.

And my dad did his best to wrap his arms around the family.

He actually took us on a family holiday.

We went to Hawaii and we went to Disneyland just to bring some unity and connection into the family.

And then he built a pool in the backyard.

And once again, I was able to hone my craft at home because I used to put my foamy on the pool deck or on the edge of the pool and run and jump and ride the length of the pool on my foamy and step off on the other end as an eight year old or a nine year old.

And I did that before school nearly every day in my school uniform, knowing that if I fell, I would get a whipping.

So I stayed upright.

So I know, yeah, the next couple of years were rather tumultuous and challenging and an emotional rollercoaster.

But I surrounded myself unconsciously with just friends and fun.

I just became, I was just a kid.

I was allowed to be a kid.

And I was fortunate that I grew up at a time where you had to be home when the street lights were on.

That was the rule. The rest of the time, you're off playing.

So that element of creativity and joy and immersing myself in nature with that sense of freedom, I think was like God's end and a lifesaver.

Amazing, thanks for answering that.

No worries, thank you for asking.

Can I ask you to, we're jumping around a lot.

We are jumping around a lot.

Sorry listeners. Because there's just so much to talk about, but you talked about, and I hope you don't mind me going here, but you talked about depression and suicidal ideation.

And it seemed to be when you were winning world titles that this was happening all around that time.

Well, the depression, and I it up to the world title.

So in those first seven years, that's when I was really intense and victimised and really harsh and projecting and rejecting a lot.

And when I was, after I won my first event in 1993, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

No surprises. I mean, I was getting up at five o 'clock in the morning every day in the pouring rain in the middle of winter with the flu and still going to training.

So I was flogging myself to death, but that's what I what's that.

I've never actually asked someone what it I've heard about it, but I've never really asked someone what's that chronic fatigue.

Yeah. Look back then, it was called yuppies disease, so much empathy in the nineties, isn't there?

Really it's called yuppies disease.

Yeah. Well, there's nothing wrong with you.

Look at you. Just get up.

You're tired, get on with it.

There's a lot of similar symptoms to menopause actually.

So the brain fog and the poor concentration and the memory lapses, but then and the bloating and the weight gain and just the extreme fatigue, just I wasn't able to get out of bed and I was struggling a little bit, but then I got put on a very strict diet.

So yeast free, wheat free, sugar free, dairy free, fruit free and alcohol free.

So there's not much left to eat.

But fortunately, I was only on that for a couple of months and I had to do, I had to follow a very strict diet and supplement regime.

And after a couple of months, I was able to regenerate.

So the thing with chronic fatigue is the symptoms is one of my favorite sayings.

The body whispers before it screams.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

The symptoms were whispering for quite some time and I didn't listen until the body started screaming.

Yeah. So that was 1993 and I was able to overcome it quite quickly and then get myself back on tour.

And then I started winning more and more events.

And then in 1995, the body was whispering.

And then in 1996, the body was screaming and I still chose to ignore it.

And the symptoms were horrendous.

The tinnier between my toes, for example, because chronic fatigue thrives on yeast and sugar.

So when I was craving all of this shit that I know is not good for me, there was an indication that something's going wrong here.

And the symptoms were just exposing themselves in the most uncomfortable of ways, but I just chose to ignore them.

I was scratching my toes, even in my sleep so much that all my toes were bleeding during the night because I just had so much fungus and candida and sugar in my system.

And I was always bloated.

I couldn't remember things and I was seeking external validation from my peers to boost up my confidence because I was so depleted.

And then I went into states of suicidality and depression and that's what made me do something.

Because I got scared.

I got scared that I kept waking up and thinking of different ways to end my own life.

And I thought that's not who I am.

That's not who I want to be.

But I don't know who to turn to.

And Brene Brown often talks about how there's very few people in our lives that have earned the right to share in our pain, share in our struggles.

And you've got to find those people, you got to be discerning about who those people are.

And I had a girlfriend in my life, her name was Joanna Griggs.

She was an Olympic champion, Olympic swimmer.

Lovely, lovely woman.

She is a lovely woman.

And she had been through a very similar bout of Langella fever bordering on chronic fatigue.

And so I thought she would have compassion and understanding and maybe some wisdom about what to do.

So I rang her and she picked - You know her at this point at all.

I've known her for a few years.

And she picked up the phone and she said, Hi, Lane, what took you so long?

So you can't help people that aren't willing to help themselves.

And I wasn't willing to do anything until I was willing to have the courage to pick up the phone and say, okay, I'm scared now.

I need to do something.

Is that a general feeling or is there actually a moment where you can pinpoint?

The moment I can pinpoint was when I woke up probably for the seventh or eighth day in a row, thinking of different ways to end my life.

And I thought, that's not who I naturally am.

It was a really disconcerting period because I am a lover of life and I love to bring energy and I couldn't actually even find the energy to want to live my life.

So the easy way out was to just think about ways to end it.

And there's no way I would have done that, but the fact that I was even considering it scared the shit out of me.

What were the thoughts?

Like what were you telling yourself about yourself?

That I was actually buying into that yuppie disease mentality, you're fat, you're lazy, get over it, get on with it.

Your memory shot, you're done, you're dusted.

You're never going to win.

You're never going to make it.

They were right. You know, when I grew up at Manly, the boys would always say, get out of the water.

You're a girl. You're not smart enough.

You're not talented enough.

You're not strong enough.

All of the classic stories.

And so it was because I was so depleted, I kept going back into those old stories because they validated the lack of energy and the lack of love that I had for myself.

And as I said, we'd rather be right than happy.

So it was just easy just to fall on those old stories and go, they're right.

I'm done. There's no way I can come back from this.

I'm toast. I'm so exhausted.

And I don't even know what's going on with me physically.

I'm fine. Like, look at me.

I'm still strong and I can still surf, sort of.

I'm really inconsistent.

But I just, I mean, I'd be sitting in the lounge room watching the tennis and I'd go to the bathroom and sit down and think, what was I just watching?

Who was I just watching?

Just the memory lapses and just everything was just culminating in this moment where I just wake up going, I'm sick of feeling this way.

And I've actually experienced it in menopause too.

I'm tired of being tired.

I really am. And I decided, finally, I'm going to go and see a doctor about this now.

I've been in this for eight years.

And the minute I saw a doctor and spoke about it, I felt empowered by that because I was now taking action to address it.

And that's what silent sufferers don't do.

Silent sufferers suffer in silence, suppress it, bury it, stay stuck in it, and then go and throw themselves off a cliff.

And that's not who I am.

It's not who I want to be.

So most people who do resort to suicide or start thinking about suicide are tired, scared, and they don't want to die.

And I was tired, I was scared, and I didn't want to die.

So that's what gave me the confidence to pick up the phone and ask for help.

But when you say you took, you saw a doctor and took action about your menopause, what action did you take?

I started by listing all of my symptoms and going, yep, oh my God, oh, wow, there's a lot going on here.

From the brain fog and the memory synapses to the weight distribution.

Like I've put on weight between my rib cage and the top of my thighs, just my body's changed so much.

Tinnitus, all sorts of other issues that I'm not going to bore you with.

Kirk has been a lifesaver so many times for me in that regard, when I go into states of depression and he can see, okay, how long are you going to stay there for?

When are you ready to have a conversation?

And when he says, are you okay?

And I say no, his immediate response is, do you want a hug?

Like that's a man that knows how to hold your space.

Right? So that's something that every man could learn how to do.

Do you need a hug? Yeah.

So with menopause, he can't solve that for me.

So I have to go and see an expert.

She didn't offer me a hug, but she did offer me HRD.

Slightly more effective.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm about to find out.

Oh, you're about to start it.

Yeah, I'm about to start it.

When I get home. Wow.

Yeah, you you mentioned that you feared rejection self and push people away on the tour would push people away.

What was that like to reach out?

Because it's pretty vulnerable to reach out to Joanna.

Well, like I said, I was very discerning about who I would reach out to.

I would never let my peers know that I was struggling.

Like don't let them know you're in pain, right?

Yeah, because they would like, sense weakness or that was my projection.

Yeah. I don't know what they would have done.

It was just the scarcity mentality and that mentality of the time that no one allowed each other to support each other unless you'd created that bond and that connection with your peers.

There were very few peers that I had established that bond with.

And now I look back on that tour life and there's only probably maybe a maximum of a handful of girls that I could consider friends from those years on 19 years on tour.

I destroyed a lot of friendships and friendships that'll never be rebuilt or forgiven because of the way in which I behaved.

I take ownership for that.

I also, I can't take ownership for their choice of not forgiving me, but I forgive myself because I'm now more aware of.

Can I ask what kind of things that you did?

Like was it? Oh, look, I was a, remember I said I was that compassionate, this Tiger Shark, I was so fierce.

I was just, I played a lot of head games.

I basically brought the competition out of the water and just, just attempted to get into their heads.

And it's funny, we are what we judge.

So I always, always accusing them of trying to get into my head and unravel me.

And it's exactly what I was doing to them.

And I was playing those games all the time, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously, but it was never my intention to hurt anyone.

In fact, all I was really doing was hurting myself.

So I was a bitch, but they were bitches too, right.

It was just the way it was, the way it was at the time.

And it was fierce and it was hard.

And we were fighting for very little, you know, our prize purse was $30 ,000 between 12 of us.

Today, Steph Gilmore or Tyler Wright or Molly Picklem can win an event and walk away with a hundred grand US just from one day of surfing.

So it's a different game today, but they, the girls don't have, the girls still have their share of challenges and issues.

But we just had a lot of scarcity mentality.

We had an industry that didn't invest in us.

We had a governing body that didn't really respect us.

And we had male counterparts that didn't want us.

So it made it very hard for us to find that space of belonging.

I've been trying to get the right time to ask this.

I'm so interested to know about the relationship with your mum, with your birth mom now.

And like, did you reconnect?

Yeah, we did. What was that like?

So in, gosh, I think in the mid 90s, because remember when I said I was kicked out of home and I wasn't allowed back.

I did actually end up buying an apartment.

I went down to my dad's house and when he wasn't there, when Christina wasn't there, and I went under the house and squirreled out this little box that I'd been stashing my travellers checks in.

And I had $18 ,000 US dollars in travellers checks.

So I had $36 ,000. So I literally had a deposit for a house for a unit because back then a two bedroom unit was $180 ,000 all the good old days.

And I thought, all right, I'm going to buy myself a place.

And that was my introduction and forte into property.

And that's what became my investment strategy when I competed.

So I didn't earn very much money, but I invested every ounce of it back into real estate.

So long story short, after that happened and I found my space and I felt centred in the world again, I thought, I wonder where I come from.

I wonder why I'm the way that I am.

So I went to the birth desk and marriage registry and applied for my birth certificate.

And I then had it sent to a mate who decided to fax it to me while I was competing in South Africa.

And the tour manager, who I actually think was just, he prided himself on making my life very challenging.

He decided to come and present this because there's no doubt he would have read it.

And he presented it to me 10 minutes before I paddled out for a heat.

And it completely rattled me, of course.

Like here's my original birth certificate, my mother's name, my original name, where she...

So what was your original name?

Tanya Maris Gardner was my name that I was born with.

Tanya Gardner. My mother's name was Maggie.

Maggie Gardner. She lived in Surrey Hills.

She was 17 years of age.

I was like, well, that answers a lot of questions as to why I was given up.

So I just crafted this story.

Maybe she was a backpacker.

I don't know the situation.

And so I settled on that.

I was happy with that information.

And that was in mid -90s.

And then in 1999, right before I was about to compete for my second world title, she reached out.

I was in Indonesia on a boat trip doing a trip for one of my sponsor.

And she called, she found my dad and she rang my dad and said, hi, I'm Lane's mom.

And Dad's like, whoa, okay.

And Dad, I'd always been very clear and honest with Dad.

I just want to know, because at the time in the 70s, that level of information wasn't shared.

Fortunately, there wasn't a contact veto on my birth certificate.

So I was allowed to go and explore.

But once I received that birth certificate, I was settled in that.

I was a little bit kind of, I felt reconciled.

Then she reached out and Dad said, look, she's in Indonesia.

Give me your phone number and I'll let her know that you called and she'll reach out when she's ready.

So I came home and Dad shared with me all this information.

And I went, okay, wow.

All right. I'm going to wait until I'm back in Hawaii next week.

And I went on with Ken.

So I've got that safety and that support in case, who knows how it's going to go.

And she didn't wait.

She rang me the next day when I was at home and she wanted to hear my voice on my voicemail and tried to make up for our 27 years of not knowing each other in the first 10 minutes of my phone call.

Hi, I'm your mom. And I was 16 when I was raped and you were conceived through date rape and I gave birth to you and 17.

And then my mum wouldn't let me keep you.

And they were Catholics.

And we were living in Surrey Hills.

And then after I gave birth to you, I went off to New Zealand and then moved to America and I've been living in America for the last several years.

And I've got a five year old daughter here.

Have a chat to your sister.

Her name's Melissa.

Hi, Melissa. Hi sister.

I love you. I'm like, who the fuck are you?

I don't even know what is happening.

Oh my God. Wow. You're 27.

Yeah. It was overwhelming.

Oh, I put the phone down.

I was like, holy moly, that was too much.

Yeah. And so we agreed to meet later that year.

So I went, she lived in Santa Rosa, which is just outside of San Francisco.

We met at the airport and we met at a restaurant at the airport.

I remember walking up to her because all my friends were like, could she be a gold digger?

Is she a fame digger?

Like, do you really think this is your mother?

And blah, blah, blah.

And I didn't question it.

I thought I'm going to go with an open mind.

And I remember walking up to her going, there's no question.

This woman is my mother.

There was a startling reflection.

Wow. And it felt like I was looking in the mirror in 17 years' time.

Before you'd seen that piece of paper, had anyone told you the name?

Like Maggie, didn't you know anything about your birth mother?

I knew absolutely nothing.

My dad knew nothing.

When mum died, when Valerie died, when I was seven, dad brought in this lady called Joan, who was a family friend and she became like my nan and she was the one that suggested, look, you're obviously feeling the need to connect with that aspect of yourself.

I'll take you to the to the office and we can apply and I'll help you process the, you know, go through all the paperwork and stuff.

So up until I received that certificate, I knew absolutely nothing.

No one within my family knew anything, knew anything about her at all.

She was a mystery to all of us.

Wow. So with my relationship with my mother, it was tumultuous.

It was challenging.

She kept showing up when I didn't really want her to be there.

I really wanted to compartmentalize that relationship.

I wanted to focus on surfing and winning and then relationship with family.

I've never had a very strong bond with family.

I've always kind of kept family out here.

I believe the friends are the family that we choose and I'm very fortunate that I have a very strong bond with my friends, therefore my family.

But I had this tenuous relationship with Maggie to the point where I pushed her away, I rejected her and then we were writing the book Beneath the Waves with Michael Gordon and we brought Maggie to Hawaii and we did a big interview and I had a realization, another awakening, that the reason I had kept

her there was not to prove her wrong, but to prove myself right.

That's what I was - In what way?

Well, I didn't believe her story.

I didn't believe that I could be conceived through date rape.

I didn't believe that I would be rejected at such a young age.

I started to unravel all of my old beliefs and just to keep myself safe and protected, I just went back into a story that served me and it kept her at a distance.

And because of my judgment of her, it ended up rejecting her and because I kept her at such a distance, it made our connection really tenuous and fragile.

And then, when I became aware of that and we'd been kind of going like this, I would only speak to her, I wouldn't see her or speak to her very regularly and my sister, Katherine, couldn't understand it because Christina, my second mother, my stepmother, who wouldn't allow me to come home, she died

from breast cancer when I was 30.

So, she's like, you've got an opportunity to connect with your mother, why aren't you?

And I just had so much judgment around it, so much fear associated with it that it kept her at a distance.

So, we wrote the book in 2008.

I apologized. I sent her a card and I said, Mom, I'm so sorry.

I said, I was never trying to prove you wrong, I was trying to prove myself right, I hope you can forgive me.

And her response was, card received, don't know what I meant to do with that.

So, she rejected me again.

So, we kept rejecting each other constantly, which made life very uncomfortable at times.

But so, we just, she's on the other side of the world, I'm living my life, she's living her life.

And then, she would send me these cryptic messages, you know the song by Guillotee?

Just somebody that I used to know, she would send me like a snippet of that song, you're just somebody that I used to know.

I'm thinking about you, but you're a bitch kind of thing.

And so, when I asked for forgiveness and asked for reconnection, that's when I was rejected again.

And I asked one of my best friends, I was like, why is she doing that?

She's like, well, she's rejected you once, what's going to stop her from doing it again?

It's like, yeah, what's like looking in the mirror, I've done the same thing.

A lot of adoptees fear reaching out and connecting with their biological parents or their biological family, for a variety of different reasons, whether it's a fear of being rejected again, or a fear of hurting the current family that they're in.

There's a lot of stories that go on that prevent these connections from occurring.

After writing my biography, I actually had three guys come forward claiming to be my father.

Even though, you know, with the circumstances.

Even though she declares she was date raped.

And that was in the book.

And mum was very forthcoming with that information.

Three different men have claimed to be my father.

I've done three DNA tests, which upset my mother immensely because for her, that was saying you don't believe me.

And I do believe her.

And fortunately, none of them were my father.

And I say fortunately, because that would open up another can of worms that I don't feel ready or I don't even feel the need to deal with.

So I can see why there's this trepidation around adoptees wanting to reconnect and rekindle relationships, because these people have gone on to establish new families and new lives.

And it's a struggle to open yourself up and immerse yourself into an environment where you could potentially be rejected and brokenhearted again.

So I have a lot of compassion for adoptees and a lot of obviously empathy for them because we have this story that we don't belong, that we've been rejected, that we're not accepted, and all these stories drive us.

And a lot of successful people have been through a lot of traumatic experiences, but then also some of the biggest misfits and delinquents and, I don't know, failures of this world have also been through the same challenges.

So it all comes down to the story you wrap around it and how you choose to utilize it or channel it to drive you to do something great.

Anyway, many years later, I think it was only five years ago now, she, I know six years ago, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and rang me and said, they've given me three weeks to live.

Can you come say goodbye?

I did. Wow. Hello to America.

How was that? That was hard.

But I got to say goodbye.

That was before COVID.

Thank God for that.

What did you say anything else to her?

Was there something you wanted to say that you didn't say?

Yes. There was a lot that went unsaid that never got said, but I don't know if you've had a bedside vigil with anyone that's dying, but they have those last moments of life and she had one of those.

And I was there with Mel, my sister, and it was just the three of us.

And we got to say, I love you.

I forgive you. I'm sorry.

And then she fell asleep.

Never wake up again.

Sorry, Josh. So whenever I think of the loss or I think of, I never got to connect with my mother because of my judgment.

I go, I'm glad I got to say goodbye.

Because there's so many people that don't get that opportunity.

So that's one of those reconciling moments where I go, I'm grateful I had that conversation.

I'm grateful I just dropped everything and jumped on a plane and flew to America.

Yeah. I mean, then obviously I get the sense that meant a lot to her to go to the effort to ask you to come based on what you've said.

It sounds like that's probably a big thing for her to do, to ask you to come.

It was and her best friends were at the hospital and they reaffirmed that message and just said it was just so good of me to come because they were aware of the relationship that we had and how fragile it was.

And so yeah, to be able to have those moments and just go, God, I'm so glad I got to at least get to that moment where we forgive each other.

Because I think about someone like Timmy Varis from In Access who had an argument with Hutch before Hutch died and never really got to settle that.

So living with that guilt and that shame is a heavy burden to carry.

So I don't live with that.

I live with joy and gratitude.

There's something, the way you told that story of your, it really got me as you acknowledged, I was there crying, you and your mother, the friction that had sort of been there for so long.

I don't know if this is accurate, but it felt like there was, at least at the end there was this moment of like acknowledgement that we didn't fix everything, but at least we're okay with each other.

Yeah. 100%. Yeah. That was the moment where we just like, it's too late.

Let's not try and dredge up old wounds and try and fix anything.

Let's just, we both acknowledged where we went wrong.

Didn't even think about where we could have done it just, we both fucked it up.

And did our best with all the pain we had.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's what was driving the behavior was pain.

There was very little love associated with the dynamics.

So the question that I often ask myself now is when I'm in that, that tension is what would love do.

And that's when you start making decisions from the right place.

That's great. Great question.

So first thing you think of when you think of love.

Oh, Kirk, of course, I'd be probably fired if I didn't say that.

No, I have to say my husband.

No, yes. My husband, Kirk is someone, my dad, you know, my dad's been through some pretty tough times, you know, losing his first wife, losing his second wife.

Now he's battling dementia.

So yeah, I think of my dad, I think of the men in my life.

Yeah. And then myself.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel that too, which is a beautiful place to find myself.

It's taken 52 years to get there.

I feel so privileged to be sitting with you here at that point in your life with the work you've done.

And he tells me about a white academy before.

Oh yeah. You've been through so much.

Yes. The lessons you've shared with us today are quite profound, but you put it into a program to help others, which is so great.

Yes. Yeah. And thank you for the work that you do with the resilience project.

It's, I mean, it's inspiring and it motivates us all to want to do more and help others.

And Awake Academy is all about helping people help themselves.

And it was, it, it evolved out of my own awakenings, but also my deep heartaches and, and setbacks and obstacles.

And I want to shortcut the struggle.

So I was writing a book and I just didn't want to write a book.

So I built an online course because I wanted to expand on my reach because as a motivational speaker, I stand on stage and I vomit on my audience.

I drop the mic and walk out like, all right, over to you guys, sort your shit out.

I'm just gonna offer a surf.

You go back to the office.

And I just didn't think that was a realistic way to go about helping people.

So I thought if I can digitize myself, I expand my reach and that way they can keep coming back to the lessons and come back to the learnings when it suits them.

And then COVID hip and online learning became a thing, but free online learning became a much bigger thing.

And I thought, how can I help people do the work?

And so we hosted it on, on zoom just to get people actively involved in the community.

And, and that was reaffirming and reassuring that the work that we've created and the exercises that we share are actually really life changing.

So over the years, we've been delivering that to some of the biggest organizations like Kohl's and KPMG and the iconic and office works.

And we distilled the course into a day.

And then that's what's now in the book.

So the book is called Awake Academy, know yourself, grow yourself to live a happier, more purposeful life.

And it's all the life lessons that I've learned in and out of the water to become more centered, connected and confident.

It's the positive psychology that supports the exercises and the diary entries and the stories that led to the creation of them.

So how I've utilized them to help me navigate my way through different periods of my life, whether I'm on the top of the world, or whether I'm in the bottom and depth of despair and depression, all of these exercises have culminated in me being a happier, healthier, more purposeful human being.

Sounds incredible. Yeah.

It's a, it's a piece of work that I'm very proud of that I'm excited to share with the world.

And I can't wait for it to land in people's hands and hear how it's helping them just awaken to be their best selves.

Because as we all know, the way out is always within.

I was trying to think, I was trying to think of the word to summarize.

This is one of the more wholehearted conversations I've had in the podcast, but just one more wholehearted conversations I've ever had.

Thank you so much for just the way you've been today.

It's just, yeah, thanks guys.

Been fun. Thank God for the tissues.

I thought about that for the next few days.

Her and her mum, that said a farewell they had.

And the unspoken story behind that, but then also what it probably meant, the intention behind it from her mum.

Yeah. One of the more moving moments I feel like we've had on this podcast, really, really incredible.

And so generous of her to actually share that as well.

Yes. Did we talk about in the episode how Maisie were that her name was Beechly?

Nominated determinism.

Yeah. Is it? Yeah. What is nominative determinism?

It's when your name determines your career path.

Like a doctor we went to, Dr.

Blood. Oh, yes. My dad used to get, get a, had a masseuse and his name was Ron Armstrong.

Perfect. Yeah. But then years later I said to dad, isn't it so funny that his name's Armstrong?

It's like, Oh, never noticed.

It's like, what are you talking about?

That's all I've been thinking about.

Day in, day out. Armstrong, masseuse.

But the one thing I did want to talk about off the back of that chat, which I think is for anyone who finds himself potentially a little bit lost with career or film work they've achieved a lot, and then not knowing what's next and how to progress.

And a lot of high achievers might feel this like they've achieved so much and now a little unsure what's coming next.

I think it's particularly pertinent with people retiring out of elite sport.

But Ryan, a book that you talk about a lot, that you absolutely love and you're gifted to quite a few people from strength to strength.

Yeah. From strength to strength book by Arthur C Brooks.

Yeah. It talks about essentially finding happiness in the second half of your life.

Yeah. There's a great quote from it.

And I just, it's something that she's done because the book is all around in the second half of your life, providing help and support and wisdom and service to other people.

That's how you can derive joy from the second half of your life.

Whether you're transitioning out of a career or you're finding yourself a bit lost in your current one, or not just career, but just life in general.

The quote that I love so much from the book was, devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom, yet all sharing the things you believe are most important.

Excellence is always its own reward.

And this is how you can be most excellent as you age.

Yeah. It's kind of confronting the book, to be honest, at first when you first rate it, because it's really kind of aimed at what he calls like strivers, which are people who like are so kind of focused on work and success and career.

And it's, he talks about how like the, the older you get, you naturally essentially, this is not the way he puts it, but you essentially get worse.

You know, skill wise, you decline and if you continue to hold on to career and success and winning essentially as your identity, then you will naturally become unhappy because you'll become less good at the thing that is your identity.

So you'll feel like you're less worthy, less valuable as a person.

So he encourages you to get what he calls, get on your second curve, which is a curve that never declines, which is one of like, yes, service and giving to others.

And yeah, it's hard to do, particularly if you're a striver, but if this, any of this is resonating with you, then it's a great book.

I think of, I kind of think of my father -in -law who I've mentioned a few times on the podcast, Professor Rob Moody, who is one of the ultimate high achievers and has done so much incredible stuff with his life from in the public health space, not just here in Australia, but, but around the world.

And he's 70. I think he's 70, about 70 ish and happy 70 ish birthday.

Oh no, he's definitely 70.

He's definitely 70.

Because you've been to a 70th.

I went to a 70th and I made t -shirts for us.

Definitely 70 for the t -shirt.

Way to rub it in. You're definitely 70.

I'm not a present. And, I mean, he's still working in public health as a professor at Melbourne University and then abroad in Malawi as well.

But I actually think he spends more of his life mentoring young medical students or young professionals, really, that he sees great potential in or he really likes.

He spends so much time mentoring.

I think he spends a lot more time mentoring than he does doing his actual job.

But he won an award the other day.

Like it was like the best mentor in Australia or something, because he's just always bloody doing it.

But he, I, when he, when I asked him about his day, I want to ask him what he's been up to, the joy he gets from telling me about the people he's mentored and the success they're having.

And this is from someone who has, who I think would be happy to him, he's been a striver and someone who's always performed at a very high level.

I think this is the thing that really lights him up now, is helping other people.

It's going to be so hard to make that switch.

Yeah, I totally agree.

But then as soon as you do, I think you would straight away feel how great it is.

Well, yeah, I think everyone knows how what it feels like when you do something good for someone else, like, oh, that felt really good.

I'm really happy I did that thing.

I think that's essentially just thinking about others instead of yourself, your own success.

It's like, ultimately meaningless if it's not for anyone else.

Yeah. Well, interestingly on that online and her giving back, I know she sort of portrayed herself in this episode as someone who's very sort of isolated and within the surfing world.

But from my understanding of it, and people have talked to her, know a lot more than me.

There's no one in the world of women surfing who's done more than Lane Beachly for other female surfers around the world for the women's tour.

In her work with Steph Gilmore and other people, but she apparently really led the push for equal pay, which has now led to I was speaking to a mate of mine, Scott, who's a big surfing fan who says like, this is the perfect example.

They got equal pay in I think 2019.

And now if you look at ridiculously late, but now if you look at the young surfers coming through, the most exciting surfers on the tour are all women for anyone that really knows their surfing.

And it just shows you when you do bring equal pay in the talent follows.

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that Lane did also with hers, I mean, you could say a world in which she becomes a surf coach and that's it.

And she's helping people become better surfers.

But I think surfing is what put her in a little bit of a hole at a certain point of her life as well.

It didn't bring her all the joy that she sort of wanted.

So instead, she's taking a life lesson she got from that and then she's teaching those people her wisdom, not on surfing just on life to people who will benefit greatly from it.

I'm sure she has very good mental health.

Mental mental mental health.

Very possible. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You guys picked up on the word play.

Yeah, it's good. Cool.

Really good. Yeah. So does your father -in -law, good mental health.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that was the name of the award.

Yeah. Mental health awards.

Yeah. Yeah. If someone said that before.

I doubt they have, but it is that good.

Yeah. Wow. I forgot the response it deserved, but should we go your voicemail?

Anyway, the book is from strength to strength by Arthur C Brooks.

Yep. Oprah Winfrey approved or his book after that was written with Oprah.

So really? Yeah. What was it called?

Uh, I don't know. Forget what it was called.

It's probably not as good as from strength to strength, but it's with Oprah.

So yeah. And of course, um, lane beach, Lee's book as well, we need to talk about as well.

So awake Academy. Yeah.

Get into it. Yeah. We'll put a link in the show notes to all the books we've talked about.

Yep. Even the one that we don't know the name of build the life you want.

I just remembered. Oh, good.

Remember the life you want written by Oprah Winfrey and Arthur C Brooks.

I thought that was Georgia.

No, no, no, no, no, we've, we've, we've edited the bit out where George yells out the answer and I've remembered it.

I remembered it. Yeah.

I remember that. Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks for joining us.

And thanks to lane beach.

Yeah. Thanks so much.

It wasn't here to lie.

Unreal, unreal. Hugh.

It's Ryan. Um, mate, just wanted to circle back on that, um, mentor health gag from earlier.

Yeah. I'm just not convinced you and Josh fully fully got your heads around it.

So I thought I'd we talk about it every episode.

So what I did just before was I switched out the word mental for mentor, which, you know, obviously sounds really similar.

I mean, even if you say it out loud, mental, mentor, mental, mentor, they're almost interchangeable, like audibly.

And when you, when you say mental health instead of mental health, it's, it's, it's, they're so similar.

Right. Now, obviously that's not funny like that, that alone, just saying mental health.

But if you consider that the timing of when I said it, while we were talking about the importance of mentoring in the second half of your life and how, and how, how healthier it makes you, um, and you agree with the belief that comedy is all about timing, then technically it was actually very funny.

Technically, I mean, you guys should have been pissing yourselves, um, but you weren't, which is, which is just it kind of threw me.

So anyway, I just thought I'd call for, for clarification.

I mean, I don't care.

I don't care at all.

I just thought I'd just, just call just, just saw her on the same, same page.

Yeah. Okay. It's Ryan Shelton from, from the podcast.

The imperfect is hosted and produced by Hugh van Carlinburg, Ryan Shelton, and Josh Van Carlinburg.

Our executive producer is Bridget North East, assistant producer, Bella North East.

This episode is edited by George Martin with music from No Modern.

The imperfect is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment.

The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

You said the tone

[Leyne Beachley: Surfing, Surrender, and the Search for Worth]-[Layne Beachley - Surf’s Up… And Down]

📋 Summary

The Burden of Performance and the Myth of Worth

The Shadow of Adoption and "The Story"

Surfing as a Metaphor for Surrender

The Body as a Battlefield

Reconnecting with the Past and Finding Purpose

From Striving to Serving

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript