Lisa Wilkinson’s shock secret
As she celebrates 10 years as co-host of Today, the mum-of-three bares her soul
Watching her each morning on Today, Lisa Wilkinson is the flawless epitome of a woman with huge confidence, a ready smile, fierce intelligence and a willingness to battle for what’s right.
But when she was growing up, it was a very different Lisa who faced the start of each day. As a teenager she’d wake up fearful and terrified, looking for ways to blend into the background rather than stand out.
The 57-year-old TV host was the victim of relentless bullying – both physical and verbal – that she still can’t believe she survived.
It would get to the point, she says, where every day she was in fear of a gang of girls at her school.
“I felt so powerless,” Lisa tells Woman’s Day of her experience, which was at its height in her mid-teens. “I still don’t know how I survived it because every day I went to school I didn’t know if I was going to get beaten up.
“I became really good at hiding it. I hid it from my parents. I even hid it from my girlfriends because I didn’t want them to be subjected to the bullying as well.
“I would isolate myself so they didn’t become part of it because I felt so completely humiliated.”
As a result of the bullying, Lisa gave up the things she loved most. Despite a talent for ballet she hung up her ballet shoes. And her grades and school work suffered drastically.
“When you get bullied, you want to disappear,” she explains. “You don’t want to shine at anything. So something I was really good at and that I loved, I gave up because the bullies thought it was uncool. “I look at photos of myself back then and I think, I wish I could reach into that photo and hug that girl and say, ‘Just hold on, it’s going to be OK. And you’re going to have an amazing life.’” Finishing Year 12 with significantly lower results than she knows she otherwise could have achieved, Lisa made a vow. “The day I walked out of the gates of Campbelltown High School, the scene of so much upset for me, I made a promise to myself that never again was I going to let someone else decide who I was and what my worth was in this world,” she recalls. “I just had to dig deep and back myself. I didn’t have a lot of confidence when I started out, but I thought I had a bit of talent. So I decided to put my head down and work hard. And I discovered that confidence comes when you feel like you’re starting to achieve things that make you personally happy.”
To that end, the Today host – who celebrates 10 years in the chair this week – says that attitude has seen her embrace each new challenge to come her way.
And it’s also taught her to be kind to herself – especially when it comes to the expectations she sets for herself as a mother.
Like every working mum, she’s felt guilty for missing occasions important to her three kids – Jake, 23, Louis, 21, and Billi, 19, who she shares with ex-wallaby and fellow journalist Peter Fitzsimons – when they were growing up.
“I think it would be confronting for any parent to have your kids give you an absolute scorecard,” she admits.
“We women feel very vulnerable about the job we do as mothers. You know you’re not getting it right all of the time, but you hope there’s enough times that you do.”
‘I wish I could reach into the photo and hug that girl’
Certainly she and Peter, 55, appear to have hit that goal. Having survived their teenage years – which Lisa says was her toughest time as a parent – all three kids are healthy, happy and treading their individual paths.
“The rebellion that comes in those early teenage years, nothing prepares you for that,” she laughs.
“One day you give them a kiss at the school gate and the next they don’t want to know about you!
“As teenagers they fib about where they’re going and you find out four weeks later exactly what went on at that sleepover. I’m sure I don’t want to know some of the stuff they got up to in those years – they pushed the boundaries.
“But they’ve turned into fabulous young adults and I couldn’t be more proud of them. And it makes the bond all that much closer now they’ve gone back to loving you unconditionally again!”
Since she faced bullying in her own teenage years, Lisa says she was hyper-vigilant with her own kids as they hit that same vulnerable age.
To her relief, her children were spared any similar experiences. But she’s mindful that others aren’t so lucky.
Working with groups who support vulnerable children – either via family break-ups or through bullying – is a passion she will always make time for.
“When you experience injustice like that, if you see someone else go through it there’s this lioness in me who rises up,” she says.