TVNZ’s Joy Reid says biggest achievement is staying awake all day
At her lowest point, journalist Joy Reid wasn’t sure she would ever be a functioning mother to her three children again.
“It’s taken me a lot of time to process the grief of losing so much,” she said. “I think I knew late last year that it was going to be a long journey, but when I was in my darkest moments I couldn’t even imagine how I would cope with the afternoon, let alone any type of future.”
But she’s made a lot of progress – if you consider “progress” a grown woman being able to stay awake for a whole day.
This, Reid said, is her greatest health achievement since February 2023, when she became ill with what turned out to be long Covid.
Back then, she was sleeping up to 18 hours a day. With her cognitive function severely impaired, she took leave from her job as a reporter on 1 News.
At the time, she said, she “never” imagined she wouldn’t be going back.
But a few weeks ago, she made the decision to resign.
Up until early 2023, Reid was working at TVNZ and running the charity she co-founded, One Mother to Another, while also raising three children with her husband Geoffrey – Jono, now 10,
Stella, 8 and Annabelle, 3. “The old Joy could do it all,” Reid said from her Christchurch home, Peppa Pig keeping Annabelle occupied in the background.
“She could juggle motherhood, career, charity CEO. But this current version is not strong enough – yet. And I say yet because you never know.”
The “life-changing” development of staying awake all day is relatively new, having only come about in the last six weeks as Reid took on a new “alternative medicine treatment”. Up until then, she was still taking a three-hour nap every day.
Reid was under no pressure to resign. TVNZ have been “extraordinarily patient”, she said, and the decision to make her departure official was one she “agonised for months over”.
She was keen to stress that her resignation had nothing to do with the TVNZ restructure that has this week seen the cancellation of TVNZ’s Fair Go, Sunday, Midday and Tonight broadcasts.
“My job was never affected by the redundancies at all,” she said. The fact she posted her resignation news to social media the same day decisions were handed down on Newshub’s operations and Sunday was “very unfortunate timing ... I had not thought through the timing at all”.
In fact it’s part and parcel of the long Covid symptoms that did convince Reid to resign. She’s not able to multi-task, she said, and her memory is still poor – neither is good news for a journalist.
But her health is on the up, aside from the no napping.
“I’m no longer using a wheelchair. I can now walk small distances and I can be on the sideline of my son’s sports games, which is major improvement for me.”
And she’s eager to take what energy she has and channel it into her family.
“I can now see myself being a functioning mother,” she said. “Now I need to protect every ounce of energy I have to be able to do that, and I know the demands of going back to work would cost me my family time given my current health ... Considering where I was late last year I’m just delighted to be able to have enough function at the moment to be a mum.”
Reid developed long Covid after contracting the virus just once, though she says research shows it can develop as late as the fourth infection.
“The empathy and understanding for long Covid has improved dramatically over the last year as the public has got a greater understanding of what long Covid is and what it looks like,” she said. “It’s a growing and legitimate problem for thousands in New Zealand.”
Early on Reid received some unpleasant messages from what she refers to as “interest groups” who doubted the existence of Covid-19, but says she was too sick to particularly notice, let alone engage with them.
“I was not keeping up with the outside news, which is very unusual for me. I was only having small conversations with family.
“I couldn’t have visitors, I barely could engage with my phone. I guess I was in a bubble.”
Right now her main focus is on being present for her children. She’s putting a little bit of time into One Mother to Another, which provides care packages to whānau who have sick children in hospital, but in “bits and bobs”, she said; about five hours a week in 20 minute increments.
When she is up to it, however, she’d like to advocate for others suffering long Covid.
“Right now I don’t have any spare brain space but I know that the old Joy is super passionate about being a voice for those that can’t stand up for themselves, and I know what it’s like being so exhausted you cannot advocate for yourself, so I would like to think that when my full function returns that I would absolutely advocate for others ... I’ve spent 20 years doing that in journalism, and having walked this journey I would like to think that it’s not been for nothing.” Maybe one day, she’ll even return to reporting.
“Journalism and storytelling is in my blood,” she said. “I’m tagging out now for a season (but) in my heart I’m not signing off forever. I just don’t have another choice at the moment given my health condition. “I hope that I’ll be welcomed back if my body decides that is an option in the future, but is that two, five, 10 years? Who knows.”