Turia Pitt BAD DAYS DON'T LAST

THE AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR, ATHLETE, MINDSET COACH AND NOW MUM-OF-TWO HAS OVERCOME MORE OBSTACLES THAN MOST – HERE, SHE SHARES HER KEY TO HAPPINESS …

- Melissa Field, Kylie Walters

By anyone’s standards, Turia Pitt has had an exceptional year. She entered 2020 fearing her home on New South Wales’ South Coast would be engulfed by the catastrophic bushfires. Pitt, 33, was heavily pregnant with her second child at the time, and she was also due to deliver the manuscript for her fifth book. “It was pretty crazy,” she understates during a phone interview with WHO. “I look back now and that time feels like a dream.”

Thankfully, the home Pitt shares with her fiancé, Michael Hoskin, and sons Hakavai, who’ll turn 3 on December 7, and Rahiti, seven months, survived the flames – and her book Happy and other ridiculous aspirations is out now, too.

“I’m really proud of what I’ve achieved this year,” she says. Here, she talks us through her non-negotiables when it comes to happiness – even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles – and dishes on life as a new mum with two children under three. “In a nutshell? It’s chaos,” she laughs.

Are you actually Superwoman? How did you meet your book deadline and juggle a new baby and a toddler?

With help, to be fair. Michael is a super hands-on dad and we have family nearby, too. But it was pretty crazy. I submitted the book’s manuscript, then my home town almost burned down. So then I rewrote the book to reflect that experience with the bushfires – and then a global pandemic broke out. So I sat down and wrote about that, too. I pretty much crystal-balled to release a book on how to get happy just after a major natural disaster and a pandemic.

Has your new baby boy settled in?