We’re shown countless TV adverts, movies and programs with the so-called ‘perfect’ family every day – but Carrie Bickmore has urged her fans to ignore the hype, and celebrate their “imperfect” families.
Opening up on her own parents’ painful divorce when she was just three-years-old in a first-person piece for Stellar magazine, The Project star, 37, gave a moving insight into the difficulty she had at the time – and how she’s come to realise there’s no such thing as a “normal” family.
The TV star, who has two children – Oliver, nine, and Evie, three – said she’s happy now that her parents can be civil together, and says her situation is much better than some people’s whose parents stayed together despite being unhappy.
“A lot of water has to go under a bridge before the pain of a divorce can be washed away, if at all,” she wrote.
While she admitted there were likely times her parents didn’t like each other and would “whinge”, she never once remembers them “b****ing” about each other. She spent her early years with her mum, step-father and two step-sisters in Perth, but remained close to her dad and visited him regularly.
“My childhood wasn’t perfect but I’ve realised the older I get, and now with a family of my own, that no childhood is perfect. A nuclear family doesn’t guarantee happiness,” she added.
“It’s about celebrating the imperfect, the untraditional, the abnormal. Because, let’s be honest, is any family normal? Even the traditional ones?”
Now, she says, she has more family than she could have dreamed of, with step-cousins and more siblings.
Carrie suffered her own heartbreak in December 2010 when her late ex-husband Greg Lange passed away following a battle wth brain cancer. She later met her now-partner Chris while he was working as a producer on Channel Ten’s The Project.
She previously told Woman’s Day they bonded because he had also suffered his own loss, and said: “He lost his brother in a car accident.
“I think that’s why I connected with him – he had an understanding of what I’d experienced through his own experience.”
Since then, Carrie has worked to raise money for brain cancer awareness, and in under three years, her own project has reportedly raised $4.5million, with hopes for a further $5 million this year, the Herald Sun reports.
She famously spoke about her devastation at the Logies three years ago, while wearing a beanie, and it kickstarted her ‘Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer’ project.