There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Carrie Bickmore made her now-famous acceptance speech at the 2015 Logies.
The Project host used her win to raise awareness of brain cancer, the cruel disease that took her first husband Greg Lange.
Six years after his death, Bickmore says the sense of loss hasn’t gone anywhere.
“I often read headlines about my new life and how I have moved forward and it amuses me, because anyone who has suffered grief will tell you it is not like that,” she told The Weekly Review.
“Grief is a really tricky thing; it is a very fluid thing and I don’t think there is ever any end point to it. But I’m OK with that. I can’t imagine it any other way.”
Here’s a throwback to Carrie Bickmore’s Logies speech that prompted a wave of change. Post continues after video…
Bickmore says she has now found a way to accept the past as part of her present.
“My past will always be with me, it shaped who I am today and I wouldn’t want a world where Greg wasn’t part of it. I look at my son and I see Greg,” she said.
“He is every much like him in different ways. We talk about him all the time.”
Bickmore met Lange when she was 19 years old studying journalism at Perth’s Curtin University. It was when they were in their twenties that he was diagnosed with brain cancer. (Post continues after gallery.)
Carrie Bickmore
The pair were married in 2005, before having son Oliver in 2007. In February last year, Bickmore gave birth to daughter Evie with partner and former The Project producer Chris Walker.
Top Comments
I love that she's opened this up. So many of us grin and engage with those around us, do the competent thing, and focus on others... yet underneath, our spirits are being crushed with deep suffering that we cannot share with most people, as most people Simply Don't Get It, particularly when it's complex grief and trauma. It's incredibly isolating, but it's worse daring to disclose to someone, only to have them dismiss it or make trite platitudes.
Thankyou for just showing that even if we are shining on the outside, we might be breaking on the inside. And if you're strong and resilient and not going through hard stuff, maybe reach out in a meaningful way to neighbours, colleagues, acquaintances, friends and family to see how they're really doing.