Lisa Curry: ‘The Jaimi pain never went away’

Former Olympian Lisa Curry has opened up for the first time about the loss of her daughter Jaimi and her mother Pat within 18 months of each other.

As a three-time Olympian, multi-sport champion, TV personality, entrepreneur and adored mum, Lisa Curry had all the accolades a person could want. But when her daughter Jaimi and her mother Pat died within 18 months of each other, the normally composed Curry was left reeling. And yet, in grief, she found that the best way for her to place the tragedies of her life in context with her achievements was to write a memoir. In this Stellar exclusive, Curry sits down with her co-author Ellen Whinnett to talk about sharing her most personal stories for the first time.

In an anonymous recording studio in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, Lisa Curry wipes the tears falling from her big blue eyes and tries to focus on the words in front of her.

The triple Olympian and wellness entrepreneur is reading her memoir aloud for an audio book and is struggling to make it through the final, painful chapters. Whole paragraphs are beyond her. She breaks it down into single sentences.

“I hope people aren’t driving when they listen to this,’’ Curry says, reaching for more tissues. “People will hear everything in this book. It is raw and it is real.’’

A year ago, when the death of Curry’s daughter Jaimi Kenny was so raw that she couldn’t say her name without breaking down, the 59-year-old businesswoman and motivational speaker started writing her autobiography.

The recent death of her beloved mother Pat Curry, at the age of 86, has reopened the emotional wounds and let the hurt and pain and grief come flooding back in.

“My bookends have gone,’’ Curry says of the loss of two of her most precious people. “Every time I’m in the car, their photos come up on the screen – my favourites who I would ring all the time. I get in the car and think, I’ll ring Mum. Oh, hang on, Mum isn’t there anymore.

“It was a habit, a daily routine when I got in the car to drive to the coast – that’s when I’d ring Mum. And before that it used to be when I would ring Jaimi.’’

Lisa Curry: “People will hear everything in this book.” Picture: Steven Chee.

For more than four decades, Curry has been synonymous with sunshine. A blonde, bronzed Queenslander in green and gold togs, winning a swag of gold medals at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games in 1982 and the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990.

Made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1982 and awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1994 in recognition of her swimming achievements, then appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2008 for her services to the community.

Married to Ironman Grant Kenny. Competed in her third Olympic Games in 1992 at the age of 30, with two young children. Golden girl. Supermum.

After starting her Olympic career at the age of 18 in Moscow in 1980, she became one of Australia’s best-known swimmers and public identities, including as the face of Uncle Tobys muesli bars.

Her remarkable life, her risks, her many achievements and her occasional failures often made their way to the front pages of magazines.

When Curry retired from the pool in 1992 following the Barcelona Olympics, she found success in other fields: designing her Hot Curry swimwear range; competing with her outrigger canoe team to win four world championships and launching her wellness business Happy Healthy You.

Offering lifestyle coaching and advice on matters such as health and nutrition, the company now has more than 400,000 subscribers.

Curry was also chair of the National Australia Day Council, has sat on corporate boards and raised significant money for charities, including through appearances on reality shows such as The All New Monty: Ladies’ Night and I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

“I feel like I’ve been the master of reinvention,’’ she muses in the book. “People change, goals change, expectations change. But it always comes back to finding what’s exciting, challenging and satisfying in your life.’’

But a dark cloud descended on Curry on September 14, 2020, when her daughter Jaimi died after battling mental illness, self-harm, eating disorders and alcohol-related illness.

Jaimi was just 33, but had spent her final years in and out of hospital, supported by her parents and her siblings, Morgan Gruell, 31, and Jett Kenny, 27.

Curry tells Stellar the process of having to relive painful memories has been difficult, and she worries people will think she is oversharing.

“I had to keep reminding myself that Jaimi said to me on many occasions that she wanted to write a book to help people get through what she was going through,’’ she says.

“[But] we were too late. Because we always thought we had more time. Because we always had time. You know, she always came home.’’

Lisa Curry “We were too late.” Picture: Steven Chee.

Until that awful day in 2020 when she didn’t come home. Her mother was left to give voice to her pain and to the pain of all of Jaimi’s family and friends who loved her. And, if not able to find answers, to at least start a debate about mental illness and let people going through similar ordeals know they are not alone.

“I always hoped that through my sport and my motivational speaking and interacting with people, that I could help in some way,’’ Curry says.

“Every time I speak on stage, someone leaves with the tools to improve their life… and particularly now, I feel like I’ve lived and experienced every emotion there is to feel. The incredible highs, the excruciating lows and everything in between.’’

In March, 18 months after Jaimi died, her beloved “Ma” passed away in an aged-care facility on the Sunshine Coast. Pat was 86 and had been living independently at home until a fall saw her fracture a bone in her spine.

The retired nurse had helped Curry with research for the book, sharing memories of 5am starts and travelling the globe to watch as her daughter took on the world’s greatest swimmers. She also spoke about the abuse and violence she suffered at the hands of Curry’s father, Roy Curry, who died in 2015.

“Mum was telling me stories about what had happened to her. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,’’ Curry recalls.

“The way that she told the story about when she got a black eye was so real, and it sounded like she was actually reliving that moment. And it was horrible. For her, at the age of 86, to still be reliving those moments, it’s very sad.’’

Pat later caught Covid and spent time in hospital, unable to see visitors. “I thought we’d lose her then,’’ Curry says. “I didn’t think she’d come out of hospital, but she did.’’

Shortly afterwards, Curry herself contracted the virus and had to spend a week quarantining at her Sunshine Coast property. Covid robbed the pair of six weeks of Pat’s final four months.

By late February, it was obvious her mum was fading, so Curry and her sister Melanie, an artist living in Airlie Beach, called their brother Scott, a concert pianist in Berlin, and told him to make plans to come home as quickly as he could.

He rushed back to Australia, thinking he had three weeks to spend with his mum. It ended up being just 36 hours before Pat passed away peacefully on March 3, with her three children by her side.

Lisa Curry: “I was able to tell my own life in my own words.” Picture: Steven Chee.

Curry is grateful she was there with both her mum and her daughter, holding their hands in their final moments. But losing them both, just 18 months apart, cuts deep.

“Life seems hard again,” she tells Stellar. “My mind is consumed with thoughts and grief and sadness. I felt like I was just starting to see a little bit of sunlight and then we lost Mum. Then it’s having to deal with all that again.’’

She had long wanted to write a book to mark her upcoming 60th birthday on May 15. She toyed with it at 50, but decided she wasn’t ready a decade ago, and “hadn’t done enough.

“I’d never thought too much about turning 60, yet here I am. When I was younger and achieving all my ‘things’, 60 seemed so old and so far away.’’

Despite her sorrow, Curry has written a book that is uplifting, triumphant, inspiring and sometimes downright funny. A holiday romance with a young man later jailed as a suspected terrorist is a good example.

“There’s a little bit of kiss and tell,’’ she confirms. “But the stories are a part of my life. And I was able to tell my own life in my own words.

“Everything in the book is true, it’s in context and I mention things because if they hadn’t happened, my life would have taken a completely different course.

“When I read the story again, it even excites me, with all the different things I have done. I sit there and think, wow, I’ve actually done all right. I’ve done a lot of things.”

Curry has many personal stories that she’s choosing to share for the first time. She writes about her fear of being alone; of the end of her marriage to Grant Kenny; of her efforts to have female swimmers awarded replica medals to compensate for the Olympic medals they were cheated out of due to the East German doping programs in the 1980s; of her second marriage to entertainer Mark Tabone; of the time she briefly considered ending it all in a desperate bid to erase the pain of losing her daughter.

“I would never have done what I thought, I would never have followed through [with] what I was thinking, but they were thoughts, and it surprised me that I would even have thoughts of harming myself,’’ she says.

“I was just in so much pain and it’s hard for that pain to ever go away. It just never went away. So I can kind of understand people in Jaimi’s position, or with their own mental health concerns, when they go through this every single day. It must be a terrible way to live.’’

Curry admits that even her mum never knew some of the stories that she’s decided to tell in her new book.

“There are things that have happened to me that I have never, ever spoken about before,’’ she says. “People might ask, ‘Why do you tell those stories now?’ Well, it’s because it was part of my journey. And it was absolutely a sliding-door moment.

“I came to a fork in the road and I could have gone this way or that. If, in any of those cases, I went the other way, made a different decision, [went] through a different door, who knows where I would be?

“Everything that I have done has landed me where I am, here today.’’

Lisa Curry stars on the cover of this Sunday’s Stellar.

Curry is excited about the next phase of her life, and is regaining both her optimism and her drive.

“I don’t want to retire, just reset and find a new direction,” she says. “My first 30 years were spent growing up and swimming. My next 30 were family and business. My final 30? Adventure, fun, me, family, being a Grannie.”

Her daughter Gruell has two young sons, Flynn and Taj, and a third child due later this month.

“My family is getting smaller from the top, but growing from the bottom,’’ Curry says. “I can’t wait to meet grandchild number three.’’

And that intrepid outlook she’s known for will come out to play as she marks the upcoming milestone.

“I’ve just booked a holiday that has been on my bucket list forever so we’re excited about that,” Curry admits.

“My husband Mark has planned something exciting for my birthday and I’m going to take full advantage of this milestone. Instead of having a 60th birthday, I’m going to have a 60th birthyear – and celebrate all year.”

Lisa: A memoir – 60 Years Of Life, Love & Loss by Lisa Curry with Ellen Whinnett (HarperCollins, $39.99) is out Monday.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available at Lifeline, phone 13 11 14,

or Beyond Blue, phone [phone].

Originally published as Lisa Curry: ‘The Jaimi pain never went away’