Why Megan Gale decided to slow down
After working so hard she made herself sick, model Megan Gale has stepped off the treadmill to focus on spending more time with her family.
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To outsiders, it looked like a charmed life. Megan Gale had never had more going for her: a plum gig judging on Australia’s Next Top Model (ANTM) that proved she could do more than just model, a happy home life with an equally genetically blessed partner, and a sweet toddler.
But in 2016, after almost 20 years at the top, Gale was about to learn “the biggest lesson” of her life.
“I pushed myself so hard, I got so sick and run down for months. I was sick the entire time [filming ANTM that year], and I just didn’t want to stop or let anyone down,” she tells Stellar. “It was very reflective of my whole career of not saying no, that ‘show must go on’ mentality.”
Gale lost her voice for an entire episode, contracted hand, foot and mouth disease — and had a miscarriage when she was nine weeks pregnant, the day before she was due to fly to Italy for an episode.
She didn’t tell anyone at work, and so found herself in a bind. “It’s a very personal, raw thing to tell people,” she explains.
“And it was my episode, it was hinging on me, no-one else could go in the eleventh hour. I couldn’t explain why [I didn’t want to go], so my hands were tied. So that morning I went and had the procedure and then in the afternoon I flew to Sydney, did some filming and then flew to Italy. All with a smile on my face,” she says, with a bleak laugh.
“It really forced me to stop and assess what I was doing, trying to juggle it all. I just thought, ‘I’m not going to do that to myself again. I’ve got to really prioritise myself and my health a lot more.’ And that’s when I began to be conscious of not only connecting with my child more, but connecting back in with myself — and how important that is.”
In a culture where busyness is worn as a badge of honour, success is about slaying goals and sacrifice is just part of the deal, Gale decided to do something almost revolutionary: slow down.
And now she’s hoping to convince others to press pause, too.
Gale sits cross-legged on the bed in a quietly luxurious hotel room in Sydney, watching the day darken across the skyline, as she soaks up a child-free night away from her young family in Melbourne.
After speaking to Stellar, she’s heading off to have dinner with one of her very best girlfriends; tomorrow she’ll catch up with another friend before heading home.
Waiting for the 43-year-old will be her partner, the recently retired AFL player Shaun Hampson, and her two children: River, five, and Rosie, 19 months.
The couple — whose 12-year age gap thrilled the gossip circuit when they first got together eight years ago — got engaged in 2017.
They “haven’t planned a thing” for their wedding. “I think I prefer to wait until Rosie’s quite a bit older so she can be a part of it and remember it. There’s no rush. We’re locked down, we’re in for the long haul. We’ve produced humans,” she says with a laugh.
“To me, that’s the biggest commitment. I don’t want to sound like I’m not a romantic because I absolutely am, but to me it’s like, ‘That’s another thing I’ve got to organise.’ Isn’t that terrible!
“We just want to be united,” she continues, after a pause. “I just want the same last name as my partner and my kids. Even the dogs have Hampson on their vet cards. I’m the odd one out.
“But I can’t see us having this big day of festivities and palaver... I don’t know what or where or when, but whatever the case it’ll be the act of us uniting as a family and that’s all it needs to be. No bells and whistles.”
Sport and modelling are both notoriously short-lived career paths, and over the past year or so, the pair have found themselves farewelling their former lives.
After two years of dealing with a chronic back injury, Hampson announced his retirement from AFL last year. Gale has put her “old job” on the backburner, calling time on hectic schedules.
She’s swapped heels for work-from-home flats, and launched an entrepreneurial venture that she admits was borne directly from her burn out: an ethical skincare line, Mindful Life, that’s designed to encourage a moment of pause and presence.
The idea for the debut range, for children, came when River was just a baby — and Gale struggled to find a full lineof truly natural products.
“This is the first business I have done completely by myself. I’ve dabbled as a businesswoman before with other companies, but this is from the ground up. There’s no investor, there’s no backer, there’s no business partner — you’re looking at the team,” she says, motioning to herself.
“I’ve outsourced to people that have the right sort of skill set that I don’t possess to help me, but this was too important to me to make a range just for the sake of it to make a quick buck. It had to have a purpose.”
It all coalesced in the aftermath of her period of poor health, when Gale was determined to start doing things differently.
For years her mother had been telling her to slow down. “From as young as I can remember, my mum would always talk to me about mindfulness and how important it was to have a sense of self-awareness and check in with yourself constantly, to pause and reflect,” she says.
“She was particularly insistent on it when my career took off and I was just so busy. I was like a mouse on a wheel. I think when my career took off, it started a tendency to race. I had to always be somewhere, on a plane, on a shoot.
“And even the nature of my old job, it’s: ‘Quick! We’ve got to get the shot done, the light’s going. We’ve got to get changed, you’ve got to be on the catwalk. Quick! You’ve got to be on a plane and get there and hurry, hurry, hurry.’
“It’s very unforgiving in terms of time and what’s expected of you. I always prided myself with that job on being very professional and not letting people down. I’d just push and push and push, and I wouldn’t stop, and I wouldn’t take holidays.”
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It took her health crisis to really hear what her mother had been trying to tell her. “I knew I had to learn to take my mother’s advice of slow down, be present, check in.”
That, coupled with constant “they grow so fast” calls from older parents telling her to cherish her small child, helped Gale find her “why”.
“It was like this light-bulb moment. We’ve all been guilty of it at that time of day, between 4pm and 7pm: ‘Let’s just get them fed and bathed and in bed.’ And we rip through it. But I started to think, ‘No, it’s time to connect. Get out of your world and step into theirs. Because it’s beautiful.’”
Gale hastens to clarify that it’s not all Zen calm and chanting at her place. “There are toys everywhere, there’s food everywhere, there are wet floors and towels, but it’s awesome. It just dawned on me that these products could be tools for parents to connect with their kids. Massage them, bathe them, look after them — because you are going to blink and these beautiful little kids are going to be teenagers.
“And as much as you may not want to think that it’s going to happen, or admit it, you’re not going to be cool enough to hang out with. They’ll love you, but they won’t need you anymore. You won’t be the centre of their universe, and you don’t want to end up being those parents that go, ‘Oh, why didn’t I stop and enjoy it a bit more?’”
When she gave birth for a second time, in 2017, Gale found her new perspective helped her endure the newborn haze.
She left the laundry in the basket, the house messy. “I remember sitting in bed with her thinking, ‘I’m just going to enjoy this.’ Sniffing her head, stroking her skin. I know it sounds a bit corny, but I appreciated it.
“I’d had that learning the previous year of ‘don’t leave it too late until you completely burn yourself out’, so I kept checking in with myself, which is something I didn’t do the first time. I found I had a better awareness of how I was feeling. I made sure I called on people more for help, which I didn’t do the first time.”
There are times when Gale can’t stop her mind racing. Her daughter is starting to have tantrums, and her son is pushing boundaries. She feels guilty when she says no to her kids when they ask her to play because she’s busy working.
So she understands why busy people often put mindfulness in the too-hard basket — but she credits “checking in” with herself, dog walks and yoga classes with keeping her sane.
“A lot of people think it’s something a bit New Age, a bit hippie, just meditation and yoga. But mindfulness and being present can be going for a run, or playing tennis, or swimming in the ocean. It’s not necessarily about Tibetan singing bowls and crystals. Although I do own crystals,” she laughs.
“I want people to understand it’s all about being present. We’re often thinking about the future and the past, and I’m guilty of it too, really guilty, but we’re often not present enough. That’s simply all mindfulness is about: being present and self-aware.
“The more of those moments you have in your everyday, the better. And with your kids, I think it’s just so important to apply it to family life.”
It’s tricky enough to maintain a higher consciousness with two small children (“I’d be lying if I said every night it’s possible to slow down and connect”), but that isn’t stopping Gale from considering having a third.
Having babies is “addictive”, she admits. “To get your head around the idea that you’re not going to experience that again is hard. I’m 44 this year and I don’t want to rush having another baby just because time’s marching on.
“Ideally I’d like to have a decent gap between Rosie and the next one and that might mean giving birth at 46, 47. Not that that’s impossible, but I have to be realistic. I’m open to it, but I’m realistic about it. I do love making babies.”
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