Jackie ‘O’ opens up on life in radio and how she discovered she needed to love herself
As she edges closer to 50, radio star and businesswoman Jackie ‘O’ reflects on her journey to realising she needed to learn to love herself, and opens up on the frustrating boys’ club that still exists in radio.
It’s a new year, and Jackie “O” is a new woman.
Soon she’ll have her feet up with daughter Kitty, 14, and bestie Gemma O’Neill in Fiji before she starts back on the air for another year of radio as one part of KIIS FM’s famous breakfast duo – and at the end of the month she turns 50, at a time in her life where she’s never felt stronger.
A planned ‘eat, pray, love’ tour of India to ring in the New Year with O’Neill was postponed because Gemma was sick, but it will happen when it’s meant to, as all good things do.
It’s a lot. All of it. And after the year she had – revealing in tell-all book The Whole Truth she’d battled a debilitating painkiller addiction that saw her check in to rehab in the US – she’s reflective as she talks to Insider about how far she’s come – but admits there’s a long way to go in healing.
“I feel like I am a completely different person in a way,” Jackie “O” Henderson says.
“I know who I am now.
“I don’t think I ever even asked that question of myself before. And I think that I was almost because I was numbing so much of myself.
“I was just coasting in life – and there was never any questions of who am I, or what do I stand for ... that person was living a very surface life.
“But now I’m really understanding myself … and I like what I’ve learned.
“Because I have read so many books about the way we are as people, how our brains work, and how past traumas affect us – and also what it takes to love yourself again.
“I didn’t know what loving yourself even really meant – was that just telling yourself you’re beautiful in the mirror?
“I didn’t even understand that, to be honest. That’s how completely naive I was two years ago, and then when I started understanding you really have to listen to who you are … I’ve discovered so much about myself.
“I am a lot stronger than I thought I was. I feel like I have a purpose, a direction – and I like who I am now. I don’t think I did before.”
It’s a life-changing place to be as she turns 50.
It’s the first year of her and Kyle Sandilands’ record setting $100m 10-year radio deal. Their foray into Melbourne hasn’t started out as they planned, but the industry heavyweights know winning over a new market takes time, and they’re in it for the long haul.
Besties – her guest speaker and event business with O’Neill, the woman who saved her life two years ago when she was secretly downing up to 24 painkillers a day – has taken a turn into the dating scene with its Red Flag Project, helping women like them feel empowered on the search for love. It’s ‘gone crazy’ in the last few months, and there’s a lot on the horizon. Their podcast Her Best Life is being binged far and wide and, in early February, they are set to launch a Negotiation Power course, something they say there is a big appetite for. Women want more, and want to achieve on their own terms.
“The truth will set you free,” Henderson continues.
“I never realised that until I started writing the book, and how therapeutic that was, but also how much of the shame goes away when you do speak. I think hiding it, that shame just grows and sits there inside of you, and shame is the worst emotion, it really is.
“Telling the truth and revealing those vulnerabilities about yourself ... really is liberating.
“It’s almost like you just don’t have anything to hide, and when you don’t have anything to hide, it’s very freeing, so I’ve definitely felt that.”
Telling Kitty was the hardest part. But a realisation made easier by her teen’s acceptance, support and empathy.
“We all make mistakes … it’s OK to be flawed,” she says.
“We are human, and absolutely she needs to know that I’ve always felt that honesty with my daughter is the best way for us.
“It works for us.
“Sometimes things need to be sugar-coated, obviously, and there’s certain areas that are maybe no-go zones, but I think, generally, we have a pretty open dialogue with each other, and there is a lot of trust there – but ultimately you just also want to protect them. But I don’t want to wrap cotton wool around her either.
“And I will say that since I went public with it, one of my biggest fears, actually, was judgment from mums at school.
“I think all women fear that.
“And so that was probably one of my biggest fears, is, what will the mums think? And I had so many of them reach out to me, and they were just so beautiful and kind and Kitty, she hasn’t had any problems in the playground from it.
“And I just think that part was really lovely, it really was.”
Today, she doesn’t drink. She doesn’t do drugs – she laughs off public conspiracies about her sudden weight loss – “I’m the only one who has never done coke”, she quips.
“I think the thing was – for years – I was crying out (to be loved),” she says.
Failed marriages – first to then co-host “Ugly” Phil O’Neil and later to Lee Henderson, Kitty’s father – both ended with a mutual respect, despite challenges in the relationships.
“But also realising that I wasn’t loving myself either,” she says.
“And I think that was the biggest realisation.
“It was like I was expecting someone else to fill that void of giving me the love that I wasn’t giving myself, and then when I did start doing that, the peace that came with that, the contentment of not needing it – because I do have wonderful people in my life.
“I have wonderful women, especially, and I do get a lot of love, but it was me that wasn’t giving myself that love, and that’s where the yearning was coming from, and expecting it from a partner.
“It was cry for help, but I think I was just a little lost, to be honest.”
Despite being one half of the most successful breakfast duo in Australian radio history, Henderson says she still felt dismissed by men in the industry.
“Boys’ clubs still exist, and they treat women a lot of the time like you don’t matter,” she says. “And that’s how Gemma and I feel a lot of the time in our industry. We get very, very frustrated by it absolutely.
“It’s something of an old club that is eventually, hopefully, flushed out, but it’s frustrating to have interactions where we feel that way and we are absolutely dismissed at times and ignored. It’s definitely not all men, but it still exists, absolutely.”
But Henderson has found support in Besties.
“It’s our passion,” O’Neill agrees of Besties and the Red Flag Project.
“We want young women to be aware of all of these things before entering long-term relationships, marriage, family, because we were not knowledgeable about any of this stuff, in our 20s … and it’s never too late to learn.
“I mean, we learned it only in the last two years, but when we did learn what we learned, everything made so much sense. We just kept saying, ‘if only we’d known this’.
“If we can educate or help women when they’re that bit younger, that goes a long way.
“But also women – whether they’re in their 40s or 50s or 30s – knowing that you can still make changes in your life, and you can still make decisions in your life in a romantic sense, that can completely change the trajectory of your life.
“You don’t have to sit in something that makes you unhappy, or you don’t have to be on an eternal quest to find someone, feeling that they’ve got to complete you,” O’Neill says.
“Where does that come from, and understanding why you feel that way – so it naturally evolved in that direction, which was never what we initially set out to do here, but it’s kind of just ended up – and we are big believers in signs and going with things and trusting that this is the journey that Besties is meant to go on.
“And I think it’s dovetailed into all the work that Jackie’s done on herself, so now we’re incredibly thankful, but passionate now that it’s about helping women not feel so alone, (helping them feel) connected and giving them the tools to change their lives.”
Picking at a tuna carpaccio and some hot chips for good measure, Henderson agrees with her friend.
“We just wanted women, really, to know their worth more than anything,” she says.
“To understand that you are valued.
“Make sure you value yourself.
“And sometimes, when you sit in a relationship, a marriage, that you’re not being treated the way you should be, for us, we just wanted women to realise this.”
And that too is a work in progress.
“I do believe in fate,” she says.
“I think it was very fateful the day I stepped into that world by meeting Phil and the way we talked on the phone when I was entering a radio competition – I just think all the ingredients were there.
“It was just like this sliding doors moment that changed everything.”
Since then, there have been millions of those moments.
The women – who share everything from their favourite medium to their therapist, lawyer, dermatologist, even obstetrician – like seeing hummingbirds along the way too. Even today, they line the wallpaper at Woollahra’s Hotel Centennial. And both women wear delicate matching necklaces of the powerful sign that bonds them.
“I keep learning and growing absolutely, and I’m really excited about where I’m at,” Henderson says.
“I’m excited to step into 50. I don’t fear the age part.
“I’m grateful that you gave me another year – why would you dread that?
“It’s like saying you know, what’s the other alternative? You just didn’t make it to 50 – so I always see birthdays as a blessing.
“And I’m really, really excited about the unknown, actually, because I don’t really know what will happen.
“I don’t have this kind of set goal of where I want to be in five years, never have – so I’m OK with that, but I do love the elements of surprise at the moment.
“I love the uncertainty of what’s to come in life.
“But I feel it’s … I’m stepping into something really fulfilling.
“The most wonderful thing is going through all of this with Gemma, honestly.
“She has not just saved my life with rehab, but she’s saved my sanity on those days where I was struggling over the last couple of years. She’s been there every day, and we talk to each other throughout.
“We go through similar parallels in our lives, and it’s uncanny how similar our journeys are.
“So we help each other through those days, and one of us could walk in almost hysterical and really panicked or triggered, or something’s going on in our lives … but for that year after rehab, and we just, when we walk out of that and we’re so much happier and calmer, we’re very good for one another.
“I just can’t imagine doing this without you,” Henderson says to her friend.
“I am so happy. I actually am.
“I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time.
“And do you know – a lot of biographies I’ve read in the past, everything gets wrapped up at the end in a nice bow, and isn’t it convenient that everyone’s fixed and happy at the end.
“But I’m not fixed, and you can see that I still have a lot of things that I still would like to work on, and it hasn’t been wrapped up in a bow where I suddenly did find the man of my dreams, and none of that has happened … but I’m definitely the happiest I have been since I can remember, so I feel good about that.
“You know, in the last eight to 12 months, I’ve been like, ‘OK, it’s got to happen soon, it needs to happen soon – where is he?’ And I genuinely was like, I need it. And now I’m at a place where – I would hate to think it’s never going to happen, don’t get me wrong – it’s human connection. We all do crave it. But if you said to me, ‘you know what, Jac, it’s not going to happen for another five years’, I’d be OK with that.
“I’m patient and I’m so fulfilled without it. Whatever comes or whoever comes along, it’s no longer coming from a place of need.
“And the unknown is exciting.
“I used to hate the unknown – but now I’m actually excited by it.
“It takes a lot to get to that place – but it was worth it.”
Do you have a story for The Telegraph? Message 0481 056 618 or email tips@dailytelegraph.com.au
More Coverage
Originally published as Jackie ‘O’ opens up on life in radio and how she discovered she needed to love herself