Jackie Gillies opens up about motherhood, how she juggles it all and how to ask for help | Exclusive interview

With a business to run, reality TV appearances, her career as a psychic medium along with family life with husband Ben and their twin boys, Jackie Gillies has a lot to juggle. 

But there’s one way the 45-year-old manages it all, and it’s advice she wants other mums to know: you need to ask for help. 

“How do I do it? I asked for help,” she says candidly as we chat. 

READ MORE: ‘Most beautiful surprise’: Buddy and Jesinta Franklin’s baby joy

“I think a lot of women find it hard to ask for help, but I’ve got a good strong support system like my mum – you know, that old-school European – and friends.” 

Jackie said when her friends ask if they can help, she jumps at the chance. 

But there’s also her husband Ben, the musician known for his time in Silverchair, who she can’t praise more as a dad and a partner. 

“I have the most amazing husband,” she says. 

“I manifested Ben, but I couldn’t dream up an amazing father. Ben does everything. Every cry, he gets up, if I need to do something, he’ll take the kids out. 

“I’m just so lucky with what I have in a husband as Ben, and not just that, the help.” 

For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.

But at one point, it all became too much for Jackie. Looking back now, she knows it was hormones, but it’s a situation that will resonate with so many new mums.

When the reality of life with two kids sunk in, Jackie joked it was like she’d been hit over the head with a baseball bat. 

“By the time you get to the end of the day, you’re so frustrated at everybody, and nobody really talks about this shit, you’re so frustrated at life going, ‘Is this it? Is this what I signed up for?'” she recalled. 

Those feelings came with layers of guilt, because her road to motherhood wasn’t a smooth one. 

“I went through seven rounds of IVF, and how does that look? When they finally came, and feeling like that… I felt so guilty about it,” she said. 

READ MORE: Influencer’s raw message after welcoming her second baby

She wasn’t coping, and the universe sent her a sign. 

A lactation consultant came for a home visit, and Jackie realised she had actually given her a psychic reading 20 years prior. 

The woman had been taking one of Jackie’s TransformU courses and said, “You, Jackie, are on the verge of a breakdown.” 

Jackie was struggling with postnatal depression and puts it down to her breastfeeding journey with the twins, but it wasn’t until she said it that she even considered it. 

“Sometimes people need to tell you something for you to really hear it,” Jackie said. 

“She goes, ‘You need to do what you actually teach other people’ and I just bawled my eyes out.

“I knew what that was, I was breastfeeding and I didn’t like it, I hated it, it was like torture for me – two of them and sleep deprivation.” 

READ MORE: Which Hoka shoe is right for you?

Jackie put the pressure on herself to breastfeed, admitting she felt people would think she was a bad mum if she didn’t, but it was the hormones talking. 

“I had this vibe in my head where I was going to take out some serious coin out of the bank, go overseas, come back when my children are eight or nine, because Ben’s such an amazing father and my mum and everybody else can help out,” she said. 

“And as soon as I stopped breastfeeding, I kid you not, two weeks later, I was back to myself.” 

Influencer reflects on how she’s feeling after welcoming second bub

While it’s difficult to talk about, Jackie believes it’s something so many women have felt before, but don’t want to speak about it in case people think something is “wrong” with them.

“It’s not that there’s something wrong with you, it’s the hormones,” she said. 

READ MORE: ‘My right side has completely stopped working’: Actor’s sad update after diagnosis

Jackie noted it’s hard for women in 2025 too, when many have a career and it’s often put on the backburner to make sure everyone else is being looked after first. 

While you should prioritise self-care, she also believes you need to protect your own energy – something she teaches in her TransformU courses. 

With so much going on with life, work and just being busy, she wants women to know it is OK to say no. 

“If something is not serving me emotionally, physically, or even spiritually, then I’ll say no to it,” she explained.

It might be someone telling you to come around for dinner and bringing the kids, but if she isn’t feeling it, she’ll say no. 

“I know a lot of women that’ll be like, ‘Oh no, I should go because it’s my sister or my cousin’,” she explained.

“If your intuition’s saying ‘don’t do it’, then don’t do it and if you’re feeling loaded up, or you’re feeling like something’s not right, then really trust that.”

Jackie admitted that as a mum, you can feel guilty for taking time out for yourself, but you shouldn’t. 

“I find it, personally, cathartic that when I do that, I’m a better lover, I’m a better wife and a better mum.”

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.