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    Defying The Enemy Within: How I silenced the negative voices in my head to survive and thrive
    Defying The Enemy Within: How I silenced the negative voices in my head to survive and thrive
    Defying The Enemy Within: How I silenced the negative voices in my head to survive and thrive
    Ebook221 pages2 hours

    Defying The Enemy Within: How I silenced the negative voices in my head to survive and thrive

    By Joe Williams

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    About this ebook

    How I silenced the negative voices in my head to survive and thrive -- Foreword by Johnny Lewis

    'Joe Williams has been into the darkest forest and brought back a story to shine a light for us all. He's a leader for today and tomorrow.' -- Stan Grant

    'In telling his powerful story, Joe Williams is helping to dismantle the stigma associated with mental illness. His courage and resilience have inspired many, and this book will only add to the great work he's doing.' -- Dr Timothy Sharp, The Happiness Institute

    'It is through his struggles that Joe Williams has found direction and purpose. Now Joe gives himself to others who walk the path he has.' -- Linda Burney MP

    Former NRL player, world boxing title holder and proud Wiradjuri First Nations man Joe Williams was always plagued by negative dialogue in his head, and the pressures of elite sport took their toll. Joe eventually turned to drugs and alcohol to silence the dialogue, before attempting to take his own life in 2012. In the aftermath, determined to rebuild , Joe took up professional boxing and got clean.

    Defying the Enemy Within is both Joe's story and the steps he took to get well. Williams tells of his struggles with mental illness, later diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder, and the constant dialogue in his head telling him he worthless and should die. In addition to sharing his experiences, Joe shares his wellness plan -- the ordinary steps that helped him achieve the extraordinary.

    'In telling his powerful story, Joe Williams is helping to dismantle the stigma associated with mental illness. His courage and resilience have inspired many, and this book will only add to the great work he's doing.' -- Dr Timothy Sharp, The Happiness Institute

    'It is through his struggles that Joe Williams has found direction and purpose. Now Joe gives himself to others who walk the path he has.' -- Linda Burney MP

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Australia
    Release dateFeb 1, 2018
    ISBN9780733338755
    Defying The Enemy Within: How I silenced the negative voices in my head to survive and thrive
    Author

    Joe Williams

    Joe Williams is a proud Wiradjuri First Nations Aboriginal man born in Cowra and raised in Wagga Wagga, NSW. Joe played in the National Rugby League (NRL) for many years before switching to professional boxing in 2009 and winning two welterweight championships despite suffering severe mental illness. Joe currently spends his time between Australia and the United States, travelling across both continents delivering workshops and talks to inspire people to think differently about their mental health.

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    • 5/5
      This book made me cry, made me smile and made me say "me too!"
      A brilliant account of the authors mental struggle and personal growth.
      Read it if you are bipolar, read it if you are not.
      A courageous story by a proud first nations man.

    Book preview

    Defying The Enemy Within - Joe Williams

    PART 1

    MY STORY

    1

    MY WIRADJURI ROOTS

    I grew up in Wiradjuri country, which encompasses the lands in New South Wales, Australia, that are the traditional home to the First Nations Wiradjuri people. I was born in the town of Cowra, one of five kids belonging to Wilfred and Lee Williams.

    My dad’s father was also called Wilfred Williams, though most people called him Willie. Granddad was an Aboriginal man from what was then called the Brungle Aboriginal Station or Brungle Mission, near Tumut in New South Wales. He was over six feet tall with a wiry and lean, chiselled body. He was a bare-knuckle tent fighter who travelled around from town to town, fighting in tents to make a few quid in order to feed his family and have the odd drink with the boys. If he didn’t win a fight, there’d be no drinks and no food for the family. As well as his tent fighting, Willie also played lead guitar in a local band, which might be why I love listening to and playing music.

    After Pop married my grandmother, Nan Olive, they immediately started having children. Sadly, my granddad died young, leaving Nan Olive to bring up nine children. She was just twenty-nine. Nan would later have another child, a daughter, so she had ten children in all, and she lost two more partners after Pop Willie — John and Paul.

    Pop willie.

    My dad was nine when his father died, and he had a very tough life growing up in Brungle. Dad always laughs about how he, his siblings and pretty much all Olive’s grandkids, including me, took after her when it came to height (all of us being short). With me being closer to the ground than Willie’s six foot plus some, height is something I wish I’d inherited from him.

    People who knew my father when he was growing up talk about the strength and physical toughness he and his brothers had. I believe they have a lot to thank my Nan Olive for. The strength and mental resilience it would have taken her to raise ten kids must have been enormous. Dad often tells me stories about how Nan got into physical fights in order to protect her kids when the family moved from Tumut to Cowra.

    Even though she lost her husband so young, as well as a daughter shortly after birth and Paul and two of her sons in the past few years, Nan Olive continues to smile and has a great sense of humour. Every time I make my way through Cowra, I make sure to knock on Nan’s door for a yarn about the old days in Brungle and the many stories of the tough times and struggles the family went through.

    I always love hearing Dad’s stories of his youth, which make me understand why he is such a physically and emotionally tough man. There are stories of how, when Dad and his brothers — Arthur (deceased), Shane, Dennis (deceased) and John — were teenagers, they would sometimes have to stick up for the family in physical fights with men. At times you hear of ‘fight to survive’, and they were literally fighting for the survival of the family.

    Dad showed great potential as a footy player from a young age, but he didn’t take it too seriously. The way he tells it, when he was about eighteen years old, he was walking home with a few drinks under his belt. He walked past the local footy oval

    At times you hear of ‘fight to survive’, and they were literally fighting for the survival of the family.

    and decided to join in a game of touch footy. A man called Greg Fearnley saw Dad had potential and began to encourage and motivate him. Dad says that Greg was the one who started him on his rugby league journey. Someone believed in him.

    Brungle Public School footy team: Dad (middle back row) and Uncle Arthur (back left).

    From then on, Dad played football and always showed potential on the field. In 1984, when he was twenty-four, he was selected to play for the NSW Country Firsts team. The much-revered Indigenous league player and later coach, Arthur Beetson, recruited Dad to play for the Eastern Suburbs Roosters in Sydney in the Winfield Cup competition that was the forerunner to the National Rugby League competition. Dad stayed in Sydney for two years, going on to play for the Western Suburbs and then St George before returning to the bush.

    My mum, Lee, was one of four kids born to Nan Shirley, a Wiradjuri woman from Orange, and Pop Ron, a non-Indigenous man. From the stories I’ve been told, Nan Shirl was quite the larrikin and life of the party, while Pop Ron was an accomplished boxer and also a bit of a joker. I vividly remember visiting him during the final days of his life at the time I was playing NRL with the Rabbitohs. Despite being on his deathbed, Pop Ron looked across at me and said: ‘I’m still good for a few rounds [of boxing] so don’t think because I’m lying down in bed that you’ll beat me.’ So right until his final days on earth he was cracking jokes.

    Mum had two sisters, Tania and Lisa, and a brother, Craig. She never really speaks much about her upbringing — just says that her parents were strict on discipline, that they had some tough times financially, but they got by because of their love and support for each other.

    I am told Mum was quite the athlete when she was younger, holding athletic and a few swimming records that still stand to this day. She and her brother Craig (now deceased) had enormous talent as kids and were invited to train with Olympic gold medallist Dawn Fraser. Mum did so well at school swimming carnivals and inter-town district meets that one day, when she was to compete in the age group 50 metres or 100 metres freestyle, she was made to do butterfly to even out the race. What the organisers didn’t realise was that Mum was actually stronger and faster at butterfly than freestyle.

    Dad learning music.

    Sadly, when Nan Shirl died, Mum’s younger sister, Lisa, was only sixteen, so Mum took on the mother role to Lisa and they are still very close to this day.

    So you can see there are some strong people in my family, and I’m pretty sure some of that strength rubbed off on me.

    2

    GETTING BY ON FAMILY, SPORT, MUSIC AND LOVE

    When Mum and Dad first met in Cowra, Mum already had a son — my brother, Mike — and Dad already had a daughter — my sister, Jessie. Back then, Dad was playing rugby league. If his team won, he’d have enough cash to buy a feed of takeaway Chinese, have a few drinks after the game and buy two dollars’ worth of petrol for the car, so he’d try his guts out on the football field to get a decent match payment.

    Once Mum and Dad got together, they had me and then my younger sisters, Jasmine and Aleesha. When we kids were growing up in Cowra, things were often tough financially, with only Mum working at times. But while we didn’t always have much money, which was sometimes tough for us as kids, we learned to be grateful for what we did have. No matter how challenging the financial situations our family faced, we always seemed to get by. Looking back, I think the reason for this is that through every difficult time we not only loved and supported each other, but we were also respected within the Cowra community.

    Little Joe.

    Mum and Dad instilled strong values in us when we were growing up, and I still carry them with me as an adult. Even though there was never any money flashed around, we kids never went hungry or without the basics. Mum made sure we were well fed and well dressed. There were many occasions when Mum sat down to the dinner table with little or no food on her plate, which showed us the importance of thinking of other people before yourself.

    Once, during my primary school days, I was in the school choir and had to wear a particular style of shorts and T-shirt for a performance we were doing. I knew our family wasn’t doing great at the time, so I made up an excuse to the choir teacher about why I couldn’t turn up so Mum wouldn’t have to spend the money on the uniform. Little did I know that Mum had already gone out and bought the clothes that day. When I found out, I felt even worse because I knew Mum would have had to stretch our family budget to buy the clothes. I remember feeling so remorseful and sobbing to Mum about her having wasted money on clothes I wouldn’t use. But as she always did with us kids, Mum just gave me a cuddle and told me not to worry.

    There were also times when the ice-cream truck would drive up our street, music playing loud, with a dozen kids running behind it, waiting for it to stop. One day, every kid in our street was in the

    Even when we were at fault, Mum still supported us.

    line, even us — but then Mum put her head out the door and waved us back inside with a look of ‘sorry kids, not today’. Those sorts of experiences taught us that we couldn’t always get things just because we wanted them.

    Mum was and is an extremely strong person and the rock of our family. To people who don’t know her, she seems a fairly quiet woman but she’s always good for a laugh and has a great sense of humour. She was amazing when it came to supporting us kids in any disagreements with others or when we needed help at school. Even when we were at fault, Mum still supported us, though sometimes when we got home she’d give us a kick up the backside for doing the wrong thing.

    Then there was my brother, Mike. When I was growing up, I idolised and was in awe of him. For one thing, he was an amazing league player, which I wanted to be, too. When he was a teenager, scouts from rugby league clubs would travel to the country to watch Mike play, but if he got wind of it he would tell Mum he wasn’t taking the field that day. He just had no interest in playing in the big league. Mike was a country boy and wasn’t going anywhere.

    Both being sports-mad, Mike and I were constantly battling for victory against each other, whether playing knee footie in the lounge room or cricket, rugby league or boxing outside. Sometimes when we were playing, Mike would wind me up to the point I’d end up running upstairs, my feet covered in dirt, crying out to Mum that Mike was cheating or being too rough. ‘Don’t go back down there if you can’t handle it and don’t come upstairs crying,’ was always Mum’s reply. Without fail, I’d go back for round two with Mike, often with the same result — me crying and running upstairs.

    As Mike got older, I was the annoying little brother wanting to hang around him and his mates and getting the odd clip around the ear for trying to sneak into his room. I still admired him, though, and was in awe of how good a league player he

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