OCTOBER 2019 | The Australian Women’s Weekly 21
→bedridden for months and it’s fair to say
it was a rough time. On September 9 of
this year, Rachel turned 50, and she can
now look back on her 40s with the
clarity that only hindsight delivers. She
says those difficult times often deliver a
message that’s been a long time coming.
“Everything I had done beforehand
was the reason I ended up here,” she
says of India. “Those s*** times that
happen to us are some of the biggest
gifts – and the biggest teachers.
“Whatever energetic force you want
to believe in, for the most part, we
all go through the same stuff, we all
experience hard times. Whatever our
soul is experiencing, we have to get
through that. But also, are you going
to make that choice of learning that
lesson? Are you going to go totally left
field and give something new a go?”
When asked to define what her
previous life stages were about, she says
it’s the moments of great transformation
that jump out. “When I was 15, that
was a big moment. I had a serious blood
disorder, Mum and Dad broke up and
I started modelling. Then 29 was
another... I left,” she says, referring
to the end of her marriage to singer
Rod Stewart.
“I would say that from my 40s until
now, it was almost like being told, ‘You’re
going the wrong way, we’re going to
whack you again.’ Every year! It was like
‘No, you’re not getting married again.
No, that’s not going to happen. Now
your kids are going to leave home, but
now you get to have this beautiful job...
and then your mum’s going to die.’”
But following that time of turmoil, she
says, “the great surrender comes. And
then things settle down.”
India has played a crucial role in the
new direction she has taken – learning
the ancient ways of yoga and meditation
for years, and then sharing her tools
around the world.
“It was like this jigsaw puzzle that
was all spread out but then started to
click together – it just took a lot of
intense work to get it to fit.”
This growth of her spiritual side was
something Rachel was very reluctant
to share with the world. It was only
when The Australian Women’s Weekly
approached her last year to talk about
her journey that she decided to tell
all. “I felt like I’d been caught out- Hidden in the Himalayas – and
this is all going to go pear-shaped,
because people are going to think
I’m f***ing weird.”
It was the same battle her mother,
Janeen Phillips, had gone through.
When Janeen was battling the cancer
that would end her life in 2017, one
of her regrets was that she’d never
felt comfortable enough to step out
of the spiritual closet.
So when Rachel
decided to go public
with her spirituality,
she knew she was,
in her own way,
“changing the
ancestry” from
how her mother
had expressed this
side of herself.
“It doesn’t need
to be a scary thing,”
she says. “There is
I don’t know where the track is
going exactly, but I know the general
direction and I trust that it’s taking
me somewhere good.”
She may snicker good-naturedly at
the idea of her journey being a career
but there’s a reason Rachel Hunter has
been a household name for decades.
There’s also a reason her very famous
life has avoided the kind of clichéd
downturns you might expect from
someone who became a supermodel as
a teenager and married a rock star at 21.Cover story
There’s been no
rehab, no fall from
grace; her children
with Rod Stewart
couldn’t be further
from the kind
of Instagram
influencers you
might expect
millennials of
their background
to be. Renee, 27,
is a dancer, Liam,
25, is an ice hockey player currently
based in Queenstown, and despite the
soft American accents from their LA
upbringing, they’re about as laid-back
and Kiwi as it comes.
Long before actress Gwyneth
Paltrow coined the term “conscious
uncoupling” for her drama-free divorce
from singer Chris Martin, Rachel and
Rod were walking the walk of splitting
up while remaining a family. Rachel
credits this to a sense of humour and
a strong belief in community.
“I was a young mother, and I had
great security from having a great
husband. There was lots of humour,no separation between being spiritual
and being human. It seems to be
that people see [this side of me] as
‘spiritual’” – she waves her hands
around – “but no, it’s just me. I’m still
going to laugh, I’m still going to joke.
I’m still going to swear.”
When I ask her how she decides
her career moves, she laughs. “What
career? Is that what that is?” Then
she grows serious. “I feel like I have to
honour this path that I’m on right now.
It’s kind of like going into the bush.ABOVE: Rachel
(far right) with
Rod’s past and
present partners
at a family
birthday, from
left, Alana
Stewart, Penny
Lancaster, Rod
and Kelly Emberg.
LEFT: On the
cover of Italian
Vogue in 1988.