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National | Wāhine

Nix Adams: from life's rock bottom to winning TV Personality award

Nikola ‘Nix’ Adams didn't have a private school education, nor did she receive the love, care, and protection as a young person that some might take for granted. Instead, she was thrown challenges that hit and hurt her life including domestic violence, drug addiction, prostitution, incarceration - and she's also had to deal with the devastating loss of a child.

Adams has fought her way back from heartbreak and adversity to a healthier future, not just for her but also her tamariki.

Turning her life around to become a social media star, and now the winner of the 2021 Television Personality of the Year Award for her work on Pio Terei's talk show, Terei Tonight, Adams spoke to Te Ao Tapatahi earlier today about challenging and changing inequity towards wāhine.

Appropriately, today is International Women's Day, a day to reflect on the achievements of ngā wāhine katoa.

“Just listen to them and let them be the author of their own book, of their own stories, Just be there for them when they need you to be there for them. Don’t feel as though you need to jam things down their throats in order for them to get somewhere, because they do have the capabilities on their own. They just need somebody there for [them] if they fall over, if they trip up, to just help them up.”

'We won it'

Winning the TV Personality of the Year Award was a "big milestone" for Adams.

“To be honest, I felt as though I didn't win it, we won it, and, I'm not going to just say women but human beings who have been at the absolute lowest, hit rock bottom. When that happened, I felt like ‘Woah, we all just won it.’ That just showed us we can climb back from the bottom of the barrel and we can make something of ourselves, so I feel as though that's why it was so overwhelming for me because there was so many of us that felt that win.”

She offered some advice for those who are going through struggles and life’s adversities.

“Your why, whatever that may look like, has to be stronger than the obstacles that you've got to climb through.

“Once you can pump it into your brain, ‘my why has to be stronger, it has to be stronger,’ because if it's stronger, it doesn't matter what the universe is gonna throw at you, you're gonna get through it.

"If you’re falling or relapsing or things like that, it's because you’re not at that stage yet where your why is stronger than the obstacles that you’ve got to overcome. And that's okay because one day, it is going to be stronger and you are going to be able to make it.”

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