"It's been a tough path."

In a soul-baring exclusive, Edwina Bartholomew shares her family’s secret struggle, and their hopes for a brighter future.

- SAMANTHA TRENOWETH

Edwina Bartholomew sits in a patch of golden sunlight in a perfect Victorian country garden. Three-year-old Molly – strawberry-blonde curls tumbling down her back, a look of sheer delight in her wide, blue eyes – removes the bangles that the stylist has carefully arranged on her mother’s wrist and, one by one, slips them onto her own. All done, she shakes her arm with glee and strolls off in search of fairies.

Edwina, her husband and fellow journalist Neil Varcoe, Molly and little brother Tom are all big believers in fairies – and make-believe foxes that gobble lollies in the night, and playfulness and imagination generally.

“I think one of the great joys of being a mother is to see their imaginations flourish,” the Sunrise star begins. “Molly and [sixteenmonth-old] Tom love stories, and Neil and I are both storytellers by profession, so to be able to foster that love of the imaginary is just the greatest gift … And a sense of wonder. It starts as a sense of wonder about the small things at this age, and it becomes a sense of wonder about the world, a sense of curiosity and inquisitiveness that will carry them both through their entire lives.”

When Edwina wrote in her newspaper column about the family’s belief in a mischievous, lolly-snaffling fox, there was a bit of blowback from more literalist readers who were concerned about a parent’s duty to tell the absolute truth. But the critics don’t worry her nowadays.