A self-confessed sensitive child, born into a family with a history of mental illness, she developed an eating disorder as a teenager, watched her father learn to walk again after he was paralysed from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and, at the age of 23, became a widow when her partner died of cancer three weeks after their wedding day.

Now the Kiama-based writer has opened up about her past and shared practical “tools”, which she hopes will help readers overcome life’s challenges in her latest book, The World Is A Nice Place: How to Overcome Adversity Joyfully.

It took only five months to write, but Molloy was researching for 10 years – only at the time she didn’t realise that’s what she was doing.

“From my first ever job at the Daily Mail, I gravitated towards incredible survivors,” she said.

“Because of my access as a journalist, I got to interview Tsunami survivors, 9/11 rescue workers, an incredible mother whose 10-year-old son took his own life – literally unimaginable people.”

Molloy said their stories became part of her own healing process.

“I began grilling them for their coping mechanisms,” she said.

“Many of them were still able to have hope – I don’t think I spoke to a single person who said their life was over. I became so intrigued as to how you could go through something like that and still look forward.

“I amassed hundreds of articles about survivors, which became the basis of the book.”

The book’s prologue begins with a description of Molloy, given to her by her family – “challenging, difficult, unpredictable, a magnet for drama”.

She understands why her parents might have thought those things, and admits she had a head start in life when it came to overcoming adversity, compared to her peers.

“Even before my Dad was paralysed with cancer and before I was widowed, I grew up in a family with a history of mental illness and I was aware depression and anxiety ran in my family,” she said.

“I say in the book, I knew what Prozac was when I was eight years old.

“I knew I was an emotionally fragile person, even in the book I talk about the strategies I used when I was nine and 10, to change my mind and let go of negative thoughts.

“I was always aware that I needed to protect myself. That’s when the curiosity began and then it began in my career and a decade later it led to the book.”

Molloy said she’s not a naturally happy person, but rather a “strategically happy person”. She practices many of the strategies and rituals mentioned her book every day, to keep her resilience levels high.

“I’m at this point in my life where a lot of my friends are facing their first real challenge – difficulty getting pregnant, their parents getting sick, losing a job or divorce – only now in their thirties,” she said.

“So many of my friends email me and ask for recommendations for books and therapy.

“I Kind of began to explore all that when I was 10, again at 17 and then when I was 20.

“The positive is I have had a bit of a head start, which will hopefully help me guide my friends.”

While the writing process came easily to Molloy, she had reservations about one particular chapter of the book.

“The end of the book gets a bit more alternative. There’s a chapter in there about how I had an experience in a past life and how regression therapy shed light on one of the reasons behind my eating disorder and the infertility I was suffering at the time,” she said.

“I added that chapter really late in the book writing process. I thought if any chapter is going to put people off then this is the one that’s not going to resonate with people.

“I didn’t want people to just dismiss the whole book as a hippy book they couldn’t relate to.”

Molloy was raised by a Catholic mother and an atheist father who both turned to Buddhism when she was a teenager.

“I had this wonderful mixture of influences around me, which I think mean I can speak about spirituality in a more grounded way than a lot of books do,” she said

“When I was writing the book I met a mother whose daughter had died from an eating disorder and she wanted to know what helped me.

“I couldn’t lie because the real turning point was the session on healing I had that finally helped me understand what I believe was the real reason.”

Molloy said she met her dream publisher in Hay House, when she went to them with an idea for a children’s book.

“I really wanted to write a series of books for children helping them to emotionally support themselves during times of grief and insecurity,” she said.

“They turned around and said ‘we would love you to write an adult book for us – go away and write the book you would love to write, pitch it to us and we will support it’.

“They gave me absolute creative freedom, it was only when they said that to me that I realised there was a book I wanted to write.”

Molloy said while she thought the book would be well received, she was surprised when it was a sell-out on Booktopia in eight weeks and in re-print within 12 weeks.

“Even I couldn’t have predicted that,” she said.

“I think a lot of people have bought a copy for themselves and then come back and bought copies for their friends and family, which I think has been the happiest thing for me.”

“At events I try to offer a second book for half price because I love the fact people are gifting it to others.

“I constantly have a box in my car and I meet people everyday or week who are struggling with something, so I’m constantly giving out books to people.”

Molloy has been taken aback by the wide range of readers who have purchased the book.

“I was in a bookshop in Bondi and they said to me it was amazing to see the different demographic of people who have bought it,” she said.

“Young women my age up to women in their seventies say to me ‘you’ve helped me to let go of my past and I’ve been carrying this around for 50-60 years, or new dads who are struggling with becoming fathers saying this is helping – the incredible mixture of people has surprised me the most.

“There’s so many different stories and tools in it, even if you just used 10 per cent, you’re going to get something.

“I think also, you don’t need to have been widowed at 23 to get it, and you don’t need to have watched your dad become paralysed to get it. I use the same tools I used for being widowed as when I get a difficult work email, you can relate them all to everyday things that happen to you.

“I think that’s why people have adopted it so much.”

The majority of the book was written in Kiama, a place Molloy said provides her with creative inspiration.  Her “creative sanctuary”, as she calls it, was Milk & Honey – the blowhole café which is in the process of relocating.

“It was a beautiful time,” she says, “I was pregnant with my daughter and every day I would sit in Milk & Honey and write.  Most of the book was written here and then the last edit was done with the baby on the outside strapped to me.”

“I always write on the same table – there’s something about it, it belonged to Liz, the owner’s father, it was his work table, and I just feel there is creative energy in it.” Since her second child, Zephyr was born in April 2018, she has completed her next book – a follow-up to The World is a Nice Place which has a “twist” she says.

The current editor of Collective Hub, she is also helping other people embrace their past, with a series of online writing workshops dedicated to ‘storytelling for healing’.

Molloy described the support she had received from the Kiama community as “astounding”.

“My highlight was when Kiama Downs Pharmacy changed their outdoor sign to say ‘The world is a nice place’ and my friends walked past and took photos and sent them to me,” she said.

“I cried because I just thought, I’m new in town I’ve only lived here for two years, it’s not like I was born and raised in Kiama, for them to care enough about the message to put it on their billboard when they could be selling something on that sign instead, they sold happiness and that sums up the support from Kiama.”

The World Is A Nice Place: How to Overcome Adversity Joyfully is available online at Booktopia and in national bookstores.

Find out more about Amy Molloy HERE.