The all-rounder: how Pia Sims overcame PTSD to recover her fearlessness

Funeral celebrant, firefighter, actress, building renovator, Torana enthusiast, mental health advocate.

Pia Sims is not a person to leave an opportunity unexplored. She recently accepted the chance to skydive for a film being made in Melbourne. Although the shoot was cancelled due to bad weather, she says there was no way she wouldn’t have leapt from what I describe to her as “a perfectly airworthy aeroplane.” She is an enthusiastic lover of horse riding, despite having both knees replaced. But her life hasn’t been all excitement and thrills.

She’s spoken to The Courier previously about the challenges of the funeral industry and dealing with traumatic scenes. Now she talks about her own struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and putting her life back together after the collapse of her marriage and being assaulted on a Ballarat train.

Pia Sims speaks openly about her mental and physical health and her continued advocacy for causes as diverse as the local Country Fire Authority, (she’s a volunteer, of course) to speaking up about violence, to the global Before I Die Wall movement, which she is organising locally.

Pia Sims spoke to Caleb Cluff from The Courier on a crisp, sunny winter afternoon. 

When we last spoke, you were working as a funeral director. But you gave it away for a while? 

I did. I was working for F.W. Barnes in Ballarat. I had trained as a wedding and funeral celebrant. My passion was funerals; circumstance led me to focusing on weddings. I was located near Daylesford and had connections.

After the spontaneous combustion of my own marriage I wasn't up to selling marriage as a good idea. I can’t sell a product I’ve got no faith in. So I found myself again through circumstance working in the funeral industry as a funeral director, and in the last six months I've had a really deep think about where I want my life to go and decided to value my own worth and focus on becoming the best funeral celebrant I can be.

I still get to assist families; I still get to advise families; I still get to advocate for the dying; I still get to hold the hand of these people whose world’s just been turned upside down - but I'm not exposed to the 3am trauma from a coroner's callout. I’m not beholden to anybody.

I want to talk to you about PTSD, because when we last spoke you said, ‘I love this job, those traumatic situations don’t worry me...’

It doesn't worry me as far as being able to attend and do the job. However with hindsight it has had an impact.

PTSD manifests itself in so many ways, and can be the catalyst to our life changing course completely. And often without our conscious consent. But that doesn't have to always be a bad thing.

My entire mental health over these last three years has undergone some significant changes. I sent myself off to a facility down in Melbourne and had a ‘little stay’ just to get an accurate and in-depth diagnosis.

My local GP is just brilliant; however she's only knowledgeable within her scope, so I got a second opinion.

The change in my mental health is like going from analog to digital now. It has provided me with clarity; it has provided me with tools, skills, to move forward.

I know that my mental health is not, ‘oh I went and had a stay in a psych hospital and now I’m all better’; it's ‘I had a stay in a psych hospital; I can now go forward adequately armed with the knowledge and the tools to manage this for the rest of my life.’

How was your situation described to you?

It was complex and compounding trauma in regards to death of my dear friend, Mel, then my Dad, an assault and in the way in which my marriage ended, which was pretty horrific. I wasn’t part of my husband’s journey anymore. His demons just got the better of him, and I respect that, now. This was all in the space of 18 months.

I got beat up at Ballarat Station by three ferals. That was mid-2015.

People may not realise the long-term effect of being attacked by someone, or by a group.

The anxiety and the panic and the anger. And when you appeal to the Victims of Crime (Compensation Tribunal), you walk away with $600 and you’re told, ‘There you go, everything’s fine now, we’ve paid the laundry and the damaged jacket, everything should be fine.’

Well no actually. I can't get past my f*****g letterbox here. And if I do and I manage to get Coles and they've moved the eggs, I have a f*****g meltdown and have to abandon my trolley because it's just too much to cope with.

What happened?

I had a job interview in Melbourne and I knew I wasn’t up to driving so I thought, ‘f**k you anxiety, I will drive to Ballarat and catch the train to Melbourne, I will not be beaten down’. And on the train back from Melbourne I was in the quiet carriage.

There were three women, and their children are running up and down and screaming and carrying on. I said. ‘Hey is there any chance you guys could move onto the other carriage? This is the quiet carriage.’

“What’s your f*****g problem, you racist c**t?” They just went right off. The next minute I was king hit, my nose was spread across my face, I got hit in the head with a bottle.

We should have the right to leave our homes and feel safe. It's a train trip from Melbourne to Ballarat, and you do that thinking you're going to get from A to B without incident.

Do you think the way people interact on social media has affected the way they behave in person?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean look at Shannon Noll and his little carry on the other day, the reaction that he had.

It was like somebody had opened the gate to every troll inside his head.

That really encapsulates it, and the following remarks from people. It allows people to to vent and to attack. We need to to think before we act. We need to say what we made and mean what we say. I’ve been able to take that from the two weeks with my psychiatrist and the psychologists and attending various group sessions at The Melbourne Clinic.

Let’s talk about your beloved Toranas, which are the first model Toranas. (Pia has two HB Toranas, Betty Blue and Betty White)

Yes they are indeed. These are the 1969 Toranas, series II. They’ve got a few more horsepower than Series I, that’s it. The white two-door is a Torana S; the blue four-door is an SL. S being ‘Sports’, SL being Sports Luxury.

Because it has four doors?

No because it has a heater, and it has … a console. That’s it. They are quite rudimentary.

But they are lovely.

At 16 years of age I was able to purchase the workshop manual, open the bonnet and go, ‘that looks nothing like what’s in the book –  I'm going to go off and source parts and make it look more like that.’

I completely rebuilt my first car between 16 and 18. 

Where did you get the skills?

I recall with my father and his uncle, assisting with an oil change on his old Dodge Phoenix at about six years of age. It's just something I've always been interested in, breaking things down and seeing how they work and hopefully putting them back together with not too many nuts and washers spare.

You have your first Torana at 16.

And I’m 42 now.

So in those days they were relatively easy to acquire and you said had a couple.

One ended up under a Hilux and the other in a paddock somewhere in Gippsland. They are a rare car now. They've become more expensive and they're actually gaining a little bit more recognition as a classic, as the first model Torana. Nowhere near the power of your big V8 SLRs, the GTR XU1s or anything like that, but they still are able to hold their own.

They are an Australian design, based on the English Vauxhall Viva, – but MUCH better looking.

They're a pleasure; they’re an indulgence. With everything that's unfolded in my life over the last four years for me, I wanted to get in touch with that 16-year-old girl who was fearless, who was confident, who had the skills and knowledge and the resources to to achieve things.

To get myself back on my feet physically and mentally I bought something that bought me joy. I allowed myself to feel joy again and the flow-on effects from such an outrageous purchase. Well worth it.

Now I have two! Double the joy!

Let’s talk about your work with the Country Fire Authority.

I’m a passionate volunteer with the Kingston CFA. They have been an amazing source of support over my journey these past four years. I was the first female member of the brigade to attain crew leadership.

We are doing a combined CFA-SES community awareness session shortly. I love being able to assist the community through the work we do.

And you were going to skydive this week?

On Tuesday! On the weekend I got a message from someone in the film and television industry, a stunt coordinator, asking me ‘how tall are you, what size are you, would you skydive?’ 

In short - f**k yes!

So it's just been a bit of a joke with myself over the last couple of weeks that after saying no to being able to leave the house, to interact with people and live as I wanted to for a number of years, now I’ve re-established myself, I’m just saying yes. The Pia Express.

So if my agent calls and says, ‘Are you ready to jump out of a plane?’ I say yes.

This is something we haven't touched on. You’re an actress!

Well, I do extras work for film and television...

What have you worked on?

Wentworth. Neighbours. Winners & Losers. House Husbands. Jack Irish. A Beautiful Lie… a new series Channel 10 is doing – I played a masseuse rubbing down a hot 20-year-old footballer. More gigs like that please!

I’ve got no aspirations to be at the Logies. I don’t want to be famous. It gives me play money. I thoroughly enjoy being on set, seeing how the things work, move, change people around. It's just a part of my life I really enjoy.

Being able to ride a horse – something you love – would help.

I haven’t ridden this year because of my knee surgery (Sims has had both knees replaced). I’m only just now at the point where my surgeon will be comfortable with me hopping on a horse.

Tell me about your new work as a funeral celebrant and what you are doing.

I’m already receiving work as a celebrant through my former employer. It’s called Pia Sims Funeral Celebrant.

I’ve been in negotiation with the Hepburn Shire and I’ve got approval for two interactive installations surrounding the week of Dying to Know Day which is August 8

I'll be hosting a Before I Die Wall at both the Creswick Hub and the Clunes Warehouse.

It involves people taking a moment to write down on a Post-It note one wish, one thing, one dream, one vision they want to fulfil before they die.

It can be something as simple as, ‘I want to see a sunset from an exotic location’ or ‘I want to tell someone I love them’.

You may have been estranged from a family member or a friend and you may want to repair the connection with them. It may be, ‘I will write my own funeral plan; I will plan my own funeral party; I will stop and smell the roses more. I will live before I die - I will live.

I am passionate about people having their plans and wishes made known to their family and friends. When someone passes away, whether that's expected or sudden, it throws people into complete turmoil.

I have seen, as a funeral celebrant and as a funeral director, families at loggerheads over the most simple things: whether someone was to be buried or cremated and it pains me to see an opportunity passed where people could have avoided so much stress on their family and friends by making their wishes known.

The success rate of death is 100 per cent. No one gets out alive. It's one of my passions; it's something I feel drawn to, whether that’s through choice or whether it’s a universal guidance I'm not sure, and I'm not really here to question it.

I'm just here to follow through with it, and instigate, educate, advise and advocate for people who don't know their options; who aren’t aware of the procedures and the processes leading to someone's death and what follows.