Photography: Nicola Edmonds.
Working as a content creator from her Porirua home, Nix Adams is used to being in her “comfort zone”. For her, the hardest part of Celebrity Treasure Island wasn’t so much the physical challenges as living with a bunch of extroverted personalities and their “whole lot of energy”.
The social media superstar, 39, explains, “I needed my time to myself, so I’d get up before everybody else and go sit on the rocks, just staring at the water, singing songs to my babies and talking to Alaska, like, ‘What the hell has your mother gotten herself into?’”
Alaska is her son who passed away suddenly in his sleep in 2013, aged just 16 months, sending Nix into a spiralof grief and severe meth addiction. He may no longer be physically by her side, but she felt his presence keenly throughout her time on CTI.
Nix tells Woman’s Day, “He was sitting with me on those rocks, telling me, ‘It’s all good, Mum. Just tackle this like you’ve tackled everything else. Even if you don’t come out on top, don’t give up.’
“I had moments like that right throughout the final treasure hunt. I was talking to him, like, ‘Come on, son, pull me through!’ He was with me that entire time.”
A historic win for wāhine and Māori representation
Along with her all-female alliance, Alaska proved to be her secret weapon, helping Nix become Treasure Island’s first female winner since Hayley Holt in 2007 and the very first Māori champion.
Asked what this means to her, Nix replies, “Fk, I don’t want to get too political, but there are a lot of Ma¯ori and wa¯hine who are at a disadvantage at the moment. I’m proud to remind all of us that we can do anything. We may not feel strong or confident, but we can still pull a rabbit out of our hats if we work together and put our minds to it. Shit, yeah! “What I see online is a lot of women tearing down women and it really frustrates me. If only we could all put that same effort into supporting each other and accomplishing a common goal, like we did in getting a female across the fking line on Celebrity Treasure Island.”
When we speak, it’s been half a year since Nix filmed that final episode. She laughs, “Fking hell, I had sand in crevices that should be illegal! It took maybe a month to get it all out.”
A $100,000 win for Child Abuse Prevention Foundation
Her chosen charity, the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation, is yet to hear she’s won them the $100,000 grand prize, but as the mama bear of a blended family of seven kids, she’s proud to support them.
She explains, “I’ve lost a child and I’ve got a toddler, and when I sit back and watch my girl Egypt run around, she’s so happy, smiley and bossy because she feels safe and loved. To think there are so many children who don’t feel safe to speak their minds or don’t feel loved breaks my fking heart. I’d do anything to ensure abuse isn’t normalised. It’s a cause that means the world to me.”
In our last interview, Nix spoke openly about hitting rock bottom seven years ago, when she spent time in jail, an experience that helped her turn her life around. Treasure Island has also changed her, she now admits.
I sweat the small things in life
“Having to survive on a bowl of rice made me realise that I really sweat the small things in life,” she reflects.
“I can turn something insignificant into a big thing and it can really fk up my mood, my day or a friendship. It’s helped me realise that as long as my kids are safe, my relationship’s good and we’ve got food in the fridge, life is good. There’s no reason me and my partner should go to sleep facing different directions.”
When it comes to the future, Nix has a book coming out and she wants to keep encouraging other women not to give up on themselves.
Turn the page and rewrite your story
“Just because you might have made mistakes, that’s not the end of your story – that’s just a chapter. Turn the fking page, rip out a pen and rewrite your book. When I was in the middle of that addiction,
I fked up bigtime, but I grabbed that pen and I carried on writing. Everyone has that ability to change their story at any given moment. It’s your one shot on Earth. Live it for you and nobody else.”
However, Nix is living her life for her whānau these days. She smiles, “After the loss of my son, I didn’t want to have any more children. I wondered how I could play with one child when I couldn’t with another. But I got through that and had my daughter, so now I’m just doing the best I can at being a mum, having some fun along the way and doing some fked-up shit because I’m good at that!”
