Lessons from the front line - how I learned that I had to help myself

Kath is a 64-year-old therapist, body-work practitioner and advocate with more than 38 years of experience supporting people through physical, emotional, and mental health challenges. She brings a deeply lived understanding of trauma, burnout, dissociation and recovery, shaped by a lifetime navigating both the mental health system and life at the margins of it.

Her story spans construction sites, workplace violence, trauma, gender identity masking, and multiple reinventions through natural therapies, somatic work, breathwork and self-education. Kath speaks openly about what it means to survive, unmask, and finally come home to herself after decades of carrying her story in silence.

She shares her lived experience not to be inspirational, but to be real — to remind others that healing is not linear, quick, or system-defined. Kath now advocates for trauma-informed, human-centred care built on safety, autonomy and the dignity of telling your own story in your own time.