In mid 2011 I had a breakdown. I remember standing on my bed, banging the wall endless tears falling down my face thinking ‘I don’t fit’, ‘ I don’t fit into this world!’.

Mental health has been a theme in mine and my families life. My father was diagnosed with ‘Paranoid Schizophrenia’, and it felt like that was all I was told about him as a child as an explanation as to why he wasn’t present. My mother was unsurprisingly diagnosed with ‘PTSD and Clinical Depression’ when she was experiencing domestic violence in her next relationship. I was carted off to the local counsellor as a teenager because ‘I wasn’t behaving’, diagnosed with Depression, just before I was kicked out of home by the perpetrator. At 16 I had already turned to drugs as a way to survive/self-sooth/escape. It was a long time till my mother made it out of that situation. And unlike we were told, and I was made to believe, my half sisters ended up facing similar abuse. I tried my best to care for my mother and younger siblings as I grew into maturity.

It was 2011, when I experienced a major shift. This began as a breakdown. Perhaps it would’ve been diagnosed a drug-induced psychosis, or just plain psychosis in the bio-medical terms, I will never know. Perhaps even the early onset of Schizophrenia. Whatever it was, I began to withdraw from the world in which I was doing harm to myself and others. And started willfully walking towards peace.

Jungian John Weir Perry coined ‘psychic renewal’. This is what best describes, and is most resonate to me. Many around the world identify with ‘Spiritual Emergence’ and ‘Spiritual Emergency’ depending on factors. Like most, I moved between. I was lucky to only brush with significant danger hitchhiking as a lone young and ripe mad woman across Europe. Perhaps I could have been safer if it were common knowledge of such places to go in altered states. As I felt psychiatry failed my father I wasn’t going to turn this way for help.

I removed myself from the big city and sought alternative life. Ending up in environmental protest camps, first Bilston Glen and then ZAD. Then rural-urban quat Can Piella and Barcelona’s PANSAS. I was completely transformed by my experiences in these environments. My neurodiversity was accepted, as self-determination and autonomy were paramount to these cultures. I fell in love with learning and became an autodidactic very curious about self-organised systems I was witnessing within the emergent anarchist organising around me.

Through unlearning and informing myself I began to understand causes and conditions for my own madness. This was not without other essential friends. One was automatic/stream of consciousness writing which begun of its own accord at the dawn of my crises. Allowing me time and space for reflective self-inquiry. And a kind of distancing, non-self. The other friend came from a work colleague booking me into a Goenka Vipassana meditation course that I attended whilst on the road. Here I met my demons so to speak and had my first taste of peace. Changing the trajectory of my life thereafter. Over a period of around 7-months I transitioned through crises, spiritual emergency/e to a full blown awakening. And it was compassion that saw me stop drifting and return to ‘civilisation’. As many religious scriptures depict, I wanted to serve.

Back home I wished to raise awareness that extraordinary experiences labelled and treated as ‘mental illnesses’ are regenerative processes of psychic renewal. These experiences with care can be catalysts for societal healing and transformation. Yet I did not know how to go about this. At first I contemplated the convention way studying to become a psychologist. At the same time I took myself to the hospital my father was once admitted and signed up for volunteering. Little did I know I was becoming a ‘consumer advocate’. I felt far removed from the states in which the people I was working with were experiencing that I did not see myself as a consumer. Even the word consumer wasn’t the right fit for me as I didn’t consume the bio-medical/psychiatric treatments. After around 3 years I left thoroughly disturbed by what I witnessed hoping that if I made my efforts in education, this could be potentially be a force to prevent people getting into this mess.

I worked as an artist and educator whilst completing a Graduate Diploma in Experiential and Creative Arts Therapy at The MIECAT Institute in Melbourne. I became ready to do my own healing of childhood trauma taking a the leap of trust to work with a Clinical Psychologist only because she was an experienced practitioner of a modality that I felt particularly drawn to; Sensori-Motor. At some point during our process I read Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving and shifted from anti-diagnosis to self-diagnosed Complex PTSD.

I took work in public and private schools across Australia. With babies and infants at child care centre’s. And with primary aged children at Sydney youth-led staple Shopfront Arts Co. Yet I always felt a misfit as essentially what I was doing was advocating for self-inquiry/psycho-social-physical awareness.

I continued creating work as an independent artist. Mainly in the field of vocal performance., sometimes branching out. Spanning performing arts institutions and galleries; The Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), Heima Arts Residency (Iceland), The Museum of Arts and Applied Sciences (Powerhouse Museum), Culture At Work.

In 2019 I was employed by The Black Dog Institute for a Brokered Dialogue project drawing on my lived experience of youth mental health and addictions. Having a stint on a panel at a big symposium in the ICC Sydney: International Convention & Exhibition Centre.

In the midst of the pandemic I was lucky to leave the big smoke and live on Gundungurra and Darug Country. Commit more deeply to de-colonisation. I bought the Korean ‘Pansori’ practice to the Valley of the Waters embodying its transformation.

Soon I accepted an offer to return to the beast (Ministry of Health) asa respected elder Kath Thorburn of Inside and out Associates asked. We co-designed the first Safe Haven at Sydney Children’s Hospital Randwick with children and teenagers who had experience of suicidality and artist Gav Barbey. I absolutely loved working with the young people with lived experience.

In 2022 I was sponsored by the Australian Democratic Education Community to attend the yearly international democratic education conference in the UK. And just three weeks before I was due to fly my father died. The father I had been searching for all my adult life. The police contacted me as next of kin. And I learnt my father’s story the small peice of the tragedy I had heard stretched out across his life. He had been homeless, drifting throughout the late 80s and 90s. And eventually someone from The Brown Nurses along with Matthew Talbot Hostel advocated for him to get housing. He took his meds until the day he died. He died of lung cancer. On the day he was first hospitalised he took up smoking chronically after being a bodybuilder, gym junkie, health obsessed human. It seems a common side effect of anti-psychotics and psych wards. He died in a tiny little public housing bedsit just down the road from me. In the weeks leading up to his death he shared with a support worker that he felt he “had no one in the world”. The Brown Nurses and disability support organisation Caura financed and organised the funeral supporting me throughout the entire process. I was blown away. The church was filled with health care workers, many volunteers.

After my father’s death I attended the conference then sang with 16 sites of ecological distress around the world. Meeting various influential people in the fields my interest was strong. When my father died I decided spirituality would be the primary vehicle of my life. And that I come out spiritually in the context of livelihood. My dad had been a symbol of spirituality for me since my own extra-ordinary experiences in 2012. I spent just over a year and a half working as a Bhikkuni Assistant (kappier) for Ayya Suvira on alms round in Sydney’s notorious drug hot spot Cabramatta. At the same time I studied Mental Health Ministry qualifying myself as a Buddhist Chaplain specialising in Mental Health so that I could access psychiatric wards. I finally completed the Emotional-CPR training I had heard such great things about from advocates I admire like Oryx Cohen.

Mid 2023 I returned to the big smoke finding a place tucked in an inner west suburbia near enough to bush to keep my sanity. I made my first solo show as part of Sydney Fringe Festival disability/access festival; Limitless. Ironically, the last time I did such a thing was for Edinburgh Fringe in 2012. Where and when I was experiencing paranoia, delusions, hallucinations and homelessness. I made ‘A Sinkless Shore’ to honour my father, my experience of saying hello and goodbye to him, and to give the audience a more intimate understanding of how trauma is experienced somatically and ecologically.

I closed this year hosting a screening of documentary “Drunk on Too Much Life” starting a series “I’m not shutting up”. By and for people with lived experience of extra-ordinary states so that we can come together and build community and support. It was a very small turn out. I used my own savings to make it happen. Still Parliament on King (a refugees/asylum seeker run cafe and catering social enterprise) were incredibly kind and donated dinner. There was a strong need expressed by those that came. And a great welling of appreciation. I wished to be able to run another event soon enough.

I spent the first half of 2024 chasing government grants to raise the funds for a film and sound production of my unreleased third album ‘A Sinkless Shore’. And in May I ran a successful crowdfunding campaign which has granted me 10k. I have decided to dedicate these funds and a single/music video release to people with disability living under the administration of the trustee and guardian.

In July after multiple scenarios in which I found myself experiencing distress on alms round when not permitted to respond others mental distress. I accepted I was no longer fit for the role. I left endeavouring to embrace responding to mental distress within my personal network as a livelihood. Hosting a Mental Health Ministry peer support group for Buddhists with lived experience on Tuesday nights. And a drop-in Emotional-CPR community of practice on Wednesday nights.

With a Self-employment Assistance Allowance keeping me afloat till Jan 2025 I am in the midst of attempting financial independence i.e. no longer needing government benefits. Attempting to exist by gift, the generosity of any that wish to support the contributions I make.

Even though I am surrounded by people who’s work is not their calling. And I experience some shame, that I am just “doing what I want”. I have given myself to a wish, and deep faith that everyone can be supported in contributing the way that is most truthful to them.