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I’m a counsellor, a mum, a wife, and someone who is genuinely curious about people — why we do what we do, what sits underneath our behaviour, and what helps us find our way forward when life gets messy.

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My career has given me the privilege of working closely with people from incredibly different walks of life. A significant part of that career has been spent working across regional Western Australia, supporting people experiencing complex challenges both within the prison system and in the community.

My experience has included working with people in reintegration and rehabilitation, alcohol and other drug services, and alongside individuals navigating complex personal, family and social circumstances. I’ve also worked extensively with young people experiencing mental health and life challenges, including relationships, family conflict, identity, emotional wellbeing and the often complicated experience of growing up.

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Working across these very different settings has shaped the way I understand people. While our circumstances can look incredibly different on the surface, many of the things sitting underneath them — connection, belonging, relationships, identity, hurt, coping and the patterns we develop along the way — are often remarkably similar.

Across these roles, I started noticing something. 

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Whether I’m sitting across from a high school student who feels like nobody understands them, someone in prison trying to make sense of the choices that brought them there, a parent questioning whether they’re getting it right, or an adult who has reached a point where something in their life simply needs to change — underneath it all, I often hear remarkably similar things.​

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• We want to feel understood.

• We want to feel like we matter.

• We want connection.

• We want to understand ourselves.

• And most of us are doing the best we can with what we’ve learned along the way.

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Something else I’ve seen time and time again is that we don’t experience our challenges in isolation.

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We are shaped by our relationships, families, experiences and the systems around us. When one person is struggling, there are often other connections and patterns influencing what is happening — and sometimes supporting one person also means looking at the relationships around them.

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There are times when individual counselling is exactly what is needed. There are also times when involving a parent, partner or family can create a much greater opportunity for lasting change.

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For me, this isn’t about finding someone to blame. It’s about becoming curious about the bigger picture — how people communicate, how they respond to one another, what patterns have developed over time, and what might need to shift so that change can actually be supported outside the counselling room.

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