Why I Started
The Mental Wealth Hub

My own struggles began in childhood. And throughout my life, so many people I love have been affected by mental illness, trauma or addiction. I know what it feels like to struggle yourself, and what it feels like to watch someone you love suffer while you desperately search for something that might help. For years, I have dreamed of building a free platform that brings together the knowledge, tools and resources I spent decades trying to find.

Somewhere people could understand themselves better, explore their options and find a way forward without hitting another paywall. I am incredibly grateful that I had the resources to keep searching for help. Even then, finding my way was exhausting, expensive and often overwhelming. Many people never get that opportunity. That has never sat comfortably with me.

That is why keeping The Mental Wealth Hub free and accessible to everyone is at the heart of this project. This has been a dream of mine for years. I have finally decided to take the risk, change direction and make it my life’s work.

My façade was extraordinary, but my coping mechanisms were killing me

I grew up working in television from an incredibly young age, learning early how to perform, keep going and appear okay. In many ways, I continued doing that for much of my life. As a wife, mother, entrepreneur, daughter and business owner. The person who held everything together. From the outside, I often looked successful and highly functional. Inside, there were periods when I was barely coping.

Over the decades, I moved through the mental health system in the way so many people do: doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, medications, diagnoses and different opinions. ADHD. Anxiety. Depression. Addiction. Complex PTSD. For a long time, I thought those labels explained me. They gave names to parts of my experience, but they did not tell the whole story. Looking back, what strikes me is how rarely anyone asked:

What had I lived through? What was I still carrying? Did I even remember? How were childhood trauma, grief, relationships, hormones, gut health, sleep and stress affecting me? Which behaviours had once helped me survive but were now hurting me? So much attention went towards what was wrong with me. Far less went towards what had shaped me, how I was living or even what I was eating. Understanding that distinction changed the way I approached healing.

Connecting the dots

For years, I thought mental health was something happening purely inside my head. It took me decades to appreciate how much of my experience involved my body, my nervous system, my relationships and the way I was living. I was carrying motherhood, marriage, divorce, business, grief, trauma, responsibility and addiction. Sometimes all at once. Yet I kept searching for one thing that would somehow sort out everything.

There were nights when I scoured the internet, desperate to understand what else I could possibly try. One page explained trauma. Another discussed the nervous system. Somewhere else, I would discover nutrition, bodywork or an approach I had never heard of. And I could never get a clear idea of emerging therapies like psychedelics or somatic therapy. Information was everywhere. Connecting it was another matter.

At one point, I had become a human guinea pig, trying so many different therapies that I wasn’t sure what was actually helping. And just when something seemed promising, there was often a program to buy, a subscription to join or another expensive treatment. By then, I had spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get well.

Finding help became a full-time research project at the exact moment I had the least capacity to do it. I tried so many approaches that I sometimes felt like my own unpaid research department. Except I was paying. Quite a lot. At this point I was a single mum, looking after my own mentally unwell parents, thinking how do people do this with no access to money? At times, this search almost sent me broke.

What changed for me

Over time, I found approaches that made a meaningful difference. Somatic therapy, nervous system practices, breathwork, trauma work, nutrition, movement, bodywork and connection all became parts of my toolkit. Carefully supported psychedelic-assisted therapy and plant medicine experiences also played significant roles in my own story.

There was no single magic fix. There was a lot of learning, support, integration and work. There still is. Together, these experiences helped me understand myself differently. I began recognising patterns I had lived with for years and finding ways to make better choices. Learning that my brain could change gave me something I had desperately needed. Hope.

Today, I live free from the toxic addictions that once had a powerful hold over me. I live free of any medications and while significant loss can still trigger my CPTSD, I have the tools to help myself shift through those states. And while the instinct to escape when life becomes painful has not simply vanished, I now recognise what is happening. I have tools to help me through the shutdown states that once left me frozen for weeks. I know when I need support. And I know that a difficult times does not mean I have failed.

The platform I wish I had found when I needed guidance and hope

The Hub brings together what I wish had been easier to find when I needed it most. Clear information. Practical tools. Different perspectives. Research made understandable. Lived experience that helps someone feel less alone. A place to explore the connections between the brain, body, nervous system, trauma, lifestyle and environment. Somewhere established therapies and emerging approaches can be explored with clarity about what we know, what we are still learning and what comes from personal experience.

My commitment is to keep the Hub’s education, tools and resources free to access. I cannot remove every barrier to treatment, but I can make knowledge easier to find, help people ask better questions and open doors to support they may never have known existed. Over time, I want to build a worldwide collective of therapists, specialists and practitioners, including those offering pro bono support, so people can connect with someone who may be able to help, whatever their financial circumstances. Alongside this, I want to embrace new technology to make useful information and connections easier to find in real time.

A hub of knowledge, practical tools and meaningful human connection. Somewhere hope can become a next step. Whether you’re taking your first step or exhausted from years of searching, you deserve more than another dead end. You deserve somewhere to turn, something you haven’t yet discovered and a reason to believe change is still possible. That is what I want this Hub to offer.

Why this is now my life’s work

I want to help change how we understand, manage and respond to mental health and in time even help shift policy. I want more curiosity about what sits beneath distress and addiction. More attention to the whole person. More support before someone reaches breaking point, and clearer pathways for those already there. There are extraordinary doctors, therapists, researchers and practitioners doing this work. I want to help connect more people with that knowledge and keep asking how we can do better.

Building this means taking a risk and stepping away from a path I know. But after years of thinking about it, I know where I want to put my energy. Into something that might make another person’s search a little less lonely, confusing or expensive. I know what it feels like to believe you have tried everything. I also know what it feels like to discover something that finally helps.

If you are in that place now, I want this Hub to offer you somewhere to start, something useful to explore and a reason to stay curious. You deserve access to knowledge, support and the opportunity to build a better life. That is why I started The Mental Wealth Hub. Welcome. I’m glad you found us. We’re only just getting started.