Victim To Empowered
Sexual abuse survivor Romecca Sawers displays her courage and inner strength as she moves through her journey in her life to rise and inspire many.
Mental health
Sexual abuse survivor Romecca Sawers displays her courage and inner strength as she moves through her journey in her life to rise and inspire many.
After losing her sister to cancer Angel decided to use her skills as an award-winning hairdresser and help people suffering from hair loss subsequently changing the quality of life for many.
My name is Mitchell Lancaster, I’m a 24 year old singer songwriter. I have struggled against, and learnt to work with my mental health issues throughout my teen years (and many others). When I was 16 years old, I attempted to take my own life. 2 years later, I was introduced to music.
I have always had a passion for creating and sharing stories, and music was a light that showed me that I was able to transmute my own struggle into a narrative that could, perhaps, land for others and resonate with experiences that are not so isolated as we may believe.
“Winter” is a song I have written myself and produced with my band Dreams of Indigo, and comes at the tale of mental illness from the perspective of an old lover – one who you fail to lock the doors on time and time again.
Sharing this story has allowed me to move productively with my own pain, and opened my eyes to the stigma that surrounds these struggles, and my own desire to demystify it.
Pitch your story…At the age of 6 I became a carer for my mother who has been constantly suicidal through my life. I too am a survivor of child abuse and have had first-hand experience with PTSD. Statistics show that due to my history I am at higher risk of suicide and ongoing mental health issues. I refuse to accept this. I am living proof that as individuals we can change this reality.
When I was growing up I had no idea that my personal story would end up impacting the lives of thousands of Australians. I have the bloodline of the traditional Inca people in me. I feel fortunate that those who have walked before me have smashed the poverty cycle, breaking the integrational trauma cycle that has allowed me to become the person I am today. #incawarrior
My grandfather was the army secretary at the time through different events. He once tasked Mary, his daughter to deliver a package while in Laos, Vietnam, to my father Charle’s work. He and Mary wed. My father was in the US Air Force, I was born on a US Air Force base in England. Having a beard grayed from LSD and having faced death after a near fatal assault in Canberra, surgical metal plate in his head, Bruce has fought and overcome challenges most would not dream, living now in Brisbane.
Genice has cerebral palsy, a condition that is caused by abnormal development or damage to the parts of the brain that control movement, balance, and posture. She has been confined to her wheelchair for all her life and had no hope for her conditions to ever get better. Until her visit with Steve Richards Dream Time Healing using Holographic Kinetics where, after one session “it was like the light got switched on…” according to her mother. After her visit, one of the practitioners (Kalka) has suggested that she now starts her physical training so that she can continue to heal and might even stand on her own one day!
Jesse returned to civilian life, with nothing. Struggling to transfer his skills that he learned in the army into meaningful work, he was rejected because of his PTSD, alcohol dependence, anxiety and depression. On June 27th, 2017, feeling left behind by a failing system Jesse’s life took a tragic turn.
Six years post stroke, Shelagh is now a published author of her stroke poems; ‘A Stroke of Poetry’; a motivational speaker and volunteer Stroke Safe Ambassador with the Stroke Foundation. She now shares stroke awareness with corporate, health and community organisations, stressing the impact the emotional side of stroke can have upon your life but also the importance of living a healthy life, full of positivity and hope.
As a child growing up in a home with family violence, Brisbane author Jas Rawlinson often felt alone, fearful, and uncertain. After struggling through her teens, losing her dad to suicide, and then experiencing sexual assault at age 20, she fell deeper and deeper into depression. Often, suicide felt like the only way out. But in the back of her mind, there was a small flicker of hope; a desire to one day help others so that they didn’t have to suffer the same traumas alone. Slowly, Jas began to regain control of her life, and explore her passions, eventually becoming a freelance journalist, the founder of Brisbane’s first domestic violence memorial, and the author of the suicide prevention book ‘Reasons to Live One More Day, Every Day.’
This is the story of Barbara, the founder of Boob Buddies. She provides free in-home professional counseling to help children and adults cope with the unseen emotional side-effect of cancer.
Elysian Dreams is Anita’s escape and sanity. The artistic outlet of a single mum of three, who is challenged by her life every single day determined not to give up, but to persevere for her children and for everyone out there searching for a more meaningful life.
For some strange reason – or perhaps we’re nurtured into this – everyone seems to focus on their weaknesses… Find out how and why Danny chooses to focus on the opposite.