My Founding Story

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The Roots of Connection & Lineage

I was born in Tasmania and spent my earliest years on the land, raised by a German mother and a cattle-farmer father. Those wild, early spaces anchored a deep love for nature within me. When my family later moved to Melbourne to run my grandfather’s cake company, life brought its share of storms—the weight of post-war generational trauma, my parents' divorce, and a painful fracture in our family.

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Through every season, nature, creative arts, and contemplative practice became my sanctuaries—a way to listen to the soul and make sense of being human. I carry a rich lineage of creative women: I still paint on my paternal grandmother’s easel, treasure the hand-woven textiles of my maternal great-grandmother, and share a studio practice with my four daughters.

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My early path was shaped by remarkable mentors: the late Dr. Simonne Jameson—a psychotherapist and art critic who trained with Carl Jung in Zurich—and my dear friend Arian Young, a former Tibetan nun. In my youth, a six-month overland journey west to Darwin deepened my reverence for Country as I spent time alongside remote First Nations communities. Decades of silent retreat practice eventually led me into formal Dharma teacher training in the Insight tradition under the mentorship of Subhana Barzaghi – Senior Insight Dharma Teacher, Zen Roshi, and PACFA Supervisor.

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From Individual Selfing to Living Systems

Through thousands of hours facilitating coaching, corporate workshops, and public well-being initiatives—including a WorkSafe-funded leadership program in educational leadership—I have witnessed the profound burnout caused by our hurried, hyper-consumer and productive culture. We have been taught to treat human distress as an individual failing, forgetting that we live inside a living, biological world that has sustained life for billions of years. What is happening to human well-being is happening on a macro scale to our earth.

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Yet all over the world, people are waking up. We are remembering that we are nature. True healing is not an isolated self-help project; it is a collective return to sacred relationship, local community, and environmental regeneration.

Now, entering a midlife chapter, I bring a lived understanding of creative stewardship and leadership development—having supported my husband through the arc of building a climate-tech startup to success while raising four children into adulthood. Today, as we establish a land-based sanctuary on our 70-acre farm in Boonah, I am dedicated to walking alongside others as they listen deeply, step into wise leadership, and live in vibrant reciprocity with the living earth.

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Credentials & Background

Qualifications & Formal Training

• Bachelor of Counselling (Coaching) – ACAP

• Registered Clinical Practitioner – PACFA (Reg. 28445)

• MBSR & MBCT Certified Teacher – Mindfulness Training Institute Australasia

• Dharma Teacher Training – Insight Meditation Institute (2025–Present)

• Work That Reconnects Facilitator Training – Spiral Journey (2026–Present)

• International Certificate in Applied Ecopsychology – Dr. Geoff Berry

• Art Therapy Certificate – CECAT

• First Nations Cultural Awareness & Narrative Practice – IndigenousX & Dulwich Centre

• Trauma-informed practice in Education - Smiling Mind. 

• Mindful Self-Compassion Core Skills Training – Christopher Germer, PhD & Kathleen Cator

• Jungian & Post-Jungian Clinical Concepts – Applied Jungian Studies

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Affiliations & Community Projects

• Committee Member, Insight Meditation Institute (IMI)

• Community Initiatives: Co-creator of Breathe with the Birrarung (with Stonnington Council & Parks Vic) and Mindfulness in the Park (with Boroondara Council & Victoria Walks).

• Creative Practice: Active studio painter, author of The Mindfulness Workbook (2016), writer at The Wild Muse and Slow Acres and teacher on Insight Timer. Co-founder of The Eco Retreat (Boonah, Victoria).

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