It was somewhere in the middle of all of that, that I discovered Psychology and something clicked. Here was a way to understand myself, to make sense of the environment I had grown up in, and to find answers that the people around me had never been able to give me.
What started as a personal search gradually became a professional one and it led me to work at the Department of Justice, supervising people on parole. I sat across from people whose stories, although more extreme than mine in many ways, weren't as different as I expected. The common thread was almost always the same: a childhood where the foundations weren't solid, emotional needs went unmet and the people who were supposed to provide safety and guidance often couldn't. The people often sitting across from me had simply been doing their best with what they had.
The more I learned about how people end up where they end up, the more I wanted to get in earlier. To work with people before the damage had compounded, before the decisions had been made, before the foundations had already crumbled. ABOUT
ABOUT
Where this began
I grew up in Australia, having migrated here as a young child with my family. From early on, I found myself caught between two worlds; the culture I came from, and the one I was growing up in. To anyone looking in, that might have seemed like a straightforward question of identity: where do I belong? But underneath it was something more complicated than that.
Home didn't always feel safe and I grew up in an environment where I never quite knew what to expect. Moods and emotions could shift without warning, and typical of Asian culture, making mistakes didn't feel safe, it meant getting in trouble or being told “you’re not good enough” or “you’re too sensitive”. You adapt quickly in that kind of environment; you learn to stay small, stay careful, and stay watchful. I felt alone. Not because there was no one around, but because being around people didn't necessarily mean feeling seen, known, or emotionally held.
So I tried to find other places to land. I leant heavily into friendships, relationships, and illicit substances. I guess I was trying to feel okay, to belong somewhere, and to matter to someone. At the same time, I studied hard and held it together in ways that looked fine from the outside, as I wanted (or perhaps needed) to uphold the expectations that had been placed on me. Two very different versions of myself, running at the same time, and exhausting myself in the process. 
TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF IT
It was somewhere in the middle of all of that, that I discovered Psychology and something clicked. Here was a way to understand myself, to make sense of the environment I had grown up in, and to find answers that the people around me had never been able to give me.
What started as a personal search gradually became a professional one and it led me to work at the Department of Justice, supervising people on parole. I sat across from people whose stories, although more extreme than mine in many ways, weren't as different as I expected.
The common thread was almost always the same: a childhood where the foundations weren't solid, emotional needs went unmet and the people who were supposed to provide safety and guidance often couldn't. The people often sitting across from me had simply been doing their best with what they had.
The more I learned about how people end up where they end up, the more I wanted to get in earlier. To work with people before the damage had compounded, before the decisions had been made, before the foundations had already crumbled. 
WHAT I BEGAN TO SEE
So I moved into working with young people, and what I found there didn't surprise me. The same patterns, just earlier in the story. Kids carrying weight that was never meant to be theirs, doing their best to make sense of environments that hadn't made sense to them. And behind almost every one of those young people was a family doing the same; parents who were struggling, relationships that were strained, homes where the adults were also just trying to survive.
It became clear that the young people I was working with weren't the starting point - they were the result. The real foundations were being laid much earlier, inside the relationships and environments their parents were creating, often without realising it.
And that stopped me in my tracks. Because I had lived that. Seeing it play out again and again, across different lives and different stories, only deepened what I had always quietly known.
The environment a child grows up in, the relationships they witness, the emotions they absorb, the safety or lack of it, shapes everything.
I believe that parents who can communicate effectively, regulate their own emotions, and show up for each other as well as their children can give children something quite profound - a template for what safe, connected relationships actually look and feel like. And that template, for better or worse, follows them into every relationship they will ever have. 
WHY I DO THIS WORK NOW
Becoming a parent myself, I saw how easily that foundation can quietly erode and I also recognise how little support exists for couples navigating that transition into parenthood together. The focus is almost always on the baby (which makes sense) but the two people at the centre of that family often get left behind. That gap became impossible to ignore.
That's what brought me to where I am now and it's why this work matters so deeply to me.
I didn't come to this work from a place of having things sorted. I came from the same place many of my clients come from; confusion, pain, and a genuine desire to understand and do better. I stayed because I kept meeting people carrying the same quiet weight - people who had never felt they were enough, who had learned to cope in ways that made sense once but were now costing them, and who were ready, even if only just, to do something different.
What I bring to this work isn't just training. It's the lived experience of knowing what it feels like to sit in that confusion, and the deep belief that with the right support, things genuinely can be different. 
So I moved into working with young people, and what I found there didn't surprise me. The same patterns, just earlier in the story. Kids carrying weight that was never meant to be theirs, doing their best to make sense of environments that hadn't made sense to them. And behind almost every one of those young people was a family doing the same; parents who were struggling, relationships that were strained, homes where the adults were also just trying to survive.
It became clear that the young people I was working with weren't the starting point - they were the result. The real foundations were being laid much earlier, inside the relationships and environments their parents were creating, often without realising it.
And that stopped me in my tracks. Because I had lived that.Seeing it play out again and again, across different lives and different stories, only deepened what I had always quietly known.
The environment a child grows up in, the relationships they witness, the emotions they absorb, the safety or lack of it, shapes everything.
I believe that parents who can communicate effectively, regulate their own emotions, and show up for each other as well as their children can give children something quite profound - a template for what safe, connected relationships actually look and feel like. And that template, for better or worse, follows them into every relationship they will ever have.