admin, Author at Power of Women

Find Jasmin Bedir at:

Website https://www.innocean.com.au/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasminbedir/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/innoceanaustralia/?hl=en

Additional resources:

Chanel Contos – Fix Our Feeds https://www.teachusconsent.com/fix-our-feeds

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The Power of Identity & Leading With Purpose

by admin | Jun 15, 2026 | Female Empowerment

There are women who talk about the power of identity, and there are women who have lived every uncomfortable, exhilarating, grief-filled inch of it. Yasmin London is firmly in the second group.

Yasmin [Yas] London has worn many hats: elite athlete, police officer, cyber safety expert, keynote speaker, founder, author, and now – a woman who has stepped fully into a purpose-led life.

In this episode, Yas talks with Di about the identity crisis that followed missing the Sydney 2000 Olympics at eighteen. About coming out and having to earn her place – literally changing how she looked, just to be accepted by the community she was trying to belong to. About thirteen years in the NSW Police Force and what it teaches you about human behaviour when you’re standing at the edge of a cliff with someone at 3am.

And about why she built First Movers: because women and girls are still being conditioned to wait. She’s done waiting. Yas London shares her story – take it or leave it.

➡️You’ll Hear :

Resilience and identity and what impacts us

Cyber safety and online harms

Women’s empowerment and leadership

Mental health and well-being in high-pressure roles

The importance of self-acceptance and authenticity

Gender bias and online harms faced by women

The ethos of ‘going first’ and leadership

Key Takeaways:

“Be the signal. Don’t wait for it.”

“Action beats good intention every day of the week.”

“In life, there’s always someone who needs to be the first to go first — so why not you?”

“What we make visible shapes what others believe is possible.”

📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT [Host] (00:02)

Hey Yas, what does power of women mean to you?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (00:07)

Gosh, the power of women, I guess I absolutely live by this phrase, but one of things that I love is that women share their insights and their practical strategies to success with each other. And on a podcast like this, it really just amplifies those messages. For me, I live by this saying that what we make visible shapes what others believe is possible.

And so I love any opportunity where we get to learn from each other and share our success stories so that other people can see that blueprint to break through as well.

DI GILLETT [Host] (00:54)

Was

there a moment where you thought, this is me, take it or leave it? I’m Di Gillett and this is the Power Of Women Podcast and we’re a platform that showcases and celebrates the strength, resilience and achievements of women from all walks of life. And today’s guest has worn many hats, elite athlete, police officer, cyber safety expert, keynote speaker, founder, soon to be published author and now a woman.

who has stepped fully into a purpose-led life. Yas is the CEO of First Movers and co-founder of First Movers Media, where she equips individuals, particularly women and girls, to lead courageously, communicate with impact, and become visible forces for change in a fast-paced digital age. Joining me from Sydney, Australia, Yasmin London, welcome to the Power of Women Podcast.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (01:52)

⁓

I am so excited to be here, Di. Thank you so much for having me. It’s gonna be a great conversation.

DI GILLETT [Host] (01:58)

Yes,

let’s start with a bit of backstory about you, could. us about growing up.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (02:06)

gosh, growing up, I had a pretty, lovely childhood, I have to admit. I grew up in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, a pretty privileged upbringing, ⁓ you know, two loving parents, but a really, really fun upbringing as well, because we are a family of powerful women. And when I say that, let me just give you a snapshot of what that looks like. ⁓ I am one of what is now, I think a group of 15 strong.

women in my family. So from my great grandmother to my now ⁓ niece, we only have women in our family. We’ve never had a boy born into the family out of 15 different births over the last couple of years. So when I say, know, I grew up with a group of female cheerleaders, ⁓ I’m not kidding. ⁓ And I guess, you know, that created a pretty feisty child.

deaf to the word no, I was pretty independent and extroverted and I think my mum would always describe me as a kid who was bored easily which meant that I found myself in some pretty fun situations here and there as a youngster.

DI GILLETT [Host] (03:16)

And

what about your knees? Stronger or on par?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (03:20)

God, look out for all of these. What they’re coming up, whether it’s my daughters, my nieces, my cousins’ kids, they’re all strong, little, fierce, independent Wonder Women. And I’m often reminded of that meme, know, that strong women may be, may we be them, may we raise them. ⁓ It’s really what’s going on, I guess, in our family at the moment. ⁓ We’re definitely balancing the scales, put it that way.

DI GILLETT [Host] (03:48)

I’ve got ⁓ a great niece called Rosie and she is a force to be reckoned with and I keep saying to my husband, where did she get it from? And then he plays out a story and I go, hell.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (04:01)

But wouldn’t we rather have that? I think that even with my own kids, I’ve got two daughters, my eldest is nearly 12 and I’ve got a nine-year-old. Sometimes you’ve got to parent the best and worst of you out of them, but I’d much rather them be feisty independent girls than wallflowers. 100%. So you’ve got to remind yourself of that sometimes.

DI GILLETT [Host] (04:20)

to go out and chase life.

Yeah. So coming back to that question I posed in the opening, Yas, have you ever said, is me, take it or leave it?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (04:36)

Oh yeah, I think, you know, it takes some time to get to that point in your life. And often, you know, I’m 44 this year, you know, I probably am much more certain in who I am and what I want in life now than I was in my twenties, as many people listening today is probably, you know, can resonate with. Um, but there has certainly been moments in my life where I had to acknowledge who I was on the inside. Um, you know, own my own myself, you know, warts and all, and the person that I am.

⁓ And yeah, just say this is who I am, take it or leave it. you know, in my life, hopefully most people have decided to take it.

DI GILLETT [Host] (05:15)

Fantastic. Yeah. So let’s just have a look at your background because as I said, athlete, police officer, cyber safety expert, founder speaker, author, published about to be…

YAS LONDON [Guest] (05:32)

About to be in a couple of months time. Yeah. in progress, but yes.

DI GILLETT [Host] (05:36)

Beautiful. So is there a joining of the dots in this? Did one thing lead to the other?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (05:45)

Yeah, I think what you’ve just shared, Diet, sounds like a lot of different areas, but I think the golden thread is I’ve never been really afraid to try something new. so a lot of those careers have kind of just evolved one from the other.

It’s because I really believe that our skills, our behaviors, our attitudes, they’re transferable in lots of different parts of life. It’s just up to us to be unafraid to step into something new. And so, you know, if I think about my life as an athlete, that gave me a lot of great skills when it comes to, you know, discipline to show up when I didn’t feel like it or resilience to learn and try again. And, you know, the importance of things like consistency and knowing that that’s actually how confidence is built.

allowed me to become a police officer and you know to deal with some of the challenges that come with a role like that. Obviously starting your day at five o’clock in the morning four to five days a week and being okay with that. ⁓ You know being able to overcome challenges in really tricky situations like ⁓ that can be life and death or can be quite confronting in terms of what you’re walking into. Those skills really did transfer and

I’m sure we’ll talk about it more today, moving into the world of technology and cyber safety, that was challenging for me because I don’t and still don’t see myself as a tech person. Like if I’m the one that’s relied upon to try and fix the television remote, like good luck to you. But.

I understand people, I guess, and my skills in terms of understanding them and communicating with them is what led me into that world of technology and the impact that tech has on human beings and how we behave and why we behave a certain way. And so from my time in the police force, I saw a gap, I saw something that needed to be fixed or done better. And so I just went ahead and gave it a go. And that’s sort of what led me into the world of technology and digital safety.

DI GILLETT [Host] (07:46)

Yeah, awesome. Well, we’re going to delve into all of those bits in some form of sequential order. Let’s start with the athlete because you won a world championship.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (08:00)

Yes, well I won the World Cup, Gold, Silver and Bronze, which was in Malmo in Sweden in the year 2000. So yeah, I can say I’m an international gold medalist, which is a pretty big tick off the list for many athletes for sure.

DI GILLETT [Host] (08:13)

Absolutely. And 2000 was an Olympic year, but you had your first real hurdle in that because as I understand it, you didn’t make the games.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (08:29)

Yeah, yeah, that was a challenging time. I think when you have swum at an international meet and won, you know, a gold, silver and bronze, and then, you know, you see yourself as obviously one of the top qualifiers or top potential qualifiers for an Olympic Games in that same year. That was in February. The Olympic trials, I think, were in May. And yeah, I just didn’t have a great race.

that day, it’s all I can put it down to. I did the preparation, I put the work in and you know, I had a bit of a slip off the blocks as a backstroker. So there’s always that sort of challenging area of where you put your feet and how gripped they are on the wall. Sometimes it works well, other times, you know, there’s no other way to put it. It just wasn’t my day. And so subsequently missed the qualifying time and missed, you know, the top.

top two, which you need to come in to make an Olympic Games ⁓ and had to sort of suffer the consequences of that, which was hard of a lesson.

DI GILLETT [Host] (09:33)

And I think with high performing athletes, you’ve got to peak at the right moment. So peaking in February and then holding it there for that long, I mean, that’s kind of a metaphor for life. How hard is it to do that, to peak at the right time?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (09:52)

Yeah, it’s challenging. mean, as an athlete, you train to peak at key.

points in the athletic calendar year. Obviously the Olympics is the pinnacle. ⁓ You taper off a couple of weeks before a big race and you hope it all comes together. But sometimes things just go awry. A lot of the time when you do taper down and you allow your body to relax, that’s where you’re going to get a cold or you’re going to get sick or your immune system is going to dip and…

There’s just nothing that you can do about it at times. But there are moments that you can overcome it. I’ve raced many a time where I thought I was going to do a terrible job. I was unwell. I talk about this a lot in a keynote that I do in particular, swimming a race with a 40 degree fever internationally and still coming out with a bronze medal unexpectedly. Sometimes you surprise yourself.

DI GILLETT [Host] (10:49)

That describes life in so many ways.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (10:51)

It really does. You just have to deal with the unpredictability of it.

DI GILLETT [Host] (10:56)

So how old were you in 2000? You were…

YAS LONDON [Guest] (11:00)

I turned 18. yeah, 2000, I was just finishing school and yeah, turned 18. So became an adult and had to sort of figure out what to do with my life post-swimming, which was challenging.

DI GILLETT [Host] (11:15)

So what did that, missing the team, what did that do to your sense of self as a young woman? ⁓

YAS LONDON [Guest] (11:25)

think that moment had multiple impacts on…

my life. know, it was obviously a failure. was the pinnacle for any athlete to make an Olympic team, to call yourself an Olympian. You can win every other race on earth, but if you aren’t in the Olympics, there’s still something deep down that’s missing. So that was challenging to overcome. But I think a lot of things happened at once at that time because I had turned 18, become an adult, because I had finished school and had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life at that point. And I also decided

that, you know, did I want to go another four years and try again for the Olympics? And I just had to listen to my heart at that time, which, you know, as much as I tried to deny it, said, no, you’re not, you don’t know. I don’t have another four years in me. And

You know, the other thing was what was I going to do with life because we didn’t have the opportunities that are now available to many athletes, not very many female athletes, I might say, you know, sponsorships or commentating positions or whatever it might be, the dreams that all of us probably had deep down. They weren’t really realistic. And so I knew I had to reinvent myself at that point in time.

And it was challenging because all I’d ever known myself as was a swimmer and an athlete and everybody that I knew knew me as that. And so I did have a bit of a crisis of confidence and identity at that point in time, if I’m honest, I because I didn’t know who I was without swimming. And so it was a bit of a journey of self discovery from there.

DI GILLETT [Host] (13:03)

How did you land at where you landed? Because it’s the only commonality I can see so far is the 5 a.m.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (13:12)

Yeah,

I mean, look, that was a good lesson. It was good skills and experience to get. But I basically, you know, I had to run away in a way. I had what I call my gap year at that point in time. And I went over to Canada. just I had

found myself randomly working in reality television in the production unit. And I met a guy who I knew for a couple of days, it’s gonna sound so crazy, but he was lovely, who was a cameraman from Canada who would come out to Australia to film a television show. And when we finished working together for these couple of days, he said, oh, if you ever wanna come to Canada and do some work over here, give me a call, I’d love to have you come over. And because I…

really wasn’t sure what I was doing with my life. I just kind of took him up on his offer and I still cannot to this day believe my mum allowed me to go halfway across the world to go live in some guy’s like dungeon in his house, which it was. ⁓

But I think she knew I just needed to go and evolve. so I went over there and he was, he remains a wonderful friend. was a great person to me through a bit of a crisis time in my life. But I needed to be around people who didn’t know me for my swimming career, who wanted to get to know me for the person that I was. And I spent, yeah, close to 12 months over in Canada, doing all the things that I’d missed out on, I guess, as a teenager, going to parties,

being silly, doing, you I had my 21st birthday in Las Vegas. I went to Cuba, you know, all these great like growth opportunities, I guess, that happened for me. But I did know that I had to come back and get a job. And in my mind, I’d always sort of been thinking a little bit about what that might be. And towards the end of the trip, ⁓ this guy, his name was Kelly, his sister was an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

And one night she said, do you want to come on a ride along with me and see what the job’s all about? Which again, would never ever happen.

DI GILLETT [Host] (15:20)

in Australia. No, I was going to say that is, I was going to say does that happen? You see it

YAS LONDON [Guest] (15:25)

movies

but it did. It did then. I remember thinking gosh I should not be here because I was literally in the back of her police car driving to different jobs and it was so exciting and it was really fun and I loved the diversity of the work.

deep down the meaning and the impact that they had as police officers for people in these sorts of situations. And so, you know, I may or may not have had a bit of a crush on Dana Scully from the X-Files as a young girl and really loved a bit of the X-Files there. So I came back and went, why not join the police force? So I put my application in and the rest is history.

DI GILLETT [Host] (16:03)

that is awesome. So, but more than that, around that time, you’re also navigating your own identity in life in general. Can you share something about that with us?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (16:17)

Yeah, well, I think perhaps because I had spent years with my head looking up and down a black line, I’d not really explored much about my sexuality or who I was as a person. so, you know, I guess with the relief of what was happening in the swimming world now off my mind, it gave me space and time to sort of decide who I was and to explore a lot of those thoughts and feelings. And

I had never honestly given a second thought to being attracted to women versus men. ⁓ I’d always sort of been pretty balanced in that way, I guess, but it became evident while I was away that perhaps I swung the other way and it allowed me time to explore that, I guess. ⁓ So yeah, that was another.

change and quite a big change, I guess, to deal with amongst that loss of identity as an athlete and this new identity as a police officer. So yeah, I guess go back to your original question. Did I have to ever

find a time where I just went this is who I am, warts and all, accept me or not. That was probably the biggest moment for me ⁓ when it came to my family and my friends of standing in my power and you know believing in who I was and what I needed as a human being.

DI GILLETT [Host] (17:39)

So did you share that with family once you got back to Oz or did you share that from a distance from Canada?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (17:45)

No, I shared it when I got back to Oz. I think, you you’re not going to tell your parents too much about what you’re getting up to on Saturday nights and running around at, you know, gay bars and things like that. I think, you know, the moment that my mum started to notice that I was hanging around with a lot of lesbians and I remember her saying to me, darling, you’re never going to get a boyfriend if you keep hanging out with all these lesbian girls. And I sort of just had to turn to her in that moment and say, look, mum.

There’s a reason that I’m hanging out with a lot of lesbian girls who were my friends, mind you. ⁓ But it was about building community, I guess, and trying to ⁓ figure out who I was. I wasn’t putting any major labels on that, but I did.

⁓ one who acknowledge and give myself permission to explore this side of myself that I hadn’t thought about before. ⁓ So yeah, look, I have a beautiful family. I’m fortunate that I never really was at risk of some of the really terrible consequences that many other people in their rainbow community have had to deal with, like being disowned or…

you know, being abused or whatever it might be for being who you are. But I did have to deal with the perception of grief and loss of the life they thought that I would live. ⁓ Certainly for my mum, there was concerns around

you know, having children and getting married and all of the things that she had in her mind about what my life would look like. And I can now reflecting back, really understand the kind of grief and loss element of that. But I’ve always been pretty determined to live life on my terms. And I was not going to miss out on having children and I was not going to miss out on getting married if that was what I chose to do. Marriage equality hadn’t happened at that point. But

⁓ you know, I was going to live a life as close to what I had decided I was going to have, ⁓ no matter who I was with. So that kind of.

DI GILLETT [Host] (19:48)

keeping

all of those boxes since then.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (19:51)

Yeah, we have. ⁓ I think, you know, you live a life on your terms. It’s not always easy, but you have more control than you think.

DI GILLETT [Host] (20:00)

Yeah, that’s wonderful. So if there is a woman in the audience at the moment or a listener at the moment who has reached a crossroad and doesn’t know how to actually step forward with that, what would you like her to walk away with?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (20:19)

Look, I think the first thing is to be a bit kind on yourself and don’t place unrealistic expectations on yourself. You’ve got to have self-acceptance first because once you do…

come out with this, it can be jarring for some people. We’re lucky now that in this day and age there is a lot more acceptance, ⁓ not just acceptance, but an embracing of the rainbow community. That’s not to say there aren’t challenges and people pushing against it, of course, as we’re starting to see around the world. But I think being sure of yourself, listening to that inner voice is really important, taking some time to explore and make sure that it’s right.

And then I think the big thing is finding community around you, you your champions, your allies, the people who love you for who you are. You’ll know who they are and to lean on them. I think I imagine a lot of the listeners on this podcast are really strong, competent, you know, often known as alpha.

women or allies and sometimes we can get trapped in thinking that we can do it all ourselves but we’ve got to remember that we need community and supporters around us and to create those support networks and systems.

DI GILLETT [Host] (21:32)

And that’s a

really interesting point, Yas, because I think you’re right. ⁓ We end up being attracted to like-minded people. We group together, we find ourselves. mean, if I think of all of my girlfriends, they’re all fierce, determined. There’s so many of them who are entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs and go-getters, and your world will be the same. But it doesn’t mean we don’t struggle with the same things that…

that those who have less confidence than ourselves have. And in some respects, we feel we need to keep the wall up so that people don’t know that we might leave our feet paddling underwater at a million miles an hour just to keep our heads above water.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (22:17)

That’s right. That’s right. I think it is hard, especially if you see yourself and you identify as a high achiever. It can be particularly difficult to reach out and ask for help because people are, guess, surprised that you need it. can be these real perceptions and you’ve got it all handled. And we’ve got to just be realistic and remember nobody has it all handled. Certainly not all of the time. And so it is that kind of moment for each of us to remember to reach out

our strong friends as well as those that we think perhaps might need extra support because you never know what someone’s going going through you know behind the scenes.

DI GILLETT [Host] (22:55)

Yeah, that’s so true. Well, you’re listening to the Power of Women podcast and I’m talking with Yas London and we’re just getting started.

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode.

Yas, you spent 13 years in the New South Wales Police Force, which is quite a period of time. think we’ve already established early mornings from swimming were pretty good training ground because as you’ve already suggested, policing day or your policing day started really, really early. You had the experience in Canada with your cameraman mate’s sister in the Mounties.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (23:37)

be.

DI GILLETT [Host] (23:47)

What was it about the policing that really resonated and when did you know it was right for you?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (23:53)

don’t even know if it was.

perfectly right, but what I did see was a career that allowed me to move around and to get lots of different types of experience. think, you know, I mentioned as a kid, I was bored easily. was, that’s constant. I’m still this challenge for me, to be honest. I like to be stimulated and, you know, have a little bit of a bright, shiny thing, fascination. But, you know, I loved the idea of a career that had social impact. I knew that I was good under pressure.

was good with people and I wanted to be able to contribute I guess in a meaningful way. Meaningful work was important to me.

And so, yeah, the ability to have diverse experiences, whether it was general duties policing or whether it was working in the proactive crime team or whether it was working in corporate comms. I did some supervision for some of the police television shows for a period of time, like Missing Persons Unit and the recruits and Highway Patrol, because I had a bit of a television background that allowed me to sort of step in there. But the majority of my service I spent at Rose Bay Police Station

in the eastern suburbs of Sydney as a youth liaison officer. And I took that role on because I was ready to step off the truck a little bit. Night shifts and ⁓ rotating rosters were pretty challenging. I was never someone that did particularly well staying up all night. ⁓ And I’ve always sort of had a knack with young people to understand where they’re at and to help them. And so I thought that would be a good role. ⁓

And I guess, yeah, that was the role that changed my life, to be honest. ⁓ I dealt with a lot of different situations, but the one that brought me into the world of technology was a suicide negotiation with a 14-year-old girl over a clifftop known as The Gap.

Now that is a not yeah it’s really well well known 96 meters high and you know unfortunately for me as a cop in that area I was there regularly which was a surprise to me when I first started at Rose Bay but ⁓

DI GILLETT [Host] (26:04)

What’s regularly? I

know we don’t talk about suicide in terms of, you know, a media thing, but what is regular in something like that?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (26:16)

Well, you know, depending on the time of year that you were working, there were times where I would be up there several times a week, sometimes several times a shift. So when we were looking at, you know, periods of time of the year, summertime, Christmas time was particularly challenging. I think that’s a really important thing for those of us to, you know, who have.

mainly happy families to remember that times like Christmas can be really, really hard for a lot of people. They aren’t joyful times. They can be dangerous times for many women in particular. ⁓ And yeah, so, you know, it could have been multiple times a shift. think the most I’d been up there is three times in a shift. ⁓

and you’re talking to people sometimes for just a few moments or sometimes you’re up there for a few hours. ⁓ I remember the very first day that I started at Rose Bay, we did our sort of briefing in the morning and we were going on a little ride along up to the gap to just have a look at the area and get familiar with it. And when we arrived, there was an active negotiation happening, which we of course all ran up to help with. And while that negotiation was happening,

another person jumped from the cliff top at the other end of the gap.

That day, I mean, that was a real wake up call to the impact and prevalence of mental health, even in ⁓ the most influential and high socioeconomic areas of our society. We’ve got to understand that other people are struggling and to not make assumptions about what their life looks like. And I think that’s what that day really taught me.

DI GILLETT [Host] (28:02)

Yeah. through that lens, what surprised, and the lens being a police officer, what surprised you most about human behaviour?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (28:14)

⁓ Look, I think after a while there wasn’t a lot of surprises because you learn not to make assumptions about anyone. People have a mask and what’s going on behind that mask can be very, very different. So in terms of the mental health aspects, you know, we dealt with women who were struggling with postnatal depression. We dealt with young people who were dealing with cyber bullying incidents. We dealt with

you know, CEOs who had gambling addictions and had gambled away their life savings and everything and their family didn’t know. We had other elderly people who had been diagnosed with diseases like dementia, who didn’t want to be a drain on their family. All of these different reasons for people to be up there on that cliff top. And so you do learn a lot about what people are going through. And I guess that the only way that you can can

can solve that problem is to connect with them and understand their side. And I think that’s, you know, a really kind of a morbid way to say you’ve learnt life lessons, but I’ll never forget the people and the lessons that I learnt up at the GAP. And I still bring those lessons into what I share in my work today. And I think that really, you know, being able to see someone ⁓ and not make assumptions about them is the greatest lesson that I’ve learnt.

DI GILLETT [Host] (29:37)

Yeah, and that’s a line I have to say, that my husband uses all the time, which is never assume. And I think that is such an important thing. And I know I’m guilty of it, you know, even in the traffic. all are. Yeah, even in the traffic, somebody does something and I might gesture ⁓ my expression of interest at the time. ⁓ you can’t assume what sort of day they’re having.

who’s to know what they’ve just walked out of, what’s going on in their world, how their day started. So I think it’s a really important lesson. But can I ask, and it’s a bit of an obvious question, but I do want to touch on it. In the police force as a female, was that a tough place for you as a collegiate workforce?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (30:32)

For a period of time, definitely. I think there was certainly bigger barriers that I needed to overcome to prove my worth. ⁓ Certainly as a woman and even more so as a gay woman. I think probably the sexualisation ⁓ commentary, the harassment that happened. ⁓ There was workplace bullying. I had situations with a superior who had made advances that I rejected.

who basically gave me the silent treatment for weeks and weeks and that silent treatment extended to quite critical situations that were dangerous where I wasn’t being responded to on police radio. So yeah, it was challenging.

It probably came down more to feeling like I had to prove myself. And once you did get to that point where, you know, you were given the tick of approval anecdotally by your colleagues that you were a good operator, then that reputation did follow you throughout the police force. And that was a benefit, I guess, if you were seen as a competent officer. You know, that continued, but it takes a lot to get there in the first place and certainly as a woman. Yeah.

DI GILLETT [Host] (31:50)

And look, mean, you’re a very attractive woman. Did that work for you or against you in that setting?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (31:57)

⁓ I would say it worked against me for a fairly significant period of time. As I said, you know, I was only seen as fresh meat, I guess, for the first period of time where I was. ⁓ But, you know, that perhaps was by men, but it was also by other female officers. There’s this really interesting, you know, proximity to power.

issue that goes on in the police force. And so I can remember in my first sort of week or so being at the police station that I started at having a female officer call me a lava lamp. I was like confused at what that meant. It means pretty to look at, but not much else going on and or not much else that you can you can offer. So, you know, coming into a new workplace, I was I think all of

23, 24 years old, really enthusiastic, wanting to start. And that was kind of the entry. And so it was a bit shocking and a bit hard to handle. But I always sort of go back into this, guess, frame of mind of what can I control here? And a little bit of a, can prove myself and I’m gonna prove you wrong. That’s just that kind of, I don’t know, fire in my belly that I have as part of my nature.

DI GILLETT [Host] (33:11)

But it is challenging. That’s what got you down the pool following that black line. It’s same drive.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (33:17)

It is that same drive. And I think as well, Di, knowing that I had a lot more to offer as well. And the challenge that I had there is when you’re in the police, the only thing that matters is your time in the job. So you could have done amazing things outside of the police force, but none of that really seems to count against

you the work that you’re doing there. So I could say, you know, I’ve worked in television, I have been a, you know, a near Olympian, I’ve won, you know, international gold medals. This is the person that I am. This is the discipline that I have. This is what I’m the competency I’m bringing to this role. But none of that matters because you enter the world and you enter the police force as a probationary constable, the lowest person on the ladder. ⁓ And you are based on, you know, how well you respond, but also how well you adhere

to rules and hierarchy. And I’ve always found that very difficult. So I was probably a bit of a square peg in a round hole for quite some time.

DI GILLETT [Host] (34:20)

⁓

That’s an interesting thing because in most of our careers what we’ve done is recognised as the amalgam of who we are. That’s a bit of a unique scenario where it’s like we don’t give a toss. You are only the entity that you are in this job and your history counts for little if nothing.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (34:35)

Yeah.

Absolutely. You are valued based purely on your time at rank. So you you go through the ranks, you become a constable, a senior constable, a leading senior and sergeant and above. And the respect goes up ⁓ at a concurrent level to your rank. ⁓

So, you you could be a senior constable and have a lot of respect, but you’re always at the mercy of your superiors and what they think. And I think one of the challenges that I had was I value people on, you know, their ethics, their integrity, how they behave, all of the things that we should look at and say, you are a person worth following. And there are many great people in the police just like that. But there are also people who really enjoy, you know, the rank and form and hierarchical structure.

Yeah It is it is and there’s a lot of people that perhaps I didn’t feel deserved that level of respect which yet

DI GILLETT [Host] (35:34)

It’s a place to hide.

which will

be the same thing that our defence forces suffer with it, these overtly hierarchical structures have reason and they have flaws, clearly.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (35:55)

That’s right. They’re imperfect. Possibly a system that needs reshaping in the very near future.

DI GILLETT [Host] (36:01)

Yeah, the police force though was where the first intersection with cyber safety really came onto your radar. What were you seeing that became the drip feed to what was the next step in your career?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (36:23)

Yeah, there were a couple of different incidents. you know, many people listening might remember the beautiful Charlotte Dawson, who was a famous celebrity here in Australia, who died by suicide. And I was fortunate enough to know her through a period of time in the lead up to her death, where she was being quite seriously trolled and harassed by different people on the internet. And

Personally, I believe, you know, that was perhaps a contributor to her mental ill health at that time. So her experiences there really woke me up, I guess, to the impacts of online environments on our physical world. ⁓ But around that time as well, I had a suicide negotiation with a young girl up at the Gap. ⁓ And she was up there because she had been cyber bullied quite significantly. And I remember this conversation with her

It was like a penny drop moment because I just, didn’t know a lot about social media. I’ve got to admit to you at the time, like it was 2012, I think Instagram had been around for two years. I knew a bit about Facebook, but that was about the extent of it. And I realized that a situation that had happened online for this young girl had literally brought her to a cliff’s edge where she felt like her life was not living, not worth living anymore.

And I just wanted to do more about that. I remember at the time, you know, my wife and I were considering going through IVF and so we were thinking a lot about kids and what that could look like. And I just had this moment of just internal grief and distress that if this ever happened to my child or anyone that I knew, you know, I just don’t know how I would have handled it. And so,

I didn’t see a lot being done in that space. And because I’d been working in schools at the same time as a youth liaison officer, I started getting asked to come in and talk about this to the kids. I was asked to teach the staff. I was asked to talk to the parents and there just wasn’t enough education out there. So I started a side business, which I’ll take my hat off to the police. They allowed me secondary employment to start this business.

And I did both for a period of time and was really fortunate to meet a couple of other fantastic, powerful women in my business partners, Jordan Foster and Taryn Wren. And we created a online safety business that still operates today. ⁓ Working in about 500 schools across Australia. It’s one of the biggest online safety education businesses across the country. And it was acquired by an organization called Coria back in 2020.

that’s sort of what led me into the world of technology. ⁓ And, you know, they’re a safety tech organization and they create fantastic tools for schools, but also parents to help manage online time for kids. And so, yeah, it sort of was a very random ⁓ segue into the world of tech in many ways, but something really driven by self-belief. And again, that need for meaningful work and to make an impact and a difference. ⁓

So yeah, just followed that gut instinct, I guess.

DI GILLETT [Host] (39:36)

Yeah,

and as you say, you weren’t a tech person, but it was the awareness of what was happening in that space. So with that in mind, do you think our recent, ⁓ I’ll call it really a global trial of taking younger children offline is effective or will be effective?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (40:00)

This is a very big question, Di. What I will say is I think it’s an excellent first step. think that the ⁓ social media ban or the delay did what many of us in this space for many years have been trying to do, which is draw attention to the issue that is causing critical harm to our kids in many ways. What this ban does though is it kind of segments kids off a portion of the internet while leaving

a lot of the rest of the internet wide open. And, you know, it’s great for younger kids perhaps who are not on social media in the first place or whose parents have, you know, been able to action, you know, keeping them off it for a period of time. But what we know about kids is that when they are banned from something, and I certainly was this kid as well, you might have been too, you will find a way around it.

DI GILLETT [Host] (40:55)

Yeah, I think that’s right.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (40:57)

What happens when you find a way around it and you’re not meant to be there is if something happens that’s bad.

DI GILLETT [Host] (41:03)

No safety net.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (41:04)

No safety net and you’re not going to ask for help because you don’t want to get in trouble. so what it does is drive down help seeking behavior. And that is the single biggest protective factor for kids when it comes to online environments is being prepared to say something’s happening. I need help and I need help from a trusted adult who I know will be able to help rectify the situation in some way. So, you know, there’s a real divide about this ban.

And I think it’s really unnecessary. think people are being put into the for camp or the against camp. And I think we just need to say, look, it’s here. We have to deal with it. It’s a great first step, but we need to look at a more holistic solution, not just banning them from one section of the internet when we know significant online harm happens in many other darker places that they’re accessing at the moment too.

DI GILLETT [Host] (41:56)

Yeah, and

you’re so right. I was reflecting on a childhood story in my own home the other day and I was a horse rider from age four, but I never was allowed to go riding on my own and I didn’t like sleeping in. And my parents used to hammer up literally a woolen picnic blanket over the window to make it darker. And what I used to do at five in the morning was pull the corner out.

shimmy my way out the window, walk up to the hill where my pony was. I was too little to get on and saddle it on my own. So I used to use a milk crate, but I could sneak out, shimmy out the window, go riding and be back in bed to be woken up at seven o’clock and say, hey, it’s me. And all the things that could have gone wrong in that two hour window, because I’d been told I wasn’t allowed to do something, but I was.

That was half the appeal. Let’s see if I can do it without getting caught. I mean, that is human nature.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (43:00)

It

is human nature. It’s exactly right. And I think when it comes to kids in technology, you know, they’ve got the time and the motivation, you know, this is their world. And the means. Like how often are we the ones that say, darling, can you fix the internet for me? Or can you help me make my computer work or whatever it might be? These kids.

DI GILLETT [Host] (43:09)

and the main

The younger they are, the more tech savvy they are. That’s exactly right.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (43:25)

They are. So, you know, we’ve got to be realistic about what this ban can do, but also importantly, the unintended consequences that happen as a result of that, which is that they find themselves in much more dark and dangerous places on the internet that are far less regulated, talking to chatbots that might encourage self harm, ⁓ you know, spending time on games where they’re really, unfortunately, learning about

toxic masculinity and misogyny or the manosphere, know, these community forums that they’re on. Social media is harmful. I don’t think there’s much to deny that, but it’s like a piece of Swiss cheese. There’s holes everywhere and we need to look at it more holistically.

DI GILLETT [Host] (44:10)

Yeah. So where does this intersect with what you’re doing with your business now, First Movers? Is this in the same sweet spot?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (44:18)

Yeah, well, I think first movers is essentially a leadership philosophy. And it’s really based on my belief that a lot of us in life, particularly women and girls, we’re kind of can

conditioned to wait, ⁓ know, wait until someone else tells us something is okay or wait for someone who’s perhaps more qualified. There’s a lot of situations, I guess, where we hesitate and First Movers is really about being a call to action to stop waiting for the signal and remember that you can actually be the signal yourself in terms of the systems and ⁓ I guess processes that affect our lives that no longer fit the future.

DI GILLETT [Host] (44:58)

Is

metaphor for your own life?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (45:00)

could be. I think it is, you know, I knew that I wanted to expand my work beyond kids, you know, I’ll always work in terms of digital safeguarding and young people. But what I started to see was, you know, equal damage happening, particularly to women and girls when it came to online environments. what I can teach and what I can share, I guess, is what I feel has helped me be successful, which is to, you know,

I’m not saying everybody needs to run out and do whatever they want, but…

If you see a solution or you think that you have an idea that’s worth hearing or you know, there’s a system that you think you can reshape. Don’t wait for someone else to come up with that idea. Believe in yourself enough to step forward and be the first to go first. ⁓ You know, it is about thinking through. It’s not about being reckless. ⁓ But I guess my work in First Movers is that ethos and it’s particularly targeted, I guess, in terms of themes and content around technology, gender.

youth and culture. Those are sort of the four areas that I specialize in. ⁓ But I think, you know, the digital world at the moment is amplifying gender bias, inequality. And if we don’t start to reshape it, if we don’t have more women in tech, if we don’t have safety by design embedded ⁓ in these these types of technologies, then we’re going to find ourselves in a really problematic situation in the next couple of years. You know, we saw recently in January,

the GROC put her in a bikini scenario where the GROC chatbot on X was able to create nude images of thousands and thousands of women and girls and create image-based abuse. Now that chatbot at one point, I think it was on the 8th of January, was getting 6,000 requests an hour to nudify women and girls. There were 3 million women and girls total that were impacted.

around 23,000 images of child abuse material were created as a result of that. ⁓ And so, you know, these are significant harms that impact people in the real world.

DI GILLETT [Host] (47:13)

against the gender

consequences of AI.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (47:17)

It is. And we need to understand that, you know, there are things we can do, but we have to understand how it impacts people in the first place. And what we’re seeing is, you know, when women stick their head up from the pulpit, when they want to become leaders, when they want to be, you know, if they’re amazing athletes, you know, if they’re high profile, if they’re journalists, for example, they are targeted even more severely. If you’re a politician.

DI GILLETT [Host] (47:44)

any public image position.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (47:46)

100%.

And so, know, whoever has the visibility owns the narrative and the online world allows us to have a voice and a voice of influence. And what happens when women are suffering these sorts of online harms is they refrain from participating. There’s a phenomenon called the silencing effect, which means that women don’t fight back. just withdraw from platforms. They withdraw from public life.

⁓ And that’s not a situation I’m prepared to cop, to be perfectly honest with you. And so I want to do everything that I can to try and make sure that these systems are designed in a way that is equitable and safe for women and for girls and allows equal opportunity for a future for all of us.

DI GILLETT [Host] (48:31)

That’s admirable work, Yas. My question though around AI is given AI’s learning from everything that’s out there in the ether, can we train out the bias that’s already existed in society for so many generations that AI is a level playing field for everybody?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (48:58)

It’s a really great question. If I had the answer, I’d probably be very rich woman. But I think, you know, in the end…

We’ve got we have systems that perhaps we can cleanse in terms of data. We have businesses that can choose more ethical data sets that have gone through checks and balances. Can we totally rewrite history? Probably not. But I guess that next step is understanding that each and every one of us has the capability to apply a critical thinking lens to the things that we’re seeing, to challenge and call out bias, to correct it, to take those small steps.

each of us as individuals can take that has scale when we actually action them. ⁓ So I guess, you know, is there a perfect solution to that? No. But the day that we stop trying, we may as well give up. think that’s right. We’ve got to keep pushing.

DI GILLETT [Host] (49:51)

So what’s the title of the book that’s about to come out?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (49:55)

Oh gosh, it’s still a work in progress. haven’t got the actual title. No, it’ll be around August, July, early August is what I want. Working title is sort of dancing around the art of going first, which is the same title as the keynote that I do a lot as well. You know, is it an art form? I don’t know. I think, you know, it could be.

DI GILLETT [Host] (49:58)

for the release date.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (50:21)

And I think that there’s tangible lessons that each and every one of us can apply to our own lives. It’s about women, about inclusion, about courageous action. And I guess, you know, always that first mover ethos of, you know, making sure that we don’t wait for the signal. Remember that we are the signal when the world needs to change.

DI GILLETT [Host] (50:40)

Brilliant. Is there, and I did mean to ask you earlier, is there a pin up first mover that you look to as aspirational mentor, exemplar?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (50:55)

I have many, I guess. really, ⁓ well, I actively surround myself with women who believe in themselves, who want to live a big life, who are chasing dreams and have ambition and goals, but also are cheerleaders for each other. you know, if I have a great group of people like that, but if I think about the OG first mover, the one that really taught me to chase my dreams.

you know, it probably is my nanny June, who has passed away now. But she was, you know, an incredible rule breaker, status quo shaker, amazing woman in the 60s, an entrepreneur, ⁓ overcame a troubled marriage ⁓ to create the very first gourmet sandwich store underneath the ASX building in Sydney city.

DI GILLETT [Host] (51:45)

There you go,

there’s a bit of history.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (51:48)

No,

she used to say she sold fruits to the suits because she used to put pineapple and cranberries on sourdough bread and make these crazy concoctions, but everybody loved her. And she always used to say, you know, never let anyone tell you who you are. You chase your dreams, you go for them. ⁓ And I’ve always believed that from a very young age. so I have her to thank for that as well as my mom and the rest of the women in my family.

DI GILLETT [Host] (52:11)

Yeah, fantastic. Couple of quick questions to wrap up. What’s your superpower?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (52:16)

Yes.

gosh. I think I’m pretty good at connecting with and understanding people quickly and I trust my instincts and I trust myself to move on them.

DI GILLETT [Host] (52:36)

Yeah. What’s a phrase that defines you?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (52:40)

I live and die by the saying that action beats good intention every day of the week. I think that, you know, that’s how confidence is built. You know, it’s not a prerequisite, it’s a result of taking action.

DI GILLETT [Host] (52:52)

Yeah. And what was the most valuable life lesson that underpins who you are today?

YAS LONDON [Guest] (52:59)

Most valuable life lesson, that in life there’s always someone who needs to be the first to go first, so why not you?

DI GILLETT [Host] (53:07)

Yeah, beautiful. You were always going to start First Movers, Yas. That was always going to be the name of one of your business ventures.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (53:15)

I think it was. It’s taken me a long time to get here though, Di. I think, like I said, I’m interested in passion. It feels like I’ve lived a very big life.

DI GILLETT [Host] (53:22)

Hey, that’s not a long time.

in front of you to do more.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (53:28)

But I’m excited about it. That gut instinct, you’ve to listen to it. And there’s the highs and lows, obviously, of any entrepreneurial journey. But I know that this is the impact that I want to make on the world and on women to have that self-belief and that just go get them attitude. Because I think women should rule the world.

DI GILLETT [Host] (53:49)

There you have it. Well, the power of women title might suggest we could be in the same, on the same vein. exactly. Well, thank you. It’s been a great conversation joining me today. I know we’ve jumped around a little bit. We’ve been cyber, we’ve been cyber security, we’ve been bullying in the workforce, we’ve been identity, we’ve been resilience building through.

not necessarily always getting what we want in life. But we’ve covered a whole lot of aspects that I think still come back to the individual aspect of building resilience, building strength, building self-belief. And these are the types of conversations that I think we need to have more and more of. And I’m the next generation up from you. I’m in the baby boomers and I’m not sure we had as much of…

of the role models as your generation have to look to and hopefully we can all help each other because I think this intergenerational mix of knowledge and learning and connection is what makes it so much better to move forward together.

YAS LONDON [Guest] (55:04)

Yeah,

absolutely. I couldn’t agree more, Di. We’re all in this together. Got to give each other the leg up that we need.

DI GILLETT [Host] (55:10)

Exactly. Fantastic.

Thanks, Yas. Until next time.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:11 Yasmin’s Journey: From Athlete to Advocate

05:59 Navigating Identity and Self-Acceptance

09:17 The Impact of Failure and Reinvention

12:13 Finding Purpose in Policing

15:08 Exploring Sexuality and Community

18:08 Advice for Women at a Crossroad

21:15 The Role of Support Networks

24:20 Life Lessons from the Police Force

27:33 Understanding Mental Health and Human Behavior

30:27 Challenges of Being a Female Officer

36:18 The Intersection of Cyber Safety and Mental Health

39:31 Navigating Technology and Online Safety

44:13 First Movers: A Leadership Philosophy

48:28 Addressing Gender Bias in AI and Technology

Connect with Di:

Find Yasmin London at:

Website https://yasminlondon.com/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasmin-london/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_yaslondon_/

This is the home of unapologetic conversations and powerful stories of reinvention. New episodes drop every 2^nd Monday to fuel your week with insights on leadership, resilience, and success. Subscribe and join a community of women who are changing the game.

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Playing It Safe Was Never an Option

by admin | May 18, 2026 | Female Entrepreneur

At what point does playing it safe become the greatest risk of all?

That’s the question sitting at the centre of this conversation. Vanessa Bell has walked runways for global fashion houses. She’s led million-dollar media campaigns at one of Australia’s most awarded agencies. And then she walked away from all of it to live and work on the land in regional New South Wales and build a luxury fashion brand rooted in Australian Merino wool.

This is a story about what happens when a woman stops waiting to be invited and starts laying the foundations herself. We go deep on the proof problem – the additional credibility tax women pay in male-dominated industries, on what it takes to be taken seriously when the room wasn’t built for you, and on why perseverance will always outlast passion. If fear has been doing your decision-making, this episode is the interruption it needs.

➡️We explore:

Vanessa’s career transition from fashion and media to agribusiness and life in a small country town in rural Australia.
The importance of resilience, courage, and community in reinvention.
Women in male-dominated industries: Why she chose to create her own table rather than fight for a seat at someone else’s.
The shift from attention economy to trust economy, and what that means for sustainable fashion.
The supply chain from sheep to garment, and what sustainability and full traceability involves.

Key Takeaways:

Perseverance is more powerful than passion. Passion gets you started. Perseverance gets you through.
Resilience is forged in difficulty, not preserved by avoiding it. The path is not meant to be perfect.
Community is not optional. Whether you are building a business or surviving a drought, isolation is the enemy.
Provenance is the new luxury. Consumers are moving from attention to trust, and the brands that will endure are the ones that share their journey.

📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT [Host] (00:02.094)

The power of women. What does it mean to you and who do you think of?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (00:08.258)

Di it means to me to lead with strength and empathy and when I think of the power of women, it’s really about the women in the bush. They’re women that generally don’t get a voice and they contribute in so many meaningful ways to the economy, to communities, they have long-term vision, they have resilience.

So yes, that’s what comes to mind.

DI GILLETT [Host] (00:40.61)

The question underpinning today’s conversation is at what point does playing it safe become the greatest risk of all? I’m Di Gillett and this is the Power Of Women Podcast and we’re a storytelling platform that showcases and celebrates the strength, resilience and achievements of women from all walks of life. Now today’s conversation is really about reinvention. Reinvention as lived experience, which is what I’m passionate about sharing.

here on the podcast. Personal journeys to inspire, motivate, and ignite a spark in all of us. And my guest today is Vanessa Bell. Vanessa has moved across industries and world. She began in fashion and modeling, working with global houses, including Valentino, Armani, and Chanel. She later built a career in media and strategic communications before making a quantum leap, leaving city life to live and work.

on the land. Today as the founder and CEO of Vanessa Bell Luxury Knitwear, she’s building a fashion brand anchored by the magnificence of Australian merino wool. And her work sits at a unique intersection of fashion, agriculture and sustainability in a sector where female leadership is still rare. This is a compelling story of female courage, of determination and resilience,

So stay with us. Vanessa Bell, welcome to the Power of Women podcast.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (02:15.47)

Dara, thank you so much for having me. It really is an honor to be here today.

DI GILLETT [Host] (02:20.952)

Vanessa, it’s great timing because you’ve just had a launch of the brand and of the collection on the property at Emu Creek. How did that go?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (02:32.906)

It was such a joy, literally a dream come true. And it was a whirlwind getting the entire event together, but truly a mix of media, industry and community to really celebrate this foundation launch. And truly we were blessed with the gods and wonderful to have that immersive experience, which I think is incredibly important for consumers to actually see.

where the product comes from at source.

DI GILLETT [Host] (03:03.362)

Yeah, beautiful. And the weather was kind.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (03:05.996)

The weather was remarkably kind for Walker. At this time of the year, can be minus 15 or, you know, it’s still hot. it’s, it, it’s, it’s one of those climates where higher than Jindabyne, which for those that are familiar with snow country, that’s right. Yeah. So we’re, we’re in the new England, but very much cold climate.

DI GILLETT [Host] (03:21.742)

more.

DI GILLETT [Host] (03:27.106)

so your product gets a fair workout in your own wardrobe. Yes. Yeah. So Vanessa, this podcast is really built on the idea that reinvention is grounded in courage and determination and tapping into resilience. And you’ve made, as I suggested in the intro, that quantum leap from media strategy to agribusiness and sustainable.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (03:32.45)

Dintage.

DI GILLETT [Host] (03:54.986)

and all of the components that come behind that. When you look at all of those chapters, is there in fact a common thread across all of them?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (04:07.122)

I think the common thread is perseverance, a sense of humor, curiosity, really a desire to evolve and to take risks. And I think that’s pretty well covers every industry that I’ve been in, every experience that I have willingly participated in. And really when I look at things from 30,000 feet, people often talk about passion.

And while I think that that’s truly important, perseverance is actually more important.

DI GILLETT [Host] (04:42.636)

Yeah, I’d agree with that. think that’s a great point to drive home. So when people look at where you are now, and it does, for all intents and purposes, appear to be quite a significant pivot. And I think any of these significant life changes from a career perspective or a lifestyle perspective take courage. If you reflect on that, is courage in fact part of your overall life story?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (05:13.56)

Definitely diet, although I’m not sure if I were to look back as a younger person, I would necessarily have put that label on it. I think when you’re actually in the thick of it, you don’t realize that you’re actually pressing into that car. But certainly when I look back, particularly when I was modeling, you know, if I go back to thinking there was certainly no text messaging, there were phone calls to my father from.

DI GILLETT [Host] (05:27.47)

That’d be naivety.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (05:42.432)

Austria or Germany or wherever I happen to be and and are you okay? Yes, and then you know you’d hang up so resilience that courage to really put yourself out there and Yes, I definitely think it’s been a huge part of my journey

DI GILLETT [Host] (05:58.126)

And you raise an interesting point because we’re such a connected world now, but when we were both starting our careers and distance, connection was nowhere near as easy. It was a reverse charge phone call on a good day or an aerogram on a bad day.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (06:16.12)

That’s right. Or a pigeon, or a pigeon, depending on which country. Exactly. Close to. Absolutely. But yes, I think, you know, that courage really has helped shaped everything from starting a new business to, as I said, travelling across different countries. And then, you know, obviously as I’ve moved into migrating from city to country.

DI GILLETT [Host] (06:41.112)

So what parts of those have been the richest experience that have shaped you both as an individual and as a businesswoman?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (06:49.166)

Goodness, such a huge question across so many different, you know, when I look at being in fashion or, you know, stepping into media, it’s really been, it’s been just such a joyful experience. So in terms of shaping me, that I think the biggest shift was actually moving from city to country and being able to look at opportunities through a fresh lens. you know, often when you’re in the thick of everyday life, being in the traffic,

driving to, you know, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, you become desensitised and you become part of, you know, you’re part of just a normal everyday routine. And I think so much of my life has just been completely out of routine, know, whether or not it’s in

DI GILLETT [Host] (07:35.79)

it rains or not is a very different meaning to somebody in the country than somebody living in the city.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (07:41.548)

Yes. So, you know, I think you would appreciate this growing up in the country. It’s there are two different, vastly different worlds, both offer very wonderful things, but also there are challenges. And really, I think my learning sits within those challenges and being able to look at opportunities, see things again through fresh eyes and think, hmm, OK, what can I do here? How can I how can I further myself? What can I learn? And

When you’re really immersed in nature, this is something that comes home to you. You don’t necessarily have a choice in it, which I think is Mother Nature’s way of keeping us on our toes.

DI GILLETT [Host] (08:23.096)

So for the listener, because many people have got no sense of what it’s like to live in the country and be reliant on the weather, and we’re certainly learning in a volatile world that the agro sector is being impacted in so many ways that perhaps city dwellers couldn’t even imagine.

You’ve made the transition in reverse. I came from country to city and that’s not that uncommon, albeit as an 18 year old, that was a big, deal. Getting myself settled in in a faster paced life. And I’m not saying I hadn’t seen traffic lights, but just a faster paced world. Now you’ve gone the reverse as you have said.

What are some of the tangible transitions in making that move that you could share with us that perhaps were most testing?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (09:28.263)

I think for me the most testing thing was moving into a very very small community. know if you’re even in Sydney or Melbourne you know when you’re part of a larger community privacy is something that we value very deeply in the city. When you move to a small country town everyone knows you or they presume they’ve got this preconceived understanding in their minds of who you might be or how you might behave and

found that most challenging and I feel that, you know, come on, what are the benefits about being an ex model is that you have an incredibly thick skin. you sort of take everything with her. So, but I made a concerted effort, which for someone that is very reserved, you know, I definitely take after my father. He has

always being considered very arrogant for those that don’t know him because he is very reserved and he’s very private.

DI GILLETT [Host] (10:28.654)

and this is often confused with arrogance.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (10:31.488)

Absolutely. And so I had to really step out of my comfort zone and connect and community was vital. I knew that I would not necessarily fit in with, with everyone in the community and that’s fine. That’s completely fine. But that’s right. And, for me at that time, I was, I just had my son. So he was, you know, a few months old and, and that’s actually where I was able to find solace was.

with other other moms that were in the district that also had young children and just by sheer fluke found the most amazing bunch of girlfriends. So I think community in that sense is in terms of such a massive shift is really, really vital to your mental health and wellbeing. But also having a sense of purpose. know, when you go from, I was one of

the executive team at a media agency in Sydney called Slingshot, at the time was Australia’s most highly awarded media agency, independent media agency. you know, like I’ve just gone from running campaigns that were in excess of a million dollars to being on a farm with a baby. And that had some wonderful things, you know. I mean, I’d always wanted to have a beautiful family.

So I was really embracing the pace and the space of country life that I found really joyful. But at the same time, I realized I needed my own sense of purpose. And ironically, my sense of purpose came from a baby blanket that was gifted to me by my mother, which was knitted by my great-grandmother, Sarah Jane Bond, back in 1940. And I realized this was this beautiful Merino baby blanket, and it was still going strong.

you know, 75 years later, and I had this light bulb moment of why, why are you not able to buy these beautiful blankets? Everything that I looked for was synthetic or no one was doing it. And so that’s where my journey really commenced in the bush was around a desire to do something that was meaningful. I’m, never been good at nasal gaze, gaze. You know, I really need to be doing something that’s

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (12:48.364)

that has purpose behind it. And then working with local ladies that were elderly to workshop a prototype based on my great-grandmother’s knitting, which then became the genesis and inspiration for what I’m doing today. And Dietrually, that business was my saving because within three months we were on landline. I had these extraordinarily beautiful baby blanket designs, some of them dating back to 19…

11, 19, 12, you know, I was going through all these patterns with Patti Stone from Dalton, who’s just, I’m sure she won’t mind me saying, but Pat’s now in her nineties and I’d travel out to Dalton and she’d have the scones and cup of tea and we’d go through all her knitting patterns. And I gave this sense of purpose of creating something that was built on love and longevity and that I could create something that would impact elderly women where they felt like they were being valued. They were

passing on this generational wealth and knowledge that was just mind blowing, not to mention Pat makes the best scones you’ve ever had in your life. So it was just this wonderful group of women and to have that success through Buy From The Bush and this wonderful business that then took off and we’ve got baby blankets in Geneva and London. And so that was the media hat, the synergy of

understanding how to connect these two worlds. But more so my just complete, I could not believe that growing up in the city, I had this, I mean, we all wore our scratchy jumpers at school. To To school. But I had no knowledge of all, I had no idea that it was, you know, this miracle fiber that had incredible attributes of being thermoregulating, antimicrobial and antibacterial.

UVA, UVB protectant, the only fiber you should wear if you suffer from eczema. All of these extraordinary benefits of the fiber I had no knowledge of before. And that was really, you know, producing these luxury bespoke, handcrafted baby blankets was such a joy and gave me such, it was such fun to do, especially when Charlie was, you know, three, four, five years old. but then again,

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (15:09.644)

think, you when we talk about opportunity, sometimes it’s through that fresh lens. And I remember being behind when I first started dating Philip, we were out bouncing around in his ute through the paddocks chasing a mob of sheep. I remember looking at their ears bouncing up and down and saying to him, look at all of their ears. And he just looked at me, you know, looked completely dumbfounded and said, you know, I’ve never noticed that. So I think that’s that’s been, yeah, I mean, that’s a long winded way of answering.

For me it was around purpose and community.

DI GILLETT [Host] (15:41.966)

And did that change the way in which people in the community responded to you because you’d taken this sense of purpose and grounded it in a product that would have been very close to their hearts? Did that change perceptions?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (16:00.782)

Absolutely and look I’m not for everyone. I know that I’m incredibly direct and you can take the girl out of Sydney, but not all of that But yes, I do feel like You know When you have your community behind you they immediately start advocating for you and they they realize that there’s a bigger conversation at play

In fact, this morning I could not be more pleased. I’ve made the front page of the Apsley Advocate on the back of my launch of the Emu Creek Long Lunch, which is incredibly exciting, not only for me, but for the community because it was, you know, 20 years. That’s right. It’s really important that it’s, I can see, you know, with the media hat on that it’s not about me. It’s about advocating as a champion of Australian marina wool. I would say.

DI GILLETT [Host] (16:41.217)

in lights.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (16:54.54)

I do remember, so we’ve had Outback Stations as well and we were, through the period of COVID, we were at our Outback Station Wuchilaba, which is between Mount Hope and Cobar at a place called Gilgunya. And I remember one of our, we were out there for months and I remember one of our contractors saying to me, you know, Ines, you’ve changed. And I said to him,

I said, you know what? Oh, his name will remain nameless. But I said to him, I said, no, I have not changed. I am exactly the same girl. I had, I’m just as comfortable wearing Armani as I am wearing my RM Williams boots. And you, after my exactly after my is in red dirt. said, what has changed is that your preconceived ideas of me have shifted. So again,

DI GILLETT [Host] (17:39.918)

about

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (17:53.09)

Going back to my modeling roots, when you are a model, you are a face for all demands. You are being paid to be someone else’s product. You have to be super clear on who you are as a person to do that. And I feel that that’s, yeah, I mean, that’s part of the whole process of really just standing in your power.

DI GILLETT [Host] (18:12.33)

I get it. was on, I was in front of an audience on, Tuesday and, and we were talking about perceptions and the perceptions first impressions of me is grounded in the city. I’ve got a certain look. doesn’t look like I’ve grown up in, the country. And then you start to share that through, through this platform, through, storytelling. And you can see a whole lot of those.

preconceived views start to melt away as people suddenly find you more approachable because everything that they had had assumed actually was not the case. So it’s it’s it is really interesting isn’t it and and to your point you haven’t changed they’ve just they’ve just taken away some of the filters that would were putting judgment before before reality.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (19:06.296)

That’s absolutely correct.

DI GILLETT [Host] (19:07.886)

So for anybody listening who’s not familiar with country settings and country life, Vanessa, tell us about, can you describe where you live and can you describe what a typical, I won’t say a typical day, but more what a typical week looks like and the thinking behind being where you are now?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (19:31.406)

Absolutely, Di. So our property is located outside of Walker, which is a beautiful cold climate town in the New England. It’s a really wonderful community. And what I especially love about Walker is it’s a very social community. So there’s, you know, we have things like the Jibang races. We’ve got a wonderful art community. So it’s a there’s lots of markets. Really, it’s a really vibrant town.

Um, in terms of our property, it’s, uh, steeped in history. So, uh, we were very fortunate to purchase Emu Creek last year. It’s the first time it’s come onto the market in 161 years. and so yes, that’s the first time it was, was in the Gill family for six generations. Um, and.

DI GILLETT [Host] (20:13.781)

time out of the family.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (20:21.43)

And the ship, well, it’s got this magnificent homestead. The shearing shed is truly what got me across the line. It’s a 19-stand shearing shed. And it’s just, it is just so steeped in history. So we have, you know, our own museum, which basically houses the original steam engine that powered the shearing shed. And in terms of, we grow super fine marina wool here. And so for people in the city,

What does that mean? means that Walker in the Southern Hemisphere, we certainly grow wonderful wool down in Goulburn as well, which is where Philip’s family are originally from. But the quality of the Merino wool that we grow here is outstanding. So Emu Creek has won every award that you can possibly win, you know, from Golden Bale, et cetera, right through. And so that is something that we’re really passionate about here is.

picking up that mantle and running with it. So for context, literally at the beginning of this year, Philip and I became RWS certified, which means that we’re really part of a global standard of wool classification, which means that we can also sell our wool at a higher price. But what does that mean for the consumer? It means that we’re very serious about the flock health and management and also biodiversity and pasture improvement of

of the property. So that’s where we are in Walker. then separate to that, we are also in far North Queensland. So we have Bellevue and Nightsham stations, which are about five hours west of Port Douglas, which is very different and also spanning over 500,000 acres. So it’s a large scale cattle production and

You know, for my husband in particular, he’s very, very passionate about his cattle, as are my sons. So that it’s a mixture of two worlds, incredibly vast. The colors are incredible. The blues, wonderful, it’s actually Chilago synonymous for its white marble. There’s the diversity, just the incredible terrain.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (22:41.29)

It’s something that is so vast. have the Mitchell River that runs straight through our property for 70 kilometres. So it’s freshwater crocodiles and literally there’s nothing as far as you can see in 360 degrees. It’s completely, you are completely remote. And, you know, we’ve had other stations that are remote, but this I think really takes the cake.

DI GILLETT [Host] (23:03.446)

Yeah, wow. And how much time do you spend on that one?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (23:07.554)

So this is a new project, because we’ve only really been able to take over in the past few months. So we’ll wait till dry season kicks in, which we’re not far away, and then we’ll embark on. We have quite a mustering program, helicopters, guys on.

DI GILLETT [Host] (23:25.102)

You’re just about to hit with some heavy rains, I’m guessing, based on what’s forecast. So, we’re wet underfoot.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (23:31.244)

That’s right. It’s exactly it’s been a very, very wet season so far. So yes, very excited to really immerse ourselves in that part of our lives as well. So I feel like it’s still a

DI GILLETT [Host] (23:43.784)

to gumboots Vanessa. Exactly. Completely different. different. It is. Excellent. Well coming up we’re going to talk about what it takes to be taken seriously as a female business leader in a male dominated industry.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (23:49.198)

It is time.

DI GILLETT [Host] (24:02.528)

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode.

I’m talking with Vanessa Bell, Merino Ball champion and sustainability advocate. Now, here’s a question that I’ve been building towards because it really is the heartbeat of this episode. Agribusiness in Australia is still largely male dominated when we think about who are the leaders. When you arrived as a woman with a modeling background and really city credentials, you’ve shared with us what the reception was like.

from the community. What was the reception like though as a business person?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (24:54.273)

Thankfully, I think I had quite a positive experience on the whole. Mostly, I would credit my husband for that because we’re such a team and we work so closely together that I think, you know, any time there was any bias and particularly, I mean, we’ve done significant land transactions on the Eastern Sea board of Australia and out west, I would always see Philip

you know, turning to me to say, well, you know, this needs to be part of the conversation with Vanessa. So I was very much included with Philip’s support. The other thing I would say is I have very, very strong business skills from the city. And then Philip obviously is incredibly big picture. I’m very detail orientated. He’s very big picture and entrepreneurial as well. And so we were able to combine those skills together.

How other people perceived us, again, I think it’s my directness and my ability to just hold my own and just be very clear and intentional about what I expect. And I think with that level of confidence, it’s not arrogance. And I think that’s a very clear differential. There’s a difference between being so clear and polite and respectful versus being arrogant. And that I felt was really well received in the bush.

I feel that there’s been a huge shift in agribusiness. There are more women, particularly in wool, on the ground now than there are men. And I feel that there’s an opportunity for women in ag in a way that they’re previously, you know, it’s been lacking. I would say that in the cattle arena, it’s definitely male dominated and I believe it will stay that way. I think it’s a tough one to crack.

I can only speak to my experience of just being, you know, I remember one transaction and being asked to go and have my husband sign off on the documents for security and die. had to point out to this chap that the security was in fact actually my property. you know, it’s about how you manage that and you can be, I choose not to be aggressive. I just choose to be direct. And I think that that’s really important.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (27:13.518)

I do not want to lose my sense of femininity or my compassion or ability to understand that there are always different, there’s always something going on behind the scenes in the bush. The one thing that I’ve learned that we don’t have in the city is the bush telegraph. It’s real, it lives, it breathes and people are, there’s always a conversation going on. It can be over, you know, over the bonnet of a Land Cruiser. can be…

while someone’s fencing, can be in the pub, can be across the board within a community. So you have to be very careful about how you treat people. But at the same time, I think you need to understand that in a male dominated industry, I definitely believe that there’s a really powerful future for women in ag. What I would also say is that in terms of wool, I had conversations

with people that have been instrumental in the success of the Australian war business for years. And I realized that that was not the path that I wanted to go down. And so I think when you realize that you’re not going to get a seat at a table or at a table that you actually want to sit at, for me, it was about creating my own table and being able to shape a narrative that is, in my case, important to

connect with consumers in a way that’s meaningful to them. In terms of flock health and the flock health and demand of wool, that will always be the most important thing. But in terms of being able to make sure that that demand is there, we need to connect with the consumer. And I feel that the way that I’m doing that is potentially a different angle than what has been done historically, specifically around sustainability.

And just on that, feel like we’re moving very much from an attention society to a trust society. So traditional models.

DI GILLETT [Host] (29:18.112)

that more what what do you mean by that

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (29:20.386)

So historically we were, brands for example, would be wanting to gain the attention of consumers. And what, if I go back to just the event that I had last week on farm, it’s about provenance, it’s about longevity, it’s about…

DI GILLETT [Host] (29:36.022)

Not a logo to be seen.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (29:37.602)

No, it’s about looking at the sheep on the ground and connecting that journey with the consumer. So what do they see? They say that I’m a woolmark licensee. So that’s around rigorous testing, understanding all the garments, meeting those credentials. But then to follow through as an RWS wool grower, that experience, so that trust for the consumer, that experience on the ground, that’s delivering more value than it is trying to send them ads.

and getting their attention through social media and the traditional channels. So yes, that shift of sustainability, of truly understanding ethical and responsible business pathways has never, ever been more important.

DI GILLETT [Host] (30:22.572)

Yeah, and the generation coming through will judge all of us on that because they’ve made a quantum leap in what they value compared to what we historically valued. Can I round back to the supply chain of people that you are doing business with? Are you only doing business with men or are there women on the other side of the table doing business with you?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (30:51.598)

Great question, Diane. I love this question because this is one of the things that I really, really wanted to do was that I wanted to work with partners that really… Firstly, I wanted to know the people that were making our clothing. Made initially was a conscious decision because I wanted to work with partners that not only understood the fiber, but also were very conscious of their…

the grain, what they were doing behind the scenes, that they were actually making sure that everything from paying their staff correctly to how they were treating their water and processing, that all of those credentials were actually true and that we could account for them. But then to go through and find not only Lanikadatta and Tulaneo 1900s, so two very prestigious mills that have been anchored in tradition for years, that could also understand me as a grower.

to then find Magnifico Pini, who are my production partners, run by Martina Pini. This has been a generational business, very, very positive in how they treat the women in their business. They have apprenticeships, they do wonderful things in their community. We literally, I really believe in the power of connection, and this is how we found each other through our values, some minor courage, innovation, and integrity. We were able to find each other and traditionally,

a company that only does major orders for really significant brands, which will remain nameless because that’s private and confidential for Megalufa Copini, but very serious brands. The reason why we were able to join and to come together is because they believe in my journey. They believe in seeing what I’m trying to create for the consumer. And going back to that trust narrative, they trust in me because they are so incredibly pleased to see that it’s not just about

you know, yarns that are turning up from the manufacturers, they are actually being part of that journey, they’re being brought on that journey. And that’s super exciting for them. So yes, they’re very much about giving back to their community. And that responsible business pathway as we move into, you know, a circular economy, having our products with passports, it’s going to become an absolute versus a nice to have. And I think that

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (33:15.682)

to be so far down that track. We’re already setting ourselves up for success. I’d really love to just congratulate the Australian Fashion Council and RM Williams in particular, because I know that they’re working really hard on bringing manufacturing back on shore as part of an important.

DI GILLETT [Host] (33:31.82)

That was one of my questions, yeah. Is there ever going to be the opportunity with, there’s not much in terms of knitting looms or technology in Australia these days, I would have thought.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (33:44.758)

No, so I think in principle, I absolutely think this is a fantastic initiative. However, my caution is around the lost knowledge. So, you know, yes, there are other countries in China, Japan, there’s manufacturing all over the world. What I would like to see is a reciprocal agreement where almost like an apprenticeship scenario where people are able to go to countries like Italy to learn the art of spinning.

of scouring, carding, spinning, dying right through to production because we have lost those skills. So we have a skills gap there. And I think while it’s very important to address because we’re losing all of these opportunities offshore, you know, the value that’s being left on the table because it’s all being taken off offshore is huge for this, particularly for Australian growers.

We would love to see manufacturing here, but that comes with that caveat of the knowledge gap. We really need to make sure that people, because I can’t step into a business such as mine when you’re producing luxury fashion at that level and entrust it if the capability is not there.

DI GILLETT [Host] (35:01.1)

And are you designing the product yourself Vanessa?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (35:04.312)

So my designer is actually Natasha Lennart and she headed up Victoria Beckham’s knitwear team for 10 years. again, through the power of connection, we met on LinkedIn and she sort of loved what I was doing with my baby blankets and she asked me, would you like to actually return back to what your past life in fashion? And so we struck up a friendship and it was this wonderful concept that’s taken a whole life.

with its own. But I’m saying that yes, technically Natasha has been very much driving the technical side of the designs. However, because of my years and years and years of working in high fashion, it’s a very clear brief. Like literally Natasha’s like, you are the most clear cut client I’ve ever had to work for because I’m so clear.

So the colors, the vision, nods to different. So I have my signature turtle neck is this beautiful deep water navy and an iron bark black. That is my nod to Tokyo. That is my nod to working with Komedi Gasson and Yohji Yamamoto and Hiroko Kishino. The colors, the black and camel that I’m wearing today, sandstone and iron bark, this is very much me. The nod to being able to understand women.

who are on the go, people that are getting on flights, business leaders. It’s about effortlessly chic. while I’m on that thought process, for me, it’s also about making sure that women don’t feel overwhelmed because in this world of fast fashion, I’m trying to hit it on two fronts. One is to stop people from wearing petrochemicals and to stop contributing to microplastic pollution through synthetic clothing. And the second thing is to

Make those decisions in wardrobes, investment pieces, so that we take out the, what am I wearing? It’s at the back of my cupboard. This is too complex. don’t need, this is a literally set forget. Beautiful, effortlessly chic, so comfortable, breathes with you, works with you. It’s a no brainer. You put it on, you look fabulous, you walk out the door.

DI GILLETT [Host] (37:21.932)

Yeah, beautiful. And whilst I’m not wearing your brand today, I am wearing Merino wool and you’ll find me wearing it most days for all of the, all of the reasons that you’ve already advocated for. So, which is incredible. Tell me, are you close to getting to the point? So we, if we put it into food terms and in the cattle or, or, or, sheep and, and, and lamb markets that paddock to play concept, are you

anywhere near being able to say, this is the wool that we grow. And this is the wool that my products are made out of that whole traceable Providence piece.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (38:02.702)

Absolutely. literally three weeks ago I sold 72 bales of Emu Creek wool that was RWS certified. So the work that goes into doing that is huge. So what does that now mean? It means that I am now able to grow wool fit for purpose for my knitwear. And it also means that while I’m producing accessible luxury at the moment, I can then step into the next area of superfine Merino wool.

and pure luxury products because Cashmere for example is a micron that sits between about 9 and 13 and SuperFi Merino sits at between 13 to 15. I’ve just bought my beautiful rams that are sitting at approximately 14 micron. So if we can then grow SuperFi Merino wool that is RWS certified and then create products that are fit for purpose for

know, specific range or to potentially do a situation where there’s cross spinning with another growers product. That traceability factor becomes such a key part to the journey. But also, as I said, it goes back to that trust piece where consumers will then have an understanding of where the garments coming from.

DI GILLETT [Host] (39:21.57)

So when you look at what you’re building, not so much as the brand, but as a legacy piece, what do you want the story of Vanessa Bell to mean going forward?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (39:34.262)

I think it’s a bunch of different things really, to really simplify it, it’s to really encourage people to choose wool for a healthier life and planet. there’s so many different options out there for people, but if they just choose merino wool, not only will they be comfortable in their everyday life, but they can really feel like they’re part of the solution and not the problem.

DI GILLETT [Host] (39:56.982)

A couple of rapid fire questions to wrap up and for our listeners if you can hear noise in the background it is the fantastic sound of rain on roof in a setting where Vanessa has just shared with me between takes that they have not had much rain for the years so as somebody living on the land that is something to celebrate. Three quick questions.

The most important thing country life has taught you.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (40:29.464)

Country life has really taught me about the seasons. So as we sit here, I can smell the rain and it is sensory. It is about that connection back to the environment. I know for example, when we had our previous cattle station, Kupilakarapa, when we had the huge floods that transpired at the beginning of last year, three days before that happened, all of the frogs migrated, literally. The noise was deafening.

They knew. So the seasons and the animals, I was very fortunate a few years ago to have a pet dingo as a dog. And that intuitive understanding of nature is such a gift. So yes, it’s really taught me about the seasons, how that affects us as human beings, how it’s important to understand that those seasons in our lives are just that. They come and they go.

and that the seasons of nature are there to remind you to think differently, to smell the roses, to take time to go for that walk, to look into the sky and see the endless stars. Often we spend too much time just focusing on ourselves and I truly believe that that connection to nature is also a connection to

DI GILLETT [Host] (41:51.342)

Yeah and I love that you had a less than conventional pet. I had an emu for 17 years and they are quite extraordinary creatures to to observe. You never get you never get close but they’re but they’re interesting.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (42:11.628)

It’s a joke.

DI GILLETT [Host] (42:14.348)

What’s the hardest day you had on the property in one sentence?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (42:19.404)

The death of, well, death, death is, it was the death of my assistant. She was leaving our cattle station to come and take care of my son as I was heading off to Singapore on business. The loss of Vivian was just horrific. Again, it goes back to that, the understanding of acceptance. I’ve had,

I’ve had so many different experiences with drought, with there’s been all sorts of different things, but that would stand out in my mind as the most devastating, the most difficult day of my life was the death of Vivian.

DI GILLETT [Host] (42:58.338)

Yeah, thank you. The most powerful lesson reinvention has taught you.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (43:05.954)

Be fearless. Don’t be afraid.

DI GILLETT [Host] (43:09.516)

My favourite line.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (43:12.098)

Don’t be afraid to give something a go. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. And don’t be afraid to shy away from who you are. You know, if I’m on a dirt track and there isn’t anyone on the radio, there’s no one for three hours and I’ve got a flat tire, don’t be afraid to feel what you feel. And it could be…

I mean, years ago, I said to my husband, don’t ever try and shut me down from how I feel. I’m cross, I’m cross. So I would say I would also. No, so I, you know, all of those things being fearless, being able to own your story, being able to try and experience things, not being risk adverse. think people are really frightened of change. That’s life.

DI GILLETT [Host] (43:51.96)

I wasn’t left wondering.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (44:10.976)

Life is change.

DI GILLETT [Host] (44:14.508)

And I think that’s such a powerful message, I think, for anybody who is thinking about making a change or some form of transformation or reinvention, you’re exactly right. We see it in organizations when things get changed up. People are change resistant. For people living on the land, change is every day of the week. And in terms of where that comes into play in building resilience, that is

just where it’s grounded, that’s where it happens because if you can’t move and adapt with the change that’s coming your way every day of the week, you won’t make it. So it’s such an important point.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (44:57.258)

Absolutely. I remember vividly, just one story before we part, I remember being out west in the drought and I had shampoo in my hair and I went to sort of wash my hair out and that was it. The water tank went out and that meant a tanker coming in. It was three hours to get a tanker in. I had shampoo in my hair for days but it was literally, you know, I the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was just so…

so exhausted. think so many women, you go through so much in life. It’s divorce, it’s a change in career, it’s redundancy, it’s, you know, fire, it’s loss of life, it’s loss of a child. There are so many challenges. The mental load is real. So I feel like we’re in a community where we’re being desensitized, where everything is so fast. We’re getting so many messages per day. We’re told that we have to be, you know, calm and contained.

actually disagree with that. feel like you really need to just experience what you’re experiencing at the time. That doesn’t necessarily dictate the answer. Water is something that runs through a creek and it’s the same with emotion. You let that emotion run through you. I have literally kicked my tires out with a flat tire with nothing but you know water because you’re prepared obviously but I’ve been that frustrated. That’s fine. I think it’s when you try and shut that down.

is when it becomes a problem. Resilience isn’t born out of being calm and being collected and everything’s okay. Resilience is born out of challenges, frustrations, people that are really difficult to get on with. It’s not a perfect path and that’s why I would really encourage people to just be fearless because you are the only person. You can’t control, you cannot control how people behave or how they

treat you but you have the control to respond to that in a way that’s appropriate.

DI GILLETT [Host] (46:59.596)

I think that’s wonderful. Loads of, loads of clear, clear messages and particularly for our female listeners. So thank you for that, Vanessa. Adding to the show notes. Now I know you’ve got a podcast also. where, tell us about your podcast quickly where they can find you under what name?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (47:19.48)

So it’s Fashion to Pharma and we’re on Apple and Spotify. And essentially we’ve only had season one, so we’re going to kick off season two again this winter. It’s something I like to do when the fire’s on and I can bunker in and really focus on my guests. essentially it’s about shining a light on sustainability in the fashion industry and shining a light on the perspectives of those wonderful people shaping the industry.

It really is a plethora of media, industry, know, amazing guests that are doing remarkable things within the fashion business and circular economy.

DI GILLETT [Host] (47:57.422)

And where can they find your beautiful products?

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (48:01.422)

Certainly, so our product currently is online at www.vanessa-bell.com and on Instagram we are at Vanessa Bell Official or at Fashion2Farmer. And I’m excited to share with listeners I’m embarking on a new flagship store in regional Australia. We’re just looking at new store frontage in Ural.

DI GILLETT [Host] (48:25.75)

how exciting. That’s brilliant. I look forward to, I will need to make a trip up and see that. That sounds absolutely wonderful. Well done. Thank you, Tanya. thank you for sharing your stories today. think for listeners making a shift in terms of lifestyle from city to country, there could not be a more quantum leap than that. you’ve shared with us what it takes in terms of resilience, what it…

what it takes to break through traditional workplaces and stamp your ground. But at the same point in time, it sounds like you have not given away an inch of who you are or what you stand for or what you represent in doing that. You have just found a way of finding how that is accepted and making that work for you. And I think that is incredible. And I think the work that you’re doing

in the providence of your product and the whole community involvement is just so inspiring. So thank you for the work that you’re doing. It’s absolutely brilliant.

VANESSA BELL [Guest] (49:32.947)

Di, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time today. I really do appreciate

DI GILLETT [Host] (49:36.782)

Appreciate it. Wonderful. Until next time.

Chapters:

01:23 Reinvention and Personal Journeys

06:54 Life in the Country vs. City

09:30 Community and Connection in Rural Life

13:01 Purpose and Legacy in Business

15:55 Changing Perceptions and Embracing Identity

24:28 Breaking Barriers in Agribusiness

29:31 Shifting from Attention to Trust in Business

38:04 From Paddock to Product: Traceability in Wool

39:47 Building a Legacy: The Story of Vanessa Bell

40:42 Lessons from Country Life and Resilience

47:32 Sustainability in Fashion: The Podcast Journey

Connect with Di:

Find Vanessa Bell at:

Website: https://vanessa-bell.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vjbell/

Instagram: https://vanessa-bell.com/

This is the home of unapologetic conversations and powerful stories of reinvention. New episodes drop every 2^nd Monday to fuel your week with insights on leadership, resilience, and success. Subscribe and join a community of women who are changing the game.

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Stressed? What Your Heart Rate Is Telling You

by admin | May 4, 2026 | Female Leaders, Health & Wellbeing

Most high-performing women believe they are coping. The data tells a different story. In this episode, Di Gillett sits down with Jane Smorodnikova, founder and CEO of Welltory: the world’s first consumer app to use heart rate variability (HRV) to measure stress, energy and recovery in real time – to have the conversation that every woman running on empty needs to hear.

From building a 16-million-user global platform without institutional funding, to navigating the physiological cost of chronic stress as a female founder, Jane brings both the science and the lived experience. This is an evidence-based, boundary-pushing conversation about what is really happening inside the female nervous system, and what the data reveals when we stop lying to ourselves.

➡️We explore :

How Jane built a 16-million-user platform to profitability without Silicon Valley backing

The personal cost of founder stress and what Jane believes triggered early perimenopause signs

Why women experience stress differently – the ‘tend and befriend’ response versus fight or flight

What signals high-performing women consistently ignore and how long the nervous system can compensate before it forces a reset

Heart rate variability explained in plain language and why it is a more powerful measure than steps, calories or hours slept

How HRV shifts during perimenopause and menopause, and why so many women in midlife are misdiagnosed

The role of AI in personal health – where it genuinely helps and where caution is essential

Who really owns your biometric data — and what happens to it when investors get involved

Jane’s daily non-negotiables for her nervous system and her one metric every woman should prioritise over productivity and weight

Key Takeaways:

Stress is not just psychological – it accumulates physiologically and the body keeps an honest score, even when the mind insists it is coping.

Women’s stress response is biologically distinct. The ‘tend and befriend’ pattern means women often channel stress into caring for others, masking burnout until the system crashes.

Heart rate variability is the metric of adaptability. The more variable your heart rate, the more resilient your nervous system.

Running in the morning does not cancel ten hours of back-to-back Zoom calls. Stress management requires active release throughout the day, not just morning exercise.

Six hours of sleep sustained across a week produces cognitive impairment equivalent to being drunk.

Perimenopause is frequently misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety. HRV data can help women identify that something is physiologically shifting and advocate for themselves with greater authority.

Biometric data is legally yours – but understanding who owns the company holding it matters.

📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT [Host] (00:03)

So Jane, in your view, what is the power of women?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (00:09)

When I hear that, I mostly think about the systems and organisations and movements women built to solve their own problems outside of system and organisations built by men and for men. So, for example, when Venture Capital firm that is from women decide to invest in female founders.

because they are basically 30 times more successful but get only 2 % of venture capital. Or when there is a community that’s lobbying research for endometriosis or ⁓ bringing the gaps in scientific research because most of medical and health research is made by ⁓

on men bodies because men’s body considered as a human body and women are too complicated to research because of the cycles and all these things. So yeah, I think the power of women is like when women just stop relying on society and start to solve their own problems by themselves.

DI GILLETT [Host] (01:31)

So how many of you believe you’re managing stress or is it your body simply compensating? I’m Di Gillett and this is the Power Of Women Podcast and welcome to our regular listeners and for those new to this platform, we’re about the opportunity to showcase and celebrate the strength, resilience and achievements of women from all walks of life.

Now I know health and wellbeing and the focus on managing our stress levels has become a recurring theme on this podcast of late. But personal experience and your feedback has catapulted this to front of mind and if it’s happening to me, I suspect it’s happening to you too. Which is why I am thrilled to welcome today’s guest with whom I’m going to take a more evidence-based angle to the discussion.

as we explore the intersection of leadership, science, resilience, and the reality of modern stress. Jane Smorodnikova is the founder and CEO of Waltory, the first consumer app to use heart rate variability. I’m gonna say that again for Daryl. The first consumer app to use heart rate variability to help everyday people understand stress,

energy and recovery in real time. Jane took a clinical metric once reserved for elite athletes and laboratories and turned it into a daily decision-making tool used by millions globally. And you may recognize the name as the app on your iPhone or your smartphone with the red heart. But behind the 16 million user platform is a woman managing her own nervous system.

And that’s part of today’s conversation. And what we’re going to cover is scaling a global business, the physiological cost of chronic stress on high performing women and how HRV changes our understanding of recovery and where AI enhances health and also where caution is required. So let’s get started. Jane Smirodnikova, welcome to the Power of Women Podcast.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (03:52)

Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

DI GILLETT [Host] (03:57)

Jane, could we just wind back before Woltree became a 16 million user platform? What did you identify as the opportunity and what was behind the app?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (04:12)

Yeah, basically, you know, ⁓ it was a pure ambition because ⁓ I was a fan of this like changing the world’s disruption startups. And at about 35, I had something like a panic attack that, you know, all the big challenges and big markets are transformed with data already. And it’s like nothing left to make something huge. ⁓

Of course, it was a silly thought, anyway, and ⁓ I realized that healthcare is the last industry that was not transformed with data. At the same time, human generated data is growing much faster than any other data on the planet. ⁓ And that’s an opportunity. So you just see like the biggest market on earth, the biggest challenge on earth, and it’s unsolved.

So that’s how we actually started to go there. And next, if you want to do something in any industry with the data, you need to find your metric. Because all transformation like Spotify metric is the data that how you actually listen to particular song. For marketing, it’s how you click on particular ad.

or Uber is geolocation data of the driver. So if you want to transform ⁓ an industry, you need a metric. And the first problem we found is that actually there was no metric for health, only metrics for disease. And that’s how we actually found the heart rate variability that can track you from like ⁓ you’re almost dead to you’re in your best shape possible.

DI GILLETT [Host] (06:02)

Hmm, isn’t that interesting we had the negative not that not the positive. Yeah

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (06:07)

Yeah, and that’s why hardware rate variability was used for people in whose health and performance some industries are interested in, like professional athletes, like military. Yeah, and for normal human beings, there is no financial interest at any organization or a group.

DI GILLETT [Host] (06:36)

Yeah, yeah

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (06:37)

In our health, basically.

DI GILLETT [Host] (06:39)

Yeah, so with that in mind Jane, how difficult was it to get the interest of investors when you came up with this idea?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (06:51)

So basically we have never raised institutional funding, only some angels because we were not able to manage like when we came to Silicon Valley in 2018 and we had this app that was able to track hardware capability with just a phone camera and interpret it in a personalized way.

and investors got their medical experts and medical experts told us that heart rate variability will never be popular and our bet was that it will be on the risk in 24-7 months and they said it’s not possible it will not happen anytime so we lost our chances to fundraise ⁓ but we were right and they were wrong so we just you know

decided to continue without ⁓ big venture funding and became profitable as a result.

DI GILLETT [Host] (07:48)

There you go, that’s very satisfying I bet.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (07:51)

Yeah, you know, it’s a very cool thing talking about like tracking your founder’s stress. There is no more stressful thing that ⁓ your chances to die every month. so on our young years before profitability, I had a really strong correlation between my stress levels and our revenue. And

This correlation just disappeared when we became profitable.

DI GILLETT [Host] (08:23)

Yeah, there you go. think many could relate to that, albeit not everybody puts their everything on the line to throw into a business. So at what point did you realise that this had potential to scale globally?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (08:42)

It was about three years of the company ⁓ when finally ⁓ Apple Watch managed to measure heart rate variability in the background. We understood that ⁓ you can’t build a huge company if you have retention metrics like usual health app, ⁓ like a benchmark. You need something extraordinary.

and that’s why we turned all the data we collect into something like a Twitter feed from your body and when we launched it, we started to grow like crazy, like 30 % per month and people, retention spiked and people tried, like started to buy it like crazy.

So, and we grew like, without funding, the problem is that when you grew too fast, at some point your servers will not…

DI GILLETT [Host] (09:40)

Yeah. So you needed the funding to even exist. Yeah. Yeah.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (09:47)

Yeah, yeah, and it was hard because there was no funding for us ⁓ and like we had to repair our service, we changed our technical team, we changed leadership team. Somehow we survived, I think only because of the team and their dedication to our company and mission.

DI GILLETT [Host] (10:07)

How many of you in the team in those early days, Jane?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (10:10)

about 100 people.

DI GILLETT [Host] (10:11)

Okay, yeah, so there was quite a workforce behind it. So in that funding journey and not being able to go to market because of the wonderful promotion of those in the finance world, did you find the angel funders were female-centric, tech-centric? What were the profiles of the

of the actual angel funders who became interested in this proposition.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (10:42)

Basically, ⁓ most of our angels are just like people who knew us before and who understood that basically they invest in the team, like just trust them that you’re able to build something. So that’s where our first investors and of course, like our connections and connections of my co-founders were like the major reason for

like about like 10 million fundraising that we made in like our early days from the angels but it’s actually pretty big in terms of the angels so most of them are entrepreneurs like founders who had built their own company and there are different ⁓ like process management companies, gaming companies

logistics companies like ⁓ other setups like this so most of them are founders not professional investors.

DI GILLETT [Host] (11:41)

Yeah, interesting. So my question, my next question could be could be personal or commercial. What did growth actually cost you?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (11:55)

⁓ I personally think that’s ⁓ the reason I started to get early pyramid-aposal signs because of that.

DI GILLETT [Host] (12:09)

Please do. Expand on that.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (12:12)

Yeah, because it’s really hard. You know, I know that ⁓ and it’s like there have been research about this that founders are more stress resilient than most people. And that’s actually how you get into this crazy job. ⁓ But as a result,

you have no way out, you cannot just go to another company and ⁓ just decide that’s all for me, so you just need to stand no matter what. ⁓ I think that I have seen all my limitations and reached my limits a lot of times and of course it’s

You have to learn to manage this because you can adjust, you know, burnout and go to sabbatical for two months. ⁓ So you don’t have such an option. So you have to learn how to manage yourself, even if the pressure is too high. And ⁓ at the same time, you know, I think that when I was young and when I was like, if it

In more early days, I just decided that I should not rely on any venture funding. I should not expect any understanding from any external ⁓ community and just rely on yourself. It would save me a lot of energy.

DI GILLETT [Host] (13:47)

I was going to say, is that more or less stressful not having the pressure of external funding?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (13:57)

It’s much easier to rely on yourself. It’s what right now, like for last couple of years, when my co founder left and I like the only one standing founder in the company, it was first it was like really hard. But then you realize that ⁓ it’s much easier to just rely on yourself and manage yourself without any expectations without

like trying to be nice and look good and etc etc and managing your own energy with respect.

DI GILLETT [Host] (14:31)

Yeah. So how have you managed the pressure? What have you done?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (14:36)

You know, it’s like really ⁓ stupid personal tricks because like for everybody you just need to, ⁓ if you want to achieve something, you need to invest in your recovery and support system, like in your infrastructure. And it’s like, it should be serious. So that’s why actually I live on the islands. I see the sea every day in my window. I can meditate in a Buddhist temple.

⁓ I can go to Thai massage on a daily basis or weekly basis. So you invest in your recovery and your infrastructure.

DI GILLETT [Host] (15:18)

Sure. So Jane, can you just share with our listeners, where do you spend six months of your year? Where are you right now?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (15:28)

I live on an island called Koh Samui. It’s near the temple that was in that Netflix series about Thailand recently. I live here. my house is even in the series. Easy, really. There you go. Yeah.

DI GILLETT [Host] (15:37)

White lotion.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (15:48)

And it’s very nice here. It’s very peaceful. Nothing is happening here. It’s very stable. And so I just travel to Europe, to the United States for business meetings. So I had this particular time in the year when I communicate with external worlds. And then I just go back to a safe spot and work on the intellectual heavy tasks on algorithms, on building the company and the product, etc.

DI GILLETT [Host] (16:18)

So have you been monitoring your own heart rate variability during the journey of building the business?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (16:26)

Of course, for us it’s our everyday. We are not just monitoring heart rate variability, we are monitoring everything and building new algorithms all the time. But thanks God, thanks to ⁓ Valtteri, think my heart rate variability today is better than 10 years ago when I was smoking and not exercising and not monitoring everything.

DI GILLETT [Host] (16:50)

There you go. weren’t, you weren’t, see, you weren’t a good pin up in those days. So it’s taken you down a wellness, conscious wellness approach as well, which, but I can understand that the stresses of founders don’t always see you follow the best habits because the pressure’s high. So Jane, for…

high performing women listening and what you’ve learned about this data that you have been gathering, what are the signals that we typically ignore?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (17:26)

Basically, ignore most of the signals from our body. we, like people in Western civilizations are not aware about what is going on in their bodies. And the problem when pressure started to grow and you started to experience stress, your ability to feel decreased even more. So that’s why you just get your stress reaction. ⁓ And

If your stress is not managed and it’s not finished, it just continues to accumulate. And here is like very important thing about the women, because we were taught that stress is a fight or fight response. ⁓ So just you can run or you can fight, but for women, there is a third way. It’s called something like ten and be friends. So

they just start to take care more about people around them because it’s a pattern they use to build a more safe environment. And that’s how they become obsessed with the clean and taking care of kids and taking care of their partners, et cetera. And when they do not have a great feedback on that and support, ⁓

and oxytocin that should be generated there, they just get more burnout and more stress. And that’s why you just like, you need to find out what type of stress and what type of emotion actually you’re experiencing ⁓ and find a way to release the stress. Like for example, if you feel anger and aggression and rage, go to MMA or something and actually beat somebody.

It’s like, it’s very good ⁓ to, ⁓ like, you know, just to release your stress. Or if you feel anger, but it’s cold, go to shooting and shoot something. ⁓ It also works very well. If you feel fear, you can run. And that’s when running is really helpful and walking is really helpful. And if you feel unsafe,

build connections, but if your relationships in your house are not good, fill it outside with some women group, with volunteering, with something that actually will give you gratitude back to support and like will make you feel more safe.

DI GILLETT [Host] (20:04)

So with coming back to the app for a moment, does it show how the impact of stress or does it detect the impact of stress on our sleep, our hormones and on our cognitive clarity?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (20:24)

So basically ⁓ you can see how your brain is ready for work every day if you’re measuring the morning. So you can see your ability to focus and you can see ⁓ how much energy do you have and of course you can see how your sleep is changing if something is wrong. So yeah you can see all this stuff like except probably hormones because it’s a blood ⁓

DI GILLETT [Host] (20:49)

future.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (20:50)

⁓

Yeah, yeah, much much harder to measure but yes, you can see all this and like the most important thing that ⁓ why we are like calling this like the first up to measure it in real time is that you we can track your stress that is accumulated ⁓ when you’re just sitting down with a zoom call with a stressful person, for example, and you can see

that this person basically is generating your stress and this one and talks with this one are actually good for you. And then you can see how walking or other activities are releasing your stress and you can see how you can release the stress and that’s how to manage through the day not to come to 100 stress at the end of the day. Because you know, there is a huge myth around

the women or the high-performing men that if you are running in the morning, ⁓ enjoying in the morning, and then you have 10 hours of Zoom calls, and basically you’re okay because you’re exercising, that’s bullshit. Because ⁓ you spent 10 hours accumulated with the stress, you went to the sleep with 100 % of stress, your sleep was not good, and you’re just in the cycle of burnout.

So of course you will be more resilient, a little bit more resilient than if like in comparison with people who are not exercising at all. But managing stress is not about just this. You need to fill these things into the day.

DI GILLETT [Host] (22:26)

Like anything, if we don’t measure it, we don’t know what’s going on and therefore we can’t address it. So is the crux of what makes this so valuable, the fact that it is gathering the data and giving us the measurement by which to make the decisions, is that the sweet spot?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (22:49)

Yes, because it’s very personal. Nobody can provide you any recommendations and interventions that actually 100 % will work for you.

⁓ Everybody is unique, your environment is unique, your body is unique, you need to find out things that are working for yourself in your personal conditions. So that’s why you just need to see what is going on when you try these things, how your body reacts, when you try these things, how your body reacts. Sometimes you just find out something cool like, for example, I know a of people who are just laying down with a laptop on the Zoom calls.

and their stress stops accumulating because they’re laying down. And for other people it doesn’t work like that. So you just need to like explore yourself like you’re a scientist of yourself.

DI GILLETT [Host] (23:44)

Yeah, got it. Well look, you’re listening to the Power of Women podcast and coming up we’re going to unpack how HRV operates in practical language, what it tells us about our energy and recovery and we’ll also touch on perimenopause and menopause.

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode. I’m talking with the founder of WellTourie, Jane Smarovna Kovar, and it’s a 16 million user platform turning heart rate variability into a daily decision-making tool for stress, energy and recovery.

Jane, can you tell us in layman’s terms how this app actually works?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (24:41)

So basically the best way to use our app is just to wear some wearable like Samsung Watch or FitBait or Apple Watch, like anything and connect it to the app. And by getting data from these wearables, we build some visualizations that in the background are really

personalized and scientific and based on like tons of millions of data of people like you. ⁓ And it shows how your body reacts and what is going on with your body. ⁓ Talking about your sleep, your exercises, your recovery process, your stress, your energy, like, and basically even your general health, like your

ability of your body to cope with what is going on. And if this metric is going down, you actually need to go to the hospital if you see the red lights ⁓ out there. So we are not able to diagnose anything. We are not able to give medical recommendations, of course. But ⁓

We have seen tons of stories when we have got a one-star review with a mention that, you know, why you’re telling me that I’m not okay, I feel okay. And usually it means that people just used to feel like that.

DI GILLETT [Host] (26:12)

Mmm, they’ve got no benchmark.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (26:15)

Yeah, I think that it’s normal. ⁓ But then we tracked this ⁓ reviews ⁓ after like several months. It’s improved on the five star review. And they write to us that, you know, I came to the doctor, I made some tests, we have found this and it can be something different. And so thank you guys, because actually you’re right. ⁓ So that’s ⁓

That’s the most lovely review for our team. Every time we just make a check that we help somebody and it feels pretty good.

DI GILLETT [Host] (26:55)

rate variability tells us what in essence. ⁓

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (27:00)

To explain heart rate variability, think it’s the very important thing is to understand the difference with the pulse ⁓ which is like your average ⁓ heart rate ⁓ during a minute. imagine a grandma in a room with a temperature of zero, but she has a warm coat, a hat, boots and all the things. And you know that she’s…

like being there for an hour with an average temperature of zero, do you think she’s okay? And you think like probably if the cold is warm, she’s fine. But if you know that every 10 minutes the temperature goes from plus 30 to minus 30 for the whole hour, you will not think that she’s okay after this hour. But the median, average

temperature is still zero. So that’s the difference. So heart rate variability is milliseconds between each heartbeat. And it’s a time series that shows much more information about what is going on. It shows how your heart tries to adapt to everything what is going on with you. And the nervous system is signaling to your heart, should they be faster or slower or things like that.

Your ability of your body to adapt to what is going on is your health. You can imagine some, I don’t know, the tree that you can flex and it’s not breaking, it’s just flexible and that’s your health. But if you will push too much,

DI GILLETT [Host] (28:48)

It’ll break.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (28:50)

And that’s your disease basically. So if every disease occurs in your body when the ⁓ pressure is too much and you’re not able to handle, that’s why variability is adaptability. That’s why the more variable you are in general is the better. But just in general, because there are conditions and people for whom like

Too much heart rate variability is also not good. It means something just stopped working out there. Yeah, so it’s very personalized. It’s very unique for each phenotype, the type of your nervous system, the type of your genes, et cetera. That’s why you should never just compare bluntly your metrics with other human beings and look more on yourself.

DI GILLETT [Host] (29:44)

Jane, for those unfamiliar, why is it HRV a more powerful measure than perhaps measuring our steps, our calories or in fact the hours slept?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (29:57)

Yeah, basically, you know, steps are really useless because in terms of your health or longevity, it’s really important to go to some cardio zones that are usually higher than usual walking. So of course, like walking 10,000 steps per day is better than 2,000 steps per day.

DI GILLETT [Host] (30:24)

But some of those need to be at greater exertion.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (30:27)

Yeah,

yeah, so it’s just not enough just to track steps. Yeah, you need to go to the heart rate and the cardio zones. Then talking about like, so heart rate variability is the metric that actually reflects how your body is coping with what is going on and can be measured in a passive mode without any actions and just be collected and be interpreted in like

closer to real time. ⁓ So that’s why wearing a wearable with a high quality signal is really something that

is important and can collect a lot of data for you. even if you’re like our last algorithms ⁓ and algorithms that we are actually using to detect that ⁓ this Zoom meeting is like more stressful than another one, we are actually not using the heart rate variability itself, but our new algorithms that are trained on heart rate variability, but just uses your heart rate fluctuations during your talking and your personal baselines

So it allows you to actually track every minute of your life.

DI GILLETT [Host] (31:43)

So that’s actually tapping into our cortisol levels really if somebody’s spiking at all or not.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (31:49)

Yes, yes. And it gives you a metric that is about feedback from your body about everything you are doing and that you can use this data to explore yourself, to know yourself better and to manage yourself better.

DI GILLETT [Host] (32:09)

So if I’ve got ⁓ my wearable on and I’ve hooked up to the app and I am checking my HRV on a daily level, a daily occurrence, what are the patterns I should be looking for? Are there actual patterns and changes that I should be monitoring for?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (32:33)

You know, it really depends on ⁓ the app you have. the best companies out there who are experts in heart rate variability interpretation, and it’s really not that easy process like Aura or Woop or us, ⁓

Each of us develop our own like metrics that actually reveals something, some signal from all this like data. And by like choosing the provider, you’re choosing a set of metrics that actually you’re reflecting on because like the raw metrics are not that useful for not professional people. And each company develops their metric in

in connection with the audience they want to reach. Like for example, if WUAP is positioned for people who are actively exercising, the metrics they develop, the stress and recovery metrics or readiness metrics are related to people who are exercising a lot. if like, Aura ⁓ is focused on sleep and she’s like bringing the readiness metric,

out of your sleep heart rate variability and shows this and it’s a great metric actually that can be used to track how your daily readiness is changing. So talking about us, are like we also were focusing mostly on like relatively healthy people

and we are like changing it right now, but ⁓ we show a lot of metrics, much more because we have been targeting the broader audience from the beginning and the people who are not sick yet and people who are not athletes. And so we have this like long-term metrics like

health, so you can monitor the basic high level state of your health. You can monitor intraday fluctuations about what is going on with your body. You can see how your sleep patterns are changing. So it’s a set of metrics and basically visualizations because, you know, people are really bad at interpreting complicated charts. ⁓ So we have found that, for example, showing heart rate variability as a liquid

with the color, amount, boiling effects, etc. Like a magic ball of liquid of your nervous system is the best because we incorporate different metrics inside and people intuitively feel, they just see that it’s red and boiling so it’s like not good or it’s like a jelly so they feel like a jelly at the same time.

DI GILLETT [Host] (35:26)

simple creatures really aren’t we?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (35:29)

Yeah, it’s a very successful visualization. People share it with their relatives all the time, etc. And actually when it’s packed with real science, it works really well. And people feel that ⁓ they learn from it and their brain actually ⁓ training using this data without using their prefrontal cortex. It’s just embodiment.

Of what is going on

DI GILLETT [Host] (35:59)

What about when it comes to menopause and perimenopause, which is a topic that invariably comes up for the power of women community, Is this app and is this measure useful at that time in our lives?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (36:18)

⁓ Yes, because you need to notice that something is wrong and you will notice it, that something is wrong. ⁓ I should say that we are not that good in helping perimenopausal women right now, but we are going there this year. That’s the goal of this year for us. ⁓ But what I know is that ⁓ perimenopausal women

are usually misdiagnosed, are usually get into depression signs, usually… Yeah, I usually, you know, get highlighted with that you’re depressed or emotional or panicking or etc. And all this is bullshit because there is this like, your ability to adapt is changing because your nervous system become so sensitive.

DI GILLETT [Host] (36:53)

So true.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (37:14)

that it’s really hard to adapt to things and that’s why it’s so serious thing. It lasts so long. You need to prepare yourself in life.

as soon as possible. You need to build muscle, you need to take care of your bones, you need to get some resistant training when your bones get feedback from reality. You need to get much more protein, etc. So you just like you need to prepare yourself and change your support system because it’s not a joke. And you need to find a doctor who is not thinking that it’s a joke or you’re just depressed.

DI GILLETT [Host] (37:53)

With the integration of this data and AI, is there anything or any cautions that you would call out in terms of the information that is coming back? It’s not to be designed as Dr. Google. That’s not what the idea is. This is about giving us real-time information to make informed decisions, yes?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (38:22)

So we are basically ⁓ not ⁓ trying to provide some AI chats right now because everybody is doing AI chat, et cetera. So we are focusing on the data that actually you can take to AI chat and talk with them about it. But talking about AI, of course, is really important because ⁓

There is an elephant in the room that ⁓ is positioned like a general wellness in most of these companies, ⁓ but people are talking serious medical questions with them and discussing all of their medical questions with them and tons of people trust AI.

more than their doctors actually because doctors just talk with them like 15 minutes or something and with AI they can upload all the data and talk about etc. So I think it’s really serious and we need to understand that it’s a fundamental shift that everybody just start to use AI as a doctor no matter what positioning in marketing you are using.

And everybody knows that actually, but like, you know, FDA is calm and do not like want to intervene. ⁓ it’s, and actually, AI is good. But the problem is that it’s as good as the questions that are asked and the data that is provided and the timing.

DI GILLETT [Host] (39:57)

Of course.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (40:03)

that actually you’re asking and people tend to ask the wrong questions in the wrong time period of time. of course, AI is great and much better than you have you just cannot afford a doctor or you can get to a doctor in six months or something. It’s much better than not having

DI GILLETT [Host] (40:25)

But there’s the caution because if you haven’t articulated the question in quite the right manner, the information you’re getting back is only as good as the question asked. It’s like briefing an ad agency. Crap briefing, crap ad. Good briefing, good ad.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (40:41)

Yeah,

engineers call it garbage in, garbage out. So ⁓ yeah, the simple tips here, ask one AI to check the answers of another AI. ⁓ After you’re asking something, ⁓ ask, you sure? Prove me, give me some sources. Even two AI, just prove this wrong. Give me some sources. ⁓ Is it really true? Think one more time. So even just this simple thing like, can you think one more time?

DI GILLETT [Host] (41:11)

Yeah. Yeah, that’s really good advice. So Jane, who owns the biometric data that you’re gathering?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (41:22)

It’s like who owns is a tricky question. basically, yeah, of course, it’s managed by the companies you’re using to generate, to store and to analyze this data. And the things that ⁓ they will do with this data depends on the law.

And thanks God we have the law that says that data is yours and you can take it out, that you can ask them to delete it, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ But also ⁓ you can think about ⁓ the ownership of the company and ⁓ what is like is going on there. Like imagine a startup, for example.

is launching and they have great intentions, building great company, building great algorithms, etc. Then they fundraise and then they fundraise one more time and then they fundraise one more time and from broader

DI GILLETT [Host] (42:27)

in the insurance firm invest.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (42:29)

And at broader perspective, you just see a successful company. But you know that ⁓ usually even on the second round of financing, ⁓ founder cannot control anything and cannot stop anything. And then you have a company that is owned by investors and financial people and controlled by financial people and the basic ⁓

DI GILLETT [Host] (42:57)

Go Yeah.

⁓

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (43:00)

of Deliver C-Corp is to provide the profits ⁓ to the shareholders. like you have a situation when the patient interests can get into confrontation with financial interests. And that’s how we get to the worst things in healthcare that we see right now.

DI GILLETT [Host] (43:18)

Absolutely,

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (43:28)

So it’s very important to understand who is behind the company.

DI GILLETT [Host] (43:32)

It’s like understanding who’s actually advertising and you often see these well-being ads but you know that it’s being funded by a drug company that’s heavily invested behind the scenes. So hence the question and I know that’s a very political area to get into which we won’t but I appreciate your insights in that Jane.

Could I ask you a couple of rapid fire questions just to round up today’s discussion? One daily non-negotiable for your nervous system.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (44:14)

I think it’s like ⁓ moving around the day. ⁓ Small moves, go to coffee, ⁓ lay down, just ⁓ breathe, look at the sea or the sky or something. Just not get stuck into some particular one situation like your chair and Zoom. ⁓ That’s one thing that you should be most afraid of.

DI GILLETT [Host] (44:44)

One metric, women should care about more than productivity and their weight.

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (44:50)

I would say that it’s their ability to recover and their support system. They should care about their support infrastructure and recovery infrastructure as they do care about their productivity infrastructure. That’s really important and it includes some variables and devices and apps, et cetera, but also other things like the safe space, the personal space, the space when you can be alone.

when you can feel engaged with some great social connections, etc. So your support system is like the most important thing. It’s not a joke. It’s a really very important investment.

DI GILLETT [Host] (45:32)

Yeah so Jane if a high performing woman is listening to this today and suspects she’s functioning in chronic stress but still tells herself she’s coping what would you say to her?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (45:47)

that you are not coping. ⁓ You can check it out with the data. in denial. Yeah, because usually when we are stressed, ⁓ we try to influence our minds that we are coping, everything is okay, we will get through this, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, and all these things are not healthy.

It’s not true that you are more efficient if you just work 12 hours a day. It’s just not true. You are more efficient if you are recovered, if you slept well, if your prefrontal cortex is working actually. So just don’t lie to yourself. ⁓ You don’t have to be like the silly movies when people just work, then sleep for six hours and then work again.

There are tons of research that shows that ⁓ in a week of six hours sleep, you are just drunk in terms of intellectual productivity. all this is lie about. Yeah, so ⁓ just get into reality, face your reality, face the reality of your limits of your body. It’s okay. It can be managed in a proper way and everything will be okay.

DI GILLETT [Host] (46:58)

Your cognitive impairment.

Yeah. So Jane, is the WorldTour app work with all forms of smartphones?

JANE SMORODNIKOVA [Guest] (47:23)

Yeah, it works with the iPhone and Android, but not with all wearables. We have the best integration possible, but we try to increase this amount all the time.

DI GILLETT [Host] (47:36)

So

I can connect my Fitbit to the app and start tracking real time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there we go. So for the listeners today, I think this focus on health and wellbeing, as I said at the beginning of the podcast, has become a little bit of a hefty focus over the last few months. I had a personal experience starting the new year with

symptoms of a heart attack turned out that it wasn’t ⁓ and I’m now monitoring just about everything that moves in my world to make sure that I do know what’s going on and in actual fact I do a echo stress test tomorrow so that will tell me even more about my heart rate variability and what’s going on. But to Jane’s point,

Don’t ignore what’s going on and there are so many times when we are so run down and so burnt out exactly to the point that was raised our cognitive impairment is the equivalent of being drunk. So if you are getting poor sleep, poor rest, no mindfulness practices, you are probably running on empty and doing yourselves no favors and if you listen to what I talked about on the podcast with Maddy Dyckvold

It is not going to be about aging well and your longevity is going to be compromised. And we all know now that protein and our muscle strength and muscle and bone density is a key part to aging well. And this wrapped around it is a great way to track it to know where you’re at. So Jane, thank you so much for your time today and sharing it with our listeners on the Power of Women podcast.

and I look forward to sharing more of this information with the community going forward. Until next time.

Chapters:

02:24 The Journey of Welltory: From Idea to Global Impact

03:57 Identifying Opportunities in Healthcare Data

08:42 Scaling a Global Business: Key Milestones

11:55 The Personal Cost of Growth

14:36 Managing Pressure: Personal Strategies

17:14 Understanding Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

20:04 The Importance of Listening to Our Bodies

22:26 Measuring Stress and Recovery

26:55 The Science Behind Heart Rate Variability

32:33 Patterns to Monitor in HRV

36:18 Navigating Menopause and Perimenopause

38:22 Cautions with AI in Health Data

Connect with Di:

Find Jane Smorodnikova at:

Website https://welltory.com/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/smorodnikova/?skipRedirect=true

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/welltory/

This is the home of unapologetic conversations and powerful stories of reinvention. New episodes drop every Monday to fuel your week with insights on leadership, resilience, and success. Subscribe and join a community of women who are changing the game.

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How to Reset, Rebuild & Rise Stronger After a Major Setback

by admin | Apr 20, 2026 | Burnout, Female Power, Health & Wellbeing

Insights into how to rebuild & rise stronger.

What happens when the very qualities that built your success almost break you? When you whole identity is wrapped up in your career – your title.

In this episode of the Power Of Women Podcast, Di Gillett sits down with Tess Brouwer, former Virgin Australia executive, now Chief Energy Officer and Co-Founder of Awake Academy to explore what it truly takes to reset, rebuild, and rise stronger after life changes in an instant.

At 32, Tess was a high-performing corporate leader living in Switzerland when a skiing accident left her with a spinal cord injury, Guillain-Barré diagnosis, multiple surgeries and months in rehabilitation. Her identity had been built on performance, drive and achievement. Suddenly, none of that worked.

This is a raw and honest conversation about identity grief, burnout, nervous system overload, emotional resilience and rebuilding self-worth from the ground up.

➡️ You’ll Hear :

The life-changing accident that forced Tess to confront her identity

Why high performers ignore red flags – until they can’t

The difference between grit and true resilience

How mental fitness differs from “pushing through”

Why burnout is often a wake-up call, not a weakness

Practical daily resets to regulate your nervous system

The simple question every ambitious woman must ask herself: Am I enjoying my life?

❇ Key Takeaways:

The warning signs high performers need to listen to

The hidden cost of tying self-worth to work

How to train your nervous system under pressure

The power of daily micro-resets.

Tess said:

“Power is a silent self-trust.”

“If I wasn’t doing a deal or succeeding in something … who am I?”

📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (00:02)

Tess, when you hear the words power of women and reflecting on your own experiences, what comes to mind?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (00:09)

⁓

Di, I love that you asked this question and I just turned 40 on the weekend and I you very much. I’ve been thinking about my word and what will it be for the next decade and I anchored on power, believe it or not, and I anchored on that because for me it’s not power I can rule the world, it’s a deep embodiment of who I am.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (00:16)

Happy birthday!

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (00:38)

And knowing that I’ve done the work, that I’ve found my soul, my dark spots, my triggers, I mean, they’re always unfolding. But the power in that when you know yourself, when you start to love yourself again, when you trust in yourself, which I’ve never had that before, and it’s been a long process for me to get there. So I would say it’s like a power for me is a silent self-trust.

and a belief in myself that can ride the waves, can ride the storms, and is a really grounded, beautiful force, which is the divine feminine. And so that to me is the true embodiment of power now for me. So bring on power, hey?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (01:26)

Yay. Brilliant. So what happens when the very qualities that built your success, your drive, your identity, your refusal to stop are actually the same qualities that almost break you? I’m Di Gillett and this is the Power of Women podcast. And if you’re joining us for the first time, what I love about this platform is the opportunity to showcase and celebrate the strength, resilience and achievements

of women from all walks of life. And this conversation is about pushing through and ignoring some of the signs. And that is a deeply personal conversation for me because I started the beginning of this year, in fact, New Year’s Day, with having a sign, not quite so sure, deciding to listen to it and spent three days.

in a hospital in Melbourne in Australia with a suspected heart attack. Now I am absolutely thrilled to say that it didn’t end up being the case, but what it was was the fact that I had pushed too hard and literally run myself into the ground. So to put some more context to this, I am joined today by Tess Brouwer, mental and emotional fitness expert, co-founder of Awake Academy with Lane Beachley.

And Tess is the former head of brand partnerships at Virgin Australia. And she’s a woman who rebuilt her life after a life-changing spinal and brain injury. Tess was a high performer in the corporate world. There were big deals, big responsibilities, big identity. Then a skiing accident at 32 changed everything. A spinal injury, Guillain-Barre diagnosis, multiple hospital. ⁓

visits, a body that wouldn’t cooperate, and a nervous system in overload. So in a conversation today, we’re going to explore how to reset, rebuild, and rise stronger when your identity fractures. Because the reality is for any of us, life can change in a blink of an eye. Tess Brouwer, welcome to the Power of Women podcast.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (03:51)

Thank you, Di. When you hear those words being read about you, I’m instantly emotional. I’m instantly back there. Someone said to me the other day, it was actually one of my friends, are you okay? You’re talking about it a lot. And I feel like that’s the true sense of power is, is knowing that it, that trauma and that pain still sits within and you can work through it and you’re comfortable sitting in it.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (04:21)

Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (04:22)

I spent so long ignoring myself, my feelings and my emotions and passing them off as, know, well, there’s a war going on. Who am I to experience pain? but yeah, thank you for a beautiful intro, but yeah, know that it’s still hard hearing that because I still am in it.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (04:40)

So all of that emotion is going to come through in our conversation today, Tess. And if there is at any point where you want to call a break, you call a break. Thank Because I get it. Yeah. So could we go back, take us back to the skiing accident? What happened? And more importantly, what happened in the days and the weeks after you realized this wasn’t something you could just ignore and push through?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (05:09)

The truth is, is I knew instantly. So I just moved over to Switzerland and I was like first week, new job, skiing day and went up a black run with the team because that’s what you do when you’re a high performance woman who’s out to impress everyone. And a skier went past me. It was a very, very foggy, like white out up there. And I went straight into the side of a ⁓

Ice wall because he had to come down the mountain through And Yeah, I lost both my skis slammed headfirst into the ice wall lost the lost both the skis and just I remember going blank and I remember pins and needles shot through my body and then I just the adrenaline just searched and I just got up laughing trying to kind of overcome what was happening in my in myself and

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (05:40)

because you had no perspective you couldn’t read the ground

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (06:06)

Deep down I knew, I remember thinking, you’ve done something here. But I had to carry on. I had to do what I’ve always done. I don’t want to be the person that’s in shame or the person that’s the troubled one. I just wanted to click back in and keep going. And I did. And I got off the mountain pretty quickly. I just needed to get away cracking headache and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. And it’s not like me to miss a party day.

⁓ And I didn’t want to go to the after party. I just needed to go home and go to sleep now when your identity is wrapped up in your work and For context I had just sold out everything and moved to overseas so

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (06:51)

So this was a permanent move to Europe?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (06:57)

I’d signed over my residency to Australia. I was now residing in Switzerland. So the mere thought that something was wrong with me and that I would need any sort of form of medical treatment just wasn’t even a concept to me. So I did what I have always done is I carried on. And that looked like for me is pins and needles up and down my hand, loss of feeling in my shoes.

I got in my feet, so I got my mum to send over shoes that I loved in Australia because I felt like I had more feeling in my feet in them.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (07:33)

So you’re already looking for band-aids

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (07:38)

And

there was a pivotal moment where I was swimming in Lake Geneva and I was diving through the water and I totally lost feeling in my legs. I remember swimming and I remember thinking, I am going to drown because it’s quite, there’s quite a rapid that goes down there. I’m like, everything in me was get to the edge of this jetty.

And I got there and I was holding onto the jetty and I remember thinking, like, if you don’t get up, you’re gonna drown. And like with every ounce of my body, I just pushed myself up and I laid there almost like, you know, when you see a seal flop themselves up onto a jetty and they’re like…

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (08:21)

Yeah, legs working

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (08:23)

legs weren’t working and I was just thinking.

And so I do what most normal people do is you get out your phone and you Google your symptoms.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (08:34)

Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (08:36)

And it suggested that I had multiple sclerosis, which I thought, well, I can deal with that. Now, if you’re someone who has that, I’m terribly sorry for downplaying that. But in my head, it was the easier thing to capture in my brain because it was something that I could, it was a long term issue that I could deal with when I got back to Australia, you know, when I went back there another time, because I just, didn’t know how to deal with that medical system either.

second link like obviously I didn’t even speak French and it was so there was a series of these moments die that were just like I look back on myself and I’m like what were you ignoring I was wetting my pants at work and just going to the shops and buying new ones

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (09:20)

And that was the spinal injury pressing on nerves.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (09:24)

messing on my nerves and what was happening was because my spinal cord was bruised, compressed and swelling, I was going into spinal shock and I didn’t realize it. And people can do incredible things with spinal cord injury and not know about it. And they can still, you can still experiencing loss of feeling in hands and all of that. They’re quite like in quote unquote normal experiences as you know, with your back.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (09:49)

I do.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (09:50)

that was spinal shock and then your body’s starting to shut down and and that’s when I went to hospital because I just thought I can’t deal with this any longer and I said to them I hit my head they ignored that and they sent me home with an anxiety tablet. Fortunately I was sent straight back to hospital and the next morning for an MRI and at that point they just said look you’re have to be an inpatient because we’ve got to work out what’s wrong with you there’s something going on so.

lumbar punctures, being electrocuted, like actually multiple lumbar punctures which is like possibly

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (10:25)

Very

painful. haven’t had one but I’ve witnessed a family member having it and it was unforgettable.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (10:35)

Yeah, it’s a pain that you can’t explain. And I say this with grace to myself at this moment, but I still didn’t call home. I still didn’t call my mom or my family. Shame. Total shame. How could I have ignored my body? How have I gotten to this point? And I was getting really bad. Like I remember my speech

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (11:02)

How long is it now since the accident? of Okay. Yes.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (11:04)

Come on.

aggressively getting worse. And

then I was an hour away, they decided that I had Guillain-Barré disease, which is sort of like a category that they put me in and thought that’s what you’ve got and you’re an hour away from getting a blood transfusion, it’s time you call home. But we want to do one more MRI to completely make sure that you’re all right. And I went down into the MRI machine and I think it was like my third one because they put dye through me and all of those sorts of potes and prods.

And the radiologist in broken English said to me, you hit your head, you hit your head. And I said, yes, like that’s what I’ve been saying. Like I know that that’s when my body changed. You know, that moment, right? It wasn’t dramatic at the time, but I knew that that was the

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (11:51)

aggressive from there. ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (11:54)

And because I was fit and like I just did not have anything like that before that moment. And I said, yeah, I hit my head and he said, you have a spinal cord injury. And I just went bang. And yet the penny dropped and they gave my mom 24 hours to get over to Switzerland. I had to call her and say, mom, I’m okay. But yeah, I’m and

Yeah, she got over there and it was one of the most heartbreaking moments ever is seeing my mum walk into the hospital and her daughter is there broken and quite frightened really.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (12:35)

As was she.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (12:37)

But I didn’t grasp the high percentage of people who have this surgery. Well, not high, but it’s low risk, but it’s still a high number.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (12:45)

Anything

to do with your spine is scary. I get it.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (12:49)

I

didn’t realise the risk that you could actually, like it’s millimetres and my spinal surgeon said to me, you know, you’re lucky, you’re very lucky, I’ve seen scans like this and people are totally paralysed. And so yeah, I went into surgery and what I thought was going to be an eight week surgery turned out to be, I went back, I had the surgery, stayed in hospital for two weeks, went back to Australia to recover, which I thought would be eight weeks.

I thought that’s okay, I can get back to work. Because again, that’s all I thought about was just getting back, getting back. And I was back at the hospital, I was an outpatient at Royal North Shore Hospital in Northern Sydney, which has got one of the best spinal wards in Australia there. And they, I went in for just a routine.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (13:37)

and

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (13:43)

meeting I guess with my spinal surgeon and the physiotherapist and like my whole dream team and they just said you need to sit down and we’ve given you, I had another MRI and they said your spine is swelling and the surgery hasn’t worked and you’re have to go have another surgery again. And again that’s when the world shuts down on you and you fall apart because I mean for someone who has

wanted to be a high flyer and climb the corporate ladder and have all of this identity, I knew that that would be it. There would be no job, no home, no clothes, no money, nothing. It was all gone.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (14:21)

You couldn’t see beyond it at that point. was, it was, it was like, we’re done here.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (14:27)

Yeah, that was it. it was like, I truly like there were so many moments where I didn’t realize how serious it was. So even after the surgery, like the second surgery, and just before I went in, it was like 10, maybe 8, 8pm at night, something like that. And my surgeon got called in and he said, Look, I’ve been operating all day, my team are really tired, I’m not going to operate with there’s only one surgery.

ward open and I’m not going to do this at night if you don’t absolutely need it.” He said, do you understand? And I said, yeah, I understand. He goes, it’s going to be uncomfortable for you, but we have, like, I have to make sure that your health is number one. And so I went down for the MRI and I came back out and like your worst fears in that moment are realized when you said we’re opening up the surgery, you’re going in tonight.

So it was sort

of a bit like that, like a snowball that just got worse and worse and worse as time went on. And even more dramatically, like I was getting prepped for surgery and a heart attack came in. So I hope that person survives so badly, but it meant I was then left told that they couldn’t wait, rushed in for surgery only to be pulled out. And then I had to wait for the next slot.

which was another 24 hours later because there was another surgery planned. So it was just insane die. then I went very

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (15:54)

frightening. mean very, very frightening because you don’t know what the prognosis is at the end.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (16:01)

And you can retrospectively look back on these things. And I remember waking up in the spinal ward and them saying, it’s not two weeks here. You’re going to go, like we’ve got to get you recovered. And then you’re going to ride. And I said, what’s ride? Like it’s a, it’s one of Australia’s best rehab hospitals and you’ll be there for three months. And I just thought, am I living life?

Is this me? Is this what I’ve worked so hard to be?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (16:34)

And I had nowhere near the result, albeit it was a ski accident, but it was in my childhood that came back to haunt me in 2021, which put me in hospital during COVID and put me in hospital for two weeks. And I came out and I couldn’t walk without holding on to my husband’s arm and I’d gone in super fit.

and was at a point in my life where I was gonna be fabulous as I approached 60. And I couldn’t walk and I can remember it was late September and I said, I’m gonna be back to walking 10 Ks by the December. And I was nowhere near it and that’s when I was like, I need to take some drastic steps. But I have a some understanding of what happens when

everything suddenly is turned on its head and the simple things in life that we take for granted that are wrapped up in our health and wellbeing suddenly are thrown out and we’re staring down the barrel of an alternative universe that doesn’t look so great. Frightening isn’t it?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (17:53)

Frightening, totally frightening.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (17:57)

So do you know how much of your identity was wrapped up in Tess Brouwer, the corporate executive?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (18:06)

Well, at that point it was Tess Maroney and it was all of it. Every single part of my identity was made up of my work and we laugh about it, but Lane Beachley’s husband is Kurt Pangeli from InXS and he’s, I mean his phone is Tess from Virgin. In fact, sometimes I’ll still have, I’ll email someone and I’ll say, Hey, it’s Tess from Virgin. you remember? Like, cause I still build this like absolute identity that’s wrapped around

what you do not who you are and I never went like my mum was a very and is still a very grounded spiritual person but you don’t really want to hear it from mum and I didn’t like

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (18:37)

Mmm.

No,

anything that close to home doesn’t land unfortunately.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (18:53)

Yeah, but I realised like I had done like high performance leadership courses and all of those sorts of stuff, but that’s just training you to be a better performer and not a better human. so I was just, I was lost that if I wasn’t performing, who was I?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (19:11)

Yeah, if I wasn’t Tess from Virgin, who was I?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (19:14)

If

I wasn’t doing a deal or succeeding in something or being invited somewhere, who am I? And a lot of my friends were getting married, engaged, pregnant, second baby, like creating these truly beautiful lives. And that was the gaping hole in mine, was I had no one to hug at night. I had no one.

to hold me up out of the shower when I couldn’t walk. Like had my mom and my family of course, but it even accentuated that whole fact that, wow, I’ve given everything to work and now I don’t need that.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (20:00)

Yeah, so can you share with us, and I appreciate this is an emotional question, but can you share with us how that changed or impacted your sense of self? Can you take yourself back and describe what that actually felt like?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (20:17)

Yeah, I mean like it felt like I was alone in life. No one will ever understand the pain that I’m going through. Now in a ward of 24 beds I was the only walker in a spinal ward. So I was alone there too. I had so much guilt. Survivors guilt.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (20:40)

because the person in the bed next door couldn’t walk.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (20:44)

Sorry, I tried to check myself out two or three times and give my bed to someone else. And that is true test across my whole life. will give the shirt off my back to anyone apart from myself.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (20:58)

So you felt like an imposter being in the room? I relate to that. I felt like an imposter when I was in the heart ward at Christmas time because I was sitting up feeling great and the girl in the bed next door had had a pacemaker and the woman across from me wasn’t in a great way. So I get that feeling, but we’re mad. We need to listen.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (21:00)

Totally.

We’re mad. And it was the surgeon that said, if you don’t listen to yourself, if you don’t listen to us, and if you don’t put the work in when you’re here, it will be 10 times worse when you get out. And you are here because you need to be here. You’re showing some really strong signs of ⁓ permanent damage. And so this is the time.

So then that was a bit easier because I thought, okay, well I’m going to lock in, I know how to perform, I know how to drive myself. So I sort of had like this mental switch. Plus I had two guys that I was in hospital with called Alex and Harrison, who I became like their big sister to, and I devoted every hour, spare hour I had to looking after them. So rehab,

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (22:06)

So can I just stop you there for a moment? How much of that was about compassionate tests or was that test trying to find a role to fulfill because you had challenged your own identity as it was previously?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (22:26)

wonderful question die and the truth is it’s both. That’s the wonderful thing about identity right? It can be two things at the same time. It came from compassion, it came from my heart and I still like love and care for those boys now.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (22:36)

Yep.

that came from need as well.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (22:52)

Yeah, it came from purpose. It came from feeling useful again. Because if I just was sitting in woe is me, my life is, am I allowed to swear?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (23:02)

Yeah,

of course you can. Fucked!

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (23:04)

Then I realized that there was tiny things that I could do. could semi use my hands at this point. I could help them Alex clean his teeth. So it just became it just became these little micro moments where I was stacking myself onto these like I could be helpful. I wasn’t like it’s like when they say whenever you think your worst day is is on there’s something even worse that you could be dealing with. So make the most of it. So I just applied that grit.

and that resilience to where I was. So I ended up going from just doing one, like helping Alex eat an apple, to then I started running cooking classes for everyone and I’d find out different ways that you could tie a mixer to someone’s hand who had a paralysed hand so that they could cook muffins. So it started becoming part of my therapy and my joy and my light that like I was useful.

even in my most useless form.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (24:06)

Yeah.

So when, at what point did you hit that, if I can’t perform, who am I? To then saying, okay, I can now turn this into purpose to help each other. How long into your stay were you before that started?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (24:27)

It was pretty early on and I remember it. I was lying in bed and the clock on my wall was ticking and driving me insane. I mean hospital bed is pretty dire. Those curtains do not make you feel any better about your

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (24:47)

self. No they don’t.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (24:49)

And I popped next door to Alex and I said, is that clock annoying you? He said, I just can’t, I just don’t know what to do about it. So I took it down and I took the batteries out.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (25:02)

Okay, so that prompts my next question because how different does surrendering to your circumstances to be able to move forward differ to actually giving up? What’s the difference there? Because you certainly didn’t give up. You were still being true to yourself even in

in saying, I can solve that issue with the and clock.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (25:35)

Yeah, I feel like it just comes from everything I’ve been through and the journey that I’ve been on and that, like to me that is the best thing you can ever do is help someone and to be there for others and to be of service. I knew that to be true throughout my whole life but I didn’t feel that I was worthy of that.

or that I had enough to give in terms like I always sort of equated that to be a monetary value. When I was in hospital, it really turned into being my true meaning and purpose at that time was to be there to help everyone around me and to help those boys. And that, and we know this now by all the science, is when you help someone else, really what you’re doing is you’re helping yourself.

I didn’t understand the importance of that for my healing journey until I was out and learning about the science of positive psychology and wellbeing. I didn’t realise that it was actually rewiring my brain to feel like to have a mission and vision and purpose is one of the greatest. You need that, you need meaning in your life no matter what it is. And yeah, it was just those micro moments where you put your hand up and say, I can do that. I can help.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (27:00)

Yep.

Yep. And it’s the same in starting power of women. I’m 62. I could retire or I could do something meaningful. Yeah. I’m going to do something meaningful.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (27:15)

Yeah.

And thank God you did. Thank God you did. And like it was, there was so many incredible moments in that hospital where like everyone has to leave by 11 o’clock PM. It was actually 9 PM, but it got stretched. And so there’s all of these scary hours of people being alone. But then you wake up at 5 AM in the morning and it’s the same noise, the same sound and the same breakfast for brought to you every day. And the boys hated it.

It was the same bacon, eggs, wheat bix and that smell was the triggering thing. Groundhog Day. So I would get up at five o’clock and take the breakfast out of their room. They didn’t have that and that would get me up. So it was like, when I say this just stacked, I was like, okay, I’m going to use this. So that became my superpower. But when I got out die and I lost that, that is when I hit.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (27:46)

Groundhog Day

Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (28:10)

the most absolute rock bottom I’ve

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (28:12)

ever felt. You’re listening to the Power of Women podcast and coming up we’re going to move from breakdown to rebuild. you’re loving the Power of Women podcast be sure to jump on to our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode.

I’m talking with Tess Brouwer, who for years lived by the mantra, push through, power on, and prove yourself. However, Tess faced into a defining moment when her nervous system was burnt out, her mind was in overdrive, and quite frankly, the wheels simply began to fall off. So in this part of our conversation, we move from breakdown to rebuild, what Tess calls mental fitness.

So Tess, the defining moment and the tipping point where you stop fighting and what was, you recognized you needed to reset, that’s where we’re gonna get into this part about mental fitness. But when did you have that moment of going, okay, I’ve got to acknowledge what’s happened and I now need to.

take a different approach to what my life looks like. What was the first steps in that?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (29:38)

Well, I had a wonderful friend called Lane Beachley. We had met when I was a virgin and like I met a lot of people of all different shape, sizes, importance, all the rest of it. But Lane and I just clicked when we met each other and she came to visit me in hospital and she brought a book in called My Dream Life. And I thought this lady is absolutely out of her fucking mind. I’m in a spinal ward.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (30:06)

This is not my dream life.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (30:08)

Yeah,

yeah, but there wasn’t part of me, and I do feel like this was the resilience in me, was I remember looking at a white wall for so long just staring at a ceiling in a neck brace thinking, well, I guess I get to redraw my life. Like I get to, it’s a white canvas. So it put a seed in me. And then when I got out of hospital, like when I say it really hit the fan, like shit really hit the fan for me, it was more like the floor opened up.

In hospital, in rehab, you have a schedule every day, which is hour by hour mapped out and you’re working to use your body again. Not so much mentally. I was put on a lot of medication to help me. So anti-anxiety, anti-depression. I was getting like my, had complex PTSD, so I was getting really big flashes and terrors at night. So I was

a little bit sedated as well. And so when I got out of hospital, I was 33 living in my bedroom with my parents and I just found myself on the floor just like crying because I’d lost my job, my home, my money. I didn’t even have any clothes at that point. I had a couple of bond sets from and came up because that was just

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (31:26)

because everything was still back overseas.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (31:28)

everything

was still back overseas and I really didn’t care. Like I just was like, I don’t care. I’ve got clothes on my back and that’ll do. I couldn’t even imagine wearing normal clothes at that point. And I was just, I wrote one thing in that book and that was start a business. But I thought, how the hell are you going to do that when you, you’d like, you’ve been a corporate girl your whole life, which is safe. And

Like could never work a normal job again because I can’t, I now am packaged up as damaged goods in my head. And I remember coming home from a pretty traumatic appointment and it was all to do with my hands to help them work again. And the lady had grabbed me and I just remember looking at her thinking like, you don’t understand what’s wrong with me. Don’t touch me. And that friction was like, is this who I want to be?

Do I really want to be that woman? And I got home and I was bawling my eyes out thinking my life is totally fucked. And that was rock bottom. And then I started imagining ways that I could quietly sleep off this beautiful earth. And yeah, that really broke me. And I was, I remember looking out at the headland one day watching the sunrise, just thinking, who do I want to be? You’ve got the choice.

I saw a beautiful whale pop up and I just thought you’ve got to do this and I had realized that the story I’ve been telling myself was I’m broken and I’m unlovable and if I keep on telling myself that I will be broken and I will be unlovable So I quick I did a life audit and I saw that what what was that? What was the story? I was just subscribing to was I’m broken. I’m unlovable

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (33:11)

Yeah.

How did you actually do the audit? Was that just in your mind or was that pen to paper?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (33:24)

Yeah,

yeah had no framework. I was doing it on my own and

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (33:31)

And what were the key things you wrote down in that audit? ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (33:34)

am

broken, I’m unlovable, like who is who am I working with, who’s supporting this? Now at the same time I was back at Lane Beechley’s house and I was there with Holly Ransom who you’ll know she’s a power woman herself and at Lane’s house with Kirk Bengeli walking around and their house is like a huge trophy room to be honest and I had my discharge papers of everything that was wrong with me I even published it in our book and Lane

I gave it to Holly and Holly read it and gave me a big hug and she’d been in hospital with me and then I gave it to Lane and she read it and she goes, poof! She said, well if you believe all of this bullshit then your life will be fucked. I just want, and if I could rip it up I would.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (34:16)

There’s the blunt reality check you needed.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (34:20)

That’s right, love and compassion. But the truth is, when, you call someone out, and this is what I’ve learned about myself in that moment, have the courage and the care to hold them up after. So not,

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (34:34)

You need to know how much they can hear and how much you can be.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (34:37)

⁓

Her lifeline to me was, I have a course that I’m doing by myself in two weeks, which is like her own workshop. I haven’t sold any tickets, like it’s not online yet and I need help designing the course and you’re going to help me do it. And there’s that moment of yes, right? Like take the clock down, take out the batteries. This was saying yes to myself or helping myself. So I just said yes.

But I said I can’t work over than an hour, I don’t have any, like I had nothing and she said just go for it. So that was a turning point. I looked at my life and I’m like, what is serving me and what is sabotaging me? And what was serving me was the story of unbroken and ununlovable because I got support, people were behind me, but was it really serving me? No.

It would keep me stuck. So I changed my story and in that I went, okay, well what do I need? So I went from 15 therapists down to two and I got one new one and I stayed with an old one and she was really pushing me to go into my pain. You have been running from pain your whole life through drinking, through partying, through clothes, through food, like through busyness, through performance. Like these were all my band aids. And when you’ve lost them all, it becomes

very discomf, like the discomfort in that is life changing.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (36:04)

Do you ever think this accident needed to happen?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (36:07)

Yes,

yes, yes of course it did and if it wasn’t that it would be something else and I think that’s the beautiful thing about the universe is it gives us exactly what we need to wake up and that’s why we call it the awake academy because it was my awakening and if I look back my life I was getting lots of these stones thrown at me I just wasn’t willing to listen yeah I feel like life just then it gets louder

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (36:19)

Yeah.

Yep, and the stones get a little bit more… Bigger? A little bit bigger, I guess.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (36:40)

Was your face like that? Do you see yours?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (36:42)

I do and I guess just by the virtue of being older and I, but I mean I’ve had some oh shit moments. mean in 1999 I developed alopecia totalis. I lost all of my hair. I was completely bald. I was the height of my corporate powers and I’m wearing a bandana and a corporate suit and it’s like who the fuck am I now?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (37:10)

Yeah

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (37:11)

But I managed to get headhunted into a GM role in that state. I validated to myself that I could still function, I still had worth. I recognized that I could talk about my plight and talk to children in the schoolyard because children with alopecia in the schoolyard is a pretty tough place to be because you get bullied and teased and taunted. And a bit like you, Tess, of…

Okay, if I put some purpose behind what I’m experiencing and use that to help others, then that is going to help me through. it’s exactly the same. Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (37:55)

exactly same pain to purpose.

I think the learning point for me was the fight of the cost of fighting the reality I was in like as in trying to downplay it or ignore it or just trying to like I was like a duck trying to swim with it. ⁓ That was more painful than dealing with it. I just couldn’t see it at the time and learning that neuroscience behind how my brain

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (38:14)

Yep.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (38:24)

was I could rewire my brain at any time and I started doing Dr Joe Dispenser meditations morning, noon and night and I was just obsessed with trying to rewire my brain and trying to calm it down because it was just in everything was a threat.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (38:43)

Yeah heightened anxiety. So let’s delve into ⁓ this mental fitness bit. What’s the difference between pure grit and toughness that drove you to push through? mean is grit and toughness the same thing?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (38:46)

Literally.

I would say so. mean, they’re pretty loaded words, grit and toughness. I think we overplay resilience to be pushed through, get up, keep going. I think resilience has a fragility to it where you can sit with it and you learn to process it and you rewire your story and you get help and that is resilience.

If we turn that into, you’re so tough, you just get up and go, that’s when it becomes almost like a badge of honor. We’ve overdone it.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (39:39)

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and we use that line as a badge of honor. That’s the madness of it.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (39:46)

Yeah, and I think that’s where mental fitness gets a bit clouded or positive psychology and well-being or is that you have to, you know, push through, develop grit, become resilient. That’s not what it is. It’s understanding the truth of what’s going on within the root cause because as you know, emotional pain is one of the biggest causes of stress, injury.

disease, like dis-ease in your body, because the body would rather feel physical pain than emotional pain. And we’re very good at going to the gym, working on our bodies, looking great. But where have we put in mental fitness where we can start to use grit as just getting up and going for a walk instead of going for a run? that, you know, there, there’s that stuff. That is the type of language

that I love challenging people on. Not in combat, but just what are you associating grit with?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (40:52)

Yeah, that’s interesting. So I know personally resilience, and you’ve touched on it, but resilience can tip into denial. can become your enemy. How do you now define not taking no for an answer in a healthy way without losing that strength of character that is you?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (41:16)

Yeah, it’s funny, my husband said in his speech that Tess doesn’t take no for an answer, she sees it as a roundabout.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (41:28)

It’s got a softer landing than just not techno for an hour.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (41:32)

Yeah, and I think like the person that I needed to say no to, to be perfectly honest, was myself. And it wasn’t, and maybe that’s the roundabout theory in real life is like pushing through grit, like force. Like I started to apply that mindset. So the mindset that I knew of high performance woman getting shit done, ticking all the right boxes to healing.

because your brain can just brings you back to what you’ve always known. So I was trying to do it all, trying to go to every appointment. So was burning myself out in healing. So when I learned what true self love was and what mental fitness and emotional fitness was, was actually saying, no, not now to myself. Like you don’t need to do it all. You need to learn to sit in your pain and discomfort. And then I became aware of that.

So that’s when the roundabout came in and it’s like, well, you can’t do all of it, but what’s the something? Like, what would be different about today if you just actually took care of your soul? And that to me was having gentler mornings, not rushing it. And that day is how I rebuilt my life.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (42:52)

Nah, there we go, because it’s going to ask you because I’ve visited Burnout on the podcast on a number of conversations over the last two years and had a terrific conversation, which if anybody listening hasn’t already listened to it with Shanna Kennedy, who was a high performance coach and then burnt out. The difference in this conversation.

⁓ is you more than burnt out, you actually broke you, what you, you physically broke. And that’s the, that’s the different bit. So could we get practical at this point in the conversation and for the, for the power of women community for, for a woman navigating a health set back, a career disruption, an identity shift that comes from something.

not going to plan and the wheels falling off. What are the non-negotiables in rebuilding that toolkit?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (43:55)

Okay, Di. So first of all, I realised that everything comes from your intentions. So not your expectations, your intentions of who you are and how you want to show up in the world. Now, I knew I wasn’t going to be healthy, strong. All of those words didn’t exist for me. It was, I just want to be sunshine. So I woke up every day and I just made sure I watched the sunrise every day.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (43:58)

I realized.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (44:23)

What would sunshine do? Sunshine can weather all storms, it radiates from within and it just feels good to be around. So I wanted to feel good from within. So if I started there, my day actually became, what can I do to keep my sunshine? Well, I needed to rest, I needed to look after myself. So I would say to everyone, start your day with an intention and your energy will flow from that.

energetic beings and we need to be our brains need to tell our bodies what mindset we need that day. It’s not woo woo, it’s neuroscience now. So that would be my number one tip. The side note on that, I met my husband a year later from leaving hospital and the first words he said to me was I am sunshine. ⁓

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (45:12)

And because you had become somebody people wanted to be around.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (45:16)

Right. And normally I would have just put my head down and walked away. And yeah, a year later from that day, we were engaged. We got married. We had a baby and having that intent really changed my life. Then I would, and this is something I’ve incorporated because I am entering into perimenopause and I do need to be really conscious of how I feel my body and your brain and your body will fuel on what you feed it. And that includes negative self-talk is as important.

to become aware of and to close down as it is for my morning coffee.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (45:49)

Yeah, it’s true. I get it.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (45:51)

So I have a big glass of water with some cracked sea salt to rehydrate my body. And when I do that, I’m drinking it saying, today’s gonna be a great day, show me how good it’s gonna get. And I just have this quiet solitude in my moment. Now, if you’re already doing that, I highly recommend scraping your tongue first thing and cleaning your teeth before you have a drink of water, because then you’re not drinking back down the toxins. That was a game changer.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (46:19)

Yeah, there you go. Not everybody has a tongue scraper in their bathroom, but they should.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (46:26)

Yeah.

We just had Dr. Stacey Sims on our podcast, A Wake Up Call, and she introduced me to a protein coffee. I fasted a lot to help my body heal. And now I’m entering into a season in my life. really need it’s about sustained energy and sustained wellbeing. me. Protein coffee. So you want to have, we don’t want to be in survival mode from the moment we wake up. So fasting works against our hormones.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (46:44)

about a protein coffee that’s

Yeah,

because that’s fight or flight. Fight or flight? Yeah, cortisol.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (46:59)

can’t wake up with an egg. ⁓ I like to eat

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (47:04)

I meet my egg at about 11 a.m.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (47:08)

I just make a coffee and put two scoops of protein in, mix it up and it is delicious and I have really noticed a difference in my energy throughout the day because of

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (47:18)

Yeah, because you’ve kept yourself at a better level. Yeah. But it’s protein start.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (47:23)

Yeah,

scheduling breaks. So I look at a lot. I used to look at my diary and say, OK, what needs my attention today? And now I look at it. Where can I build in breaks today? Where am I resting and recovering? Because burnout is a classic. You’re climbing a mountain. You don’t come down again. You just climb the other ones. You’re constantly on peak state. And we we think of that as like maybe a project or a moment in time. But really, if we start looking at that in our day.

you start to think, okay, well, how can I build in five minutes here, 90 seconds there, a sunshine break over lunch with no tech, closing my eyes, and start to become aware of what your body and your mind are saying to you. And in those moments of rest, you’re really giving your body time to just close down, decompress, and then you come back with more energy, more clarity, more focus, and at the end of the day,

You’re not absolutely late.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (48:22)

Fucked up. So true. None of these are hard to do. They’re all free. Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (48:31)

They are all free. just need the reminder that this stuff works. I feel like it’s like, it’s so easy to say someone take this pill and it will work. then you.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (48:43)

But all that’s doing, none of that’s addressing the reason you needed the pill. That’s why I hate that approach.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (48:49)

Yeah, but ⁓ we did create a Peel Lane and I actually because all of us are experiencing brain fog.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (48:57)

Both

of you might be, yeah, in the M word.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (49:01)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we worked with a chemist actually, and it’s called wake up. So it’s for those days where you really need to be on focus. That aside, what is so important for me now is I know that emotions last in your body for 90 seconds. Anything other than that. it’s energy in motion is emotion. Anything other than that 90 seconds is the story you wrap around it. So for example,

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (49:09)

Yep.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (49:29)

email or a phone call comes through and you feel that rage you don’t deal with it you pick up your phone and or you talk to a colleague or someone else and you start raging about it how dare this person you start blaming shaming you start the self-doubt and the chatter comes in

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (49:46)

The

second starts getting bigger and bigger. ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (49:50)

Now it’s stored now it’s part of your memory now whenever that person sends or messages you your body instantly goes into fight-or-flight Now in the previous days we could just get up and run because it’s a saber-toothed tiger But you can’t do that when you’re making dinner. It’s ask you for the 18th time what’s for dinner and not offer to help Whatever that looks like whatever that rage moment looks like for you So this is a non-negotiable for me is when I feel triggered

and it could be sadness, could be anger, could be even happiness is an emotional trigger, is to sit in it and breathe through it. And there’s a breath called the physiological sigh, which is two breaths in through your nose, like short and long, and then a really slow exhale through the nose. And that puts your body from out of fight or flight into your parasympathetic nervous system and calms you down instantly. And it is my absolute superpower and that is emotional.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (50:48)

Same. I learned that some time ago and I can completely change. And I’ll give you a real life example of that when I had my heart episode at New Year’s Day and I had to go in for an MRI and they said, your heart rate’s too high, we’re gonna have to give you a drug to bring it down. I said, don’t, I’ll do it through breath. And they said, no, we’ll need to give you a drug. I said, give me two minutes.

just give me two minutes and I had to really push back and in two minutes it was down below 50. They said, how did you do that? I said, breathing. Don’t give me the drug. So it absolutely worked.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (51:31)

Isn’t that amazing, Di, that you have the awareness to do that, but then you burnt yourself out and ended up…

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (51:38)

⁓ I know, know, yeah, deeply intelligent and deeply flawed, both things can be right.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (51:45)

I think that’s what I’ve learned in this is having logical awareness of things is not the same as being in practice.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (51:53)

No it’s not. And I hear I listen to your story and I listen to other people’s story and then I go and work my ass off seven days a week and repeat it all over again. Why would

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (52:02)

Why?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (52:06)

That’s probably what I haven’t answered yet. think it’s ambition, but it might be more than that. No.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (52:08)

Yeah.

Mine was my self-worth. It should be love.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (52:15)

Yeah, well

those two things, ambition and self-worth, are wrapped together in my world and I’m sure they are in many of our listeners’ worlds too. So, we’re pulling that apart.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (52:31)

So that, just having the awareness of that dies like the biggest part. It’s like asking myself every day, I doing this because I need to feel loved? Because I’m not getting it from within and having the awareness is, then you say no to jobs that don’t light you up, that you’re doing it for.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (52:49)

Yeah. Why? Yeah. So Tess, can I ask you, are you stronger now than you were before the accident?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (53:01)

I’m softer, some would say I’m just as strong, but I’ve turned that strength into a gentle strength. And that’s been the biggest gift.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (53:18)

And that’s emotional to face into. Yeah it And you probably need to teach me that because the tough gritty facade is our armour.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (53:30)

Yeah, and at what cost does that serve us or you? You know what? Anyone listening? And I know that sustained well-being because now I teach it and I’ve taught it to thousands of people and I watch it with Lane Beechley like she won a world title, two world titles in a state of love and freedom. It’s clear, it’s disciplined, it’s not

That level of strength doesn’t make you weak. But the other level of strength which is pushing you is like over questioning, pushing through, comparison, the what ifs, the I should, the could, the would.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (54:13)

I

need to get on the couch, seriously, I seriously need to take a dead-hunt myself.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (54:17)

And

they’re two totally different operating models. when you, if sustained mental fitness, sustained wellbeing is having those cracks warts and all, and just knowing that you are enough, just as you are, and that no amount of financial money will ever prove that too. So for what?

Because when you’re on your ass in your parents bedroom with no money, no car, no home, nothing, and you have to learn to love yourself just as you are, you just become softer.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (54:58)

Yeah, yeah, well Tess, that’s a very, very vulnerable conversation and I thank you for being prepared to share that. I’m going to ask you a couple of rapid fire questions as we come to a close today.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (55:16)

Di, can I just close before you go into the wrap-up? The women listening and whether you’re a parent or not and I just want you to relate to this story. We had a lady who was a very high corporate achiever just like me but you know she I think she had three children and she did our course called On Your Streets and it was a one day live or we’ve got it online through the Awake Academy. Yeah. And

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (55:19)

Yeah, sure.

the academy.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (55:45)

We follow up with people a month later because we don’t want to just be a fry pan. you know when you walk, you don’t come to us and walk on hot coals and you’re liberated from life. It’s real grit, but with tool hits. And I saw her a month later and I said, how are going? She’s like, really good. And I’m working through some stuff and I’m just trying to be a more present mom. And that’s great. Like, you know, that for her, that was what she had realized she had left behind was her presence with her family and loved ones.

And that to me was a big wake up call. So I’m like, what is success? Like when you are too busy being busy, you miss the joy and the micro moments and the glimmers. And they’re the things that light you up that that’s what living is. It’s not just going on a holiday every few months. It really is the micro moments every day. And I was fortunate enough to see his beautiful soul another month later. So two months have passed and she gave me the biggest hug.

And she said to me, think I’ve found it. And I said, what is it? And she said, my kids said that I’m happier.

They said, what have you done, mum? You’re so much happier. You’re there with us. You’re fun, mum. And she was identified as being dictator, mum, because she was tired. And that to me, when we talk about pain to purpose, that is my why. Because I know you can still be powerful, but present and gentle and kind. Like you can still be all those things.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (57:16)

And I think there’s a simple question in that and look in the mirror and say, I enjoying life? I think it’s as simple as that. Okay, yeah. fire. Rapid fire, here we go. So one belief about success you no longer subscribe to.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (57:23)

Yeah. Yeah.

That money buys happiness and because of that output would equal worth so that you have to be doing more to being worthy and then then you get more money and then you’ll be happy.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (57:50)

A red flag high performers should never ignore.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (57:56)

chronic exhaustion marked as busyness.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (57:59)

Yes, and the strongest version of you looks like…

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (58:08)

Sunshine?

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (58:09)

Nah, there we go. Sunshine.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (58:12)

Yeah,

just energetic, magnetic, calm, present. Of course I have my wobbles, I am no, by no means perfect, ask my kids. But I think it’s just I have, yeah, grounded sense of who I am and the love I have for myself now, what’s and all.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (58:30)

Yeah, beautiful. Tess, thank you again for sharing. I’m going to put the links to the Awake Academy into the show notes. And will that take them through to a toolkit page as well, if they click onto that?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (58:47)

Yeah, please do. We’ve got a seven day self care, which you can do for free. We’ve got a soul map. If you have no idea where to begin, that’s a good place to start. It’ll tell you where you know who you are and where you need to go. Or we’ve got monthly coaching with the awake collective because people don’t want to do this stuff alone. Or if you’re really up for it, bring us into your business and let Lane and I show you how you can have sustained well-being and happy, healthy people.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (59:16)

Yeah, beautiful ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (59:18)

Can

I credit you for something? I just want to honour you for holding space in this emotion that has come up for me today. You too are going through your own challenges and the story resonates back and perhaps that’s why I’ve been so raw and open and honest and you’ve asked such beautiful questions that have given me the gift of reflection. And I know for all the women out there that listen to your podcast and men,

is that we’re all looking to find a better way through and an easier way. And thank you for that gift, for allowing me to explore that alongside you as you explore your trauma and pain as well, because there is a better way.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (1:00:02)

Now you’ve made me emotional. Thank you, Tess. That’s beautiful. I’ve spent 30 years in the executive search space interviewing people and learning their stories. I’ve spent two years interviewing on the power of women, and I have learned more about myself in those two years than I learned in the previous 30. So you are spot on.

So to Tessa’s point, there are going to be people within your network who would really benefit from listening to a conversation like this. And it might bring up the uncomfortable and it might bring up the emotion, but you know what? It takes that to actually have that inflection point and really face into what’s not working. that simple question that I said, you

Are you enjoying life? And if the answer is, if you hesitate, then you’ve got to ask yourself why.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (1:01:06)

Yeah, we’re all just humans walking each other home.

DI GILLETT [Podcast Host] (1:01:10)

That’s exactly right. Thank you Tess. Until next time.

DI GILLETT [Host] (00:02)

Tess, when you hear the words power of women and reflecting on your own experiences, what comes to mind?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (00:09)

⁓

Di, I love that you asked this question and I just turned 40 on the weekend and I you very much. I’ve been thinking about my word and what will it be for the next decade and I anchored on power, believe it or not, and I anchored on that because for me it’s not power I can rule the world, it’s a deep embodiment of who I am.

DI GILLETT [Host] (00:16)

Happy birthday!

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (00:38)

And knowing that I’ve done the work, that I’ve found my soul, my dark spots, my triggers, I mean, they’re always unfolding. But the power in that when you know yourself, when you start to love yourself again, when you trust in yourself, which I’ve never had that before, and it’s been a long process for me to get there. So I would say it’s like a power for me is a silent self-trust.

and a belief in myself that can ride the waves, can ride the storms, and is a really grounded, beautiful force, which is the divine feminine. And so that to me is the true embodiment of power now for me. So bring on power, hey?

DI GILLETT [Host] (01:26)

Yay. Brilliant. So what happens when the very qualities that built your success, your drive, your identity, your refusal to stop are actually the same qualities that almost break you? I’m Di Gillett and this is the Power of Women podcast. And if you’re joining us for the first time, what I love about this platform is the opportunity to showcase and celebrate the strength, resilience and achievements

of women from all walks of life. And this conversation is about pushing through and ignoring some of the signs. And that is a deeply personal conversation for me because I started the beginning of this year, in fact, New Year’s Day, with having a sign, not quite so sure, deciding to listen to it and spent three days.

in a hospital in Melbourne in Australia with a suspected heart attack. Now I am absolutely thrilled to say that it didn’t end up being the case, but what it was was the fact that I had pushed too hard and literally run myself into the ground. So to put some more context to this, I am joined today by Tess Brower, mental and emotional fitness expert, co-founder of Awake Academy with Lane Beachley.

And Tess is the former head of brand partnerships at Virgin Australia. And she’s a woman who rebuilt her life after a life-changing spinal and brain injury. Tess was a high performer in the corporate world. There were big deals, big responsibilities, big identity. Then a skiing accident at 32 changed everything. A spinal injury, Guillain-Barre diagnosis, multiple hospital. ⁓

visits, a body that wouldn’t cooperate, and a nervous system in overload. So in a conversation today, we’re going to explore how to reset, rebuild, and rise stronger when your identity fractures. Because the reality is for any of us, life can change in a blink of an eye. Tess Brower, welcome to the Power of Women podcast.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (03:51)

Thank you, Di. When you hear those words being read about you, I’m instantly emotional. I’m instantly back there. Someone said to me the other day, it was actually one of my friends, are you okay? You’re talking about it a lot. And I feel like that’s the true sense of power is, is knowing that it, that trauma and that pain still sits within and you can work through it and you’re comfortable sitting in it.

DI GILLETT [Host] (04:21)

Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (04:22)

I spent so long ignoring myself, my feelings and my emotions and passing them off as, you know, well, there’s a war going on. Who am I to experience pain? but yeah, thank you for a beautiful intro, but yeah, know that it’s still hard hearing that because I still am in it.

DI GILLETT [Host] (04:40)

So all of that emotion is going to come through in our conversation today, Tess. And if there is at any point where you want to call a break, you call a break. Thank Because I get it. Yeah. So could we go back, take us back to the skiing accident? What happened? And more importantly, what happened in the days and the weeks after you realized this wasn’t something you could just ignore and push through?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (05:09)

The truth is, is I knew instantly. So I just moved over to Switzerland and I was like first week, new job, skiing day and went up a black run with the team because that’s what you do when you’re a high performance woman who’s out to impress everyone. And a skier went past me. It was a very, very foggy, like white out up there. And I went straight into the side of a ⁓

Ice wall because he had to come down the mountain through And Yeah, I lost both my skis slammed headfirst into the ice wall lost the lost both the skis and just I remember going blank and I remember pins and needles shot through my body and then I just the adrenaline just searched and I just got up laughing trying to kind of overcome what was happening in my in myself and

DI GILLETT [Host] (05:40)

because you had no perspective you couldn’t read the ground

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (06:06)

Deep down I knew, I remember thinking, you’ve done something here. But I had to carry on. I had to do what I’ve always done. I don’t want to be the person that’s in shame or the person that’s the troubled one. I just wanted to click back in and keep going. And I did. And I got off the mountain pretty quickly. I just needed to get away cracking headache and all I wanted to do was go to sleep. And it’s not like me to miss a party day.

⁓ And I didn’t want to go to the after party. I just needed to go home and go to sleep now when your identity is wrapped up in your work and For context I had just sold out everything and moved to overseas so

DI GILLETT [Host] (06:51)

So this was a permanent move to Europe?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (06:57)

I’d signed over my residency to Australia. I was now residing in Switzerland. So the mere thought that something was wrong with me and that I would need any sort of form of medical treatment just wasn’t even a concept to me. So I did what I have always done is I carried on. And that looked like for me is pins and needles up and down my hand, loss of feeling in my shoes.

I got in my feet, so I got my mum to send over shoes that I loved in Australia because I felt like I had more feeling in my feet in them.

DI GILLETT [Host] (07:33)

So you’re already looking for band-aids

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (07:38)

And

there was a pivotal moment where I was swimming in Lake Geneva and I was diving through the water and I totally lost feeling in my legs. I remember swimming and I remember thinking, I am going to drown because it’s quite, there’s quite a rapid that goes down there. I’m like, everything in me was get to the edge of this jetty.

And I got there and I was holding onto the jetty and I remember thinking, like, if you don’t get up, you’re gonna drown. And like with every ounce of my body, I just pushed myself up and I laid there almost like, you know, when you see a seal flop themselves up onto a jetty and they’re like…

DI GILLETT [Host] (08:21)

Yeah, legs working

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (08:23)

legs weren’t working and I was just thinking.

And so I do what most normal people do is you get out your phone and you Google your symptoms.

DI GILLETT [Host] (08:34)

Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (08:36)

And it suggested that I had multiple sclerosis, which I thought, well, I can deal with that. Now, if you’re someone who has that, I’m terribly sorry for downplaying that. But in my head, it was the easier thing to capture in my brain because it was something that I could, it was a long term issue that I could deal with when I got back to Australia, you know, when I went back there another time, because I just, didn’t know how to deal with that medical system either.

second link like obviously I didn’t even speak French and it was so there was a series of these moments die that were just like I look back on myself and I’m like what were you ignoring I was wetting my pants at work and just going to the shops and buying new ones

DI GILLETT [Host] (09:20)

And that was the spinal injury pressing on nerves.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (09:24)

messing on my nerves and what was happening was because my spinal cord was bruised, compressed and swelling, I was going into spinal shock and I didn’t realize it. And people can do incredible things with spinal cord injury and not know about it. And they can still, you can still experiencing loss of feeling in hands and all of that. They’re quite like in quote unquote normal experiences as you know, with your back.

DI GILLETT [Host] (09:49)

I do.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (09:50)

that was spinal shock and then your body’s starting to shut down and and that’s when I went to hospital because I just thought I can’t deal with this any longer and I said to them I hit my head they ignored that and they sent me home with an anxiety tablet. Fortunately I was sent straight back to hospital and the next morning for an MRI and at that point they just said look you’re have to be an inpatient because we’ve got to work out what’s wrong with you there’s something going on so.

lumbar punctures, being electrocuted, like actually multiple lumbar punctures which is like possibly

DI GILLETT [Host] (10:25)

Very

painful. haven’t had one but I’ve witnessed a family member having it and it was unforgettable.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (10:35)

Yeah, it’s a pain that you can’t explain. And I say this with grace to myself at this moment, but I still didn’t call home. I still didn’t call my mom or my family. Shame. Total shame. How could I have ignored my body? How have I gotten to this point? And I was getting really bad. Like I remember my speech

DI GILLETT [Host] (11:02)

How long is it now since the accident? of Okay. Yes. ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (11:04)

Come on.

aggressively getting worse. And

then I was an hour away, they decided that I had Guillain-Barré disease, which is sort of like a category that they put me in and thought that’s what you’ve got and you’re an hour away from getting a blood transfusion, it’s time you call home. But we want to do one more MRI to completely make sure that you’re all right. And I went down into the MRI machine and I think it was like my third one because they put dye through me and all of those sorts of potes and prods.

And the radiologist in broken English said to me, you hit your head, you hit your head. And I said, yes, like that’s what I’ve been saying. Like I know that that’s when my body changed. You know, that moment, right? It wasn’t dramatic at the time, but I knew that that was the

DI GILLETT [Host] (11:51)

aggressive from there. ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (11:54)

And because I was fit and like I just did not have anything like that before that moment. And I said, yeah, I hit my head and he said, you have a spinal cord injury. And I just went bang. And yet the penny dropped and they gave my mom 24 hours to get over to Switzerland. I had to call her and say, mom, I’m okay. But yeah, I’m and

Yeah, she got over there and it was one of the most heartbreaking moments ever is seeing my mum walk into the hospital and her daughter is there broken and quite frightened really.

DI GILLETT [Host] (12:35)

As was she.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (12:37)

But I didn’t grasp the high percentage of people who have this surgery. Well, not high, but it’s low risk, but it’s still a high number.

DI GILLETT [Host] (12:45)

Anything

to do with your spine is scary. I get it.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (12:49)

I

didn’t realise the risk that you could actually, like it’s millimetres and my spinal surgeon said to me, you know, you’re lucky, you’re very lucky, I’ve seen scans like this and people are totally paralysed. And so yeah, I went into surgery and what I thought was going to be an eight week surgery turned out to be, I went back, I had the surgery, stayed in hospital for two weeks, went back to Australia to recover, which I thought would be eight weeks.

I thought that’s okay, I can get back to work. Because again, that’s all I thought about was just getting back, getting back. And I was back at the hospital, I was an outpatient at Royal North Shore Hospital in Northern Sydney, which has got one of the best spinal wards in Australia there. And they, I went in for just a routine.

DI GILLETT [Host] (13:37)

and

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (13:43)

meeting I guess with my spinal surgeon and the physiotherapist and like my whole dream team and they just said you need to sit down and we’ve given you, I had another MRI and they said your spine is swelling and the surgery hasn’t worked and you’re have to go have another surgery again. And again that’s when the world shuts down on you and you fall apart because I mean for someone who has

wanted to be a high flyer and climb the corporate ladder and have all of this identity, I knew that that would be it. There would be no job, no home, no clothes, no money, nothing. It was all gone.

DI GILLETT [Host] (14:21)

You couldn’t see beyond it at that point. was, it was, it was like, we’re done here.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (14:27)

Yeah, that was it. it was like, I truly like there were so many moments where I didn’t realize how serious it was. So even after the surgery, like the second surgery, and just before I went in, it was like 10, maybe 8, 8pm at night, something like that. And my surgeon got called in and he said, Look, I’ve been operating all day, my team are really tired, I’m not going to operate with there’s only one surgery.

ward open and I’m not going to do this at night if you don’t absolutely need it.” He said, do you understand? And I said, yeah, I understand. He goes, it’s going to be uncomfortable for you, but we have, like, I have to make sure that your health is number one. And so I went down for the MRI and I came back out and like your worst fears in that moment are realized when you said we’re opening up the surgery, you’re going in tonight.

So it was sort

of a bit like that, like a snowball that just got worse and worse and worse as time went on. And even more dramatically, like I was getting prepped for surgery and a heart attack came in. So I hope that person survives so badly, but it meant I was then left told that they couldn’t wait, rushed in for surgery only to be pulled out. And then I had to wait for the next slot.

which was another 24 hours later because there was another surgery planned. So it was just insane die. then I went very

DI GILLETT [Host] (15:54)

frightening. mean very, very frightening because you don’t know what the prognosis is at the end.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (16:01)

And you can retrospectively look back on these things. And I remember waking up in the spinal ward and them saying, it’s not two weeks here. You’re going to go, you’re like, we’ve got to get you recovered. And then you’re going to ride. And I said, what’s ride? Like it’s a, it’s one of Australia’s best rehab hospitals and you’ll be there for three months. And I just thought, am I living life?

Is this me? Is this what I’ve worked so hard to be?

DI GILLETT [Host] (16:34)

And I had nowhere near the result, albeit it was a ski accident, but it was in my childhood that came back to haunt me in 2021, which put me in hospital during COVID and put me in hospital for two weeks. And I came out and I couldn’t walk without holding on to my husband’s arm and I’d gone in super fit.

And I was at a point in my life where I was going to be fabulous as I approached 60. And I couldn’t walk and I can remember it was late September and I said, I’m going to be back to walking 10 Ks by the December. And I was nowhere near it. And that’s when I was like, I need to take some drastic steps. But I have a, some understanding of what happens when

everything suddenly is turned on its head and the simple things in life that we take for granted that are wrapped up in our health and wellbeing suddenly are thrown out and we’re staring down the barrel of an alternative universe that doesn’t look so great. Frightening isn’t it?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (17:53)

Frightening, totally frightening.

DI GILLETT [Host] (17:57)

So do you know how much of your identity was wrapped up in Tess Brower, the corporate executive?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (18:06)

Well, at that point it was Tess Maroney and it was all of it. Every single part of my identity was made up of my work and we laugh about it, but Lane Beachley’s husband is Kurt Pangeli from InXS and he’s, I mean his phone is Tess from Virgin. In fact, sometimes I’ll still have, I’ll email someone and I’ll say, Hey, it’s Tess from Virgin. you remember? Like, cause I still build this like absolute identity that’s wrapped around

what you do not who you are and I never went like my mum was a very and is still a very grounded spiritual person but you don’t really want to hear it from mum and I didn’t like

DI GILLETT [Host] (18:37)

Mmm.

No,

anything that close to home doesn’t land unfortunately.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (18:53)

Yeah, but I realized like I had done like high performance leadership courses and all of those sorts of stuff, but that’s just training you to be a better performer and not a better human. And so I was just, I was lost that if I wasn’t performing, who was I?

DI GILLETT [Host] (19:11)

Yeah, if I wasn’t Tess from Virgin, who was I?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (19:14)

If

I wasn’t doing a deal or succeeding in something or being invited somewhere, who am I? And a lot of my friends were getting married, engaged, pregnant, second baby, like creating these truly beautiful lives. And that was the gaping hole in mine, was I had no one to hug at night. I had no one.

to hold me up out of the shower when I couldn’t walk. Like had my mom and my family of course, but it even accentuated that whole fact that, wow, I’ve given everything to work and now I don’t need that.

DI GILLETT [Host] (20:00)

Yeah, so can you share with us, and I appreciate this is an emotional question, but can you share with us how that changed or impacted your sense of self? Can you take yourself back and describe what that actually felt like?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (20:17)

Yeah, I mean like it felt like I was alone in life. No one will ever understand the pain that I’m going through. Now in a ward of 24 beds I was the only walker in a spinal ward. So I was alone there too. I had so much guilt. Survivors guilt.

DI GILLETT [Host] (20:40)

because the person in the bed next door couldn’t walk.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (20:44)

Sorry, I tried to check myself out two or three times and give my bed to someone else. And that is true test across my whole life. will give the shirt off my back to anyone apart from myself.

DI GILLETT [Host] (20:58)

So you felt like an imposter being in the room? I relate to that. I felt like an imposter when I was in the heart ward at Christmas time because I was sitting up feeling great and the girl in the bed next door had had a pacemaker and the woman across from me wasn’t in a great way. So I get that feeling, but we’re mad. We need to listen.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (21:00)

Totally.

We’re mad. And it was the surgeon that said, if you don’t listen to yourself, if you don’t listen to us, and if you don’t put the work in when you’re here, it will be 10 times worse when you get out. And you are here because you need to be here. You’re showing some really strong signs of ⁓ permanent damage. And so this is the time.

So then that was a bit easier because I thought, okay, well I’m going to lock in, I know how to perform, I know how to drive myself. So I sort of had like this mental switch. Plus I had two guys that I was in hospital with called Alex and Harrison, who I became like their big sister to, and I devoted every hour, spare hour I had to looking after them. So rehab,

DI GILLETT [Host] (22:06)

So can I just stop you there for a moment? How much of that was about compassionate tests or was that test trying to find a role to fulfill because you had challenged your own identity as it was previously?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (22:26)

wonderful question die and the truth is it’s both. That’s the wonderful thing about identity right? It can be two things at the same time. It came from compassion, it came from my heart and I still like love and care for those boys now.

DI GILLETT [Host] (22:36)

Yep.

that came from need as well.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (22:52)

Yeah, it came from purpose. It came from feeling useful again. Because if I just was sitting in woe is me, my life is, am I allowed to swear?

DI GILLETT [Host] (23:02)

Yeah,

of course you can. Fucked!

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (23:04)

Then I realized that there was tiny things that I could do. could semi use my hands at this point. I could help them Alex clean his teeth. So it just became it just became these little micro moments where I was stacking myself onto these like I could be helpful. I wasn’t like it’s like when they say whenever you think your worst day is is on there’s something even worse that you could be dealing with. So make the most of it. So I just applied that grit.

and that resilience to where I was. So I ended up going from just doing one, like helping Alex eat an apple, to then I started running cooking classes for everyone and I’d find out different ways that you could tie a mixer to someone’s hand who had a paralysed hand so that they could cook muffins. So it started becoming part of my therapy and my joy and my light that like I was useful.

even in my most useless form.

DI GILLETT [Host] (24:06)

Yeah.

So when, at what point did you hit that, if I can’t perform, who am I? To then saying, okay, I can now turn this into purpose to help each other. long into your stay were you before that started?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (24:27)

It was pretty early on and I remember it. I was lying in bed and the clock on my wall was ticking and driving me insane. I mean hospital bed is pretty dire. Those curtains do not make you feel any better about your

DI GILLETT [Host] (24:47)

self. No they don’t.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (24:49)

And I popped next door to Alex and I said, is that clock annoying you? He said, I just can’t, I just don’t know what to do about it. So I took it down and I took the batteries out.

DI GILLETT [Host] (25:02)

Okay, so that prompts my next question because how different does surrendering to your circumstances to be able to move forward differ to actually giving up? What’s the difference there? Because you certainly didn’t give up. You were still being true to yourself even in

in saying, I can solve that issue with the and clock.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (25:35)

Yeah, I feel like it just comes from everything I’ve been through and the journey that I’ve been on and that, like to me that is the best thing you can ever do is help someone and to be there for others and to be of service. I knew that to be true throughout my whole life but I didn’t feel that I was worthy of that.

or that I had enough to give in terms like I always sort of equated that to be a monetary value. When I was in hospital, it really turned into being my true meaning and purpose at that time was to be there to help everyone around me and to help those boys. And that, and we know this now by all the science, is when you help someone else, really what you’re doing is you’re helping yourself.

I didn’t understand the importance of that for my healing journey until I was out and learning about the science of positive psychology and wellbeing. I didn’t realise that it was actually rewiring my brain to feel like to have a mission and vision and purpose is one of the greatest. You need that, you need meaning in your life no matter what it is. And yeah, it was just those micro moments where you put your hand up and say, I can do that. I can help.

DI GILLETT [Host] (27:00)

Yep.

Yep. And it’s the same in starting power of women. I’m 62. I could retire or I could do something meaningful. Yeah. I’m going to do something meaningful.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (27:15)

Yeah.

And thank God you did. Thank God you did. And like it was, there was so many incredible moments in that hospital where like everyone has to leave by 11 o’clock PM. It was actually 9 PM, but it got stretched. And so there’s all of these scary hours of people being alone. But then you wake up at 5 AM in the morning and it’s the same noise, the same sound and the same breakfast for brought to you every day. And the boys hated it.

It was the same bacon, eggs, wheat bix and that smell was the triggering thing. Groundhog Day. So I would get up at five o’clock and take the breakfast out of their room. They didn’t have that and that would get me up. So it was like, when I say this just stacked, I was like, okay, I’m going to use this. So that became my superpower. But when I got out die and I lost that, that is when I hit.

DI GILLETT [Host] (27:46)

Groundhog Day

Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (28:10)

the most absolute rock bottom I’ve

DI GILLETT [Host] (28:12)

ever felt. You’re listening to the Power of Women podcast and coming up we’re going to move from breakdown to rebuild. you’re loving the Power of Women podcast be sure to jump on to our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode.

I’m talking with Tess Brower, who for years lived by the mantra, push through, power on, and prove yourself. However, Tess faced into a defining moment when her nervous system was burnt out, her mind was in overdrive, and quite frankly, the wheels simply began to fall off. So in this part of our conversation, we move from breakdown to rebuild, what Tess calls mental fitness.

So Tess, the defining moment and the tipping point where you stop fighting and what was, you recognized you needed to reset, that’s where we’re gonna get into this part about mental fitness. But when did you have that moment of going, okay, I’ve got to acknowledge what’s happened and I now need to.

take a different approach to what my life looks like. What was the first steps in that?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (29:38)

Well, I had a wonderful friend called Lane Beachley. We had met when I was a virgin and like I met a lot of people of all different shape, sizes, importance, all the rest of it. But Lane and I just clicked when we met each other and she came to visit me in hospital and she brought a book in called My Dream Life. And I thought this lady is absolutely out of her fucking mind. I’m in a spinal ward.

DI GILLETT [Host] (30:06)

This is not my dream life.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (30:08)

Yeah,

yeah, but there wasn’t part of me, and I do feel like this was the resilience in me, was I remember looking at a white wall for so long just staring at a ceiling in a neck brace thinking, well, I guess I get to redraw my life. Like I get to, it’s a white canvas. So it put a seed in me. And then when I got out of hospital, like when I say it really hit the fan, like shit really hit the fan for me, it was more like the floor opened up.

In hospital, in rehab, you have a schedule every day, which is hour by hour mapped out and you’re working to use your body again. Not so much mentally. I was put on a lot of medication to help me. So anti-anxiety, anti-depression. I was getting like my, had complex PTSD, so I was getting really big flashes and terrors at night. So I was

a little bit sedated as well. And so when I got out of hospital, I was 33 living in my bedroom with my parents and I just found myself on the floor just like crying because I’d lost my job, my home, my money. I didn’t even have any clothes at that point. I had a couple of bond sets from and came up because that was just

DI GILLETT [Host] (31:26)

because everything was still back overseas.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (31:28)

everything

was still back overseas and I really didn’t care. Like I just was like, I don’t care. I’ve got clothes on my back and that’ll do. I couldn’t even imagine wearing normal clothes at that point. And I was just, I wrote one thing in that book and that was start a business. But I thought, how the hell are you going to do that when you, you’d like, you’ve been a corporate girl your whole life, which is safe. And

Like could never work a normal job again because I can’t, I now am packaged up as damaged goods in my head. And I remember coming home from a pretty traumatic appointment and it was all to do with my hands to help them work again. And the lady had grabbed me and I just remember looking at her thinking like, you don’t understand what’s wrong with me. Don’t touch me. And that friction was like, is this who I want to be?

Do I really want to be that woman? And I got home and I was bawling my eyes out thinking my life is totally fucked. And that was rock bottom. And then I started imagining ways that I could quietly sleep off this beautiful earth. And yeah, that really broke me. And I was, I remember looking out at the headland one day watching the sunrise, just thinking, who do I want to be? You’ve got the choice.

I saw a beautiful whale pop up and I just thought you’ve got to do this and I had realized that the story I’ve been telling myself was I’m broken and I’m unlovable and if I keep on telling myself that I will be broken and I will be unlovable So I quick I did a life audit and I saw that what what was that? What was the story? I was just subscribing to was I’m broken. I’m unlovable

DI GILLETT [Host] (33:11)

Yeah.

How did you actually do the audit? Was that just in your mind or was that pen to paper?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (33:24)

Yeah,

yeah had no framework. I was doing it on my own and

DI GILLETT [Host] (33:31)

And what were the key things you wrote down in that audit? ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (33:34)

am

broken, I’m unlovable, like who is who am I working with, who’s supporting this? Now at the same time I was back at Lane Beechley’s house and I was there with Holly Ransom who you’ll know she’s a power woman herself and at Lane’s house with Kirk Bengeli walking around and their house is like a huge trophy room to be honest and I had my discharge papers of everything that was wrong with me I even published it in our book and Lane

I gave it to Holly and Holly read it and gave me a big hug and she’d been in hospital with me and then I gave it to Lane and she read it and she goes, poof! She said, well if you believe all of this bullshit then your life will be fucked. I just want, and if I could rip it up I would.

DI GILLETT [Host] (34:16)

There’s the blunt reality check you needed.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (34:20)

That’s right, love and compassion. But the truth is, when, you call someone out, and this is what I’ve learned about myself in that moment, have the courage and the care to hold them up after. So not,

DI GILLETT [Host] (34:34)

You need to know how much they can hear and how much you can be.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (34:37)

⁓

Her lifeline to me was, I have a course that I’m doing by myself in two weeks, which is like her own workshop. I haven’t sold any tickets, like it’s not online yet and I need help designing the course and you’re going to help me do it. And there’s that moment of yes, right? Like take the clock down, take out the batteries. This was saying yes to myself or helping myself. So I just said yes.

But I said I can’t work over than an hour, I don’t have any, like I had nothing and she said just go for it. So that was a turning point. I looked at my life and I’m like, what is serving me and what is sabotaging me? And what was serving me was the story of unbroken and ununlovable because I got support, people were behind me, but was it really serving me? No.

It would keep me stuck. So I changed my story and in that I went, okay, well what do I need? So I went from 15 therapists down to two and I got one new one and I stayed with an old one and she was really pushing me to go into my pain. You have been running from pain your whole life through drinking, through partying, through clothes, through food, like through busyness, through performance. Like these were all my band aids. And when you’ve lost them all, it becomes

very discomf, like the discomfort in that is life changing.

DI GILLETT [Host] (36:04)

Do you ever think this accident needed to happen? ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (36:07)

Yes,

yes, yes of course it did and if it wasn’t that it would be something else and I think that’s the beautiful thing about the universe is it gives us exactly what we need to wake up and that’s why we call it the awake academy because it was my awakening and if I look back my life I was getting lots of these stones thrown at me I just wasn’t willing to listen yeah I feel like life just then it gets louder

DI GILLETT [Host] (36:19)

Yeah.

Yep, and the stones get a little bit more… Bigger? A little bit bigger, I guess.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (36:40)

Was your face like that? Do you see yours?

DI GILLETT [Host] (36:42)

I do and I guess just by the virtue of being older and I, but I mean I’ve had some oh shit moments. mean in 1999 I developed alopecia totalis. I lost all of my hair. I was completely bald. I was the height of my corporate powers and I’m wearing a bandana and a corporate suit and it’s like who the fuck am I now?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (37:10)

Yeah

DI GILLETT [Host] (37:11)

But I managed to get headhunted into a GM role in that state. I validated to myself that I could still function, I still had worth. I recognized that I could talk about my plight and talk to children in the schoolyard because children with alopecia in the schoolyard is a pretty tough place to be because you get bullied and teased and taunted. And a bit like you, Tess, of…

Okay, if I put some purpose behind what I’m experiencing and use that to help others, then that is going to help me through. it’s exactly the same. Yeah. ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (37:55)

exactly same pain to purpose.

I think the learning point for me was the fight of the cost of fighting the reality I was in like as in trying to downplay it or ignore it or just trying to like I was like a duck trying to swim with it. ⁓ That was more painful than dealing with it. I just couldn’t see it at the time and learning that neuroscience behind how my brain

DI GILLETT [Host] (38:14)

Yep.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (38:24)

was I could rewire my brain at any time and I started doing Dr Joe Dispenza meditations morning, noon and night and I was just obsessed with trying to rewire my brain and trying to calm it down because it was just in everything was a threat.

DI GILLETT [Host] (38:43)

Yeah heightened anxiety. So let’s delve into ⁓ this mental fitness bit. What’s the difference between pure grit and toughness that drove you to push through? mean is grit and toughness the same thing?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (38:46)

Literally.

I would say so. mean, they’re pretty loaded words, grit and toughness. I think we overplay resilience to be pushed through, get up, keep going. I think resilience has a fragility to it where you can sit with it and you learn to process it and you rewire your story and you get help and that is resilience.

If we turn that into, you’re so tough, you just get up and go, that’s when it becomes almost like a badge of honor. We’ve overdone it.

DI GILLETT [Host] (39:39)

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and we use that line as a badge of honor. That’s that’s the madness of it.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (39:46)

Yeah, and I think that’s where mental fitness gets a bit clouded or positive psychology and well-being or is that you have to push through, develop grit, become resilient. That’s not what it is. It’s understanding the truth of what’s going on within, the root cause, because as you know, emotional pain is one of the biggest causes of stress, injury.

disease, like dis-ease in your body, because the body would rather feel physical pain than emotional pain. And we’re very good at going to the gym, working on our bodies, looking great. But where have we put in mental fitness where we can start to use grit as just getting up and going for a walk instead of going for a run? that, you know, there, there’s that stuff. That is the type of language

that I love challenging people on. Not in combat, but just what are you associating grit with?

DI GILLETT [Host] (40:52)

Yeah, that’s interesting. So I know personally resilience, and you’ve touched on it, but resilience can tip into denial. can become your enemy. How do you now define not taking no for an answer in a healthy way without losing that strength of character that is you?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (41:16)

Yeah, it’s funny, my husband said in his speech that Tess doesn’t take no for an answer, she sees it as a roundabout.

DI GILLETT [Host] (41:28)

It’s got a softer landing than just not techno for an hour.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (41:32)

Yeah, and I think like the person that I needed to say no to, to be perfectly honest, was myself. And it wasn’t, and maybe that’s the roundabout theory in real life is like pushing through grit, like force. Like I started to apply that mindset. So the mindset that I knew of high performance woman getting shit done, ticking all the right boxes to healing.

because your brain can just brings you back to what you’ve always known. So I was trying to do it all, trying to go to every appointment. So was burning myself out in healing. So when I learned what true self love was and what mental fitness and emotional fitness was, was actually saying, no, not now to myself. Like you don’t need to do it all. You need to learn to sit in your pain and discomfort. And then I became aware of that.

So that’s when the roundabout came in and it’s like, well, you can’t do all of it, but what’s the something? Like, what would be different about today if you just actually took care of your soul? And that to me was having gentler mornings, not rushing it. And that day is how I rebuilt my life.

DI GILLETT [Host] (42:52)

Nah, there we go, because it’s going to ask you because I’ve visited Burnout on the podcast on a number of conversations over the last two years and had a terrific conversation, which if anybody listening hasn’t already listened to it with Shanna Kennedy, who was a high performance coach and then burnt out. The difference in this conversation.

⁓ is you more than burnt out, you actually broke you, what you, you physically broke. And that’s the, that’s the different bit. So could we get practical at this point in the conversation and for the, for the power of women community for, for a woman navigating a health set back, a career disruption, an identity shift that comes from something.

not going to plan and the wheels falling off. What are the non-negotiables in rebuilding that toolkit?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (43:55)

Okay, Di. So, first of all, I realised that everything comes from your intentions. So not your expectations, your intentions of who you are and how you want to show up in the world. Now, I knew I wasn’t going to be healthy, strong, all of those words didn’t exist for me. It was, I just want to be sunshine. So I woke up every day and I just made sure I watched the sunrise, every day.

DI GILLETT [Host] (43:58)

I realized.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (44:23)

What would sunshine do? Sunshine can weather all storms, it radiates from within and it just feels good to be around. So I wanted to feel good from within. So if I started there, my day actually became, what can I do to keep my sunshine? Well, I needed to rest, I needed to look after myself. So I would say to everyone, start your day with an intention and your energy will flow from that.

energetic beings and we need to be our brains need to tell our bodies what mindset we need that day. It’s not woo woo, it’s neuroscience now. So that would be my number one tip. The side note on that, I met my husband a year later from leaving hospital and the first words he said to me was I am sunshine. ⁓

DI GILLETT [Host] (45:12)

And because you had become somebody people wanted to be around.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (45:16)

Right. And normally I would have just put my head down and walked away. And yeah, a year later from that day, we were engaged. We got married. We had a baby and having that intent really changed my life. Then I would, and this is something I’ve incorporated because I am entering into perimenopause and I do need to be really conscious of how I feel my body and your brain and your body will fuel on what you feed it. And that includes negative self-talk is as important.

to become aware of and to close down as it is for my morning coffee.

DI GILLETT [Host] (45:49)

Yeah, it’s true. I get it.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (45:51)

So I have a big glass of water with some cracked sea salt to rehydrate my body. And when I do that, I’m drinking it saying, today’s gonna be a great day, show me how good it’s gonna get. And I just have this quiet solitude in my moment. Now, if you’re already doing that, I highly recommend scraping your tongue first thing and cleaning your teeth before you have a drink of water, because then you’re not drinking back down the toxins. That was a game changer.

DI GILLETT [Host] (46:19)

Yeah, there you go. Not everybody has a tongue scraper in their bathroom, but they should.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (46:26)

Yeah.

We just had Dr. Stacey Sims on our podcast, A Wake Up Call, and she introduced me to a protein coffee. I fasted a lot to help my body heal. And now I’m entering into a season in my life. really need it’s about sustained energy and sustained wellbeing. me. Protein coffee. So you want to have, we don’t want to be in survival mode from the moment we wake up. So fasting works against our hormones.

DI GILLETT [Host] (46:44)

about a protein coffee that’s

Yeah,

because that’s fight or flight. Fight or flight? Yeah, cortisol.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (46:59)

can’t wake up with an egg. ⁓ I like to eat

DI GILLETT [Host] (47:04)

I meet my egg at about 11 a.m.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (47:08)

I just make a coffee and put two scoops of protein in, mix it up and it is delicious and I have really noticed a difference in my energy throughout the day because of

DI GILLETT [Host] (47:18)

Yeah, because you’ve kept yourself at a better level. Yeah. But it’s protein start.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (47:23)

Yeah,

scheduling breaks. So I look at a lot. I used to look at my diary and say, OK, what needs my attention today? And now I look at it. Where can I build in breaks today? Where am I resting and recovering? Because burnout is a classic. You’re climbing a mountain. You don’t come down again. You just climb the other ones. You’re constantly on peak state. And we we think of that as like maybe a project or a moment in time. But really, if we start looking at that in our day.

you start to think, okay, well, how can I build in five minutes here, 90 seconds there, a sunshine break over lunch with no tech, closing my eyes, and start to become aware of what your body and your mind are saying to you. And in those moments of rest, you’re really giving your body time to just close down, decompress, and then you come back with more energy, more clarity, more focus, and at the end of the day,

You’re not absolutely late.

DI GILLETT [Host] (48:22)

Fucked up. So true. None of these are hard to do. They’re all free. Yeah.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (48:31)

They are all free. just need the reminder that this stuff works. I feel like it’s like, it’s so easy to say someone take this pill and it will work. then you.

DI GILLETT [Host] (48:43)

But all that’s doing, none of that’s addressing the reason you needed the pill. That’s why I hate that approach.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (48:49)

Yeah, but ⁓ we did create a Peel Lane and I actually because all of us are experiencing brain fog.

DI GILLETT [Host] (48:57)

Both

of you might be, yeah, in the M word.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (49:01)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we worked with a chemist actually, and it’s called wake up. So it’s for those days where you really need to be on focus. That aside, what is so important for me now is I know that emotions last in your body for 90 seconds. Anything other than that. it’s energy in motion is emotion. Anything other than that 90 seconds is the story you wrap around it. So for example,

DI GILLETT [Host] (49:09)

Yep.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (49:29)

email or a phone call comes through and you feel that rage you don’t deal with it you pick up your phone and or you talk to a colleague or someone else and you start raging about it how dare this person you start blaming shaming you start the self-doubt and the chatter comes in

DI GILLETT [Host] (49:46)

The

second starts getting bigger and bigger. ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (49:50)

Now it’s stored now it’s part of your memory now whenever that person sends or messages you your body instantly goes into fight-or-flight Now in the previous days we could just get up and run because it’s a saber-toothed tiger But you can’t do that when you’re making dinner. It’s ask you for the 18th time what’s for dinner and not offer to help Whatever that looks like whatever that rage moment looks like for you So this is a non-negotiable for me is when I feel triggered

and it could be sadness, could be anger, could be even happiness is an emotional trigger, is to sit in it and breathe through it. And there’s a breath called the physiological sigh, which is two breaths in through your nose, like short and long, and then a really slow exhale through the nose. And that puts your body from out of fight or flight into your parasympathetic nervous system and calms you down instantly. And it is my absolute superpower and that is emotional.

DI GILLETT [Host] (50:48)

Same. I learned that some time ago and I can completely change. And I’ll give you a real life example of that when I had my heart episode at New Year’s Day and I had to go in for an MRI and they said, your heart rate’s too high, we’re gonna have to give you a drug to bring it down. I said, don’t, I’ll do it through breath. And they said, no, we’ll need to give you a drug. I said, give me two minutes.

just give me two minutes and I had to really push back and in two minutes it was down below 50. They said, how did you do that? I said, breathing. Don’t give me the drug. So it absolutely worked.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (51:31)

Isn’t that amazing, Di, that you have the awareness to do that, but then you burnt yourself out and ended up…

DI GILLETT [Host] (51:38)

⁓ I know, know, yeah, deeply intelligent and deeply flawed, both things can be right.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (51:45)

I think that’s what I’ve learned in this is having logical awareness of things is not the same as being in practice.

DI GILLETT [Host] (51:53)

No it’s not. And I hear I listen to your story and I listen to other people’s story and then I go and work my ass off seven days a week and repeat it all over again. Why would

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (52:02)

Why?

DI GILLETT [Host] (52:06)

That’s probably what I haven’t answered yet. think it’s ambition, but it might be more than that. No.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (52:08)

Yeah.

Mine was my self-worth. It should be love.

DI GILLETT [Host] (52:15)

Yeah, well

those two things, ambition and self-worth, are wrapped together in my world and I’m sure they are in many of our listeners’ worlds too. So, we’re pulling that apart.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (52:31)

So that, just having the awareness of that dies like the biggest part. It’s like asking myself every day, I doing this because I need to feel loved? Because I’m not getting it from within and having the awareness is, then you say no to jobs that don’t light you up, that you’re doing it for.

DI GILLETT [Host] (52:49)

Yeah. Why? Yeah. So Tess, can I ask you, are you stronger now than you were before the accident?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (53:01)

I’m softer, some would say I’m just as strong, but I’ve turned that strength into a gentle strength. And that’s been the biggest gift.

DI GILLETT [Host] (53:18)

And that’s emotional to face into. Yeah it And you probably need to teach me that because the tough gritty facade is our armour.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (53:30)

Yeah, and at what cost does that serve us or you? You know what? Anyone listening? And I know that sustained well-being because now I teach it and I’ve taught it to thousands of people and I watch it with Lane Beechley like she won a world title, two world titles in a state of love and freedom. It’s clear, it’s disciplined, it’s not

That level of strength doesn’t make you weak. But the other level of strength which is pushing you is like over questioning, pushing through, comparison, the what ifs, the I should, the could, the would.

DI GILLETT [Host] (54:13)

I

need to get on the couch, seriously, I seriously need to take a dead-hunt myself.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (54:17)

And

they’re two totally different operating models. when you, if sustained mental fitness, sustained wellbeing is having those cracks warts and all, and just knowing that you are enough, just as you are, and that no amount of financial money will ever prove that too. So for what?

Because when you’re on your ass in your parents bedroom with no money, no car, no home, nothing, and you have to learn to love yourself just as you are, you just become softer.

DI GILLETT [Host] (54:58)

Yeah, yeah, well Tess, that’s a very, very vulnerable conversation and I thank you for being prepared to share that. I’m going to ask you a couple of rapid fire questions as we come to a close today.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (55:16)

Di, can I just close before you go into the wrap-up? The women listening and whether you’re a parent or not and I just want you to relate to this story. We had a lady who was a very high corporate achiever just like me but you know she I think she had three children and she did our course called On Your Streets and it was a one day live or we’ve got it online through the Awake Academy. Yeah. And

DI GILLETT [Host] (55:19)

Yeah, sure.

the academy.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (55:45)

We follow up with people a month later because we don’t want to just be a fry pan. you know when you walk, you don’t come to us and walk on hot coals and you’re liberated from life. It’s real grit, but with tool hits. And I saw her a month later and I said, how are going? She’s like, really good. And I’m working through some stuff and I’m just trying to be a more present mom. And that’s great. Like, you know, that for her, that was what she had realized she had left behind was her presence with her family and loved ones.

And that to me was a big wake up call. So I’m like, what is success? Like when you are too busy being busy, you miss the joy and the micro moments and the glimmers. And they’re the things that light you up that that’s what living is. It’s not just going on a holiday every few months. It really is the micro moments every day. And I was fortunate enough to see his beautiful soul another month later. So two months have passed and she gave me the biggest hug.

And she said to me, think I’ve found it. And I said, what is it? And she said, my kids said that I’m happier.

They said, what have you done, mum? You’re so much happier. You’re there with us. You’re fun, mum. And she was identified as being dictator, mum, because she was tired. And that to me, when we talk about pain to purpose, that is my why. Because I know you can still be powerful, but present and gentle and kind. Like you can still be all those things.

DI GILLETT [Host] (57:16)

And I think there’s a simple question in that and look in the mirror and say, I enjoying life? I think it’s as simple as that. Okay, yeah. fire. Rapid fire, here we go. So one belief about success you no longer subscribe to.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (57:23)

Yeah. Yeah.

That money buys happiness and because of that output would equal worth so that you have to be doing more to being worthy and then then you get more money and then you’ll be happy.

DI GILLETT [Host] (57:50)

A red flag high performers should never ignore.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (57:56)

chronic exhaustion marked as busyness.

DI GILLETT [Host] (57:59)

Yes, and the strongest version of you looks like…

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (58:08)

Sunshine?

DI GILLETT [Host] (58:09)

Nah, there we go. Sunshine.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (58:12)

Yeah,

just energetic, magnetic, calm, present. Of course I have my wobbles, I am no, by no means perfect, ask my kids. But I think it’s just I have, yeah, grounded sense of who I am and the love I have for myself now, what’s and all.

DI GILLETT [Host] (58:30)

Yeah, beautiful. Tess, thank you again for sharing. I’m going to put the links to the Awake Academy into the show notes. And will that take them through to a toolkit page as well, if they click onto that?

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (58:47)

Yeah, please do. We’ve got a seven day self care, which you can do for free. We’ve got a soul map. If you have no idea where to begin, that’s a good place to start. It’ll tell you where you know who you are and where you need to go. Or we’ve got monthly coaching with the awake collective because people don’t want to do this stuff alone. Or if you’re really up for it, bring us into your business and let Lane and I show you how you can have sustained well-being and happy, healthy people.

DI GILLETT [Host] (59:16)

Yeah, beautiful ⁓

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (59:18)

Can

I credit you for something? I just want to honour you for holding space in this emotion that has come up for me today. You too are going through your own challenges and the story resonates back and perhaps that’s why I’ve been so raw and open and honest and you’ve asked such beautiful questions that have given me the gift of reflection. And I know for all the women out there that listen to your podcast and men,

is that we’re all looking to find a better way through and an easier way. And thank you for that gift, for allowing me to explore that alongside you as you explore your trauma and pain as well, because there is a better way.

DI GILLETT [Host] (1:00:02)

Now you’ve made me emotional. Thank you, Tess. That’s beautiful. I’ve spent 30 years in the executive search space interviewing people and learning their stories. I’ve spent two years interviewing on the power of women, and I have learned more about myself in those two years than I learned in the previous 30. So you are spot on.

So to Tessa’s point, there are going to be people within your network who would really benefit from listening to a conversation like this. And it might bring up the uncomfortable and it might bring up the emotion, but you know what? It takes that to actually have that inflection point and really face into what’s not working. that simple question that I said, you

Are you enjoying life? And if the answer is, if you hesitate, then you’ve got to ask yourself why.

TESS BROUWER [Guest] (1:01:06)

Yeah, we’re all just humans walking each other home.

DI GILLETT [Host] (1:01:10)

That’s exactly right. Thank you Tess. Until next time.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

00:38 Tess’s Reflection on Power and Self-Trust

02:23 Personal Story: From Ski Accident to Medical Crisis

04:21 The Emotional Impact of Trauma and Recovery

05:09 The Moment of Realization and Acceptance

07:24 The Role of Identity in Healing

09:50 Medical Journey and Surprising Diagnoses

12:22 The Power of Support and Connection

16:28 Rehabilitation and Rebuilding Life

20:17 The Shift from Self-criticism to Self-love

24:27 Finding Purpose in Adversity

28:10 Moving from Breakdown to Rebuild

43:55 Practical Tools for Mental Fitness

50:48 Managing Emotions and Breathing Techniques

54:43 Redefining Strength and Success

58:47 Resources and Support for Healing

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