Staying Silent To Make Change
I’m taking on the 20 Hours for 20Talk Challenge.
That means spending 20 hours sitting in a 2×2 metre square in a warehouse alongside hundreds of other people. No talking. No phone. No technology. No disappearing into work, scrolling, messages or the million other little distractions we use to keep ourselves occupied.
Just a chair, a sleeping mat, a journal, some food and water.
And, apparently, my own brain for 20 uninterrupted hours.
Wish me luck with that bit.
But there is a much bigger reason I wanted to do this.
A huge part of what drives me, both in the work I do and simply as a person, is trying to understand people beyond what is immediately visible.
I spend a lot of my life thinking about behaviour, distress, relationships, vulnerability and the things people communicate without necessarily having the words to explain them.
Because struggling doesn’t always look like struggling.
Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes it looks like withdrawing. Sometimes it looks like being incredibly capable. Sometimes it looks like humour. Sometimes it looks like looking after absolutely everybody except yourself. And sometimes it looks exactly like, “I’m fine.”
That is one of the reasons prevention matters so much to me.
We are often very good at responding once somebody reaches crisis. I think we need to become much better at noticing people earlier, talking about mental health without making it strange or shameful, and giving people practical tools to understand themselves before everything becomes unbearable.
The statistics behind this are difficult to ignore. Suicide remains the leading cause of death for Australians aged 15–44.
And behind every statistic is an actual person. Their friends. Their family. Their weird little habits. Their favourite song. The people who would give almost anything to have had another conversation with them.
That matters to me.
20Talk works on that earlier end of the story — making mental health education accessible and relatable to young people and giving them practical tools to understand and maintain their wellbeing.
Funds raised through the challenge help support their Mental Health Maintenance program, online mental health resources and larger community education initiatives.
Every $120 raised can put a young person through a one-day Mental Health Maintenance course.
So yes, for 20 hours I’m going to sit in a tiny square and be very, very quiet.
But I don’t really see this as being about sitting in silence.
I think it is about paying attention.
To ourselves. To each other. To the things people might not know how to say. And to the idea that support shouldn’t only arrive once somebody has reached breaking point.
If you’d like to donate, I would genuinely appreciate it.
And whether you donate or not, maybe check in on somebody.
Properly.
Ask twice.
Sometimes the second answer is the real one.
