Zoe Jack

I have arrived - 30mins til silence

3 Meals for Mental Health

So tonight - Sun 28 June - I will be getting up at 2.15am for 20HOURS - silence from 4am to midnight to raise funds for Youth mental Health.

The car will be packed today with my sleeping mat, sleeping bag, pillow, chair and a journal and pens.

I have 3 meals prepared and ready to eat:
Breakfast:  Muesli, Greek yoghurt and some seeds/chia/shredded coconut and banana to add in the morning
Lunch:  Tuna and salad wrap
Dinner:  Veg quiche, steamed broccolini and snow peas
Snacks/Treats:  Raspberries and Belgian chocolate sauce!!! (girl's gotta have sweetness!), herbal teas, mandarin and apple.

I wasn't going to but I added in a little chunk of cacao to have in ceremony to thank all of you have donated. I take it when I first wake up....sprinkled with cinnamon for some spicy warmth....So know you will all be in my thoughts with gratitude.

I am ready to do this. 

We can do this together

There are only two weeks to go before I sit in silence for 20 hours to raise funds for Youth Mental Health…Will YOU support this with your tax deductible donation?

There have been some wonderful comments of support, donations and acknowledgement for this worthy cause.

Your donation will support young adults through FREE mental health maintenance programs across Australia delivered by young people for young people. Breaking the out dated ways to connect and support our youth.

If you’re a BUSINESS - I will sing your praises on my socials - naming each business that donates as an awesome supporter of youth mental health.

Go on….you know you want to give a little back to a worthy cause.

HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE DONATED ALREADY. Your support and encouragement is felt deeply. 

A poem on youth, heartbreak, and finding your way back

I am blown away by your support

I am genuinely overwhelmed. Every single donation represents someone who believes that young people deserve support before they reach breaking point. To everyone who has given — from $25 to $267 — thank you. You are part of this. I'll be carrying you all into that warehouse on June 28.

I cant have my phone for the 20 hours but I will send you some pictures before we start at 4am on 28 June so you can see my set up.

Thank you - do you think we could get to $5000?

I know what it feels like to be stuck...and what it takes to get free.

There is something no one tells you about working in mental health: you can spend years helping others find their way out of the dark while quietly losing your own footing in it.

I am a therapist. I am a kinesiologist. I work with children, teenagers, and adults navigating some of the hardest terrain a human being can walk; anxiety, depression, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, trauma, and the particular exhaustion of never quite feeling like enough.

I have sat with teenagers who stopped eating because control over their body was the only power they had left. I have supported clients through suicidal attempts, holding space with steadiness while inside I was praying it would be enough. I have watched people slowly, painstakingly, find their voice. Learning to speak their truth out loud, sometimes for the very first time.

And I have done all of this while knowing, privately, what it feels like to be stuck. Not Enough. Fearful of rejection and failure.

For a long time, I kept that part quiet. Because when you are the one people come to for support, it can feel impossible to admit that you are struggling too. I pushed through; as a mum, as a wife, as a practitioner. I told myself the feelings would pass. I minimised them the way I would gently challenge my clients NEVER to do.

What changed everything was learning something that sounds simple but cut right through me: that my feelings mattered. That my voice mattered. That my body was not just a vehicle for getting through the day — it was carrying stories, memories, and wisdom I had never stopped quietly, to listen to.

That is when I sought help as well as found time to listen to myself. And slowly, I got unstuck. I found myself again. I stood into who I am.

This is also the heart of kinesiology, the work I do alongside my own self care, that I believe in so deeply. Kinesiology is not about fixing people. It is about meeting them exactly where they are, without judgement, and gently bridging the conversation between mind, body, and spirit.

It's about education and awareness. Helping people understand why they feel what they feel, why the body holds what the mind cannot always articulate. I have seen this approach help a client find her heart again after years of disconnection. Building such a solid foundation within herself that she has been able to reduce her visits to her psychologist. Not because the work was done, but because she had found her own inner resource. Her own ground to stand on.

That is what good mental health support can do. It doesn't create dependence. It builds people up until they no longer need you in the same way. That is the whole point. Clients stop coming because they have the awareness and tools to help themselves.

Which is why I am taking part in the 20 Hours for 20Talk challenge on Sunday 28 June. Sitting in silence for twenty hours straight to raise funds for youth mental health in Australia.

20Talk is built on the belief that prevention matters. That we should not be waiting for young people to hit rock bottom before we offer a hand. Right now, 98% of mental health funding in this country goes to crisis intervention. Only 2% goes to prevention and early education.

As someone who has worked at the coalface of this with children who were never taught to name their emotions, with teenagers whose self-worth had already collapsed before anyone noticed, with adults rebuilding themselves from patterns laid down in childhood, I can tell you that this imbalance costs people years of their lives.

Early awareness changes everything. Being met where you are changes everything. Being told that your feelings, your voice, and your body matter — before crisis sets in — changes everything.

I know this professionally.
I know it personally.

Your donation funds Mental Health Maintenance programs for young Australians. It funds the kind of early, proactive, human support. It means a young person gets reached before they are drowning, while there is still time to teach them how to swim.

I got unstuck. I found myself. I believe everyone deserves that chance.

Please donate. Help me reach my goal. Help change the story for a young Australian who is out there right now, feeling exactly the way I once did. The way you might feel now....like no one can see you, and like it might always be this way.

It doesn't have to be.

Donate here →  https://www.20hoursfor20talk.com.au/s/8120/8547

The Girl with the Blue Eyes and Curly Blonde Hair

A mother’s story of love, survival, and finding the way through.

She arrived into the world with curly blonde hair, big blue eyes, and skin kissed as brown as a berry. She stood taller than most of her friends — often on the outskirts of groups, part of them but sometimes not quite belonging. Artistic, sporty, quietly academic — but she dimmed her own light because she wanted so badly to fit in.

By eleven, the bullying had begun.

Those years were brutal. But a teacher saw her — really saw her, and taught her to stand up for herself in a way no one had before. At home, we tried to understand. We did our best. And she fought back. That strong little girl with the blue eyes and the curly hair. 

By fourteen, something had shifted — and not in the way we’d hoped.

She stood defiantly against us. Communication had broken down. In between those moments of love and connection; those brief windows where she’d come to us for guidance, she was breaking. And we felt like we were failing her.

She was threatened with a knife at school. Arguments filled our home. All we ever wanted was to help our child. We felt desperate as our feet walked on eggshells. 

And then the day came that no parent can prepare for. She took the tablets.

Her blue eyes closed. Her curly hair fell over her face.

We got her through that night. The acute care ward gave her space to find herself again. Until it happened a second time. And then a third.

The last time, my husband found her — scarf around her neck, crying desperately, asking to be gone.

That image, he says, will never leave his mind.

But something shifted in that moment. In her.

She left school at the end of Year 11...with our blessing. Work was a struggle. But the walls between us began, slowly, to come down.

She started being honest — about who she was, how she felt. Speaking up. She began returning to her creative self.

As challenging moments came up she began to  nestle into my chest. I held her. I couldn’t fix it. I didn’t try to. I just let those big blue eyes weep. I let her curly hair fall over my shoulder.

I was just there. Nothing more. Nothing less. And that was enough.

She pulled through those moments — and in doing so, she found herself.

The fake eyelashes are gone. The straightened, dyed hair is gone. The hunger for labelled clothing has been replaced by charity shop treasure hunts at the local Vinnies.

She taught herself to surf. The ocean is her sanctuary now — the place that brings her back to herself when anxiety rises.

She’s found her tribe. She’s found her person. Her career path is still uncertain, but she knows who she is and what she doesn’t want — and right now, that is more than enough. And our home is again calm. 

This journey through mental health didn’t happen to me — but it rippled through our family with a force I can’t fully describe and yet….

With presence. 
With tenacity.
With consistency and persistence and a love that refused to give up — our daughter is still here.

Her big blue eyes and her curly golden-brown hair move freely now, as she finds her way.

Why 20TALK calls to me as a fundraiser

Causes like 20TALK exist for the moments prior to the long, quiet, desperate stretches where young people need someone to talk to and families need somewhere to turn. It’s preventative. 

We were lucky. We had each other, and eventually, the right support. Not every family does. 

If our story has moved you, please consider making a donation; no amount is too small. You may be helping a family like ours find their way through the dark.

PLEASE DONATE HERE:  https://www.20hoursfor20talk.com.au/fundraisers/zoejack

 .....Thank you x

The impact of accumulation

20 Hours of Silence for Youth Mental Health.

I’m taking on the 20 Hours for 20Talk Challenge which will see me sitting in a 2×2 metre square in a warehouse, alongside 400 other participants, with no talking and no technology for 20 hours. All I’ll have are the essentials I bring with me: a chair, sleeping mat, journal, water, and food. No distractions.

This challenge is a small glimpse into the isolation and struggle that someone with mental health challenges might feel every day. I know it will be tough - physically, mentally, and emotionally - but it’s a challenge I’m taking on to stand in solidarity with those navigating these experiences.

So why am I doing this?
We have all been touched in some way by the reality of mental health. I have felt those isolating times myself. It can be dark, lonely, and confronting.