Finding a Piece of Peace – Without Losing Your Mind
Even when the nation feels broken

I spend my life thinking about nourishment — what feeds us, what heals us, what brings us back to ourselves. This week, there’s been a deep sense of foreboding, a heavy weight that lingers beneath the everyday. And yet, even if you’ve never been to Bondi, even if you turned off the news, it lands anyway, hefty in the chest and a kick in the guts.

This is what collective grief tastes like: angry, quiet, disorienting, unavoidable.

Australians are very good at “she’ll be right, mate.” It’s one of our celebrated strengths — and occasionally one of our blind spots. Grief does not respond well to being told to hurry up. Shock, sadness, anger, confusion — they are all ingredients on the same plate, whether we ordered it or not. Healing begins when we stop pretending we’re fine and allow ourselves to be human. No fixing. No commentary. Just honesty.

Tragedy has a way of turning into spectacle if we let it. Headlines shout. Opinions harden. Algorithms get busy. Healing happens somewhere much quieter — in kitchens, at tables, on walks, over cups of tea that go cold because the conversation matters more than anything else. Behind every terrible moment are real lives, real loss.

When we choose empathy over outrage and curiosity over judgment, we do something radical: we remember each other’s humanity.

As a practitioner, I know instinctively how the body and mind respond to care — and science backs it up. Trauma lives in the body. If you’ve felt tired, jumpy, foggy, or strangely emotional lately, that’s not weakness. That’s your nervous system asking for nourishment. Now is the time for good food cooked with care, sunshine on your skin, saltwater if you can get into it, gentle movement, and sleep whenever you can. Nourishment isn’t self-indulgence — it’s what carries us toward resilience.

When life falls apart, we either isolate or we gather. One of those helps. You don’t need to host a dinner party worthy of a magazine spread. Sitting around a table and sharing honestly counts more than anything else. Community shows up in many forms. Sometimes it’s a shared plate, hot buttered toast, or the quiet company of someone who doesn’t need words.

Love gets a bad reputation for being soft. In reality, it’s disciplined work. It’s choosing kindness when you’re tired. It’s refusing to dehumanise. It’s holding complexity without needing an immediate answer. It’s protecting what’s tender — in yourself and in others. These small daily decisions are how a nation’s heart repairs itself. Not all at once. Slowly. Collectively.

I don’t pretend to have answers for why these things happen. But I do know this: how we respond matters. If Bondi has cracked something open, let it be our capacity for care — let it remind us that healing often starts by acknowledging the layers of our shared history – even the uncomfortable ones – then choosing care in response. Let it remind us that safety isn’t abstract — it’s built through connection, responsibility, and compassion.

Nothing heals alone — especially not our home. So we cook. We gather. We break bread. We linger over tables and conversations in pursuit of mending the national fracture, one meal at a time.