Mental health awareness looks different when it’s your own child in crisis. Sarah Rosse spent her career helping others navigate mental health emergencies, until October 2023, when her 16-year-old son attempted to take his life. In this episode of Kintsugi Heroes, Sarah shares how the gap between her professional knowledge and her lived reality as a mother shattered her sense of control, how she moved from shame to storytelling, and what she learned about presence, advocacy, and the work of rebuilding.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses suicide, grief, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you’re not alone — help is available:
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
Sarah Rosse knows mental health from the inside out. As a human services professional, she spent years supporting others through crisis. But in October 2023, when her 16-year-old son attempted suicide, all her knowledge became useless. The fracture was immediate: shame moved in, and she convinced herself everyone saw her as a terrible mother. The gap between what she could do for her clients and what she could do for her son revealed something she hadn’t expected to learn.
What changed wasn’t her expertise. It was the discovery of what actually matters in a crisis: presence. Sitting with her son in his pain, Sarah realised there was nothing to fix, no intervention to deploy, no professional tool that fit. Just two people being together. That shift led her to journaling, not as brain-dumping but as intentional reflection, which eventually became her memoir framed through the lens of kintsugi philosophy. She also discovered that when she began sharing her story publicly, others reached out to say thank you. Shame, she learned, thrives in silence.
Today, Sarah is a memoirist and journaling coach committed to 100 conversations in 12 months about the themes in her book: identity, family, mental health awareness, and what it takes to show up authentically when everything breaks.
🕒 CHAPTERS:
00:00 Shame thrives in silence
01:45 Writing my way through it
05:53 Journal writing benefits
10:57 October 2023
14:04 Shame and the weight of silence
20:35 Presence over fixing
28:28 Professional knowledge meets lived experience
33:31 Navigating the mental health system
37:52 Doing hard things
41:24 What my son needs now
44:32 100 conversations in 12 months
48:27 When people reach out
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Welcome.
We’re glad you found your way here.
Kintsugi Heroes was created from a simple belief: every person has a story worth sharing, and sometimes the story we need to hear arrives exactly when we need it most.
Our name comes from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold. Rather than hiding the cracks, they are honoured as part of the object’s history. We believe people are much the same. The experiences that challenge us, break us, shape us, and help us grow are often the very things that connect us to one another.
This channel is home to honest conversations about resilience, hope, grief, recovery, courage, love, and what it means to keep moving forward when life doesn’t go to plan.
Here you’ll find six podcast series, each sharing stories through a different lens:
• Kintsugi Heroes, hosted by John Milham
• Animals & Us, hosted by Natalie Stockdale
• Grit Diaries: From Grit to Grace, hosted by Simone Allan and Maryan Bova
• From There to Here, hosted by Emma Bellamy-Dodd
• Golden Threads: Stories of Disability & Resilience
• Pride in Stories, hosted by John Dwyer (launching 31 July 2026)
Every story shared here is offered with the hope that it helps someone feel a little less alone. A little more understood. A little more connected.
Whether you’re navigating a difficult season, supporting someone you love, or simply looking for meaningful conversations, you’re welcome here.
New episodes are released weekly across our series.
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Thank you for being part of this community.
We help people tell the stories they need to share so others can discover the story they need to hear.
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