Coming out as a gay woman cost Christine Sellman a job. It’s a real cost of authenticity. But staying hidden in a mental health career meant staying hidden from herself. In Pride In Stories, she shares how unprocessed trauma, a suicide attempt she never told anyone about, and finding Qigong at 40 changed everything.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses suicide, abuse, addiction, 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
Christine Selman spent the first four decades of her career as a mental health nurse and clinician while keeping her sexuality private. It was a cost she paid quietly, until she couldn’t anymore.
In her twenties, after her father’s death, she survived a suicide attempt so severe she spent three days in an induced coma as an unknown person in hospital. She told no one. She sought no treatment. She buried it, the way she had buried everything else that didn’t fit the life she thought she was supposed to live.
Then, at 40, she found Qigong. For three years, she cried through nearly every session. Not because Qigong was sad, but because it gave her body permission to release what her mind had spent decades refusing to acknowledge: the grief, the anger, the fear of being seen.
When she eventually came out, mostly her family and community held her. But a job application was denied when she disclosed she was in a relationship with a woman. Because I was honest in that interview, she says now, I actually didn’t get that job.
Now 66, Christine works in palliative and aged care across remote and Indigenous communities. She sits on the Silver Pride Lived Experience Panel, bringing her hard-won wisdom to older LGBTIQ people navigating isolation, identity, and belonging. Her suicide attempt didn’t diminish her ability to help others find hope. It deepened it.
🕒 CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome and land acknowledgement
03:20 Coming out as a gay woman in her 30s
05:34 Recognising her sexuality
09:11 Her son’s journey accepting her coming out
14:21 Moving to the Northern Territory
20:45 Suicide attempt in her twenties
22:00 Three years of Qigong to release what she’d buried
27:34 Being transgender and gay in remote communities
29:17 The job she didn’t get for coming out
32:33 Work with the LEAP Lived Experience Advisory Panel
35:17 Her life now: palliative care, travel, and purpose
37:31 What real allyship looks like
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Welcome.
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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:
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• 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
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