Infectious Behaviour

What would four-year-old little Mel, dressed in her Wonder Woman costume, say to the woman she is about to become at 50? 🦸🏼‍♀️

I think she’d say:

“You never took your cape off. You just grew into it. And now, you share it with people who need it more than you do.”

The most fascinating thing I’ve realised through meeting people in my salon, cutting hair on the streets of Brisbane for 18 years, supporting a prison rehabilitation program, working in sales and education for almost 20 years, and having thousands of conversations with humans from every walk of life is that changing the world doesn’t always require something enormous.

Most days, it begins with one choice.

To choose kindness even if I only manage it 95% of the time, because I’m still human!

To challenge judgement and stigma.

To question systems that are failing the very people they were created to protect.

To remain curious, keep learning and become a tiny bit better every day.

To give someone another chance to change, rebuild their life or begin something completely new.

Because sometimes people don’t need to be rescued.

They just need someone to believe they are worthy of another go.

I wake up wanting life to feel a little better and brighter not only for me, but for the humans around me. And I keep wondering what would happen if we all made tiny improvements in how we treated one another.

What could shift in domestic and family violence?

In family breakdown, mental health, addiction and bullying?

In homelessness, loneliness and isolation?

Imagine how dramatically we could reduce these heartbreaking statistics if more people chose curiosity over judgement, connection over exclusion and kindness over indifference.

We don’t need to change the whole world in one day.

But every day, we can change someone’s experience of it.

Maybe four-year-old Mel understood something the grown-ups had forgotten:

We all have a superpower and mine was never the cape. It was seeing the human standing in front of me you standing in front of me. 🦸🏼‍♀️

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-hair-therapist/id1766074104?i=1000790972233

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ygksnHo3JxHayXiqY8NWV?si=m64H1pVvTI-TK76OHdenUw&utm_source=copy-link

🎙️ The Hair Therapist Podcast has dropped a new episode 129 part 1 “Wolston Park Asylum: Who Was Protecting the Children?”with Deborah Mason former patient & survivor of Wolston Park & Osler House Asylum

Deb was 16-17

Osler House was an adult ward for the criminally insane, murders the most complex patients. Not a child.

Those two sentences should make you stop.

Deb describes entering an environment she could never have imagined and experiencing further trauma. A nightmare she still can’t escape today in a place connected to our QLD health system. To treat and find ways to heal you, give you tools, support, care. Most people should leave better than when you entered. Not this place

When someone is already psychologically struggling, drowning losing hope, “care” should never push them further underwater. Or break them or traumatise in away they completely lose themselves.

This episode will stay with me forever and not in the way you think. It makes us want to challenge what is broken, systems so dated yet still in place, predators to take responsibility, governments to take action so this never happens again and stop hiding the dam truth. Coving up atrocities that can’t be undone.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-hair-therapist/id1766074104?i=1000790972233

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ygksnHo3JxHayXiqY8NWV?si=m64H1pVvTI-TK76OHdenUw&utm_source=copy-link

🎙️ The Hair Therapist Podcast has dropped a new episode 129 part 1 “Wolston Park Asylum: Who Was Protecting the Children?”with Deborah Mason former patient & survivor of Wolston Park & Osler House Asylum

There is one question running through so much of Deb’s story:

What could have changed if the right adult had truly listened?

Children don’t have the power adults have.

They rely on parents, family, police, doctors, teachers and child-protection systems to notice when something is terribly wrong.

Deb’s story challenges every one of us:

Don’t just look at a child’s behaviour.

Get curious about what’s underneath it. When things are off, when behaviour changes, when children withdraw, become quite, get louder, become naughtier, friends change, they don’t want to be around someone or people, anything at all that is not normal. It’s time to listen ask questions open your eyes. Don’t stop till you uncover the truth. This is how we stop vile acts, change broken systems, advocate, protect our most vulnerable.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-hair-therapist/id1766074104?i=1000790972233

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ygksnHo3JxHayXiqY8NWV?si=m64H1pVvTI-TK76OHdenUw&utm_source=copy-link

🎙️ The Hair Therapist Podcast has dropped a new episode 129 part 1 “Wolston Park Asylum: Who Was Protecting the Children?”with Deborah Mason former patient & survivor of Wolston Park & Osler House Asylum

At 16, Deb reached a point where she could no longer see a future.

When a young person wants their life to end, we need to look beyond the behaviour.

What’s happened to them?

Who hurt them?

Who didn’t believe them?

Who didn’t protect them?

What have they been carrying alone?

Deb’s story is a brutal reminder that behaviour has a history. This behaviour doesn’t come from know where there are sign posts all the way to the trauma’s, how as a society can we do better?

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-hair-therapist/id1766074104?i=1000790972233

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ygksnHo3JxHayXiqY8NWV?si=m64H1pVvTI-TK76OHdenUw&utm_source=copy-link

🎙️ The Hair Therapist Podcast has dropped a new episode 129 part 1 “Wolston Park Asylum: Who Was Protecting the Children?”with Deborah Mason former patient & survivor of Wolston Park & Osler House Asylum

Deb was a child.

Yet she describes being forced to navigate pregnancy resulting from sexual abuse and says her first pregnancy ended in a forced abortion.

Read that again.

A child carrying consequences created by adults.

Behind words like “abuse”, “neglect” and “trauma” are actual children whose bodies and futures can be changed forever.

Deb takes us somewhere incredibly painful

I am grateful Deb trusted us enough to share her story.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-hair-therapist/id1766074104?i=1000790972233

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ygksnHo3JxHayXiqY8NWV?si=m64H1pVvTI-TK76OHdenUw&utm_source=copy-link

🎙️ The Hair Therapist Podcast has dropped a new episode 129 part 1 “Wolston Park Asylum: Who Was Protecting the Children?”with Deborah Mason former patient and survivor of Wolston Park & Osler House Asylum

Deb didn’t arrive at Wolston Park as a child untouched by life.

She arrived carrying childhood sexual abuse, violence, rejection, abandonment and unimaginable trauma.

At 16, after reaching a darkness where she could no longer see a way forward, Deb needed adults to ask one question:

What happened to this child?

Instead, her life took another devastating turn.

This episode asks some bloody uncomfortable questions about what happens when the systems designed to protect a child fail to see the trauma sitting right in front of them.

Deb’s story is confronting this story is about education. Why are we not challenging the systems that are not protecting our child. These children grow up carrying the trauma from what they were subjected to. And what that can look like is what Deb is living with. This powerful story needs to be shared and conversations need to happen.

Listen anyway.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-hair-therapist/id1766074104?i=1000790972233

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ygksnHo3JxHayXiqY8NWV?si=m64H1pVvTI-TK76OHdenUw&utm_source=copy-link

🎙️ The Hair Therapist Podcast has dropped a new episode 129 part 1 “Wolston Park Asylum: Who Was Protecting the Children?”with Deborah Mason former patient & Survivor of Wolston Park & Osler House Asylum

What happens when home is the first place you learn you aren’t safe?

Deb shares allegations of sexual abuse by her father, rejection from her mother and growing up without the protection every child deserves.

The adults around a child are supposed to be their first line of defence.

What happens when they’re not?

This isn’t comfortable listening.

Child sexual abuse shouldn’t be comfortable to talk about. Silence protects the wrong people.

🎙️ Okay I DID NOT want this conversation to end.

The Hair Therapist Podcast had Richard Kavanagh in the recording studio, and what a bloody fascinating human.

Most of us in the hairdressing industry know the name Richard Kavanagh

We know the extraordinary career.

But I wanted to meet the boy, the teenager and the man behind the name.

And THAT is where this conversation went.

We went right back into the challenges, the choices, the tough stuff, the turning points and the decisions that could have taken Richard’s life in a completely different direction.

The decision to give hairdressing everything to see what could happen.

And what a ride.

From breaking into the industry to the cover of Italian Vogue. Global runways. Freelance session styling. Five-time Australian Session Stylist of the Year. Awards. Educating on stages around the world. Mentoring. Coaching. Salon ownership.

But success is only one part of this story.

We talked about what it took to get there, what it cost, the risks, the failures, the lessons and what happens when you keep reinventing yourself instead of becoming comfortable with what you’ve already achieved.

And now Richard is stepping into yet another chapter AI and technology, with the launch of an app taking hair knowledge directly to clients and consumers.

Of course, I had questions about THAT. 😂

We also got away from the career completely.

Richard the husband.
Richard the dad.
Richard the human.

I genuinely could have kept talking to him for another two hours.

If you think you know Richard Kavanagh because you know his hairdressing career, wait until you hear the life behind it.

This one is bloody extraordinary.

🎧 Coming soon to The Hair Therapist Podcast

Yesterday, Infectious Behaviour and The Hair Therapist Podcast were at Brisbane Youth Service, providing haircuts for some of our most vulnerable young people. amazing humans fighting to survive be seen heard and valued ♥️

When you hear the stories they carry at such young ages, it stops you. What some have experienced should never happen to any child.

Childhood should be filled with curiosity, nature, play and adventure. Children should be cared for, nurtured and protected while they discover who they are not forced to grow up simply to survive.

After speaking with a room full of Year 10 and 11 students during my youth advocacy work with Vinnies last month, one thing became clear: our young people are deep thinkers trying to navigate pressures many adults don’t fully understand.

We push them to grow up, then criticise who they become. We taught them to speak up, question things and express their feelings then society becomes uncomfortable when they do.

Where is our curiosity to see the world through their eyes?

We need to stop speaking about young people without speaking with them. Ask what they need. Listen without judgement. Notice the changes in their behaviour. Advocate sooner. Protect harder. Fund the services already doing the work and act before trauma becomes homelessness, addiction, incarceration or a lifetime of disconnection.

Young people are not the problem. Too often, they are responding to the problems adults and broken systems failed to fix.

A huge thank you to the remarkable Amy she’s a bloody superstar and the Brisbane Youth Service team for the incredible care, advocacy and safe space you provide.

Things need to change and that change begins with us. 🙏🏻♥️

Infectious Behaviour & The Hair Therapist Podcast was back on outreach at 3RDSPACE today with my beautiful friend James thanks gorgeous for looking after our friends they appreciate our time so much. ♥️🙏🏻

13 haircuts. 💇🏼‍♂️
13 people walking away feeling more confident.
13 people given dignity, connection and the simple reminder that somebody cares.

But it’s their stories that hit the hardest.

One person had finally received the keys to a little unit. That should be happening for everyone. Every other person we met is registered for housing and working with one sometimes several organisations advocating for them. They have done what has been asked of them. Still, they wait.

Four of the people needing haircuts today were women.

Behind every person sleeping rough is a human story: domestic violence, family breakdown, mental-health challenges, addiction, poverty and trauma. People being completely broken down by the very systems created to support and protect them.

And now Brisbane City Council is becoming increasingly aggressive in moving rough sleepers on.

Move them where?

We are living through a cost-of-living and housing crisis. Moving people from one public space to another doesn’t solve homelessness it only makes suffering less visible.

When people lose hope, self-care often disappears with it. They stop believing they are worth caring for because society has shown them, repeatedly, that it has stopped caring too.

That is the part I find so difficult. I don’t want to simply make someone feel better for a moment. I want better systems, safer housing and a life where people can begin believing in themselves again.

Today, we gave 13 haircuts.

But what these beautiful humans truly need is somewhere safe to call home.