Tanya Hicks, Free 2 B Me - Reclaiming Human Sovereignty, Sunshine Coast (2026)

26/08/2026

Some people won’t understand why, as a grown-ass woman, I’ve been playing Dolly Parton all morning - crying, singing, dancing… and crying again.

And that’s okay.

Dolly Parton was a massive inspiration to me.

She was a master of being underestimated.

I remember people mocking her when I was younger. The hair. The b***s. The clothes. How “ridiculous” she looked.

Looking back, I wonder if they ever realised…

Dolly was running the joke.

She knew exactly what people said about her. I remember hearing her say, “I know I look ridiculous,” and wanting to defend her - NO YOU DON’T.

But then I got it.

She created it.

She created a version of herself that she liked being. She didn’t follow trends or need to become more respectable so people would take her seriously.

She made her own effing rules.

Dolly didn’t become unbothered because people stopped judging her.

She built a life where their judgement no longer got to decide who she was.

And THAT has always inspired me.

To create your own narrative. To know people may misunderstand or underestimate you - especially as you become more successful - and still be so secure that their opinion cannot take your freedom from you.

That idea is woven into FREE 2B ME.

Freedom isn’t becoming acceptable to everybody else.

It’s reaching the point where you no longer need to be.

Underneath those rhinestones was an extraordinary effing woman.

Her father couldn’t read, so she went on to put millions of books into children’s hands.

But what gets me most is that the world didn’t harden her.

She saw the s**t. She experienced the judgement. And she didn’t let it shrink her or make her less herself.

She just found a different way to sparkle through it.

Dolly, I wish I was more like you. I really do.

Some people will never understand the magnitude of what you did.

Sucks to be them.

I saw it.

And I’m so grateful I got to see you while you were still here - for who you actually were.

Thank you for showing us you can be underestimated without becoming small. Powerful without becoming hard.

You can know exactly what the world thinks of you…

and put on more rhinestones anyway. ✨

26/08/2026

My heart has felt a bit broken for someone I have never met today.

There are never enough words for someone like Dolly.

She understood something so many women are punished for: you can be brilliant, powerful and wildly capable while looking exactly how you want to look. She made herself big, bright, feminine and unmistakable - on purpose. She saw the joke before anyone could use it against her, then built an empire from it.

Behind the rhinestones was one of the greatest songwriters, businesswomen and philanthropists of our time. But she never needed to trade warmth for authority, or softness for intelligence.

Dolly showed us that being underestimated can be a strategy -and that joy, generosity and self-authorship can be forms of power.

There is so much to say, but perhaps it comes down to this: thank you for showing so many people that they did not have to become smaller, plainer or harder to be taken seriously.

Rest beautifully, Dolly. The world is less sparkly without you.

😭😭😭😭😭😭

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19TJtoFyRj/

25/08/2026

I love having friends of different ages.

I get the privilege of driving my gorgeous and talented, much younger, friend, Petra, to the Yoga NRG Mindfulness Training studio when needed… and today I introduced her to Helen Keller.

Love that she captured it unfiltered… croaky morning voice and all… because this is life and living and being here for all of it. Not just the polished bits.

If I am singing and dancing - even badly - I am connected and absorbed in the moment… which is not always easy for a fast brain like mine.

Sending big love ❤️

Hope your day has a sneaky, or not so sneaky, happy tune to it in the way that works for you xx

25/08/2026

I’m honestly a little blown away…

I have been named as a speaker at the 2026 Conference & Awards in Sydney... and look at the incredible line up! 🤯💗

Seeing my face among this extraordinary line-up of founders, authors, advocates, innovators and leaders is one of those moments that makes me stop and take in how far this journey has travelled.

I built Neurodivergent Empowered / Free 2B Me because too many neurodivergent people are being asked to survive systems that were never designed for them - and then blamed when they cannot.

To be invited back onto a national stage as an advocate, author and Human Systems Architect means these conversations are being given space in rooms where leadership, business and social change are shaped.

I am incredibly proud, deeply grateful and still more than a little stunned.

Sydney, we are coming! ✈️

📅 AusMumpreneur Conference & Awards
14–16 September 2026

🎤 National Conference
Wednesday, 16 September
Telstra Theatre
400 George Street, Sydney

The broader experience includes VIP events, a Business Growth Masterclass, the Top 100 Gala Dinner, National Conference, Awards Presentations and Celebration Cocktail Party.

🎟 Tickets:
https://ausmumpreneur.com/tickets/

✨ Full details:
https://ausmumpreneur.com/2026conference/

I would absolutely love to see some familiar faces there. 💗

18/08/2026

wowee! What an incredible honour - look at these incredible women!!!!

18/08/2026

I have not been able to bring myself to watch the painful videos my colleagues have been posting recently.

Not through lack of care… the opposite.

Not having clarity of an answer, when you have a pattern recognising brain + hyper empathy + reliving their watched pain over and over in my brain and body is just not a place I’m feeling confident to be in right now.

So if you are the same, my video is asking for suggestions of how we bring the village together. How we help each other when we are all already beyond capacity.

How do we not lose anyone? 😭😭😭

I would love any suggestions, thoughts even solidarity of wanting to find a solution.

It all helps to not feel alone and hopeless right now for our community.

Ps - Omg no the audio cuts out!!! And I recorded it live 😭😭😭😭

Anyway I was asking for thoughts and suggestions of how we could support each other as a village, what we could do as a united community as I know we are all stretched already…

No ideas too big or small to get the creative juices flowing … and also a commitment just to know when others are not “there” or are showing signs of decline xx

Sending big love ❤️

Tan x

18/08/2026

🌈 A VERY EXCITING NEW PARTNERSHIP IS COMING TO THE NEST! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

We are incredibly excited to be partnering with headspace Caloundra to provide a new home for their Rainbow Social Group at The Nest in Caloundra.

Starting Monday 21 September, Rainbow Social Group will run fortnightly from 3:30–4:30pm for LGBTQIA+ young people and allies aged 12–16.

We’ve given ourselves a little lead-in time before the first session because we want to get the word out properly and give young people and families across the Sunshine Coast time to find us. We would LOVE to see a beautiful little community grow around this group. 🌈

Rainbow Social Group is about exactly what its name suggests: connection, community and having somewhere you can simply come as you are.

There’ll be board and card games, arcade and video games, sensory resources, spaces to chill out, activities and opportunities to connect - without everyone needing to socialise in exactly the same way.

And that is something we care deeply about at The Nest.

Young people deserve spaces where belonging doesn’t depend on masking, performing, explaining themselves or fitting somebody else’s idea of what socialising is supposed to look like.

We’re really proud to be opening our doors and partnering with headspace Caloundra to create more of those spaces locally.

🌈 RAINBOW SOCIAL GROUP
📅 Launching Monday 21 September�🔁 Fortnightly�⏰ 3:30–4:30pm�🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQIA+ young people & allies�🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Ages 12–16�📍 Neurodivergent Empowered — Unit 3, 10 Leeding Terrace, Caloundra�💚 Free to attend

Registration is currently an expression of interest, and a member of the headspace Caloundra team will contact you to confirm attendance.

✨ Come as you are -we’d love to meet you.

Please share this far and wide so the young people who need a space like this can find it. 🌈

15/08/2026

A little bit of immersive professional development at The Nest this week… although we all agreed we could have happily stayed there much, much longer. 😂

Some of our team and a few of our Phoenix friends spent time actually experiencing different ways of supporting nervous-system down-regulation - lying on our sensory mats, adding the deep pressure of weighted blankets, closing out some of the visual input with eye pillows, and giving our bodies time to notice what changed.

There’s some good science behind why these things can feel so regulating.

Deep pressure from weighted blankets can provide strong, predictable proprioceptive input - information from our muscles and joints about where our body is in space. For some people, that predictable sensory input can reduce competing sensory demands and support a shift toward a calmer, more organised state.

Reducing visual input can also matter. Our brains are constantly processing enormous amounts of sensory information, so simply removing one stream of incoming information - like light and visual movement - can reduce the processing load.

And lying supported and mindful gives us an opportunity to notice our internal state: breathing, muscle tension, heartbeat, temperature and all those other interoceptive signals that can be very difficult to detect when the nervous system is busy managing everything else.

Importantly, regulation isn’t one-size-fits-all. What settles one nervous system may be uncomfortable or activating for another. The point isn’t to make someone calm - it’s to have enough different options available that people can discover what their own nervous system finds supportive.

A massive thank you and shout-out to Yoga NRG Mindfulness Training Yoga NRG Mindfulness Training for generously donating our beautiful new eye pillows. They were VERY thoroughly tested. 😂

The verdict from our immersive PD?

We definitely needed a longer session.

And I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to catch quite a few team members “professionally testing the equipment” again in the coming weeks… 👀

31/07/2026

People often tell me I wear my heart on my sleeve.

They see the passion, the advocacy, the determination and the care.

What they don't always see is my mind.

As an autistic person, I've spent much of my life noticing patterns that other people seemed to overlook. Not because I'm smarter - but because my brain has always been driven to ask one more question, look one layer deeper and keep connecting ideas that appeared unrelated.

For years, I wondered whether that way of thinking was something I needed to hide. And in some challenging interactions I still do.

Now I see it differently.

It has shaped every framework I've developed, every organisation I've built and every question I've refused to stop asking.

Being named a finalist for the 2026 AusMumpreneur Thought Leader Award feels incredibly special because it recognises not just what I've built, but the thinking behind it.

{Little Tan would NOT believe that I am a Finalist for how I think!!}

Over the next few slides, I will share some of the ideas that sat at the heart of this nomination acceptance. Not because I expect people to agree with every one of them, but because I hope they encourage us all to ask better questions.

After all, changing the world rarely begins with having all the answers.

It usually begins with someone willing to ask a question everyone else has stopped asking or have never thought to ask.

Here's to the exhausting, "But, why?" kids. Keep asking the impossible questions my young friends xx

31/07/2026

I'm incredibly honoured to have been named a finalist in the Business Evolution Award Category for the 2026 AusMumpreneur Awards.

Over the past few posts, I've shared some of the more personal parts of my story because sharing from the heart has always come naturally to me.

What I share less often is the strategy behind it all.

Sometimes I wonder whether my heart overshadows my brain. Lol.

The past few years have been very much head down, bum up - expanding services, building new organisations, developing technology, strengthening governance, writing books, studying, gaining new qualifications and continually asking one question:

How do we build something that will still be protecting people ten years from now?

This Award Category is a little different.

It's less about the emotion behind the work and more about the thinking behind it - the decisions, the planning and the deliberate evolution that have shaped everything we've built.

Behind every compassionate organisation is strategy. Behind every sustainable service is thousands of decisions no one ever sees.

Tanya Hicks, Free 2 B Me - Reclaiming Human Sovereignty

26/08/2026

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