Tanya Hicks, Free 2 B Me - Reclaiming Human Sovereignty

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

I’m incredibly honoured to have been named among Australia’s Top 100 Mums in Business and a finalist for the 2026 AusMumpreneur Woman Changing the World of the Year Award.

The past few years have very much been head down, bum up - studying, building, expanding, learning, writing, creating and constantly asking how we can do better for the people and communities we serve.

There have been new qualifications, new services, new technology, new organisations, new books, and countless hours spent quietly building foundations that most people never see.

Awards are a wonderful moment of recognition, but what means even more to me is the opportunity to pause and reflect on why this work exists.

Over the next few posts, I'd love to share some of the thoughts, stories and values that came straight from my heart when I wrote my award nomination acceptance. They are the experiences and beliefs that have shaped every decision along the way.

Thank you to my Kianni, our incredible team, the participants who trust us, and everyone who has supported this journey. I'm truly grateful to be able to do work that matters with the biggest hearted people. ❤️ Together, we can xx

28/07/2026

23/07/2026

Vulnerable share... here goes...

One thing I wasn't prepared for was the effect that being the canary in the coal mine would have on my daughter.

I thought I was teaching her resilience. I thought she was watching her mum show that even when people gaslit me, dismissed me, spoke to me with disrespect, ignored my expertise, or forced me to fight systems that were never designed for our mind and bodies, I could always get back up. I thought she was seeing hope.

Instead, I realised she wasn't watching me get back up.

She was watching me get knocked down.

She didn't admire that I kept fighting. She just didn't want her mum to have to keep fighting.

She didn't want to see someone she loves constantly having to prove her intelligence, defend her integrity, explain herself over and over, or carry the weight of trying to create change inside systems that keep pushing back.

She wanted to see her mum treated with respect. She wanted people to recognise her intelligence without her having to earn that recognition every single time.

And it hit me that these are exactly the things I want for her.

To belong without performing.

To be heard without fighting.

To be valued without proving.

It's made me think about the children of the people who go first. The children of advocates, whistleblowers, and changemakers. We talk about the cost to the person doing the advocating, but rarely about what it costs the people who love them enough to watch.

Maybe we've been asking the wrong question.

Maybe we aren't supposed to spend our lives carving pathways through systems that were never designed for us. Maybe the answer isn't just making existing systems more neuroaffirming, trauma-informed or person-centred.

Maybe there are entirely different ways to create change that don't require us to keep sacrificing ourselves.

I don't have all the answers yet.

What I do know is that my daughter is both my greatest reason for creating change and my greatest reason to rethink how I do it.

Because if creating change is hurting the person I'm trying hardest to protect, then there has to be another way.

And I'm determined to find it.

Anyone else' child experience similar?

21/07/2026

After creating a life that allows me to flourish in my own authentic way, one of the worst things I could have done to continue that flourishing was to do my AQF9 Masters.

Not because the content is hard... as it's not... more frustrating as its ableist and a lot of the time outdated with later peer reviewed evidence. Mostly its because of the negative impact on my mental health... and this is what our kids are also still experiencing.

Nothing about me had changed.

Not my prior qualifications.
Not my formally assessed intelligence.
Not my commitment.

Only the environment.

And suddenly I was spending my energy navigating barriers instead of learning.

That experience reinforced something I already knew professionally:

People don't need fixing nearly as often as environments need redesigning.

Accessibility isn't about lowering expectations.

It's about creating the conditions where people can finally demonstrate what they're capable of.

Imagine what would be possible if we stopped asking people to fit our systems...
..and started designing systems that allowed more people to flourish.

I'd love to hear your experience.

When have you felt most able to be yourself because the environment supported you instead of expecting you to adapt?

And what became possible for you as a result?

20/07/2026

Soooo… it really took 47 years to identify I was AuDHD??? 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Pretty sure there was a few obvious signs from this image 🤣🤣

Any other “multi-passionate” people out there?

15/07/2026

Please do yourself a favour and go and buy the beautiful children’s book.

I cried all the way through it knowing the story of beautiful Marleigh, who is one of our Phoenix Friends and how she relies on blood donations to stay on this earth.

Kate Fisher did such an incredible job of writing the words so beautifully. I am so proud of you.

And how special it was to have Miss Taija read it in the Nest.

My heart ♥️

Perspective is a wonderful gift 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹