Who Am I When Everything I Thought Defined Me Is Gone?

For years, I measured myself by what I could build, what I could earn, what I could achieve and how others perceived me.

Then, in 2022, my construction business went into liquidation. By the end of that year I had been declared bankrupt. My marriage had ended, I was in the middle of years of family court proceedings, and I was still working through the consequences of my addiction.

Suddenly, the things I had used to define myself no longer provided an answer to the question I needed to ask:

Who am I when everything I thought defined me is gone?

The strangest gift

It sounds strange to describe such a difficult moment this way, but one of the most enlightening days of my life was the day I was declared bankrupt. Losing everything forced me to reconsider what I had been chasing.

It wasn't the money. It wasn't recognition. It wasn't the next business or the next achievement.

What I really wanted was to be healthy, to be present for my children, to build a loving family and to spend my life with people who mattered to me.

Clarity, finally

After closing the business I spent two months in Bali. I trained in meditation through the Australian Institute of Mindfulness and started looking honestly at the relationship between my thoughts, my habits and my behaviour.

I didn't have a grand plan. But for the first time in a long time, I had clarity about what I wanted my life to stand for. If I was going to rebuild, I wanted to build something that could make a genuine difference to other people.

That decision eventually became Six Seasons Recovery. You can read the full journey in My Story.