For six years, I’ve walked alongside TUF Minds, championing its Life Rescue framework across regional Queensland and beyond. As someone with deep lived experience in mental health, suicide prevention, family support, and men’s wellbeing, I’ve witnessed first-hand the power of accessible, community-based tools like those developed by Drs. John and Elizabeth McIntosh.
At this year’s Men's Gathering, I propose to speak into the timely and powerful theme: Supporting Men and Boys. While we often focus our efforts on men in crisis, we must also look upstream, to the boy who didn’t have the tools, the language, or the safe space to process his pain. That boy becomes the man we now strive to support.
TUF Minds is taking bold new steps by expanding its evidence-based mental wellness strategies into child-focused programs. These tools, simple yet profound, give children the emotional literacy and resilience skills we all wish we’d had growing up. In doing so, we don’t just change a child’s life, we shape the future adult. We believe that healing children is the most sustainable way to create healed men.
My talk will weave together:
This presentation won’t be a lecture. It’ll be a deeply human conversation, grounded in lived experience, community connection, and a fierce belief that our boys deserve better. And so do our men.
By supporting the emotional development of boys, we help break intergenerational cycles of trauma and silence. The TUF Minds approach proves that powerful change doesn’t always come from complexity, sometimes, it comes from simple, compassionate tools in the hands of everyday people.