I grew up between contrasts. Three brothers and I, the first girl born into my father’s family line in three generations. I learned early how to observe people carefully, hold my ground, and understand that people can experience the same world very differently.

​

I never questioned what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a nurse. Teaching was always there, waiting in the background.

​

At twenty-one, I moved to Alice Springs to begin nursing in the Northern Territory of Australia. The desert taught me things university never could. Nursing quickly showed me that learning is never only intellectual. People grow through responsibility, reflection, mentorship, uncertainty, and lived experience.

​

By twenty-two, I was working as the on-call clinical expert supporting critically ill dialysis patients in intensive care. I carried responsibility that felt bigger than my years, surrounded by experienced clinicians who shaped my practice and my understanding of learning itself.

​

At the time, I thought competence meant knowing.

Years later, postgraduate study in nephrology unsettled that certainty entirely. The more I learned, the more I realised how much I did not know. My thinking shifted. My practice changed. My reality was redefined as my knowledge expanded.