I guess my story begins after the birth of my daughter in 2005.  My partner had left me with our one year old son and I was 21 weeks pregnant with our daughter, so when Jazmin was born in July 2005, I guess that’s when the shit hit the fan, you could say.

Nine days after Jazmin was born, I was admitted to the Mothers and Babies Unit at Princess Margaret Hospital in Christchurch with post-natal depression.  Weeks later I was then diagnosed with rapid cycle bipolar.  After 14 months in and out of hospital and many trials of medications and having ECT [Electro-Convulsive Therapy], I guess that was the start of putting my life back together.

I had lost custody of my children and I had to learn how to look after myself again.  Slowly but surely I started to rebuild my life, winning back custody of my children.

During my journey I started painting then moving funky art out of junk, which is how my business got its name, junk2funk.  I find most of my ideas happen when I’m having what I say is a great bi-polar moment.  During one of my bipolar moments I came up with the idea of printing some t-shirts with quotes that have a mental illness theme, putting a positive spin on it and to be proud of who we are and to get people talking.