My story, and and the distressing consequences when someone's request for help for their health is minimised or dismissed.

I have written quite a bit about the inspiration and motivation for working as a counsellor, especially about supporting those people living with obesity , illness and chronic pain. 

When someone is particularly vulnerable. It's what's often missing from care givers in our health system that has cemented my commitment to people living with obesity.

When my own child was seriously ill, many years ago now, one of the major threats to his life was contact with the childhood illnesses that typically most Australian children were vaccinated against—in an era when vaccination rates were still high.Chemotherapy had wiped out my young child's immunity from their previous vaccines. 

The hospitals request was that the school would send a letter to all parents requesting that if their child showed symptoms of certain illnesses that they would alert the school. The school would then alert me, the parent. I could then keep my child home to protect them—and the other children in the oncology wards which my child was often spending days at.

This was a relatively small school in an inner suburb of a major Australian city. Many of the children came from families at which the parents were non-English speakers. (This hadn't been a problem for my children, or for me: they'd had a wonderful opportunity to listen to and learn different languages, experience other cultures and taste new cuisines.)

But I was worried that an English language letter might not be understood. So I asked the school principal if she could please send the newsletter with the request written in the principal languages that these other parents spoke and read. I offered to find the translators. (This was before Google translate.) She refused and became increasingly hostile at my attempts to change her mind.The hospital treating my child became concerned and tried to intervene, and yet the principal still refused.

So one night, l walked the streets of our local neighbourhood looking for little shops and businesses where the shopkeepers would be able to help me translate the letter. If the school was refusing to distribute the letter in other languages, I'd do it myself. I was helped by the shopkeepers to write the letter in the four principal languages that the school's parents used. I then photocopied the letters, and distributed them to every single parent in the school, on my own.

Having done that, I then put a formal complaint to the Department of Education; by refusing to assist with this important communication about a child's health, they had been putting my child and others at extreme risk.

It will come as no surprise that after that experience I enrolled my children into another local school. At this new school, I was full of hope, and felt we could find support and that I could put my anxieties behind me. My child was well and we could start fresh.

Unfortunately, my child became very ill again. The specialists thought it was a brain tumour. I was beside myself with fear. While tests were conducted, I was living in the hospital with various members of my extended family helping care for my youngest child at home. But I found time to meet with the headmistress of the new school. I explained that my family was in crisis and could they please excuse my other child if they came to school over the next few days without homework being completed and out of regular uniform, because I was living at the hospital and was not able to wash clothes and do homework.

The response was: "I don't care what is going on in your life. We expect homework to be completed, and the correct uniform worn".

These experiences hurt me deeply. They more than hurt, in fact. They were traumatising, and made the demands of caring for my children, one of them extremely ill far worse.

What I learned from this, is that when someone is vulnerable and, in a crisis, cruelty and lack of compassion and a lack of support can make a difficult situation far worse, and can create a long lasting trauma. Years have passed, my children are grown, but the lack of care, insight and compassion shown to me by the educators during those crises is still painful.

When my clients relate stories of abuse, neglect, illness and pain that have affected their weight, or their life more generally, I am acutely aware that all care providers should provide good systemic support tot heir clients, but that it doesn't always happen. Being dismissed or being spoken to with hurtful comments can derail even the most stoic of people. I had been a stoic mother, derailed.

Almost daily in my practice as a counsellor, I hear stories from my clients relating comments that  family members, friends , strangers and even sometimes   health workers have had made to them about their weight. Some of these remarks are historical, from years before, but the words hurt even – forty  or more years later. The judgements have profoundly affected the client's relationship with their body, their interpersonal and their intrapersonal relationships, and their sense of trust in a system that has betrayed them and hurt them when they were most vulnerable.

I will never understand how the two school principals believed it was their right to deny me and my child (and the other children in the oncology wards) the care we so desperately needed. Thankfully my own family, medical practitioners and friends showed us an abundance of love and care and support.

These experiences have helped me to create a practice where if someone is struggling with poor physical or mental health, I am determined to do my very best to listen carefully to what they are saying, and to reflect on what is needed. If I can't give what they need, I refer them safely to where they can get the help they need. I don't want for my clients what I was made to do: go out at night searching for good souls to listen and help translate my words.

Ginette Lenham © February 2026

Thank you to photosforyou Pixabay