I spent over 22 years in the wedding industry, fourteen of them running my own bridal gown business. I worked closely with women in one of the most emotionally significant seasons of their lives.

I learned how much presentation can hide. How often competence masks collapse. How often women continue performing while privately drowning. And that work sharpened my eye and my intuition.

In March 2020, weddings in Australia were cut to five people, and the work I’d built my life around stopped almost overnight. I stood in the doorway of my workroom, gowns still on the rail, and couldn’t make myself walk in.

My father had died that December. My mother, next door, needed more of me. I was lying awake doing sums about money. And I was telling myself I should be coping better than this.

I called it burnout, because that’s the word you get handed. It didn’t fit. I was carrying more than I’d ever carried, and I read all of it as failure. It took me a long time to see it as weight.

When the weddings came back, I closed the business slowly. I finished every gown I’d promised and took no new work.

Now I bring that same discernment into Threshold. I notice what others miss. And I care more about what holds than what sounds good.