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Alvina Brangman went from fit to flabby in what seemed like a matter of minutes. For years she was in the gym six days a week, and a regular on the bodybuilding circuit. In 2009 she quit competing to start a family — and the pounds started piling on....

Susan Thomas feared being stigmatised when she publicly revealed she had a depressive illness. David is sharing his story anonymously today, because he worries he might be judged. Mrs Thomas was flooded with messages from people who said they had si...

David didn’t understand why people were looking at him like something wasn’t right. He was speaking clearly but they didn’t get what he was saying. He was full of energy; they all seemed so slow. The penny didn’t drop until he was taken away by ambul...

Three days after a mammogram, Arlene Trott discovered a lump in her breast. She was fishing with her two young children at the time. “I wasn’t digging around or palpitating,” she said. “I just brushed my hands over my chest.” The lump was hard and t...

Tiffanne Thomas became a counsellor because she wanted to make a difference. Despite her best efforts however, the 34-year-old never felt she was doing enough. “I felt I wasn’t really living up to my full capacity,” she said. “I felt pulled to do mor...

It was a year since her mother died and Bernice Zaft-Gibbons wasn’t over it. Waves of grief and anger would suddenly hit her, particularly around birthdays and anniversaries. It was especially difficult as her relationship with her mother hadn’t alw...

Hafid James was optimistic when he took the stage for a bodybuilding competition in Mexico in 2013. He’d won the event just a year prior and believed he’d put in enough work to take home another trophy. Things didn’t go as planned. He placed fifth...

Nurse Rebecca Ronaldson thought there was nothing more exhausting than an Emergency Room late shift. Then she had a baby. As a sleep-deprived mother, she put on winter woollies forgetting it was summer. She put groceries that belonged in the fridge...

Latisha Lister-Burgess will likely be forever grateful that she decided to get fit. She believes it sparked her boyfriend Charles Burgess’s wedding proposal in 2013, and led to her getting pregnant earlier this year. “It made me feel so powerful in e...

Edward “Donnell” Ivy’s hips started failing him when he was 9. By the time he reached university, he would often suffer terrible pain that would put him in hospital for weeks. Then the crisis hit. The then 23-year-old was on duty as a resident paedia...