My name is Lauren.

I am an author and mama-of-two from Melbourne, Australia. I am also someone who has spent a significant portion of my life dealing with challenging mental health - from bouts of stormy, dark depression, to periods of overwhelming anxiety and panic.
During my twenties, I navigated panic disorder and agoraphobia: I was housebound for two years before I began working my way towards my own version of ‘exposure therapy’. During this time, I started a blog called ‘AnxietyMamma’ and a YouTube channel in which I recorded and uploaded videos of my exposure sessions. Through my blog and videos, I found myself nestled into a beautiful community of people, facing the exact same fears and anxieties as me. Hallelujah! Slowly, but surely, and with the constant support of fellow-agoraphobics around the world, I christened myself ‘officially recovered’ from agoraphobia in 2018; around the time I shut down AnxietyMamma, the blog.

Although, a funny thing happened in my quest to ‘overcome’ anxiety and panic. I realised that anxiety and panic never really left…but I learned how to create a softer landing place for those scary feelings. I stopped resisting, and I started leaning in. I began to explore what anxiety was, what it looked like, what it felt like (I won’t lie to you, mostly for me, it felt like a very crampy stomach and an urgent need to poo), and what it was that made me want to run away.

In 2021, I won the Hay House writers workshop, landing a book deal with my dream publishing house. My first book, Here You Are; Courageous, is my love letter to anxiety - to the panic, to the fear, to the resistance and the expansion, and all the other lessons I’ve learned along the way.

I aim to be as candid as possible about mental health. And for me, that means accepting the wild contradictions of it all. Sometimes I’m out having adventures, traveling or exploring with a big smile on my face and a wide open heart, but other times, I’m in bed, wearing the same clothes I was wearing yesterday, despairing to my partner about how tired I am of being such a mess. It’s not always an easy path to walk, but I hope that in talking about it, we can at least make the journey a little less lonely.