Writer. Counsellor.

I live and create on Kabi Kabi Country
Coastal lands now known as the Sunshine Coast Australia

Every morning without fail
my earth-angel Lotus
part golden retriever
wakes me before sunrise
we choose a beach walk or a bush track

Outside of writing I assist established psychologists with group therapy sessions
Slowly building my online private practice

I love reality TV especially when women bravely express
I am obsessed with analysing the social codes we are shaped by
Dominant discourse fascinates me
I try to read every day

Lately I have been prioritising rest and pleasure
Not as luxuries but as necessities
I am unlearning the internalised urgency
The pushing the forcing
Slowly remembering that slowness is not weakness
It is a powerful counter spell
And in that spell I feel clear
Whole

Baths are where I feel most me
The ocean feels like home
A memory older than language
A remembering that lives in water

I no longer dream of ascending
Transcending
Escaping
I choose to descend
Into the body
Into the ache
Into the memory stored in flesh
Into the living memory in each other
I am because we are
Sensitivity is divinity

I Descend 

To Root

To Remember 

To Remain

Updated 08.08.2025

For creative, collaborative and counselling enquiries, write to me directly: essena@withessena.com

Interesting Features

Aesthetic Labour: Rethinking Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism

Elias, Gill & Scharff (2017)

I’m honoured that my story (what was publicly available in 2015) is included as a case study in this book

After quitting social media I became obsessed with the term

“Neoliberalism”

It felt like the invisible script I had once performed to perfection
A role I never chose yet mastered

This book helped me see how the ideologies of our time 

Don’t just live in policies or markets
They live in the body

This book names aesthetic labour 

Not as surface-level beauty work

But as a demand for self-surveillance
Constant improvement
Marketability

The self became a project
Always optimising
Always pleasing

Especially for women
Beauty was never just about ‘image’
It is emotional
Social
Racial
Economic

This book unpacks it all
How power masks itself as personal choice
How aesthetic and emotional labour become inseparable
How visibility doesn’t always equal freedom