About The Healing Homestead
Hi there. My name is Zoe, and I am the backbone of The Healing Homestead.
I grew up on the land in Far North Queensland, in a very remote area, on a huge cattle property.
Clean skies, long days and hard work that required strength long before I understood what strength truly was.
From the outside, I looked like I was growing up capable, driven and high-achieving.
And I was.
But beneath that tough-as-nails, girl-in-a-man's-world was a nervous system that never knew rest. You know, if anyone was still working, everyone was still working.
For years I moved through cycles I could not name, from exhaustion that was labelled laziness, emotional heaviness that felt like failure, and internalised negative talk that would close walls in around me. And the loneliness, ohhh the loneliness.
I wondered if it was depression. I wondered if something was wrong with me. What I did not yet understand was burnout, trauma, and the quiet cost of living in constant overdrive.
It wasn’t until I became a mother at 27 that everything started to unravel enough for me to (begin to) see it clearly.
Motherhood stripped away my identity, as it does with every woman. It revealed what my body had been holding, and couldn't hold together anymore. After the birth of my first, my son, and some post-natal depression, began a long and deliberate journey into health and wellbeing - nutrition, raw food, then mental health, naturopathics, hypnotherapy...
Then I began studying the nervous system and how trauma lives in the body. I immersed myself in embodiment, soul nourishment, women’s work, bodywork, yoga and the science of how we heal not only our bodies, but also our relationships with others, too. I learned how oxytocin restores what stress erodes, particularly in women. A second child, a daughter, a lengthy separation followed by an even lengthier divorce, a move from bush to beach, and a huge change in life direction later, as I slowly worked to remove toxicity from my life and learn about my own inner hater, I learned most importantly that I was not broken - that I was chronically overextended, living in a state of stress constantly. (What Mother isn't, right?)
Overworked.
Undernourished.
Under-touched.
Under-supported.
Overstimulated as hecccck.
And beneath it all, a quiet void inside.
And I have now seen that void inside hundreds, if not thousands of women that I have supported over the past 18 years of working with women on my Australian and international retreats, in my private coaching practice, and speaking to them from stages all over. They give, give, give, losing a little more of themselves every time they put their own needs last. "Who even am I? What happened to the me that used to have fun? How did I get here?" These are words I hear a lot in our practice here at The Healing Homestead. And on my own plate, landed another beautiful baby girl, nearly 3 years ago, which had me asking a lot of the same questions, in a more loving and accepting way this time around.
The Healing Homestead has been created here on my fiancé's 6th generation family land, from that deeper understanding - that women need women; That women need way more care and rest than today's world would have them allow themselves; And women need slowness, softness, space to BE in their bodies, and out of their minds. Our systems don't thrive on stress and exhaustion. We can't just 'push through', or we end up feeling shaky, unstable, lost, and alone. For the past nearly 20 years, I have put my heart and soul into supporting women to find their alignment again; their truth and their aliveness, and bring this to every area of their lives.
Here at The Healing Homestead Hunter Valley, you return to nature and the natural rhythms around you. To touch. To presence. To community.
Here, we gather in person. We breathe with soft bellies. We soften with tender hearts. Our nervous systems recalibrate in ways that cannot happen through a screen. The land here holds you. Your body remembers how to settle. Oxytocin replaces urgency, and you start to recognize yourself again.
Please come and join us here soon. We would love to be a part of your journey.
Our offerings here are not about an escape from your life (although they will feel like it at first).
Everything we offer is about alignment.
About living deliberately instead of reactively.
About rebuilding yourself, one truthful moment at a time.
About remembering that care is not indulgence - it is foundational to you and your family's wellbeing.
Healing Homestead exists for women who know there is more enjoyment possible for them.
A way where their strength doesn't come from more pushing through.
A way where they can reconnect with their ambition, not their abandonment.
A way where depletion, stress and exhaustion become fragments of a past that's behind you.
And your future gets to feel joyous. Yes!
You get to feel at ease. You get to feel safe. You get to feel peace.