Welcome to Mental Health Chats: A Conversation Between Hearts

When I first started Mental Health Chats, I wanted it to be raw and real — not rehearsed, not polished, but human. It’s about breaking the stigma around mental health through conversation. Not with experts in white coats, but with people who’ve lived it, stumbled through it, and somehow learned to laugh again.

So, for my first guest, I chose someone who’s been through all of it with me — my partner of twenty-two and a half years, Tay. We’ve lived together through depression, anxiety, physical injuries, multiple and ongoing burnout, city life, and the quiet of the country. We’ve rebuilt each other and sometimes broken down together. And this chat, between two people who know each other better than anyone, became something deeper than an interview.

It became a mirror.

What Mental Health Means — and How It Changes Over Time

When I asked Tay what mental health means to him, his first response was honest — and human. “Shit, right off the deep end.” We laughed, because that’s how it feels sometimes. Mental health is deep, messy, and hard to define.

For him, it’s the thoughts, the feelings, the way we process the world — the quiet conversations between the brain, heart, and gut. “Science is starting to realise the heart is more than just a pump,” he said. “It’s where empathy comes from. The gut too — it governs our emotions in ways we’re still learning. So mental health isn’t just what’s in our head. It’s all through the body.”

And I think he’s right. We often talk about the mind as something separate — something we can fix with a pill or ignore until it breaks. But it’s all connected. If your mind’s out of balance, your body will tell you. Sometimes, the healing we need is physical — in movement, in breath, in touch, in reconnecting with nature.

For both of us, understanding that balance has taken decades. Mental health isn’t a destination. It’s an ongoing conversation — one where you think you’ve healed, only for life to throw a curveball that reopens the wound. A loss, a memory, a smell, a song. Suddenly you’re right back in the thick of it. But that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It just means you’re still human.

Learning to Talk (and Actually Listen)

It’s taken us years to get better at talking about mental health — not just venting or “trauma dumping,” but communicating. Tay said something that stuck with me: “You can’t just hold everything inside and think you’re fine. That’s how you relapse.”

He’s right.

So many of us isolate when things get heavy. We tell ourselves we don’t want to burden others. But silence is a slow poison. It eats at you, and one day it spills out sideways — anger, exhaustion, tears that come from nowhere.

These days, we try to recognise the signs early. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking: Have you eaten? Do you need a walk? A shower? Sleep? Simple routines have saved us — brushing teeth, feeding horses, getting outside. Nature, animals, the rhythm of daily care — they anchor us.

For us, the horses became our therapy. We don’t have time to wallow when there are living creatures depending on us. They force us into the sun, into the dirt, into the moment. In return, they give something back — a grounding presence, a heartbeat that syncs with ours. Horses, like dogs, feel emotion without needing words. They regulate our hearts, mirror our moods, and pull us gently back into balance.

Healing Through the Body

Both of us have carried our share of physical pain. Tay was diagnosed with kyphosis — a significant curvature of the spine — after years of misdiagnosis. It started in childhood and worsened after two major accidents. At fourteen, he fell from a horse and broke his back. At twenty-one, a truck slammed into the side of the car he was in. That second accident was also the moment our lives changed — it was the day our story really began.

I still remember the call from the hospital, my number being the only one he could recall. The crash had been bad — car twisted like tin, glass everywhere. But everyone survived. That day, amid the chaos and fear, something clicked. I realised I didn’t want to imagine a life without him.

Trauma has a strange way of doing that. It shakes everything loose and shows you what actually matters.

But the recovery — both physical and mental — was brutal. Tay lost the athletic career he was chasing, the modelling opportunities, the horse-riding dreams. “I had to accept that my body wasn’t going to fit the world’s definition of perfect anymore,” he told me. “So, I had to redefine it for myself.”

That line hit me hard. Because isn’t that what mental health is too? Redefining what “okay” looks like.

Life, Love, and Surviving Together

After the accident, our lives entwined quickly. Within months, we were living together. We’ve moved house nineteen times, crossed hundreds of kilometres with horses, and rebuilt fences in storms and floods. We’ve lived in a tent and then a caravan, every day on the edge. And through all that, our mental health has evolved alongside us.

We’ve learned how to give each other space — and how to call each other out. We know the look in each other’s eyes that means, I’m not okay. We’ve learned that it’s not about fixing one another but seeing one another.

And that’s what love is for me. It’s not the absence of struggle; it’s the ability to struggle together.

We’ve seen other couples who don’t talk about mental health at all — who treat it like an off-limits subject. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. For us, being open has been the difference between surviving and actually... daily... living.

The Extra Weight of Being Queer

Being a queer couple adds another layer. Even now, it’s not always easy. When we were younger, holding hands in public could invite stares and often, worse. Once, a group of schoolgirls started cheering at us for holding hands. It was meant to be supportive, and it was sweet, but it also reminded us that people notice. We are visible. Different.

That constant awareness shapes you. It teaches you when to hide affection, when to play “just friends,” and when to be brave. Over time, you stop caring what others think — but that doesn’t mean the old wounds vanish.

We’ve both experienced microaggressions — from strangers, from workplaces, even from family. Sometimes it’s subtle: a joke, a look, an assumption. Other times it’s blatant exclusion. There were years we couldn’t find a doctor who took us seriously as a couple. Years we had to come out again and again — every job, every form, every new face.

It wears you down. And yet, it also builds resilience.

These days, I don’t need the world’s validation. I know who we are. But I still wish the world understood that mental health for queer people often means healing from a lifetime of quiet rejection — the thousand little cuts of not being seen.

Redefining Family and Letting Go of “Shoulds”

For years, we imagined having kids. There were people who offered — women who said they’d carry a child for us. But each time, the offer disappeared. Ghosted messages, awkward silences, broken promises. It wasn’t malice, just the reality that it’s complicated — emotionally, legally, financially.

At some point, we realised our life had taken a different path. We had our horses. We had each other. And maybe that was enough.

“Having kids wasn’t going to fix our pain,” Tay said once. “We needed to fix ourselves first.” That stuck with me. Because so often we chase the picture we think we’re supposed to have — the white picket fence, the 2.5 kids, the happy ending. But love isn’t one-size-fits-all. For us, it’s quiet mornings with coffee and horse feed. It’s knowing we can sit in silence and still feel understood.

Sometimes success looks nothing like the dream you started with.

The Inner Child and the Masks We Wear

We’ve both learned that mental health isn’t just about surviving adulthood — it’s about healing the child inside us who didn’t feel safe. Both of us grew up in homes where we learned to watch body language like it was a second language. When you’ve lived with volatility, you learn to sense danger before it speaks. That hyper-awareness doesn’t just vanish when you grow up; it becomes part of who you are.

Tay grew up in a conservative, religious home — one that told him who he was supposed to be. I grew up watching for signs of anger before they erupted. Together, we had to unlearn the fear, the masks, the constant performance of being “fine.”

Over the years, we’ve ripped off mask after mask — the people-pleasing, the perfectionism, the “I’m okay” smile. And beneath it all, we found two kids who still wanted to be loved for who they were, not who the world told them to be.

We’ve learned to go back and make that younger version of ourselves proud — to live the lives they didn’t believe they could have.

Defining Happiness on Our Own Terms

When I asked Tay what success means to him now, he said: “It’s being happy, healthy, balanced, and accepting of myself — and of others as reflections of me.” I think about that a lot.

Because success changes. So does love. So does happiness. The dreams we had in our twenties — fame, careers, the city lights — don’t define us anymore. These days, happiness is simple: waking up to the sound of horses nickering for breakfast. Watching a storm roll over the paddock. Knowing that the person next to you has your back, even when neither of you is at your best.

We’re still learning, still healing, still human. But I think we’ve found what works for us — honesty, humour, and a willingness to grow.

Life hasn’t been picture-perfect, but it’s been real. And maybe that’s the whole point.

‘Welcome to Mental Health Chats’ was born from this — from wanting to make conversations like ours feel normal. To say, “You’re not broken. You’re just figuring it out.”

Because we all are.

Every one of us is trying to balance the scales in our own mind, to find the version of peace that fits.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from talking with Tay — and from living this life with him — it’s that mental health isn’t about being happy all the time. It’s about being honest. It’s about checking in, with yourself and with those you love. It’s about hugging a tree when you’re angry or letting the horses remind you what calm feels like.

And it’s about knowing that no matter how messy, awkward, or uncomfortable the conversation is — it’s better than silence.

Because silence never healed anyone. But talking might.

Written by Uncle Tatt

Host of Mental Health Chats and Between the Notes