Kintsugi Heroes
Alex Brandt
Alex rebuilt from thirty years of addiction and parental betrayal by studying her parents' war trauma and learning to reparent herself.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Alex Brandt arrived in Australia as a child of war refugees who carried unresolved trauma from the Second World War. Enrolled at age seven without English, without the right uniform, without any social experience, she stood out immediately. At her first school, she was abused by a janitor. When she told her parents, they argued, kept her there for three more months, then told her never to speak of it again. After that, her parents decided she was the problem making their life harder, a position they held throughout her childhood, especially once her mother had a new baby. With no school structure and no explanation, Alex began wandering the streets. By high school, she had met two sisters who introduced her to a narcotic drug. The relief was immediate and complete. Every problem disappeared, and she felt emotionally pain-free for the first time. She did not know she was carrying that much pain until the substance removed it.
What followed was thirty years of addiction. Alex dropped out of university psychology, moved to a hippie farm on the edge of Wagga, then drifted into the streets of Sydney and King's Cross. She married four times; three of those partners died from addiction while she was still using. She watched friends overdose, normalised dysfunction, and fell beneath society's norms. The breaking point came when she was arrested in Melbourne for a crime she did not commit, pregnant, handcuffed to a chair. She refused to sign a false confession and suffered a miscarriage in the police cell. In that moment of complete desperation and physical pain, every part of her knew with absolute certainty that she was done.
Alex rebuilt herself through university, studying forensic medicine, mental health social work, languages, and the psychology of war trauma. Understanding what her parents had survived gave her deep compassion for them and, eventually, for herself. She learned to let go of the survival skills that kept her alive and to reparent herself, bringing her authentic self out of the shadows. Today she works as a counselor and writer, grandmother to five grandchildren, and travels internationally giving talks on transformation. She refuses shame about the cracks.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses addiction & recovery, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • SMART Recovery Australia (addiction): smartrecoveryaustralia.com.au • ReachOut: au.reachout.com
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