Grit Diaries
Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you
Dr Heena Cheung
Dr Heena Cheung reframed childhood abuse as material for purpose, moving from silence to concrete action across housing, justice, and prevention.
Kintsugi Studio
Grit Diaries
Dr Heena Cheung
Dr Heena Cheung reframed childhood abuse as material for purpose, moving from silence to concrete action across housing, justice, and prevention.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Dr Heena Cheung survived sexual abuse from age 13 through her college years, experiences that shaped everything she does now. She left India at 27 and moved to Australia, where she studied public health after realising dentistry was her family's dream, not hers. Watching Dr Kiran Bedi advocate for women's rights as a child planted a seed: she wanted to become someone unafraid to speak truth and fight for others.
In 2017, while struggling with anorexia, a sentence from Tony Robbins shifted how she saw her past. Instead of asking why this happened to her, she began asking what she could build with what she had survived. That reframe opened everything. She founded My Second Home, an NDIS housing support service for people with disabilities. She joined campaigns to protect disabled people from harm and cuts to care. She sat on the Communities Council on Ethnic Issues to ensure migrant women know their legal rights, after being fired at 37 weeks pregnant without understanding her own protections. In 2025, she stood as an independent Senate candidate in Victoria specifically to overturn suppression laws that prevent survivors from naming their abusers after conviction, breaking the record for independent votes in the state.
Heena's work connects healing at home to action in the world. When you are in survival mode, your brain cannot access planning, reasoning, or creativity. Healing creates the space to see and act on bigger issues. Her message to survivors is direct: your past does not define who you can become. Your actions now will. Even the smallest action, taken with intention, moves toward the change you want to see.
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