Kintsugi Heroes
Ian Westmoreland · 22 min
Thirty years after a handwritten note from Dick Smith told him to pursue his dream, Ian Westmoreland finally launched Kintsugi Heroes — a podcast network turning broken lives into gold.
Support services
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
In the early 1990s, Ian Westmoreland had an idea. He wanted to ask people who had survived adversity to share their stories, so that others facing hard times would know they were not alone. He wrote to three community leaders about it. Dick Smith wrote back by hand, just a few lines, telling him to do it. Ian kept that note for years. But thirty years passed. He didn't have the confidence, the time, or the money. Then, earlier this year, he stepped back from running another organisation he had founded called Mentoring Men. He had space to think again. He decided to act.
A mentor suggested the name Kintsugi. Ian learned the story behind it: a Japanese emperor's broken pottery, repaired not by hiding the damage but by filling the cracks with gold, making it more beautiful than before. The metaphor fit perfectly. People who have lived through trauma often say it made them stronger, more able to help others. The broken places become the most valuable ones.
Kintsugi Heroes is built on two aims. The first, which has not changed since the 1990s, is to give hope to people going through crisis. The second emerged as the work took shape: to educate the wider community about what adversity looks like, and how to support someone experiencing it. The conversations themselves are the heart of it. They are not interviews. The person sharing their story is given space to speak without interruption, to be truly heard. Ian's wife Helen has funded the startup. When doubt creeps in, he watches one of the episodes and remembers why the work matters. A book is coming in early 2025. A grant-funded project in the Alpine region is capturing stories from people affected by the Black Summer bushfires. And there is a plan to crowdfund a campaign on addiction in all its forms.
Every story here belongs to the person who lived it. They said yes to sharing it, and we sat with it carefully before it went up. Nothing here is exaggerated and nothing is used without permission. Read how we handle these stories ↗
Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗