Kintsugi Heroes
Luke Marshall · 46 min
After losing his father to suicide at age four, Luke Marshall spent decades numbing unhealed childhood trauma — until a psychotic episode, a forensic hospital, and deep inner-child work finally led him to sobriety, self-love, and fatherhood.
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At 20, Luke Marshall moved to Western Australia to study postgraduate law. Within 8 to 12 weeks, mania shifted into psychosis. He lost touch with reality on a road trip with friends, stripped naked, swam into the ocean looking for his dead father, and broke into an elderly person's home. He was arrested and spent three months in a forensic hospital, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and psychosis. His university degree, his job, his independence, everything stopped. It took 18 months to find the right medication and relearn basic adult tasks. For years after that, he tried to recapture who he had been before, never realizing the coping behaviours keeping him afloat were slowly drowning him.
Luke's father had died by suicide when Luke was four years old. Luke was there when he was found. That buried trauma shaped every choice he made as an adult: the drinking, the performing, the people-pleasing, the endless work. It wasn't until a therapist asked him not what he remembered, but what it felt like, that something shifted. Sitting in that room, he felt again the liquid terror of little Luke. Owning that feeling, that memory, that four-year-old's experience, finally allowed him to understand why he had spent decades running.
Today, Luke is 2.5 years sober. His mother mortgaged her home to give him her room during those early months of recovery. His sisters cut people off to protect him. His friends, his psychiatrists, his recovery circles, his own fierce commitment to looking after the child he once was, all of it brought him here. He works in marketing and now gives his spare time to nonprofits. He is about to become a father to twin boys. He has learned that any feeling is temporary, but the need to love and give back lives in everyone. And he is here to tell you: it gets so much better.
⚠️ 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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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗