Connecting Seniors
Margaret-Anne Hayes
A woman shaped by childhood fear chose a lifetime of caring for strangers, then channelled her son's death into saving other mothers' sons.
If this story feels close to home
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Margaret-Anne Hayes woke at dawn in 1994 with an overwhelming sense that she needed to start a drought appeal scheme. She had no credentials, no experience in fundraising, and no social media to work with. She typed two pages of practical questions on an electric typewriter, printed them, and walked door to door on Kokoda Avenue. What started as one woman's response to a whisper became something larger: over 18 months, she coordinated the delivery of $100,000 worth of goods across New South Wales to people who had lost access to clean water and basic necessities.
But Margaret-Anne's life of reaching out for others did not begin in 1994. It began in childhood, in a home marked by her father's unprocessed trauma and her own fear. She learned early to imagine what hardship must feel like for people she did not know, and to act on that imagining. She has spent decades making phone calls, dropping off cakes, sending texts, and showing up. When her son Aaron died of cancer at 42, she could not save him. But she channelled that loss into raising $250,000 in seed funding for cancer research through CanTwo. That money triggered $33 million in total funding. She measures her life's worth by the mothers who still have their sons because of her work.
Now at 84, caring for her husband Wayne as his dementia progresses, Margaret-Anne still reaches out. She still believes that kindness does not require grand gestures: a phone call, a text, telling someone their hair looks nice. She still wakes each morning asking how she can bring a bit of joy into the world. That question, born from childhood fear and shaped by a lifetime of paying attention to others, is the closest thing she has found to an answer.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
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