I’m choosing to be open and honest about my diagnosis because endometriosis is not a conversation that should be kept behind closed doors, particularly when 1 in 7 women worldwide are affected by it, and it is extremely understudied.

It started when I was a teenager in high school. Period pain so sharp it would leave me lightheaded, nauseous and sometimes collapsing, with my pelvic muscles intensely seizing up. Something was wrong inside my body, but none of us, not me, not the people around me, knew what it was or where it came from.

Where I lived, the only doctors available were men who offered the same three things: Ibuprofen, diets, and the occasional blood test. When the blood tests came back normal, my pain was waved away as if it didn't exist. My friend suggested I look into endometriosis, so I brought it up at an appointment. I was told endo wasn't a real problem, that it couldn't possibly hurt as much as I said it did, and that I must be exaggerating. So I did what I was told to do: I moved on, and I believed them. I believed it was nothing.

Two years later, in 2018, I left Perth for Melbourne to study fashion; then, in 2020, COVID hit, so my sister and I moved back to Perth to wait out the pandemic. One night the pain returned in a form I'd never felt before, a sharp, hot, shooting pain in my pelvis, lower back and down my leg that paralysed me completely. I lay frozen on the floor, eyes darting, tears streaming, unable to move even a finger. My brother alerted my parents, who called an ambulance. My sister and father sat beside me in the ER while we waited for answers. But because no GP had ever flagged endometriosis, the hospital found nothing, and my pain was filed away as "low iron and vitamin D" – something, they said, that's common in people with deep skin. So once again, I brushed it off.

When my sister and I returned to Melbourne, the pain came back ten times worse. This time she urged me to seek out a female doctor. That single decision changed everything. Within ten minutes of our first consultation – no battery of tests, no doubt in her voice – she suspected endometriosis and referred me straight to a specialist. She simply knew. None of us realised it then, but that appointment was the start of the chapter that would reshape my entire life, body and mind.

My first laparoscopy was in 2022. My surgeon found multiple fibroids and formally diagnosed me with endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain. Two weeks after the operation, the pain returned, even worse than before. My GP immediately referred me to a pain specialist and a physiotherapist, and I was placed on a growing list of medications, from contraceptives to painkillers and, eventually, antidepressants, because by then, roughly three years into all of this, my mental health had begun to crumble.

Two more procedures followed, and still the pain only deepened. At my lowest, I could barely walk. Getting out of bed felt impossible; some mornings my sister had to lift me to my feet with both hands. Daily things like standing long enough to cook or take care of myself became too much. Even in a remote job, I could hardly speak without wincing, hunched over a heat pack turned up so hot my skin would burn and scar. My world shrank until there was almost nothing left of it. No friends, no social life and no motivation to continue on.

Three surgeries and two procedures later, including a seven-day hospitalisation for a ketamine infusion that was my last attempt to ease the pain, did not work. I hit my absolute lowest point. My GP, pain specialist, and gynaecologist all told me the same thing: this is lifelong and currently incurable. The path forward would be more procedures, more surgeries, and a psychologist to help me accept that I may live with this pain forever.

I fell into a deep depression, one I'm still working through today. Fashion design became the single light I had left. But without a job, and with the mounting cost of medications, specialist appointments, and another surgery ahead, supporting myself has grown harder and harder. My family has done everything they can, yet the reality is that the funds simply aren't there to keep up with treatment. That's why I launched CENTÈ earlier than I'd planned, with only a handful of garments and sizes. I wanted to get my designs into the world, both to support myself and, in time, to support women like me: women living with a disease that could be far better treated if women's health received the funding it deserves. So I made a vow. To advocate. To educate people on how devastating endometriosis really is — and to challenge a condition where diagnosis often begins with an expensive surgery and where the "solutions" offered are a hysterectomy or pregnancy.

When CENTÈ grows large enough to open a physical store, I will hire women like me who can't work because of their health. Proceeds will go to organisations like Endometriosis Australia, and above all, we'll help women cover the surgeries, specialists, and medications they need to ease their pain.

Thank you for reading my story. I am one of many women living with this condition, and I will always be grateful to those who have helped me and who help me still. And to any woman with endometriosis reading this: your journey doesn't have to be as lonely as mine was. You will always have a friend and a supporter in me and the CENTÈ brand, and our inbox is always open when you need us.