Family

Don’t Wait Until They’re Gone – Say It Before It’s Too Late

17 September 20262 min read

Have you ever noticed that we become the most eloquent version of ourselves after someone dies?

Suddenly the words flow. They were the best dad. The kindest neighbour. The teacher who changed my life. The workmate who always believed in me. The friend who never judged me. The aunt who somehow knew exactly what to say. We stand in churches, write beautiful Facebook tributes and leave flowers with heartfelt notes. And the one person who needed to hear every single word… never does. Why is it so difficult while they’re still here? Maybe we’re embarrassed. Maybe we assume they already know. Maybe life gets busy and we think there will always be another birthday, another coffee, another Christmas, another phone call. Until there isn’t. Most of us carry quiet gratitude for people who’ve shaped our lives in ways they will probably never realise. The therapist who helped us through our darkest season. The coach who saw potential before we did. The colleague who made Mondays bearable. The grandparent who made us feel safe. The neighbour who always waved. Even the stranger whose kindness arrived on exactly the right day.

What if they knew?

Imagine hearing, “You made a difference to my life.”

Not because you’ve won an award.

Not because you’ve died.

Simply because someone wanted you to know.

The truth is, gratitude costs nothing, but it can become one of the most valuable gifts another person ever receives. A thirty- second conversation. A handwritten note. A text message sent for no reason other than to say, “Thank you. I appreciate you.”

Those words have an extraordinary way of staying with people.

And while we’re talking about honesty, perhaps it’s worth remembering that unresolved feelings have a habit of following us too. Not every relationship deserves another chapter, but many deserve closure. Sometimes peace comes

from speaking with kindness instead of carrying resentment for years.

Life is unpredictable. None of us knows how many conversations we have left.

So maybe today is the day you stop assuming people know how much they matter.

Tell your parents you love them.

Tell your friend they’ve carried you through difficult times.

Tell your mentor they changed your direction.

Tell your partner they’re still your favourite person.

Tell the receptionist who’s always smiling that she brightens your day.

Because one day, people will gather to tell wonderful stories about all of us.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we’d already heard some of them while we were alive?

Things worth saying out loud!

Things worth saying out loud! Following our emotional revelation that we should probably tell people we love them while they’re still breathing, here’s your completely unofficial guide to expressing your feelings. Scenario One: The Wonderful Human You know the one. The friend who answers the phone every single time. The workmate who quietly fixes your disasters. The golf buddy who never laughs (at least to your face) when your ball lands in another postcode. The hairdresser who’s been your therapist for fifteen years. Go tell them. Not tomorrow. Not “one day.” Today. It doesn’t have to be dramatic. Resist hiring a skywriter or arriving with a string quartet. A simple, “You know what? I’m really grateful you’re in my life,” will do just fine. There’s a very good chance they’ll remember it forever. Scenario Two: The Complete Pain in the Neck Now… there may also be someone who’s made your life unnecessarily difficult. We’re not suggesting you march into their office carrying a PowerPoint presentation titled Reasons You Exhaust Me. Nor should you begin a family barbecue with, “I’ve actually been making a list since 1998.” Some thoughts are better edited before publication. Instead, ask yourself one question. Will saying this make life better? If the answer is yes, say it kindly. If the answer is no… perhaps gift yourself the freedom of letting it go instead. Not because they deserve your kindness. Because you deserve your peace. Life’s too short to carry around emotional baggage belonging to someone else. So, here’s a challenge. This week, thank someone who’s made your life better. Send the text. Make the call. Write the note. Buy the coffee. Give the hug. (Just maybe check that they’re a hugger first. Human Resources exists for a reason.) Smile at the checkout operator. Tell your GP you appreciate them. Tell your children’s teacher they’re doing a great job. Tell your partner they still make you laugh. And if you happen to suffer from what the internet lovingly calls “Resting Bitch Face”, as I do, perhaps warn people that underneath your expression of mild disappointment is actually a perfectly lovely human being. Because here’s the funny thing. The people who change our lives rarely know they’ve done it. Until someone tells them. Let’s make sure they don’t have to attend their own funeral to finally hear it. The Get it Challenge Before you put this magazine down, send one text. Tell one person exactly why they matter to you. You might make their entire week. And if you’ve been carrying around something you need to let go of… maybe today is the day you set yourself free.

Family

Navigating Family Law

When life takes unexpected turns, having a legal partner who truly cares makes all the difference. At Richardson Murray, family law isn’t just about navigating the legal system—it’s about understanding what matters most to you and your family and helping you move forward with confidence. Exclusively focused on family law, Richardson Murray’s team of compassionate lawyers knows that every situation is unique. Whether you’re making parenting arrangements for your children, working through property settlements, or seeking safety from domestic violence, they take the time to listen, understand, and tailor their approach to suit your needs. Guiding You Through Life’s Most Challenging Moments Richardson Murray is more than a law firm—it’s a trusted ally during times of change. Their experienced team is skilled in all aspects of family and relationship law, including: Divorce and Separation: Helping you navigate the end of a relationship with care and clarity. Parenting Matters: Crafting parenting plans that put children’s best interests at the heart of every decision. Property and Financial Settlements: Ensuring fair outcomes that set the foundation for your next chapter. Domestic Violence and Protection Orders: Providing strength and guidance to secure your safety and peace of mind. A focus on resolution, not conflict Whenever possible, Richardson Murray emphasises resolving disputes amicably through mediation. This approach aligns with their belief in minimizing conflict and helping families achieve outcomes that support healing and progress. Why Families Trust Richardson Murray Clients often describe Richardson Murray as more than just legal advisors—they’re advocates who genuinely care. What makes them stand out? You Come First: Your story, goals, and priorities drive everything they do. Their advice is tailored to help you achieve what’s most important to you. Unparalleled Expertise: With extensive experience and a commitment to staying at the forefront of family law, you can trust you’re in capable hands. Clear Communication: They believe in keeping you informed every step of the way, ensuring there are no surprises, and you always know where you stand. Community Connection: As locals themselves, the team takes pride in fostering strong, trust-filled relationships within their community. A Team That Understands Family law isn’t just about legal outcomes—it’s about people, emotions, and futures. The team at Richardson Murray approach every case with empathy, offering not only legal expertise but also unwavering support when it’s needed most. Here for You in Broadbeach and Byron Bay Conveniently located in Broadbeach and Byron Bay, Richardson Murray serves clients across Southeast Queensland and Northern New South Wales. Whether you’re stepping into their welcoming offices or connecting remotely, you’ll find a team ready to support you with professionalism and care. At Richardson Murray, it’s not just about winning cases—it’s about making a meaningful difference in people’s lives. If you’re ready to move forward with compassionate legal support, their team is here to help you every step of the way.

Family

The Wild West of Baby Sleep

How vulnerable parents became a business model It is 2am on a Tuesday night. Your partner snores beside you while your eyes feel like you have been out partying until dawn. Except you are in your thirties, and the “party” has been happening every night for the past 13 weeks with your newborn. No late-night cheeseburgers. No sleeping in. Just another feed, another resettle, another scroll through your phone to stay awake. You are not alone. You are in multiple newborn Facebook groups, and your TikTok and Instagram feeds are perfectly curated with baby content. During night feeds, you can scroll endlessly. But with every swipe comes another advertisement. Magnesium sprays. Red lights. Colic cures. And countless sleep consultants promising that if you pay, your baby will sleep through the night in 72 hours. Sleep deprivation is more than a rite of passage for new parents. It is a public health issue. In the first year postpartum, anxiety and depression rates rise, cognitive function drops and decision-making becomes harder. Neurologically, exhausted parents are less able to separate fact from fiction. In any other context, this would be described as a vulnerable population. In motherhood, we simply call it normal. In regulated health professions, vulnerable groups are protected by clear guardrails such as ethical standards, complaint pathways, ongoing education and accountability. In the infant sleep industry, those safeguards largely do not exist. The title “sleep consultant” sounds official, yet there is no universal qualification, no minimum training requirement and no licensing body. Anyone can complete a short course, print a certificate or rebrand once their own baby begins sleeping well. This matters because infant sleep is not only about rest. It is connected to neurodevelopment, emotional regulation, feeding and parental wellbeing. The advice given during these early months can have lasting effects, yet without regulation there is little oversight. Practices are often marketed as gentle or evidence-based without clear accountability. My inbox regularly fills with stories from exhausted parents who sought help and felt more overwhelmed afterwards. Some describe being told to avoid eye contact with their baby regardless of distress. Others recall consultants speaking through monitors, instructing them to leave the room while their baby cried. There are reports of expensive “personalised” plans that appear copied and pasted, or parents being told their baby would never learn to sleep because they were too responsive.The responsibility does not sit with parents searching for support at 4am. It lies with a system that makes it easy to market sleep solutions to exhausted families while making it difficult to distinguish genuine expertise from clever branding. If you are reading this in the middle of the night with a baby on your chest, know this. It does change. My daughter is three now, and we sleep. Not because of rigid schedules or costly programmes, but because babies grow and sleep evolves over time. Your baby is not broken. The system around sleep support simply needs stronger boundaries. Until regulation improves, discernment is one of the most powerful tools parents have. Ask questions. Seek evidence. Trust your instincts. And feel free to ignore anyone sliding into your messages insisting your tiny baby should already be sleeping through the night.

Family

The Manosphere didn’t get more extreme. It got more normal.

By Andrew Harmer A follow-up: when we last looked, the worry was that boys might find their way to something dangerous. The unsettling truth is they no longer have to go anywhere. When we last wrote about the manosphere, the advice was mostly about noticing. Learn the slang. Recognise the influencers. Watch what the algorithm serves a curious teenager who searches “how to be more confident.” The implicit promise was that if you could see the thing, you could do something about it. But that advice assumed the manosphere was a place – somewhere a boy goes and somewhere a parent might steer him away from. The harder truth, and the reason it’s worth returning to so soon, is that it has largely stopped being a place at all. It got quieter, and quieter and has turned out to be worse. The clearest sign isn’t a forum or a manifesto. It’s a teacher who can no longer tell the difference between a fourteen-year-old’s joke and a fourteen-year-old’s belief. In a 2026 study of more than a hundred Australian teachers, researchers described boys’ misogyny becoming more open, more confident and less checked since around 2022 – delivered often, as humour that dares an adult to object. Push back and you’re told to relax. It was just a joke. The ambiguity is the strategy. When the Netflix drama Adolescence landed in 2025, parents who had never heard the word found themselves Googling it at midnight. For a few weeks the manosphere was front-page news – but the version that reached the mainstream was no longer the one anyone had been bracing for. We thought we understood this For years, the story had villains you could name. Andrew Tate, banned from platform after platform through 2022. Forums with rules and moderators. A pipeline you could trace and warn your kids about. It felt, briefly, knowable – a foreign country with a border you could watch. Then it moved faster than anyone could map. The named accounts mattered less than the millions of smaller ones repeating the same script with the edges sanded off. How it actually works now Researchers have a word for it: normiefication – fringe ideas migrating onto mainstream platforms and shedding their warning labels along the way. What’s left is sometimes called “manosphere light”: less overtly toxic than the old forums, and for exactly that reason, far greater in reach. The content that finds a lonely boy today usually isn’t a creed. It’s a workout split, a budgeting tip, a clip about discipline – with the ideology folded in so gently that he never experiences it as ideology at all. The algorithm didn’t simply amplify this material. It camouflaged it inside ordinary self-improvement. And it is no longer a white, Western phenomenon: the same scripts now circulate among boys across cultures and continents. And we saw what it cost The damage that follows is mostly quiet, too. There are headlines – the documented links between this content and gender-based violence are real and growing – but the larger story is the slower erosion. The friendship that curdles. The classroom where girls report feeling unsafe around boys they have known for years. The son whose easy warmth seems to be hardening into something his parents half-recognise and can’t quite name. Health researchers have charted another cost: influencers reframing ordinary tiredness, stress or low mood as a medical deficiency, then selling the cure. A normal adolescence, repackaged as a problem with a product attached. So, what did we actually try? The response has finally arrived. In early 2026 Australia’s national women’s safety body released a manosphere guide for schools, and a Monash University team began training teachers to use it. Not-for-profits such as The Man Cave and Tomorrow Man are in classrooms doing the patient work of offering boys a different script for being a man. Much of it, though, is still built for the old problem – for the boy radicalised dramatically, not the one who drifted there one harmless-seeming video at a time. And the work is now contested ground. The school guide drew accusations of anti-male bias – a sign this is no longer a settled question handled quietly by experts. It is a live political fight that now reaches the top of public life: in April, Julia Gillard – Australia’s only female prime minister – used a Women Deliver keynote in Melbourne to warn that the manosphere’s organised pushback against gender equality can’t be swept under the rug. What it means Underneath the ideology is something the critics get half-right: a great many boys are genuinely lonely, genuinely adrift, genuinely unsure what they are for. That ache is real, and pretending otherwise is part of why blunt “it’s all toxic” messaging keeps failing. Gillard conceded as much from that same podium, suggesting the movement had not always been inclusive enough of men – a striking admission from the author of Australian politics’ most famous misogyny speech. The problem is that the people meeting that need most reliably are the ones profiting from keeping it unmet. Which is why this is harder than it looks. You can moderate a forum. You can ban an account. You cannot moderate the cultural wallpaper – and wallpaper is what the manosphere has quietly become. Not a place teenagers visit, but the texture of the internet they grew up inside. When we last checked, the fear was that boys might find their way to something extreme. The follow-up is stranger than that. They didn’t have to find it. The manosphere didn’t win by being extreme. It won by becoming ordinary.