FREE TO BE ME

Before you explore

Acknowledgement of Country

Sovereignty was never ceded. No treaty was ever signed. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters on which this work is made, and that does not become less true with time, legislation or silence.

FREE 2B ME acknowledges Elders past, present and emerging. This body of work exists because systems cause harm when they ask people to become easier to accommodate. No community in this country has been asked to do that more often, or for longer, than First Nations peoples.

We hold that as a matter of practice, not sentiment.

FREE TO BE ME phoenix by Tanya Hicks Find your way in

Media & press

For journalists, producers and conference organisers.

The bio, the lines the work is built on, and how to make contact.

Media biography

The long version.

Tanya Hicks is an AuDHD woman living with POTS, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, PMDD and trauma. Her work challenges one of the assumptions built into conventional ideas of capability: that capacity should be constant in order to be credible.

She leads differently. She works with changing capacity rather than treating it as professional failure, and builds the same principle into FREE 2B ME’s practice, workforce design and practitioner development.

She has not “overcome” these realities in order to lead. She leads with them still present.

Short bio

The one for the programme.

Tanya Hicks is the founder of FREE 2B ME, author of the eight-book FREE 2B ME library, and a counselling and behaviour support practitioner. She writes and speaks about disability, leadership, belonging, support and work, and what becomes possible when people don’t have to become less of themselves to belong.

She lives and works on Gubbi Gubbi Country in Caloundra, where FREE 2B ME’s community practice environment, The Nest, is operated by Neurodivergent Empowered.

The lines the work is built on

Quotable, and meant to travel.

  1. You don’t have to become less of yourself to have more of a life.
  2. What did “fine” cost?
  3. Capacity is conditional. Yesterday is information. It isn’t a contract for today.
  4. Support doesn’t cancel capability.
  5. Does this leave room for me to be me?
  6. What does my practice require the person to become?
  7. Different participation is still participation.
  8. A good question should keep working after the speaker has left the room.
  9. Not permission to be themselves. A world in which they don’t need permission.

What she speaks about

Bring a different question into the room.

DisabilityLeadershipBelongingSupportWorkProfessional practiceParentingCommunitySystems

Keynotes, conference sessions, panels, podcasts, media conversations, leadership events, professional forums and organisational conversations.

Speaking and media

Make contact.

For interviews, speaking enquiries, review copies or images, start here and say what you need and when you need it.

Enquire Recognition About Tanya The books

Less fixing. More living.