I’m Rosie Luik — a Brisbane-based author, speaker and lived-experience advocate — and my keynote is about the mental health cost of having to fight to be believed.
My story sits at the intersection of women’s bodies, motherhood, and systems that don’t always listen. I was Queensland’s first legal altruistic surrogate to twins. I’ve navigated 6 pregnancies, gynecological and maternity care, and complications that escalated into sepsis, infection, peritonitis and surgery. I've lived with endometriosis, adhesions and the long tail of repeated procedures. In my twenties I had a hysterectomy. I also know what it’s like to keep showing up as “capable” while living with chronic pain, anxiety, and the daily logistics of raising a family and a business. We call it ‘controlled chaos’ on purpose.
But the hardest part wasn’t only what happened to my body. It was what happened to my mind when I was dismissed, misdiagnosed and unheard inside the medical system. When you’re repeatedly minimised, you start to doubt your own perception. You rehearse your pain so it sounds “credible”. You soften the truth so you don’t get labelled difficult. You walk out with shame instead of support. That survival strategy can become anxiety, hypervigilance, and isolation — and it can reverberate through families.
This keynote is also about rebuilding self-trust. The psychological toll of fighting to be believed has shaped my commitment to women trusting their bodies and intuition — and to clinicians, service designers, policymakers and lived‑experience leaders treating that intuition as information, not inconvenience.
Today, I use that hard-earned insight to advocate fiercely for my daughters in the same system, because medical dismissal doesn’t stop with one woman. I’ll share the human reality behind the clinical notes, and the practical actions that helped: curiosity, validation, continuity, and care that makes women’s mental health inseparable from women’s health.