About

Hi, I’m Kate, and I am an Ex-Capitalist turned Extremism and Christo- Fascism researcher/Journalist .

When I was young, I always knew I wanted to be a fashion designer. Whenever someone asked, there barely was a pause before my answer spilled out. My dreams started to come true when I was accepted at Central Saint Martins, London, to complete my Fashion Design degree. Design school was where my rigor and dedication to work started to form. One night it was working on my graduate show; the next day, Alexander McQueen was guest lecturing; I never stopped.

After completing my degree and producing my graduate show, I was artistically drained and returned home to Australia, where I decided to take a break and work for the summer in fashion retail.

That summer job quickly grew into a career. One year later, I helped launch Forever New, an Australian born fast fashion brand, as their Global Business Development Manager. The next ten years were a complete blur. We set out to open 14 stores across Australia, and within ten years, we had 400 stores worldwide. For two years, I traveled 50 weeks out of the year and had physically opened 250 stores. I became obsessed with the growth of my career, and no one could make me stop. It felt glamorous! It felt luxurious! I was a self-made woman.

As time moved on, my work addiction brought unresolved trauma to the surface. In 2016, my body started giving me hints: panic attacks that felt like heart attacks. I was hospitalized numerous times and was eventually diagnosed with anxiety, panic attacks, and severe depression. My life had caught up with me.

I knew I had to make a big choice. I decided to retire from my much-beloved career to take care of my failing mental health.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg, now comes four years of bad luck. After my career ended, so did my 18-year relationship and marriage. I was in the courts with lawyers, moving out of my first purchased home and back in with my parents at 36. I was completely down and out.

After a considerable time working on my mental health, I decided I needed a change. I moved to Los Angeles, a place that had become a second home during all my years traveling. I felt inspired again. I quickly found an apartment and set my eyes on launching my brand consultancy firm. Within weeks I had secured two large contracts and started the immigration process. I quickly returned to my old ways, 15-17 hours of work a day, seven days a week. I was alive, and I was breaking apart even if I didn’t know it yet. As I was getting myself back on my feet, my dear friend Lauren passed away from her second bout of breast cancer. All this new life was happening around me, but Lauren’s passing left a dark shadow on my heart. I had lost my friend, and I couldn’t return to Australia for her funeral. I commemorated her with a ‘fuck cancer” tattoo right under my right breast (remember this for later), the place Lauren had found her cancer.

In April 2018, I would return to Australia armed with a 700-page document, including my business plan, market research, and application to the US embassy to gain my visa. I wanted to make LA my official home, and sure enough, I was approved! That day was one of the happiest days of my life. I was ready to make life happen again.

Returning to LA, I hit the ground running, and then, all of a sudden, I started falling asleep at my desk. Then I couldn’t get out of bed, and then I started fainting, and then I started getting bloody noses. I went from doctor to doctor, one after the other. No one could give me answers.

In July of 2018, I was sitting at home with a friend watching Peaky Blinders, and then I felt it… the lump. It was on my right breast, the same breast I had “fuck cancer” tattooed under. At that moment, I knew it was cancer. It all started to add up.

My initial thought was, “I don’t have time for this.” I was starting over, I had gotten my visa, I wanted to work again, and now I had to deal with this. I waited an hour to say something to my friend, then met up with another girlfriend who felt me up on Santa Monica Boulevard. The next day we went to the doctor together.

After tests, scans, and biopsies, I was diagnosed with HER2 triple-positive breast cancer two weeks later. All the people who said, “You’re too young for breast cancer,” were wrong.

So there it was, I had breast cancer.

For two years, I was in heavy treatment: IVs, radiation, surgeries, pills, pills, pills. Pills that hurt my mental health. Side effects that hurt my mental health. In 2020 I had my double mastectomy and DIEP flap reconstruction (A DIEP flap is a surgical procedure that uses a patient's abdominal tissue to reconstruct a natural-looking breast after a mastectomy. DIEP stands for deep inferior epigastric perforator, which refers to the blood vessels used in the procedure), unfortunately i developed necrosis and infection at the donor site which resulted in emergency surgery.

When i woke up in the hospital in a general anaesthetic haze I was informed I had lost a-lot of tissue, muscle and skin from my abdomen up to and including my belly-button. I would also realise i’m attached to a vacuum pump, that i would have for the next 6 months.

For 6 months i was bed ridden, I had a nurse visit daily for wound care and to change my pump. Due to LA being the COVID capitol of the world at the same time, my nurse and their back up ultimately caught COVID and could not visit, again I end ed up in the Emergency room and another emergency surgery.

All up i would have 7 surgeries, my mobility has been permanently impacted. I have since been diagnosed with fybromaliga a chronic pain condition that effects my whole body and is worsened by stress, resulting in pain flare ups where everything from the soles of my feet to the top of my head feels like its simultaneously on fire and deeply bruised, it gets so bad that even wearing clothes hurt, far from ideal.

Through all of this, life didn’t stop; the business that I had invested in was gone. All the money I saved turned into medical debt, and the cherry on top, my parents were getting a divorce after 38 years of marriage. My mental health continued to deteriorate, and I was getting really sick. I was put on suicide watch three times in six months. Then, one day, after all the suffering and all the perseverance, I was in full remission, 5 years on.

The universe had me rethinking my life. My work and my unrealistic productivity goals had ruined me too many times before. I had gone through so much. I was DONE. I had not only endured cancer; I had my eyes opened to all the ways the world fails us; how it felt so impossible to be a sick person in this world. All the systems I played into didn’t help me; they made it more challenging. I couldn’t strike out again on my own.

My focus quickly turned to community. I found cancer support groups, and I immediately saw and felt the impacts of these groups and grassroots organizations on my psyche. This is where my new consciousness began.

To say my enlightenment was overwhelming would be an understatement.

It first began with the shame of feeling apart of the system; I thought that a part of me was evil, the role of me that wanted it all for myself, and wanted to be in capitalism’s game. Through my work with therapists, I realized that we were all raised this way, a generation of over workers, experiencing burn out and engaging in unrealistic cultural expectations around work and success. The system wasn’t built to support people; it was constructed to bleed us dry.

The experience of the last 7 years has highlighted where I was and wasn’t spending my time. It also highlighted all the ways I had ignored all the other parts of me to pursue capitalistic success. I wanted to know myself. Again. I started learning rituals, and connected to my Aboriginal roots. I started a garden. I work in community with breast cancer support organizations. I became an ambassador for The Breasties, day by day, making more community for those experiencing breast cancer.

Cancer radicalized me and my politics. I realized that I am so much more than myself and that we have to make a world that works for all of us. I’ve begun to live a more conscious life.

Now, I take more time for simple things. I play in the garden each morning with my fur children. I meditate. I love my friends hard. I happily enjoy California’s cannabis laws. I’m becoming more familiar with the age-old lost art of doing nothing. I work to build community. I’m not just surviving, I’m beginning to thrive.

I’m retraining my brain with new expectations of productivity. I’m starting to know peace. It’s no simple task, but it’s a practice I embrace.

All of this with America burning in the background, COVID, MAGA, the rise of Christian Nationalism, Proud boys, January 6th, school board takeovers, local street violence and the rise of the NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) The NAR is an influential network that seeks to be its own branch of Christianity, complete with its own prophets and apostles. The NAR are dominionists—believers in establishing a Christian theocracy and they have two feet firmly planted in the halls of power via the Supreme Court and the republican party.

Feeling helpless and with a brain hungry for a project, I re-directed my skills in writing corporate research papers and business reviews into open source research of Southern California’s Christofash scene, extremism groups, NAR and Australia’s influence on it all.

Today i’m an independent Journalist and extremism researcher, with bi-lines with Left Coast Right Watch and a few podcast episodes under my belt, looking for further opportunities, stories and financial support so I can continue my work and keep a roof over my head.

You can support me and my work below

https://www.gofundme.com/f/left-coast-christ-watch