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Every year we work hard to give back to our teams Labor Of Love. This campaign specifically goes to benifit team members from our Australian team to help them open a physical therapy center for special needs children. REad Mikas story below:

My story feels like a 180 circle that every time you turn, the story changes.

My wife, Kerri and I have both suffered with mental illness. We are both suicide survivors. If it hadn’t been for IT WORKS, she wouldn’t be here. The WRAP saved not only her life, but our kids from losing their mum, me from losing my soul mate and people from losing a very inspirational lady.

3 years ago Kerri was invited to a Wrap party. She was depressed and suicidal. I was fat, unhealthy, angry and always tired from working all the time to support our family and help with our eldest son (who has autism).

The wrap literally saved Kerri’s life, it gave her something else to focus on. Soon enough we had to part of the business. Well she did. I was still a sceptic but eventually I saw the possibility and jumped in too.

Kerri’s business went from strength to strength and soon I was able to cut back my work hours to the point where Kerri said to me “babe, you aren’t happy doing what you are doing. What’s your dream job?”

I said I had a dream to become a personal trainer! My journey of using our products has started my own weight loss and through that I had regained some self confidence.

So off to school I went and became a qualified Personal Trainer. I knew there would sessions of burpees, sweat, running, cussing and all with a big smile on my face because I was changing lives.

The path of trainer changed when through social media a mother of a child with Cerebral Palsy reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in helping her 3 year old soon on one day being able to walk! I instantly cried knowing that from that moment my life took the direction it was meant to.

I have been working with Ryan for 12 months. His progression has been mind blowing. Because of Ryan, I am now working with Sebastian and Noah (both with Cerebral Palsy) and the idea of a space of my own to work with them came to me.

Somewhere we can be relaxed and focused to not only get their work done but also see them smile and laugh each day. These boys should be crying and whinging! It should feel like the world is against them. They can’t blow their nose, they can’t feed themselves. They can’t walk to the fridge to get a drink. Scratching their legs is impossible and they can’t even tell that they are itchy! But they aren’t crying or whinging (well not all the time anyway). Normally they are over the moon to see me and we laugh and giggle the whole time we are together. And we work hard! I mean it’s HARD work but the reward far outweighs the hardship.

I also see how physically and mentally demanding it is on the parents. They are sleep deprived, mentally drained and having a child with special needs is EXPENSIVE! I know one of my kids has an equipment bill in excess of $100000 this year. This money isn’t given away so just like I did, normally one parent works a million hours a week and the other is at home with the kids. So fundraising has to be done, so there is just another thing they have to do.

This is where my clinic comes in. A space where I can work with these kids to help them achieve their long term goals but also give the parents some respite. The goal is start off small with a space just for me, but eventually I would love to have a large area with other specialties like physiotherapist, speech pathologist, occupational therapist and also a beauty therapist (where the parents can get their nails done or a massage).

What started out as a dark dark place ended up being a world of joy and passion. If you haven’t found your true calling, don’t stop looking until you find it because you deserve it.