Our Story
When a family receives a neurodiversity diagnosis, life changes. Suddenly, the family calendar is filled with therapy sessions, or caregivers find themselves on waiting lists right across town. Information overwhelm descends, fast. How do we best support our loved one? What can we do between sessions or while we’re waiting to see a therapist? How can our family life be more harmonious?
The Brain Sanctuary is a toolkit for families facing the challenges that go hand in hand with a neurodiveristy diagnosis. The Family Journal is a resource for families to use in between therapy sessions or while waiting to get into a therapist that will create a shared understanding and bring them together rather than pushing families further apart due to lack of insight and communication.
The family journal will be your safe place. It gives parents an easy to understand guide to neurodiversity and exercises to help them understand their neurodiverse children. It’s also a place for navigating this time and building in that much craved but not so achievable “self care” - and no, we’re not talking about taking a bubble bath!
For children, the journal will be a sanctuary for them to learn all about the great things their brains can do,their personal, inbuilt superpowers that they can draw on when situations are tough or they feel scared and frustrated. Having a diagnosis or “label” can actually be a good thing once you know how your brain works and how to bring out all those magical traits. This journal will help you put all those inner thoughts you wish people knew about you into words.
Meet Nicola, Founder of The Brain Sanctuary
With a thriving marketing agency and as the mother of two boys, Nicola knows first hand the power and the impact of a toolkit of activities for families that not only ‘supports’ neurodiversity but celebrates the possibility and potential of a child’s superpowers.
Nicola created The Brain Sanctuary in 2021 after the you-know-what meant therapy in Victoria was limited to telehealth rather than face-to-face. With gaps between therapy sessions of more than six weeks, Nicola struggled to come up with strategies to incorporate the incredible outcomes of therapy sessions in her daily family life. This kicked off a journey of countless hours of reading, researching, trialling, talking, studying, learning, attending seminars and courses about neurodiversity and brain development and experimenting. This is when Nicola knew that a family resource library would be an incredible toolkit for managing the challenges not only in her own home, but for many, many families facing similar challenges. And so The Brain Sanctuary Family Journal was born.