Hey there! My name is Tracey and I’m a certified Wellness Coach and Holistic Integrated Creative Arts Therapy Practitioner Dip.HICAT(MBEd) and Podcast Host, based in Sydney Australia.
My interest in Mindset, Mindfulness and Wellness comes from my own experience with anxiety, motherhood and being a grown up in this crazy world right now.
I’m a wife and a mum to 3 gorgeous kids – my daughter has a genetic disorder called Rett Syndrome, so I’m well aware of how stressful and busy being a parents to an additional needs child can be, and how parenting in general can change you. My experience with figuring out who I am and what I wanted to do, lead me to studying Lifestyle, Food and Wellness Coaching in 2016 so that I could understand how to better help myself and others through this time in life. I also studied Creative Arts Therapy in 2022 because I knew how much being creative has helped me get through hard times.
My hope is that through Make Sunshine, is that I can help others (parents or not) find some calm in the chaos and redevelop self care and self love instincts that have been buried by stress and anxiety.
What am I up to lately?
I have coloring books for adults and Mindfulness journals & guides on Amazon. Women’s Wellness Self Love Journal, Women’s Wellness Self Care Workbook for Chronic Illness Warriors and more.
I post lofi playlist videos to my YouTube channel to relax to.
And an Etsy Shop which is filled with my Card Deck, printable worksheets and colouring pages for you to enjoy!
I had a podcast – This Quote Changed My Life: A podcast about inspired action. I might bring it back later in 2025….
Staying creative while living with Chronic Illness in 2025
In recent years, I’ve been diagnosed with several chronic conditions—Adenomyosis, Pelvic Congestion Syndrome, Von Willebrand Disorder, POTS, Fibromyalgia, OCD, ADHD, and Autism. ME/CFS is still being investigated (these things take time to rule everything else out).
I’ve been living with overlapping symptoms for over a decade, and while I work with specialists to figure things out, it’s been tough losing access to some of my traditional creative outlets—like painting, drawing, photography, and even podcasting. My body just doesn’t cope anymore with holding a brush, being around paint, walking for more than ten minutes, or talking for more than five. (Yes, that’s why I stopped podcasting—I couldn’t understand why I was getting sick and breathless after a few minutes. Turns out, it’s my autonomic nervous system being weird.)
On top of all this, I’m a full-time carer for my daughter, who has Rett Syndrome, and my son, who is Autistic. Creativity has become essential for my mental health. Being able to make something fun and share it means the world to me. There was a long stretch where I wasn’t creating anything, and honestly, it made things harder. Some people go running for a mental health break—me? I create on my computer.
It’s always been that way. I’ve worked in graphic design and web development for over 25 years. That includes illustration, digital media, and even designing and publishing my high school yearbook solo in 1999 (because the school didn’t want to). I’ve always been someone who figures out what works and makes it happen efficiently.
Lately, people have been asking how I manage to create so many books and projects while living with chronic illness. The truth is: I use tools that support my creativity.
One of those tools is AI image generation. I direct the style, prompt the scenes, choose what works, and then edit and lay it all out myself in tools like Photopea and Canva. It helps me stay creative when fatigue or brain fog make manual processes hard. AI is a tool—it still needs a person behind it. I know some people might use AI to generate and dump content quickly, but that’s not what I do. I put a lot of care into what I make and publish. I’m not perfect, neither is AI. It still requires a critical eye and some design skills to create a book or clip art pack, skills which I’m grateful to still have.
We’ve always used tools to make life easier — cars instead of walking, emails instead of handwritten and delivered letters, buying bread from the store instead of creating it from scratch. AI is just a new tool available to us now. For me, it’s not about copying artists or thoughtless design —it’s about making creativity possible on days when my body can’t keep up the old ways. It’s not for everyone, but it’s an option.
(If I can liken to it my daughter, who has no functional hand use and is non verbal, who is learning to use an eye gaze computer. This is her tool for communication. Should she not use what technology is available to her? Should we ignore it because it’s new and not how others communicate? No. We have adapted and we are grateful for the option).
I don’t label myself an illustrator or author for these projects. I prefer “content creator”—it feels more accurate for what I do.
I don’t talk about AI constantly because honestly, I don’t have the energy for debate. I’m not hiding anything—I disclose AI use on my site and Etsy listings. But sometimes it feels like people come at me like I’m some soulless money-hungry weirdo. I’m not. I am a real person, with real challenges who is trying to figure out how to express themselves again. And hey—sure, maybe one day I’ll make enough to come off government benefits as a carer, but for now, I’ll take my $2.30 profit and have a lovely day. LOL.
Thanks for letting me share this—and thank you for staying respectful.
Rett Syndrome Awareness
If you are interested in learning more about Rett Syndrome, please watch this preview of our full 2018 awareness video. The longer version (16 minutes) can be found at http://www.teamjovie.com/2018video
