Luka’s Legacy… A Way Forward
Luka’s Legacy… A Way Forward
Monday March 2nd 2026… I received a phone call I will never forget. This lady Susan, is a mother, she had been referred to me by another mum whose daughter I had previously helped through anorexia, and before we spoke about anything else she quietly said,
“I’ve spoken to Amanda about Sam. You helped her so much with her eating disorder. Hopefully we’re not too late”
Those words have stayed with me ever since because I can’t help wondering how many parents have whispered those same words while lying awake at night, desperately wanting to help someone they love, yet feeling as though they are slowly watching them disappear without knowing how to reach them. There was no panic in her voice. There was something much harder to listen to. There was exhaustion. The kind of exhaustion that only comes from loving someone so deeply that you would willingly change places with them if you could.
As we continued talking, she shared something that stopped me. Only a few days earlier she had been sitting beside her daughter in a funeral home planning her funeral. I remember sitting quietly for a moment because even after more than twenty years of working with people through some of the most difficult moments of their lives, those words are almost impossible to comprehend. Parents spend their lives imagining birthdays, first jobs, relationships, weddings, grandchildren and all of the ordinary moments that quietly become life’s greatest treasures. They never imagine sitting beside their son or daughter while planning a goodbye, especially while that beautiful young person is sitting there helping make those decisions. That was the reality this family had found themselves living, and somewhere inside all of that heartbreak this mum still found enough strength to make one more phone call. Looking back now, I often think that phone call may have been one of the bravest things she has ever done.
Her daughter’s name is Luka.
Like many people, when you hear the word anorexia your mind probably goes straight to food, eating or weight. Sitting with families over many years has taught me that anorexia quietly reaches much further than that. It slowly changes the rhythm of an entire family. Conversations become different. Laughter becomes quieter. The future somehow becomes smaller. Parents stop measuring life by birthdays and Christmases and family holidays. Instead, they begin measuring life by whether today was a little better than yesterday, whether there was a smile, whether a meal was possible, whether their son or daughter is safe tonight and whether tomorrow might somehow bring a little more hope than today did. The illness belongs to one person, although every member of the family quietly carries part of its weight because that’s what love does. Love never stands back. Love stays, even when it has no idea what else to do.
Luka and her mum lived more than three hours north of Brisbane. They wanted to come and see me although neither of us could make that happen quickly enough. Sometimes life presents a moment where diaries, schedules and convenience simply stop mattering because waiting is no longer an option. We arranged to meet online and I still remember seeing Luka for the first time while her mum sat quietly in the background listening. I spoke with confidence, not because I underestimated what they had both been living through, although because I wasn’t speaking to anorexia. I was speaking to Luka. Somewhere beneath everything that had happened, she was still there. My job wasn’t to meet the illness. My job was to help Luka find her way back to herself.
Over the years people have often asked me where that confidence comes from. The answer has never really changed. The brain controls every thought, every behaviour, every habit and every action. If the brain can learn patterns that slowly take someone away from the people they love, then the brain can also learn new patterns that gently guide them back towards the life they deserve to be living. That possibility has always given me hope, even when the people sitting in front of me have found it almost impossible to believe for themselves. I could almost feel Susan quietly wondering how any of this could possibly work. To be honest, if I had been sitting where she was sitting after everything they had already endured, I probably would have been wondering exactly the same thing.
When Luka travelled down to see me the following week, I had a conversation that wasn’t easy for either of us. I told her there was a decision to make because I couldn’t want her future more than she did. We could do this work together, although she had to decide whether she was prepared to fight for the life that still existed beyond everything she was experiencing. Sitting opposite me was an incredible young woman who had almost stopped believing she had a future at all. I understood that. I respected that. At the same time, I could see something Luka couldn’t yet see herself. I could still see possibility. Her body had reached the point where it was fighting itself. Luka wasn’t choosing that. Her brain had simply learned patterns that were no longer protecting her. If the brain can learn those patterns, it can also learn new ones. That possibility was enough for me to believe in her, even when she couldn’t yet believe in herself.
People sometimes assume that my work is about helping people fight their problems. It isn’t. My work has always been about helping people build a future that becomes stronger than the thing holding them back. Rather than asking someone to spend every day fighting what they don’t want, I ask a different question. Who do you want to become? What does your life look like one year from now… two years from now… five years from now? What kind of person is living that life and what needs to change today for that future to become possible? I have found that the mind responds very differently when it has somewhere meaningful to go. Luka didn’t need another reminder of where she was. She needed someone to help her reconnect with where her life could still take her.
Today, four months later, Luka is in recovery. When I think about her now, I don’t immediately think about anorexia. I think about a young woman who talks about standing on a TEDx stage in New York one day, sharing her story with millions of people so that someone else who feels trapped inside their own thoughts might begin believing that change is possible. I think about someone who now talks about travelling to Italy with her mum and sitting together over a glass of red wine, celebrating life instead of simply trying to survive it. Those are the conversations we have now, and every time we have them I am reminded that the future has an incredible way of changing the present once we begin believing it is possible.
People often know me because of my work with elite athletes. I have had the privilege of working alongside fifty World and Olympic Champions, and every medal, every world title and every Olympic performance has been an incredible privilege to be part of. As I write this, athletes I have worked with have just won five Commonwealth Games gold medals and one silver medal. Those achievements inspire me because I know how much work sits behind them. At the same time, watching Luka slowly reclaim her future reminds me that there are victories in life that will never appear on a podium, although to the people living them they mean absolutely everything.
A few weeks ago, I received a message from Luka that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. She wrote, “For the first time in ten years I managed to eat dinner in a restaurant with my mum. You’re the first person we’re telling.” She attached a photograph of the two of them sitting together across the table, smiling. Almost at exactly the same moment another message arrived from Susan. It simply read, “I thought I would be burying my daughter… not sitting in a restaurant eating gnocchi with her.”
I found myself sitting there looking at those photographs for a long time because I realised I wasn’t seeing the same thing everyone else would see. Most people would look at that photo and see a mother and daughter enjoying dinner together. I couldn’t help seeing where they had been only four months earlier. I could still picture them sitting together in a funeral home planning Luka’s funeral, believing they were running out of time. Now they were deciding what to order for dinner.
It is amazing how differently you begin to look at ordinary moments once you understand the story behind them. A shared meal no longer feels ordinary. A smile across the table becomes something much deeper. Watching your daughter eat dinner becomes a moment that words struggle to describe because it represents so much more than the meal itself. It represents hope returning where hopelessness once lived. It represents a future quietly finding its way back into a family that had almost stopped believing one existed.
That photograph has stayed with me ever since. Not because it captured a remarkable achievement, although because it reminded me that the moments we value most in life are rarely the ones the world applauds. They are the moments we once feared we might never experience again. A conversation over dinner. A laugh shared across the table. A mother watching her daughter eat. A tomorrow that, only a few months earlier, had felt almost impossible to imagine.
Because life had quietly returned to a family who had almost stopped believing they would ever experience another ordinary evening together. The world celebrates extraordinary moments. I have learned that families treasure ordinary ones because ordinary moments are what illness quietly steals. Sitting across the table from someone you love… sharing a meal… laughing together… watching your daughter eat… talking about tomorrow instead of fearing it… these are the moments that never make the news, although they are the moments families pray for every single day.
That is why Luka’s Legacy exists… it is a way forward.
Stuart Walter
Luka’s Legacy… Today (3/09/26)
Luka called me today to tell me something that, only four months ago, would have been almost impossible for either of us to imagine.
She had gone to a shopping centre on her own for the first time in years, without her Mum beside her, and somewhere in the middle of simply getting on with her day she realised she was hungry. So she went and bought herself something to eat. There was no planning around it, no enormous internal battle and nobody standing beside her encouraging her to take another mouthful. She was hungry, so she ate. It was only afterwards that she suddenly realised what had just happened.
The young woman who had spent so many years living with anorexia had just responded naturally to being hungry and continued with her day. That was the moment Luka called her Mum and then called me, because in her mind something had fundamentally changed. Yesterday she had sent me the message saying that she no longer considered herself to be recovering from anorexia… she considered herself recovered. Today I understood what she meant.
Please read the most recent blog Luka brilliantly crafted… https://www.confessionsofashopaholicblog.com/post/i-recovered-from-anorexia-nervosa
I am not promising or guaranteeing results, I can promise I will do everything and give everything I have for other’s Like Luka to live the life they choose. Yep, this is how I approach every client. Intentional, direct, and support with guidance..
This is a team approach, Luka’s result were underpinned by all the hard work from her Mum Susan and the team of loved ones around her. Their determination made it easier to weave in my work!
I also want to be very careful with those words because this is Luka describing her own experience and her own recovery. I would never make that decision for another person, nor would I suggest that one person’s journey can ever promise the outcome of another. What I can share is what I have personally witnessed over these four months. I met a young woman whose Mum contacted me hoping we weren’t too late, only days after sitting beside her daughter planning her funeral. I have since watched that same young woman eat dinner in a restaurant with her Mum for the first time in 10 years, begin talking about Italy and New York instead of a funeral, walk through a shopping centre independently, recognise that she was hungry and simply buy herself something to eat. Most importantly, I have watched Luka begin deciding for herself what she wants the rest of her life to become.
From Planning her funeral to planning her life…
Luka wants her story to mean something beyond her own recovery, which is why we have created Luka’s Legacy… A Way Forward. I am intentionally keeping this work very small because anyone who comes to me through Luka deserves the same individual attention, time and care that Luka received. This is not an online recovery course and it is not a promise that another person’s experience will follow Luka’s. It is an opportunity for me to work personally with a limited number of individuals and their families using the same future focused approach that became part of Luka’s journey, while working alongside the appropriate medical and clinical care for each individual.
If Luka’s story is the reason you are reading this, I don’t want the next step to be a purchase button. I want it to be a conversation. I want to understand who you are, what has been happening, where you are now and whether I genuinely believe I am the right person to help. There will only ever be a small number of Luka’s Legacy places available at any one time, because this work deserves that level of care. If there is a fit, we can talk about what A Way Forward might look like for you.
LET’S HAVE A CONVERSATION…
The private Luka’s Legacy program investment is $4,950 (AUD). When Luka and I spoke about creating this, I wanted her Legacy to become much more than the name of a program or the sharing of her story. Luka has a very clear dream of taking what she has lived through and using it to reach people who may still be sitting where she once sat, while giving families the hope that Susan was desperately searching for when she first called me. I want to help her make that happen, so from every Luka’s Legacy program, I personally invest $500 directly into Luka and the future she is now creating… helping her take her story onto stages, reach more people and continue building a life that only months ago she couldn’t even imagine having. For me, that is what makes this a Legacy.
One young woman’s decision to live becomes an opportunity to help someone else find their own way forward, while every person who comes through this program helps Luka take that message a little further into the world.
