Ask Georgia Hocking to describe herself as a mother and she pauses...
"I'm not a natural mum," she says finally, with a laugh that lands somewhere between honest and self-deprecating. "Not in the way society pictures it. Not the one who loves making the cakes, who never loses their patience."
Georgia is 35, a qualified social worker, and the co-founder of It's Okay Not to Be Okay, a charity that has built a community of more than 700,000 people around the belief that honest conversations about mental health can save lives.
She is also the mother of two young girls, and she talks about her own life with open honesty, that makes it easy to forget you only just met.
The YMCA Victorian Mother of the Year award recognises mothers and mother figures who make a lasting difference in the lives of children, families and communities. Georgia has built that difference through grief, professional training, lived experience and a belief that people need tools, not judgement, when life becomes hard.
Georgia grew up on a 20-acre flower farm in Somerville, the second of four children in a Dutch-background family who were, by her account, ordinary in the best possible way.
"On the farm there weren't many kids," she says, "so we had to get on with each other quick. And if someone had a friend over, we would all play with them."
Life underneath that was more complicated.
Her mother's alcoholism slowly reshaped the family home, and by the time Georgia was in secondary school, all four children had moved in with their dad.
The family home was gone. So was the routine. In its place was a father doing his best, four children learning quickly, and a family trying to stay together.
"He was a bit out of his depth," Georgia says of her father, "but we were all together. As long as we're together, everything will be okay. We can overcome anything."
Georgia was 14 when the Reach Foundation visited her school and ran a workshop that would redirect the rest of her life.
"I was awestruck," she says. "I loved it. And I started realising I wanted to help people. I didn't really know in what way."
Her path ran through childcare, a chicken shop, a Certificate III qualification and, eventually, work with Afghan and Pakistani refugees through Anglicare.
That last chapter opened something.
"I hadn't been out of Australia," she says. "And I'm sitting with these families and I couldn't believe all the adversity they were going through."
She enrolled in a social work degree at Victoria University, but two years into her degree, her brother Ben died by suicide. He was 22.
Georgia had planned to work with refugees or young people. Ben's death changed the direction of her life and work.
"I was really angry at the world," she says "But then I thought, this shouldn't have happened. I want to stop it from happening to other families. So I'm going to get qualified, go and work in mental health, and make a change. That was how it gave me a purpose. Because you have to find a purpose."
The charity started, as Georgia says, by accident.
In 2016, her older sister Hayleigh wrote a post on social media about her grief after losing Ben. It spread widely. People responded. The three sisters, Hayleigh, Georgia and Maddi, started a page.
The local footy club, the Frankston Bombers, held a fundraiser after losing three of their own that same year. They had blank T-shirts and screen-printed a message on them.
"People said, I want that T-shirt," Georgia says. "And this is how it all started."
For six years they ran everything as volunteers, storing merchandise in their father's garage and driving hours to reach communities in need.
Hayleigh built the following online, creating the original sticker design and the posts that found their way into people's feeds. Maddi handled events and merchandise. Georgia brought the professional training and, eventually, the workshops.
"We either had to close it down or step into it," she says, "because the work had become too much."
Georgia did not plan to go into mental health. She planned, once, to work with refugees and with the Reach Foundation, the organisation that first showed her what was possible when people were given the confident to lead and tell the truth about hard things.
Her brother's death changed the direction.
So did becoming a mother.
Her older daughter Scarlett, who turns five in September, was born during the pandemic lockdowns. When Scarlett was around two, Georgia began looking for answers to changes in her behaviour and sleep. With support through the NDIS, occupational therapy and speech therapy, Scarlett is now doing well and preparing for school next year.
"I didn't have the tools," Georgia says. "But when someone can give them to you, it changes everything. That's exactly what we try to do with our workshops."
Her younger daughter Arwin turns two this year.
At the end of last year, Georgia separated from her partner of 14 years. She rents now, their family house is being sold, and she describes it plainly as going backwards financially.
She knows what a household full of unspoken unhappiness feels like from the inside. She grew up in one.
She is also, she says, the happiest she has been.
"I want my children to grow up in a house with people who love them and are not fighting," she says. "There was so much fighting in my childhood. So I blew up my life at 35."
"I have to live authentically," she says. "That's what's good for my mental health. I have to live by my values. So that's why I went into mental health. That's why I run the charity. And that's why I made the call I made."
She is aware of what she is modelling for her daughters. Of what it looks like to choose honesty over comfort, and to ask for help when you need it.
"I have to find a way to get out of bed. And for me, that means doing work that means something."
The YMCA Victorian Mother of the Year award comes with $10,000 in funding.
Georgia plans to use it to subsidise workshops for schools and communities that cannot afford them. She has received requests from schools in regional Victoria that she has had to turn away, not because she did not want to go, but because the cost on both sides made it impossible.
"Cost is the biggest barrier," she says. "I've had schools in Kinglake and Yarrawonga, begging me to come. They can't afford it. I can't afford it. That's the gap I want to fill."
Her longer ambition is to become the name that primary schools turn to when they think about mental health education for children.
She wants to be there before the warning signs appear, before children are already in crisis, and before families are left trying to find help on their own.
For Georgia, the award arrives in a year of starting again.
At 35, she is trying to keep a grassroots charity sustainable in a difficult fundraising environment.
She did not expect to be recognised for motherhood.
Most of the recognition she has received has been for the charity. This feels different.
"And then I win Mother of the Year," she says. "Like, that's crazy!"
Motherhood does not always look polished. Sometimes it looks like odd socks, a messy house in a hard year, yet Georgia is still choosing to show up for the people around her.