Bonnie’s Family Worker Peta Link recently took her voice, her story and her strength all the way to the United Nations. When I sat down to speak with her after her trip, I was struck by her calm strength, deep insight and poetic turn of phrase.

A proud Gooreng Gooreng and Kabi Kabi woman, Peta was invited to speak at the 2025 UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York as part of a panel hosted by the Museum of Understanding Through Tolerance and Inclusion Ltd (MUTTI).

The panel featured diverse Australian women with disabilities who have experienced homelessness and now work in the housing and homelessness sector. Peta was there to share how @MUTTI’s UNSEEN Arts Hub creates space for women to tell their often-hidden stories using creativity as a path to healing, visibility and empowerment.

In her career as a family worker and an artist, Peta draws deeply on her own lived experience, from surviving abuse and family breakdowns to now supporting other women on similar journeys. For her, art has long been a transformative tool. Through the @UNSEEN project, she found a platform to reclaim her voice and connect with others. In her words, UNSEEN is dedicated to social justice through art; it provides a platform for dialogue and amplifies voices.

At the UN, she spoke to the power of lived experience, community and creativity in breaking intergenerational cycles of violence and disadvantage and how women, when given the space to be seen and heard, can begin to heal and lead.

“While domestic violence and homelessness are part of my story, I’m focused on stopping the intergenerational impact,” Peta says. “To rise again for myself and my children.”

As she described her experience, I could feel how deeply it had affected her. “It was inspiring and empowering to see the women of the world help each other,” she reflected. “Women all over the world elevating their stories.”

Reflecting on her time at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Peta was deeply moved by the strength and solidarity of women from around the world, all working to elevate one another. She said it left her with a powerful sense of connection and hope, beautifully captured in her own words:

“It might feel like we’re a speck in the universe, but we are actually a seed and all over the world, a forest is growing.”

Fiona Renoux