After 23 years as the peer support worker at The O'Brien Centre, Jenny Coleman has decided the time is right to start the next phase of her life.
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The 73-year-old will retire next week from the position that has seen her help countless people with mental illness to find connection, friendship and hope.
Ms Coleman, who received an OAM in 2020 for her services to community mental health, helped lay the foundation for what The O'Brien Centre is today - a safe place for those living with mental illness, their carers, families and friends, to come together and socialise in a non-judgemental environment.
Ms Coleman said the centre in the Bloomfield medical precinct grew organically from a regular meet up of friends in the 90s.
They were making cement furniture at the depot to raise money for the Consumer Advisory Group, which was started to give people living with a mental illness a voice.
"From there, because we were together, and having sausage sandwiches together, it just grew."
She said the natural evolution of the centre was its strength.
"The recipe's right. It just evolved because people were there for people.
"It's not medical and its not clinical. That's important as well, but The O'Brien Centre is the next step. Because people don't get well in a unit by themselves without anyone to talk to.
"The O'Brien Centre just gives them that regular visit every week. We do music and garden and computers and art. It gives them that: 'Hello I can do that - even if I'm not very good, and actually I quite enjoy it.' And that's what we're about."
Ms Coleman says she will still be involved as a volunteer at the centre, but has plenty of plans for her retirement, kicking off with a road trip with a friend to Port Macquarie.
She also wants to devote more time to her passion for gardening and to rediscover her love of photography.
She says she hopes The O'Brien Centre, which is currently facing uncertainty around its future location, will continue in the same vein that has served it so well over the years, and that her replacement will not be "a total academic."
"I just hope the next person doesn't miss why we're there. And that's to support each other."
Ms Coleman will be farewelled at a special lunch at The O'Brien Centre on Thursday.
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