Life’s hard lessons put to good use

A Gisborne mother is drawing on her experience of past tragedies to help others as a life coach.

“It doesn’t define you, what happens to you and you can’t blame the world,” says Katrina Wurm, 49. “You’ve just got to start taking accountability for yourself.”

After several miscarriages with her husband Michael, Wurm gave birth to her son, Andreas, in 2007 but found immediate issues with her son’s development.

“He came home and screamed at me for 12 weeks”, Wurm says. “I just went, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore because obviously I can’t do this parenting thing”’.

Andreas’ delay in development was later linked to his diagnosis as being a gifted child with a superior IQ, forming sentences and reading when he was just two.

“Got to three and he asked me to stop reading his bedtime story because he could read it better and quicker himself,” Wurm says.

Following attempts at a second child, Wurm fell pregnant in 2010 with triplets of which two were lost in utero.

Anton Wurm’s grave. Photo Tim Bottams.

The surviving baby, Anton, died in Michael’s arms 31 minutes after his birth on Father’s Day as Wurm was rushed to surgery following complications brought about during labour.

After further attempts at conceiving, Wurm was informed that she could no longer have children and has since had 22 corrective surgeries due to health complications from various pregnancies.

“That was probably hell for months. The decision had been taken away from me … that took a while to come to terms with”.

Wurm says that she was inspired to study under life coach Scott Harris after meeting him at a seminar and established her own client-base.

As well as general clientele, Wurm specialises in coaching mothers of both neurodiverse (outside the cognitive norm) and other children who might benefit from her experiences in raising her son Andreas. 

“I started coaching mothers of neurodiverse children… but then I found I had mothers coming to me who had typical kids who just wanted help finding themselves again,” Wurm says.

She has impressed Sam Cawthorn, CEO of an organisation called Speakers Institute. “she’s got… tangible tools that will help you go from where you are today to where you really want to be,” says Cawthorn who founded the group for professional speakers in 2012.

“It’s just impacting people so that they live their best life… my dream is to empower a thousand women to wake up with a smile on their face”.

Wurm is writing a book titled Wear Your Warrior and runs much of her life coaching practice through her website at katrinawurm.com.au