Athenie's Story

In 2020, at 18 years old, Athenie's world changed overnight. COVID hit, and everything that gave her life structure, meaning and joy, including rowing, the sport she loved, disappeared behind lockdown doors.

She reached out to the big organizations, the ones you're told to call when things get hard. But the system was overwhelmed, stretched past capacity, and she fell through the cracks.

Athenie was popular on social media, bright, connected, seemingly surrounded. But she didn't share what she was really feeling with anyone. She chose to carry her vulnerabilities alone, until she couldn't carry them anymore.

As her parents, we missed the signs. It's easy to, in hindsight, when staying in your room all day had become the norm for an entire generation of young people, and a curated life online can look nothing like what's happening underneath. Lockdown masked what should have been impossible to miss.

Athenie lost her battle with her mind.

Athenie's Angels was born from that loss and from a promise. We started this charity so that no other young person falls through the same cracks. So that when the big players are over capacity, there's still somewhere accessible to catch them.

Every workshop, every conversation, every event like Journey to Joy is Athenie's story, turned into something that saves lives.

Thank you for being part of our community!

Contact the host of Mental Health Celebration - Journey to Joy 2026