Prevention has become a luxury.

Okay so I said I’d been off for a while.

Not off from life but just off.

I’m still burnt out, I’m even worse actually, but I’ve been trying to find solutions.

One of my weekly cries in the car

Some days I just want to cry at everything then some days I have rage. I mask it all of course and do my job with a smile and most importantly protect my kids the best I can from what I can.

I’ve not stopped working on togetHER as we are so close. What has happened though is whilst my mission remains the same my research and findings of the world I want to enter into is ever evolving.

We know women’s health is finally getting a moment or two. Wellbeing is getting minutes and more. So now I want to share with you the next part of this journey and that my mission is getting bigger.

There's a version of wellness that costs $500- $5000 a year (at least) , comes with a full-body scan and a waitlist 200,000 people long. And then there's the version most mothers actually live: a shower interrupted twice, a mental to-do list running at 2am, and a quiet promise to deal with yourself *later* — once everyone else is sorted.

I know that gap intimately, because I lived on the wrong side of it.

The boom nobody's arguing with

The numbers are almost hard to believe. The global wellness economy hit $6.8 trillion in 2024— it has doubled since 2013, and it's on track to reach nearly $9.8 trillion by 2029. To put that in perspective, wellness is now roughly four times bigger than the entire pharmaceutical industry.

Two shifts are driving it, and both of them are personal to me.

One of my ten surgeries for endo -hoping to be able to conceive again. Thankfully I did.

The first is that we've stopped waiting to get sick. The whole centre of gravity has moved from *treatment* to *prevention* — from fixing the breakdown to stopping it before it starts. Mental wellness is now one of the fastest-growing corners of the entire economy.

The second is quieter, and it's the one that keeps me up: prevention has become a luxury good.

The part that makes me angry

Look at where the money is going. Longevity clinics. IV drips. Cold plunges and infrared saunas and retreats in the hills. Memberships that cost more than a month of groceries. When people say "experiential wellness is the future," what they often mean is: *wellness for people who can already afford to feel well.*

And here's the maddening thing. Surveys show people are willing to pay out of pocket for prevention — the demand is obviously there. But the market has answered that demand with premium price tags, so the people who need prevention *most* — mothers running on empty, holding families together, one bad week away from burnout — are the ones locked out of it.

There's one more number I can't stop thinking about. Of all the sectors in this booming economy, the *only* one that shrank last year was **workplace wellness.** Companies are still spending on wellness perks that don't land, while the actual people quietly break. We're pouring money into the theatre of wellbeing and skipping the thing itself.

Why I'm building togetHER — the new village for mums

togetHER started because I burned out doing everything "right," and discovered there was no map back. Support existed — but it was scattered, or clinical, or expensive, or all three. Nobody was catching mothers *before* the crash.

So the sub mission sharpened into one sentence:

The wellness economy made prevention a luxury. With togetHER, I am building a different starting point: a village where mums can meet, connect and find their own way to restore.

That means two things in practice.

We don't wait for the breakdown. We're building tools to notice the *invisible load* — the mental weight mothers carry that never shows up on any calendar — early, when it's still a warning light and not a fire.

And we refuse to gate it behind a premium price. Real prevention doesn't have to look like a $500+ membership. It can look like a vetted local practitioner ten minutes from your door who doesn't charge the earth. A free community festival instead of a paid retreat. Employers and councils assisting or supporting funding access, so cost is never the reason a mother goes without. Prevention delivered *through community*, not sold back to the wealthy as an experience.

Where this is going

This piece is really a beginning. Because the more I sit with it, the clearer the bigger mission becomes — and it's bigger than togetHER.

I want to build the technology and infrastructure that could detect and prevents burnout before it happens, and helps people heal their nervous systems — accessibly, for everyone, not just those who can buy their way to calm. That's the startup taking shape next to this one. togetHER is where it starts, with mothers, because that's the burnout I know in my bones. But nervous systems don't check your bank balance before they collapse, and neither should the thing that helps them recover.

Prevention shouldn't be a privilege. Feeling well shouldn't be a luxury item.

I'm going to spend the next chapter making sure it isn't.

Love — Katie* and togetHER

We got you x

---

Originally published on Substack.