One Of A Kind: Meet Kath Koschel

“I read that you’ve broken your back - twice? How on earth are you walking?” Taxi driver Matt’s incredulity is understandable once you’ve heard Kath Koschel’s story for yourself. In 2011, her childhood dream of playing cricket for Australia crashed to a halt at age 23, shortly after her debut match for New South Wales. Kath sustained a debilitating spinal injury on the pitch, which lead to six surgeries on her back and a left leg permanently damaged by surgical complications, leaving her in a wheelchair and facing months of gruelling physical rehabilitation and the uncertainty of whether she would ever walk again. Kath grit her teeth and powered through to an awe-inspiring recovery - only to lose her partner, Jim, to suicide, a day before he’d be discharged from the rehab centre where the pair had met and fell in love.

Slowly, eventually, “with time and the kindness of both my support network and strangers”, Kath rediscovered the good in the world. During this period, she started doing small acts of kindness daily, sharing them online and encouraging others to do the same, similar to the small gestures from friends and strangers that had helped Kath hold on during the lowest moments of her recovery.

Kath is convinced that the kindness of other people saved her life when she broke her back for the second time, barely four years after her first injury. She was hit by a four-wheel drive while on a bike ride with friends early one summer morning. Once again, the prognosis was bleak. And once again, Kath rose to the occasion, bolstered by the support and stories of kindness inundating her website and social media feeds during this time.

But despite her recovery, the years of mental trauma she’d been suppressing while working through devastating physical injuries left her feeling lost and alone. Her solution? Leave home with only a toothbrush and the clothes on her back, and spend two months travelling through Australia, relying only on the kindness of the community she’d forged, and strangers she’d yet to meet.

Matt, the taxi driver at the start of this story, is just one of the many people Kath met on her journey, and features in her book, Kindness (published earlier this year), tracking what she learned while working to find and ground herself again. Kath shared some thoughts with Prevention.

Letting go of control

The kind of spinal injuries I had - twice! - can be soul destroying. We all have a basic human need to have a sense of control over our lives. Before my injuries, I’d been able to do everything. And then, suddenly, you can’t use the bathroom, you can't even wipe your own bottom, you can’t shower by yourself. There’s a vulnerability to it that you have to accept: you can’t do it by yourself anymore. That realisation is devastating for almost everyone I’ve spoken to in a similar situation. We like things a certain way, and we like to think that we’re not a burden on others.

I think it’s very natural that your self esteem drops when you can’t look after your basic needs by yourself. You wonder, is this the rest of my life? My entire identity was built around being an athlete. I’d rock up somewhere, and be introduced: “This is Kath, she’s the cricket player”. So if the thing you love about yourself, and that you’re good at it and gets reinforced by how others label you… When that’s taken away from you, you suddenly have to start asking yourself questions. Well, who am I now? Am I interesting enough? Funny enough? How do I contribute to society now? And isn’t that what life is about, really - contributing? To have that sense of control taken away abruptly, is very, very tough.

I started working to get a sense of self back by making decisions about the things that I could control: the food I put into my body to nourish it, my actions and how I treated the people who were helping me… Responding with gratitude rather than aggression, for example. And I could control my environment! If I didn’t like the look of my room, I could ask whoever came to visit me next to bring in my favourite painting or poster, or the pillow that I love because it smells like home… You find little ways and tricks along the way to help you find that sense of normality again.

Before her injury, Kath had a promising career playing cricket for New South Wales.

Managing happiness

My first night in rehab was shockingly, painfully hard. I remember thinking, how on earth am I going to do this for six to 12 months? I struggled so much that first week. I think that I’d gotten way too far ahead of myself in terms of how quickly I thought the healing process would go. Stubbornness!

I’ve learned the hard way that life isn’t about instant gratification, getting everything and getting it right now. But I’ve also always been someone who’s taken accountability for my own actions - and my own happiness. When I’m unhappy (which I often am, I’m a human being, and I’ve got insecurities and fears like every other person!) it’s very rare that I’d ever let myself sit in too much of that state or environment. I’d immediately want to change it, no matter how long it took.

The momentum of kindness

Without a doubt, kindness from others is what pulled me through. I remember sitting in my wheelchair in front of the hospital elevator, unable to reach the buttons. They’d just said to me, mate, you’re just not going to walk again. I couldn’t accept that. I remember feeling so utterly defeated. Thinking, this is it. I can’t even reach the button. This is the rest of my life, I’m stuck like this, I’ll have to rely on others for everything… Then a man came up, pressed the elevator button, and walked on without a word. It cost him nothing, but it meant the world to me. Suddenly everything was okay. This small problem was solved, and I didn’t have to think about it anymore, and I could move on to the next thing. Those are the moments you look back on.

When we go through adversity, our brains can trick us to look past all the kindness surrounding us and only focus on the negativity. Sometimes, someone will call me a cripple, or people will laugh and joke about my disability [Kath has no feeling in her left leg, impacting her ability to walk]. It doesn’t bother me - but that’s an active choice, to see the good and the bad, but to choose to promote and focus on the good.

Happy with no regrets

It’s been a long road, but I’m doing really well. Physically, I can’t compete or anything anymore, but I still exercise - I went for a run this morning, and a bike ride yesterday, and I still get in the pool and that kind of stuff. Emotionally, I’m the strongest and genuinely the happiest I’ve ever been in my 35 years on Earth. I feel very balanced. And I’ve found love again, which is amazing. I’m very happily in a relationship - he’s wonderful!

If I could go back in time to the moment I had to choose between playing that game of cricket or backing out because of my injuries, I’d make the same decision. Cricket was my first love. I got to play for my state, and forge some of my most wonderful and strongest friendships. My best friend still plays in the Australian team. What cricket gave me and what it still gives me… I’ll always be indebted to it. I think a lot of people are shocked when I say that, considering just how my career in cricket ended, I guess! But no: I owe it, it doesn’t owe me. That love is still alive, and always will be. Ultimately it was my decision, and mine alone, to play as long as I did with my injury. And I have no regrets whatsoever.

This interview originally appeared in the April 2023 issue of Prevention. As told to Donnay Torr, images supplied by Kath Koschel.

Find the kind

Kath’s Kindness Factory movement had clocked 5 million acts of kindness around the world and counting. Kath’s also launched the Kindness Curriculum, used in more than 3,500 schools across Australia. Here's just a sample of how people are making the world a kinder place, as shared on the Kindness Factory's Instagram.

“Someone close to me is too proud to accept my help so they go to a food bank. So, I donate their favourite foods to the pantry so it stays stocked with the food they prefer.”

“My neighbours are too low income to afford a wifi connection, and too proud to use mine. So I renamed mine Free Council Wifi and told them I had read about it and what the password was. My neighbour is now halfway through an online college qualification and I’m so proud of her.”

“My 5yo spent over an hour taping all of his artwork on to his bedroom wall last night. When I told him it looked great, he proudly told me ‘my teacher said I’m an artist!’ Teachers, never underestimate how much your positive words mean to our kids <3”

“I was just behind someone at the train ticket machine. They said thank you to the machine for dishing out their tickets, turned to me and said, ‘I haven’t heard my voice all day,’ so we went for a tea. Loneliness is real but it’s easy to fix.”

“My neighbour (he’s like 10 or 11) just knocked on my door and asked if I could help him bake cookies since it’s his mom’s birthday tomorrow and he really likes mine… You better believe I just spent 3 hours baking and decorating cookies with him!”

“Just watched a man bringing home a goldfish on the train accidentally pop the bag - fish flops onto the floor. 3 people swarm to save him (the fish not the man). Guy chugs the last of his coffee and throws the fish in his cup. Lady next to him empties in her bottle of water.”

“I noticed that our lovely janitor gets treated like an outcast, so I made sure to drink my coffee with him daily in front of the gate. Today I was in a hurry to get to my office, so he came to my office with a cup of coffee and awkwardly goes, ‘Thank you for being my friend’.

“I’m on a plane and the entire flight sat still so that a man in the last seat at the back of the plane could get off and run to his next flight to try and make it to his twin daughters’ first father-daughter dance. Everyone rooted him on and clapped as he rushed down the aisle.”

“I walked the daughter of the man who donated his heart to me down the aisle at her wedding.”

“I recently noticed that whenever life was getting me down, I’d usually find a dollar in my pocket the next day. I told my parents how weird it was and they told me my little sister puts a dollar in one of my pockets when she knows I’m sad to help cheer me up and now I’m cryin.”