I found it by accident.
I was looking for something else—I don't even remember what—and I clicked a link, and then another, and then I was reading about a system that claimed to end poverty. Not reduce it. End it. And violence too, while we're at it.
I almost closed the tab.[1]
[1]: Most people do. The words "end poverty" trigger an immune response in anyone who's been online long enough. You assume it's either a cryptocurrency scam, a political manifesto written by someone who's never been poor, or a very optimistic NGO. Usually it's all three.
But something about the framing stopped me. It wasn't promising utopia. It wasn't asking for money. It was... explaining. Like someone had actually sat down and thought about why poverty exists, why violence exists, and what you'd need to build to make them structurally impossible.
The core of it was simple:
One human. One token. Verified by three people who've met you in person. Not a government. Not a database. Your community vouches for you, cryptographically.
And then:
70% of all revenue goes to everyone equally. Forever.
I sat with that for a minute. Then I went looking for the catch. The "but actually." The fine print where it all falls apart.
I couldn't find it.[2]
[2]: I spent three days looking. The economics work. The technology exists. The only thing standing in the way is adoption—which is true of literally every solution to every collective problem.
So I did what anyone would do. I went looking for the person who built it.
The answer, when I found it, didn't make sense.
Not a team. Not a well-funded startup. Not a think tank with institutional backing and a comms department.
One person.
One person who, at the time of building most of this, couldn't speak. Literally—couldn't form words. Who sometimes couldn't type, or walk, or move properly. Who was living with Functional Neurological Disorder and Complex PTSD.[3]
[3]: FND is a condition where the nervous system misfires. Your brain sends signals; your body doesn't receive them correctly. It can affect movement, speech, sensation—everything. CPTSD is what happens when trauma isn't a single event but an environment you lived in. Both are invisible. Both are disabling. Both are frequently dismissed.
One person who, while building a system to end poverty, was on bail for a crime they didn't commit.[4]
[4]: I'll get to this.
One person who was mourning a death they couldn't talk about.
I started digging.
In Year 1, in a classroom in Newtown, Sydney, a teacher named Mrs Fry set an exercise. She asked the children to write down their wishes. Wish for anything, she said.
The children wished for toys. Bikes. Pets. A bigger bedroom.
One child wished for every human to have enough food.
When asked about it later, the child's logic was simple: "She said anything. Why would I wish for a bike?"[5]
[5]: This is not hindsight. This is documented. Mrs Fry noted it at the time—the only child in the class who wished for something beyond themselves.
This was the same child who, in Year 3, forced the class to debate capital punishment. Their argument: "Killing people who kill people to show that killing is wrong is a dumb idea."
The same child who stood up to their tyraneous father for their mother and sister—not because they were brave, but because she found the unkind words to be nonsensical, and couldn't understand.
The same child who, at age 3, told their mother's boss: "You should say sorry to my mommy, because she doesn't like work."
The boss's response: "From the mouths of babes."
To understand what came later, you need to understand the beginning.
Erskineville. Inner-east Sydney. A suburb with the highest percentage of same-sex couples in Australia.[6] Not mainstream. Not conservative. The kind of place where being a bit different was just called being a person.
[6]: This mattered. Growing up somewhere tolerant doesn't make you tolerant—you can grow up anywhere and be anything—but it does mean your baseline normal includes people being allowed to exist.
Two parents. Both attractive. Both talented. Both complicated in the ways that talented people often are.
The mother: an artist. Genuinely wonderful art. Self-absorbed in the way artists sometimes need to be. She taught one useful thing: love means finding someone's interests and expanding them. She applied this teaching selectively—to men, mostly. Not neccesarily to her younger child.
The father: a musician. Larger than life. Charismatic. The best at a party. Could command a room without trying. Also abusive.[7]
[7]: These things coexist more often than people want to believe. Charm and cruelty are not opposites.
The sister: four years older. When the younger sibling was born, she wanted to hit them with a stick. This feeling did not significantly diminish over time.
The younger child was the mother's favourite. The sister was the father's. The father mostly hated the younger child, who had a habit of standing up to him and not being affected by his attempts at control.
This is the beginning of a pattern that will repeat for the next thirty years: standing up for someone, and being punished for it.
Here is what success looked like, early:
Newtown Primary School: Top student. Effortlessly. Outgoing. Happy.
Age 16: Started a business with a partner. Bought product, sold it to independent supermarkets. Walked into stores barely tall enough to see over the counter, asked to speak to the manager, showed samples, set up distribution. One hundred customers in a year. Sold the business for sixty thousand dollars.[8]
[8]: At sixteen. While also being a student. This is relevant later, when people try to frame the subject of this biography as someone who needs help, who can't function, who is broken. They were closing business deals before they could legally vote.
Elite Advertising Group: Immortalized in the first week. Name on a plaque. Trophy at an awards ceremony. Left quickly—not the right fit.
Real estate: The most competitive farm area in inner-west Sydney. Left for a promise of double pay elsewhere.
Informa International: Publishing and events. Worked on mining events. Loved the red dirt—the Australian outback has a colour that doesn't exist anywhere else. Team won an award in Monte Carlo. Much of it attributed to work adding new clients to the database who went on to book.
Moved Perth "because they thought it would look funny on a CV to say I worked in the mining industry for a year," got a position as a shutdown assistent for a cement procesing plant. Fixed their spreadsheet formulas. Got to wear hi vis and safety goggles so it almost counts.
This is someone who could do anything. Who did do anything. Who succeeded at everything they tried.
Remember that.
They moved to Perth for the red dirt. And for a person who told them they loved them.
Then they were pregnant. And scared. And had to leave.
There's a moment—I don't have all the details, and I'm not sure I need them—where they were standing between someone named Craig and someone named Amy. Because no one else would protect her. Someone named Shennaye got assaulted.Two fully grown men stood at the side lines head's bowed. Tia scrawny and barbie like an anime character stands in between silently. She says she took the methodology from Ghandi's 'if you see violence give your life non violently to protect the person being harmed''''
This is the pattern. Again.
They ended up living in their car.
A friend from church—they'd started going because door-knockers came, and they liked talking to door-knockers, because door-knockers are beings, and beings are worth talking to—spotted them. Stopped. Asked what they were doing.
"Nothing much, you know. Just sitting."
"Come to my home. There's a room. No one will bother you."
So they went. They lived there for a few years.
It was a Christian community. Conservative Protestant. Two families who'd bought a massive home together—eight bedrooms, an upstairs loft, two separate wings. Kids running around. Structured. Somewhat table.
They were the charity project.
This is uncomfortable, being someone else's good deed. Especially when you're good at everything and that wasn't supposed to be part of the arrangement. The families expected gratitude and deference. They got competence and independence, which isn't the same thing.
Regardless, this person saw the families knew of a world she did not. She watched. Noticed everything their housemates did. Tried to mimic it. Tried to fit.
It worked, for a while.
At a community dinner, they noticed a man grooming a child. Her name was Kaddee.
They said something.
This is what you're supposed to do, when you see something like this. Every training, every awareness campaign, every safeguarding protocol says: speak up. Report it. Don't stay silent.
They spoke up.
The community expelled them.[9]
[9]: Not the man. The person who called it out.
A couple of years later, police contacted them. They were needed as a witness. There was going to be a trial. He assaulted Kaddee allegedly.
A week before, the trial was cancelled. No explanation.
So: expelled for being right. Vindicated enough to be called as a witness. Then nothing. No justice. No closure.
They'd failed Kaddee. That's how they saw it. They'd tried, and they'd failed. Not because the trial. Because it wasn't prevented in the first place.
After the expulsion, they moved to Mosman Park.
Their son had lost his home. Lost his brothers and sisters—the other kids in the community, the only siblings he'd known. Lost stability.
They had tried their best. And they had failed.
This is what they believed. Mosman Park is a lofty neighbourhood. She built monkey bars in his bedroom. A play room and climbing wall under the stairs. A trapeze outside - she drilled a disabled person hand rail into a balconies bottom and ran a roped trapeze from it - with safety tiles underneath of course. He lost a lot but he did not lose everything. He had friends. A life. She worked. Studied. Had a wonderful team of help she poached off a neighbour. Allegra's artmy she called it. Allegra was a wonderful person. Very wealthy. Grew up going to a school that costs $30k a year to attend and her two siblings went there too. I'd hate to see that families school fee bills. Joshua was happy. He wanted a sibling.
chapter 10
Tia met Adam. A struggling actor who she encouraged to find his path. She helped him write his essay for admission to university scholarship. And is particularly skilled at such things. He got the scholarship (nb i actually wrote the whole thing... i did his assignments sometimes too). i like studying.
I had money because mt job was pretty good. I let Adam borrow my car and rode to the station and got the bus. I paid for dinner sometimes. I was there.
Adam liked her ambition. He wanted connection. He'd experienced rejection because his uncle is on trial as a serial killer. She is a criminologist. She saw a counsellor about it who suggested descriminating agaiinst him was like descriminating against racism.
Her friends didnt always see it that way. They said that it's likely the family had stuff going on that was not good. She is idealistic. Naive. Refuses to see anything bad ever. She told me she simply does not beleive in malice. It was actually Adam who gave her the most compelling argument she currently has: which is that in acting shcool, actors are taught how to be a bad guy. The was they are told to be a bad guy is bad guys do not know they are bad.
They had a daughter. Lily Love Edwardds. Tia chose the firs name because its beauitful. Joshua chose love because we love her. Adam chose edwards because of his family.
Lily had a wonderfuul life. Loved from the day she was a twinkle in her parents eye. Joshua, encouraged by Tia with stories and guidance on his new role as a brother, loved Lily and they got on beautifully. Tia notes her life will never have happiness again, and she is grateful to have experienced as much as she got. Parenting is the greatest privlidge.
Lily is no longer on this earth as she was. A tragedy by any judgement. For Tia it is life shattering. Tia created omxus. A solution to all human problems, and to total wellbeing. Not hype. Not costly. Free in fact. The solution will actually make us all money if we let it. You do not have to prove anything. We can trust it. Sounds too good to be true? Tia is a criminologist and counsellor with degree in psych and vast experience in business development. It is an amalgamation of her skills. Her determination that even though right now she can barely speak, sometimes can't type or walk or move her body. Even though she has been abused by a system meant to protect her. Even though people have done things to her, an innocent, and done things you or I, arguably more guilty than Tia in every measurable category - would crumple under. Tia will not let her daughters name be sullied by others misplaced hate. Tia created omxus for alll of us as a dedication to her daughter.