'I grew up in a "rough" postcode. The story you think you know isn't mine.'

There's a narrative society loves to sell that people from "rough" postcodes are dangerous. We are damaged, somehow deficient, and destined to fail.

What "they" never tell you is the truth: behind the brick and cladding of housing commission homes are families full of grit, culture, loyalty — and to be frank — a bloody brilliance and resilience that is incomparable.

I was raised on Debby Way, a cul de sac in Toongabbie, a suburb of Blacktown in Sydney's Western Suburbs.

On Debby Way, the scent of burnt cheap sausages drifted through busted flyscreens. Kids rode rusted bikes with no brakes. Someone's cousin was always fixing a car that would never start.

But every backyard bonfire was hosted by real people, with a genuine desire to love and connect. They told solid yarns about where they'd come from and where they were going. They had big dreams that hadn't died yet.

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Blacktown was rough, no doubt about it. It carried the weight of colonisation, migration and neglect.

Originally named after a colonial institution that forcibly removed Aboriginal children, the city was built on stolen land.

By the time I was growing up there, in the 1990s, Blacktown had become a dumping ground for people society didn't know what to do with — refugees, single mums, factory workers, survivors of war and welfare recipients.

We had neighbours who fled civil wars and others who couldn't flee domestic ones. But it was also a street where we shared meals, raised each other's kids, and survived together.

The media might call it Struggle Street, but my family called it home.

Image: Supplied.

In my memoir Accessory, written with journalist Dr Erin O'Dwyer, I trace what it costs to come from the "wrong" side of town. When your last name doesn't sound like theirs. When your food doesn't look like theirs. And when the police don't knock — they kick the door down instead.

I was born into a family of contradictions.

My DNA includes Russian, African American, and Australian First Nations heritage. My Eastern European bloodlines come from royalty, but they have been ripped apart by war, slavery and the subsequent movement of people around the world.

My family spoke in multiple tongues, carried medals from fighting the Nazis, and built entire suburbs in Australia with our hands. And yet, in the country of my birth, we were still seen as "lower class".

Why? Because of where we lived, and because our names didn't roll off Anglo tongues.

Growing up in Blacktown taught me everything I know about race, class and culture — and how it's practiced and policed.

Blacktown taught me early that power isn't about who's the smartest in the room. It's about who owns the room. Who gets locked out of it. And who's never even told it exists.

Let's change that.

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Australia needs to stop mistaking visibility for equality — and start redistributing real power.

That means elevating voices with lived experience, not just tokenising them. It means putting them in positions of leadership where they can shape policy — not just sit on panels.

It means rewriting hiring practices so a criminal record isn't a death sentence to your career. It means funding grassroots First Nations and refugee-led organisations. And it means teaching truth — the real history — in every classroom.

I'm shaking it up by turning my lived experience as a Blacktown 'houso' and a woman with a conviction history into a driver for change.

In 2016, I received a three-year suspended sentence for drug supply after my partner's house was raided by police. He took responsibility and served eight years of his 10-year jail sentence. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Since then, I've trained as a counsellor and run my own specialist counselling practice for women survivors of domestic violence.

Image: Supplied.

Through my work as a trauma therapist, author and advocate, I am fighting for women impacted by domestic violence, incarceration and intergenerational poverty.

I spearheaded Australia's first Indigenous-led, all-female lived experience study into the childhood trauma of those impacted by the justice system. I also developed what I call the Growth-Focused Trauma Model to train practitioners in trauma care.

I am speaking for the women I grew up with, because they have not yet found their voice. I speak truth in rooms that weren't built for people like me — and are still not owned by people like me.

I'm here to make sure no one gets left behind. Because I know what that feels like.

Image: Supplied.

Right now, Australia is reckoning with the limits of its criminal justice system. We are locking up women, children and First Nations people at the highest rates ever.

But the evidence is there: prisons aren't rehabilitating, and communities like the housos in Blacktown, Newcastle, Wollongong in NSW, Inala in Queensland, and Elizabeth in South Australia are still being excluded from the rooms where decisions are made.

What's missing isn't data — it's voice, perspective and power. Real people in politics too. The system will benefit from valuing our stories and our strategic knowledge — as opposed to paying lip service to them.

That's why lived experience leadership matters.

Because until we change who owns the room — and in our case, who holds the mic — we'll never change what gets heard.

I know what it means to grow up in a place like Blacktown. I've worn the labels that were meant to silence me — criminal, houso, bitch, slut, wog.

But instead of allowing them to keep me down, I've used them as inspiration to create lasting change.

Accessory by Felicia Djamirze with Erin O'Dwyer is out June 24. Pre-order here.

Feature: Supplied.