My name is Suzie. I’m over 40 and proud of it. I came from Melbourne originally and settled in Sydney. I’ve been doing yoga for about 15 years now and it’s such an important part of my life. I find my breathing improves, my whole well-being improves, my whole outlook on life. It’s just a fantastic thing to do.

Well I’m a home stylist and I love it because it’s the creative side of me. I do them up for sale, present them, make their home worth more money. I go in and take out the bits that may date the home and restyle them with modern pieces. If people want me to style their homes, I just like to go in and give them a better environment to live in.

Being a stylist is a very physically demanding job. I’m forever moving furniture, lifting things out of the way and putting them back. It is very demanding.

When I realised I had really serious problems with my hip, I was really, deeply worried. Well I suddenly started to struggle with doing what I normally did easily.

Whilst still going through the ‘not knowing what was wrong with me’ process, even lying in bed at night was excruciating pain. So it was permeating my whole life, it wasn???t just immobilisation. It was lying in bed at night, you’re still in pain.

It was all must have a relief to find out that I needed the hip replacement. I had a lot of anxieties about the operation. I wondered if I ever dance again. I wondered if I do very simple things but my main priority was to get mobilised. A yoga teacher who’s a friend of mine, she’d had a hip replacement; she said to me ‘Suzie, you’re fit and you have the right attitude. You’ll get through and you’ll be fine.’

Walking for me now is fantastic. I absolutely love a lot of walking. It’s part of a meditative thing for me. Walking is how I get to a lot of my jobs and – the actual dreadful pain that you had is gone. And that’s the most amazing thing about it. I never imagined that I come out the other end feeling better than I did before.