Refined by fire [Alhana's story]

When Alhana was last on Chip Lunch five years ago, she had just started full-time at JB Hi-Fi and was finding her feet. A lot has happened since then.In those five years: she stepped into a management role too early and burnt out, spent eighteen months largely absent from the Saturday night community she loved, got diagnosed with PMOS, PMDD and chronic nerve pain from shingles at twenty-five (the old person's disease) changed degrees multiple times, and eventually, on something close to a whim, applied for a Bachelor of Social Work at Wollongong. Got an offer four days later. Started studying. Six months in and it was the first time she wasn't sick of itThrough all of it, God kept showing up in ways Alhana is only now able to see clearly. A management conversation that became the catalyst to step back. A month of Monday-to-Friday shifts that got her back to church on Saturday nights. A new person sitting alone at a table who needed someone to make her feel welcome, which turned out to be exactly what Alhana needed too.Alhana talks about the stubbornness that kept her away from community longer than she should have been, the pride woven through her work ethic that she's still untangling, the gift of finally being vulnerable, with people and with God, and why going through the fire, while awful, has made her better at everything she actually cares about.She's still a little bit on fire, she says. But she's coming through.