Meet the Author Shavina Hill

Author • Mother • Founder • Storyteller

I’m Shavina Hill — an author, mother, entrepreneur, creative artist and founder of Street Born Foundation – India.

I was born in India and adopted to Australia as a child, and today I call Australia, Melbourne home. My life has taken me through many different chapters, cultures, careers and experiences, all of which have played a part in shaping the woman I am today.

I’ve always been a creative person and someone who loves keeping busy. Over the years, I’ve worked across dance, beauty, health, photography, face painting and handmade design. I love creating, learning, connecting with people and finding new ways to turn an idea into something meaningful.

Alongside my creative and business ventures, I’m currently studying Individual Support in Ageing and Disability, continuing another path that reflects something that has always been important to me — helping people and making a difference where I can.

India has remained an important part of who I am and where I come from. I founded Street Born Foundation – India with the hope of creating practical support and opportunities for vulnerable children, particularly children experiencing life on the streets or within institutional care.

Becoming an author has opened another chapter of my life.

Writing gives me a place to explore the things that shape us — identity, family, belonging, survival, resilience and the questions we sometimes carry with us for years.

I’ve also found writing to be incredibly reflective. It has given me the opportunity to look back with a different perspective — to recognise what is still there for me to work through, but also to see what I have already overcome and what no longer has the power to hold me back.

In many ways, writing has allowed me to see not only where I’ve come from, but how much I’ve grown along the way.

More than anything, I hope this book reaches someone who needs to hear that we can truly become our own heroes, despite all that has happened to us.

I hope someone reads these pages and realises that there really can be light at the other end of the tunnel. Getting there can take years of work, reflection, courage and commitment — sometimes it can feel like a lifetime of it.

But I can tell you this: it is absolutely worth it.

We may not get to choose everything that happens to us, but we can choose what we do with it. We can keep growing, keep rebuilding and, somewhere along the way, become the person we once needed to save us.

Why Did It Happen to Me? is my first memoir and the beginning of my journey as an author. Rather than telling you too much about what lies within its pages, I’ll leave that story for you to discover for yourself.

Outside of writing, I’m happiest spending time with my family and friends, dancing, creating something with my hands, getting outdoors, discovering somewhere new, or enjoying a long walk with my dog, Bambi, with a good coffee in hand — and, of course, throwing myself into whatever new project has captured my imagination.

I’ve lived many chapters already, but I’m far from finished.

There’s still so much more of my story to write.