In 2016, Kath Koschel decided to put a long-harboured theory to the test. The then 28-year-old woke up one morning and left her home with nothing but the clothes on her back – no cash, no credit card, no food, no water. The goal? To see how long she could survive only off the kindness of strangers.
“I ended up travelling for two months to every state in Australia,” the Fairlight local recalls.
“Ten thousand people reached out to help me.”
So, how did she know her ambitious adventure would work out? Well, it was such acts of kindness that had saved her life. Three times.
It all began when the then-rising cricket star made her debut playing for the New South Wales at Adelaide Oval in 2011.
“My first love [is] cricket. All I wanted to do was play cricket for the rest of my life,” she explains.
After a ‘not so traditional path’ to play professionally – “I didn’t set the world on fire by any stretch” – this first match with the Breakers was the culmination of years of hard work.
“I’d been having a lot of symptoms through my left leg and glute. I remember going for a run and feeling a little bit off balance and thinking, ‘What’s going on here? My toes are numb.’”
After undergoing radiography scans, she was diagnosed with a ‘significant’ bulge in her disc.
“It was no thought for me, though. Of course, I was going to debut,” she says.
Last month, Kath launched her new book Kindness by Kath Koschel.
Doctors gave her two cortisone injections in her back before she stepped out on the pitch. And while the debut was a ‘huge success’, the bulging disc eventually gave way and the vertebrae collapsed.
She had broken her back and now required a total disc replacement and six weeks of rehabilitation.
Following the surgeries, her recovery was progressing well, until she woke up one day and found her leg ‘blue and lifeless’.
After rushing to hospital, she was told the pressure in her leg was so low doctors would have to amputate. She was given two weeks to increase the blood flow to her limb, or it would be removed.
“It was just a nightmare. I’d get up at 2am and access the 24-hour gym at the Sydney Cricket Ground to try and get my leg moving,” she recounts.
“I remember Bobby, the older security guard, ran in that first night thinking the lights were an intruder, and was like, ‘Kath, what are you doing?’ I explained the situation and he disappeared before coming back with this roll of electrical tape.
“He literally helped me on to the bike and strapped my left leg in with electrical tape. He then came back 45 minutes later to unstrap me and put me on the cross-trainer.
Kath says her ‘first love’ was cricket and she wanted to play professional from a young girl.
“I just remember thinking, ‘Regardless of the outcome – whether I keep my leg or not – his kindness to me in this moment has truly mean everything. I’m going to pay forward that kindness.’”
The day before her amputation surgery, Kath unexpectedly collapsed. In hospital, doctors discovered that she was bleeding internally from a small stomach wound – her surgeon had accidentally nicked her femoral artery during the procedure.
While she would keep her leg, she was sent off for another six to 12 months of rehabilitation. She was just 24 years old.
It was in rehab that she first experienced gratitude and perspective – attributes that would later become core to her teachings of kindness.
“Here I am, and I’ve got an 85-year-old war veteran with bullet holes in his back telling me all these stories. I’m like, ‘How am I feeling sorry for myself?’” she explains.
It was at this point that in walked Jim – a rugby player around her age in rehab after damaging his spine.
“I’d never met someone who I’d dreamt I’d spend the rest of my life with,” she says.
“It very much took me by surprise – never would you expect in a rehab centre that you would find love.”
Their relationship escalated fast, with plans for children, marriage and building a home together. Then, a day before he was to be released, Jim tragically took his own life.
“At 24, how do you go through these huge life hurdles? How do I lose this dream I’ve had since I was a little girl and then lose the person who taught me there was so much more to life than that dream?” Kath says.
She experienced a ‘complete emotional breakdown’, and it was only through acts of gratitude – such as calling and thanking those that helped in her injury recovery – that she found ‘a reason to keep going’.
So, she began performing random acts of kindness – such as buying petrol for a woman who turned out to be a domestic violence survivor – and the Kindness Factory was born as a pay-it-forward mechanism.
Fast forward to 2015 and, unbelievably, tragedy struck again when Kath was hit by a drunk 4WD driver while bike riding near the Harbour Bridge. Once again, she woke up paralysed and was told she would have to learn to walk.
Kath now travels the world as a motivational speaker, sharing her story.
“Everyone kept saying to me, ‘You’ve done it once, you can do it again.’ I was like, ‘I’ve done it once, I know how bloody hard it is and I’m so sick of fighting.’”
But then, something wonderful happened. The followers of her movement began writing to her, detailing their own small acts of everyday kindness.
“It made it more bearable to know that others were out there being kind. It genuinely saved me.”
And so, the focus flipped. Her Kindness Factory website became a not-for-profit charity and community for people to log their own acts of kindness as well as follow her journey.
Today, an incredible 5 million acts have been recorded by people across the globe.
Kath now travels the world as a professional motivational speaker, and in 2020 she launched The Kindness Curriculum with international education provider, Kaplan.
What started as a ‘deal with herself’ to speak at one school for every corporate gig soon evolved, with 3,000 schools across Australia now teaching her free curriculum about the power of kindness.
Now, her latest venture, the memoir Kindness by Kath Koschel, interprets this curriculum for adults by sharing her story openly and boldly.
“If people can take one thing I away from my story it’s ‘If she can, I can’. I don’t want people to think, ‘She’s amazing, what she’s gone through,’” she says.
“It’s about giving hope, and the [self] belief that so many have given me.”
Despite all the incredible hardships, the now 35-year-old says she would ‘always’ choose the life she’s had over another.
“I feel like I understand myself and who I am, and the idea of enduring through life’s adversities. I’ve learnt so much about myself in the process, and I wouldn’t change any of it.”
For more information on the Kindness Factory or to donate, visit kindnessfactory.com. Kindness by Kath Koschel is available now from all good booksellers.