Meet Karen Maree
Endorsed Nurse · Accredited Trainer · Diploma of Counselling (nearing completion) · ACA Student Member · Level 1 Breathwork Facilitator. Currently enrolled in a Bachelor of Counselling to further deepen my practice.
While I complete my Diploma of Counselling, sessions are currently offered as coaching.
Karen Maree, founder
I haven't arrived at counselling by a straight line, and I think that's exactly why I understand the women I work with.
I spent years as a beauty therapist and salon owner, which taught me something I didn't expect: women open up in the chair. Between the small talk, women would tell me about their marriages, their grief, their exhaustion, the parts of themselves they'd quietly stopped tending to. I was listening long before I had a qualification that said I was allowed to.
In 2010, I became an Endorsed Nurse, and have spent the years since working in Residential Aged Care and Home & Community Care. That work has shown me, again and again, what it looks like when women spend a lifetime caring for everyone else, whether partners, children, parents, or patients, and reach a point where they no longer recognise themselves underneath all that giving. I've sat with women at every stage of life, and I've seen how much strength it takes simply to keep going, often with no space of their own to fall apart in.
"Women carry an enormous amount, and rarely get asked who's carrying them. That's the space I wanted to build."
Her Haven Counselling exists because I know, from years of nursing and from my own life, that women carry an enormous amount. I came to counselling later in life, while completing my Diploma of Counselling and now continuing into a Bachelor of Counselling, because I wanted to formalise what I'd already spent a career doing instinctively: really listening to women, without judgment, and helping them find their way back to themselves.
Direct, not delicate.
I won't dance around what needs to be said, but I will always have your back while I say it. You deserve a counsellor who respects you enough to be honest, and cares enough to be kind.
I don't believe in therapy that just makes you feel good for fifty minutes and leaves you exactly where you started. My focus is on real, practical change. I help you understand the patterns driving your anxiety or your relationships, build self-esteem that holds up under pressure, and walk away from sessions with something you can actually use.
Every woman who works with me is treated as exactly that: a whole, capable woman, not a diagnosis or a problem to be fixed.
Flourish & Thrive after 50
Life after 50 can look like a lot of things: the kids have left, a relationship has ended, retirement is looming, or you've simply woken up one day and realised the life you're living no longer fits who you are. You know something needs to change, even if you can't quite put your finger on what.
Flourish and Thrive after 50 is a free community for women who are ready to stop pushing through and start living with genuine purpose, connection, and joy. This is a space to be honest about where you are, get the support and tools to understand what's holding you back, and take real steps toward the life you actually want, on your terms, at this stage of life.
You've spent enough years making do. This is your time.
It still feels personal.
Working exclusively online means I can offer flexibility without compromising on connection. Many women find it easier to open up from a familiar, private space, and it means therapy can fit around your life, not the other way around.