Blue Sky Stuff

What Advertising taught me about shadow, desire and healing.

From our March 2026 Newsletter feature story.

People are often surprised when I say I used to work in Advertising. 

Yep. Me. The little hippy from the south that loves mud, threads, patterns, colour, plants, beauty, truth, inappropriate jokes and dancing - used to sit in board rooms with big tables and  even larger men. Alan Jones, John Laws, Steve Price, Ray Hadley... the radio bigwigs, with clients hoping to cash in on their vocal endorsement with their bizarrely enormous wallets.

Why?

Because when, at 26, I suggested to my Dad that I wanted to learn 'business' and go on the dole, to do the NEIS scheme (business start-up / mentoring course) to establish an initiative to support emerging local artists he said:

‘no child of mine will ever be the recipient of a government handout’.

I don’t blame his response. He’d been brought up by parents who actively experienced the Great Depression and second world war - both veterans - Nan a RAAF nurse, and my grandfather, also in the RAAF.

They had learned that accepting charity meant all sorts of disastrous things - that you were weak, broken, needy, eternally lower class. Accepting charity was 'the end'.

And not only that- you are now a 'burden on society' by accepting any kind of support.

Certainly not a functional tribe-member that supported its own country at all costs. 

Help was viewed not as a stepping stone towards expansion, but as an act of contraction. One of dependence which directly threatened a life of survival.

Asking for help was frowned upon.

And actually, not asking for help was hugely respected.

I grew up learning to ‘speak properly’ from both Nan and Dad.

No ‘w’ for white, what, where, but a more blowy, breathy WH. WHy, Where, When.

How-Now-Brown-Cow,

etc.

No hatche, for Humid, but an ACTCHE.

No DrawRING for a sketch, but drawING.

And we are making PICTures, not pitchers.

When I stayed with Nan -

"Michelle McCosker did you just say yeah? YEAH? It is yes. YES!!!

No "yeah" here. Goodness me! Where did you learn to speak?"

(I'm giggling as I write this - it felt so serious at the time - I was like "oh yeah! (I mean Oh. Yes)", and now I'm like - "OMG how ridick! Imagine saying that to a kid! WhTF!")

This was a 'cover' that Nan employed which I think somehow believed - if people heard this spoken word, they would think 'Ah. A thriving successful, prosperous person with a good education'.

Almost like snobbery that camouflaged vulnerability.

A way of pretending not to need help.

So clever!

Fast forward to the moment of me telling Dad my plans to go on the Dole.!!! HAHAHAHHAHAHA.

So - his solution? The same one that was offered to him as a young man -

"come into business with me and I’ll show you the ropes".

Meant with kindness of course. Meant with care. Meant from a place of - let me save my daughter from public humiliation and myself too while I'm at it.

At the time I was deeply entrenched in the life of living underground - both in the Sydney arts scene and with my own sense of self.

With regard to advertising - I had no training, no expertise, and a healthy sense of meeting the devil.

I was an imposter. 

In the meetings I would wear my sisters fancy clothes, deodorant and pretend to know stuff. Quietly sweating with anxiety bordering on panic that I'd be called out.

I remember saying to Dad as we got out of the car at yet another meeting-

"what if I go to say something and accidentally vomit on the table?"

He thought this was hilarious. I was quite serious.

He loved having me in the office!

All of a sudden I was in his world, seeing the double life he lived - work and home - and meeting the dickheads he'd been tolerating.

Laughing at crude jokes, appreciating good scriptwriters, and feeling the stress of 'the hunt'.

The boom and bust stress-ride of money-droughts and storms of work.

I remember he said to me:

"there are 2 types of advertising agents - the Hunters and the Gatherers".

The Hunters - Go in for the kill and get a lot of clients quickly but burn them out by bleeding their budget dry too fast, or building an expectation that cannot be delivered upon ie lying. A lot of 'one-hit-wonders'. This leaves less for the rest of us.

The Gatherers -work more slowly, have less clients, but rarely "lose" one, and invest in long-term relationships. Gatherers are patient, not too greedy, and understand weather systems.

He declared himself a Gatherer and said something profound:

"Relationships are Everything".

The only way I could relate to this world at the time was to find the beauty. Find the truth. And find how I could use it with integrity and incorporate it into my (then) life-Vision of 're-enchanting the mundane' or rather 'magic is everywhere and everyone needs to know'. 

In other words... find the human-spirit nexus.

After a radio-world extravaganza- Melbourne Cup Day function, where the amount of alcohol people drank was enough to pickle the liver of a blue whale, one client with a Landscape Supplies company listened to my ideas about compost and said I had stars in my eyes.

No money in that picture.

In the office I had ideas and would propose my ethos to Dad -

perhaps we can ONLY work with ethical businesses?

Perhaps we can feel into what the future needs and invite advertisers who have those products!

Electrical cars?

Fuel converters to LPG?

Permaculture based gardening?

Composting solutions?

Battery recycling?

Sustainable fashion trends?

Training programs?

Healthy diets?

Solar panels? 

Dad would cry - Give me a number! I'll call them!

He loved talking to people. He honestly could sell the socks off a table.

So I leant the fabulous skill of REALLY using the internet.

Going down wormholes, researching, finding out what exists, what doesn't and who the competition is.

Thinking of a 'pitch' - it's not enough just to have a good idea... it needs a nice HOOK... WHy should people buy this?

And then later of course, after thinking of something brilliant (in my eyes) - the feedback from the stations or the press - "great idea! Always was".

Or... the artist-curator in me would try and think of ways to stay in integrity-

Perhaps we can offer jobs to all the artists and musicians I know?

Do some robin-hood like art patronage?

Use the abundant land of big-ticket advertisers to fund the livelihoods of the starving artists I knew so well, who I believe are the voice of a culture.

Basically utilise my curating skills to draw together different art modalities in one commercial.

OR, perhaps some of these people can fund some underground art ventures?

Cute huh? So much integrity! So much hope.

To navigate this world I ended up calling on my weaving knowledge. 

I learned that Advertising was just manipulation- like threads on a loom.

Creating a tension. 

If we pull on this thread hard enough, something will give at the other end.

Knowing that things naturally seek balance... if we deliberately create imbalance we can utilise the response of yearning for wholeness.

Cash in on it.

So, just like in my therapy-training I learned to see into the heart of what people truly desire. What do they WANT.

As soon as you know that, you know what to sell.

What do you think it is? What does every human, at their core, desire?

I found, like so many huge companies before me, that it's simply: Love.

Which ties in with things like happiness, ease, power, freedom, acceptance, connection and sensory delight.

People want to feel good.

They want to be recognised.

They want to love and feel loved.

They want true and deep health.

And this, is worth a lot of money.

Because there's a false promise that underpins all consumerism that says - you can feel good IF you have this thing.

People will love and admire you IF you have this car.

This very human yearning isn't actually a bad thing!

But, with the model of Advertising overlaying it, it becomes a huge vulnerability to be exploited.

And slowly, very slowly, people learn not to trust each other.

And the sell becomes harder... it needs to be more crafty. More clever. More invisible.

The promise that never delivers, but keeps promising.

I realised, over time, the craft of Advertising really is the high-order craft of manipulative communication.

Used in other forms through history - propaganda, jargon, or cult.

The dinner-table taboo subjects -politics and religion- utilise it, often.

We had a political candidate once as a client, and we even had a church at another - all the same, even when well-intentioned.

"I want to advertise to get more people", "I want them to know they need me".

An honest belief that we are offering something people need, they just don't know it yet.

We are solving a yet to be realised problem.

In advertising customers are either called 'bums on seats' or 'eyeballs'.

"We want more eyeballs".

Or, and I heard this often - "This campaign sounds like sure-fire bums on seats".

More people equals more money.

More money equals more power.

More power equals more love, attachment and recognition.

More safety. More security.

The illusion that I am controlling the world.

A life free of risk.

That familiar phrase "people want someone they can trust. A brand that is reliable".

But is that actually true?

I realised, in this sell, we were basically promoting a life without pain.

Supporting some kind of life-vision that moved towards living a kind of heaven-life. A dream-life. A life without complication, risk, rejection, scarcity or ugliness.

An unrealistic life.

An unattainable life.

There is even a word for this kind of advertising... it is called "ASPIRATIONAL"

(as opposed to a CTA (Call-To-Action /do this, now) or BRANDING (don't buy anything, we just want you to know who we are - look, I sponsored this football game).

All imply - you can trust us to tell you what you need.

What happened to shadow?

In my time as a therapist I have certainly learned, that alongside this common human desire for love- that manifests in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways - we have some core wounds or experiences that whisper stories, from the shadows of our psyche.

They teach us to expect loneliness, abandonment, disappointment, powerlessness, rejection, betrayal or intrusion.

These are silently omitted from advertising ... basically erased. And if they are mentioned it is always in order to manipulate an audience into buying something from a place of fear. With some kind of underlying message thats says "it is wrong to feel pain" or 'don't let that happen'.

It is being sold a life with no shadow. 

Uplifting music, uplifting words and visuals.

A manipulation of communication and attention.

Giving us goosebumps...

Having our human organism with its emotional responses and needs taken advantage of, without permission. 

Creating awe! So we want more.

But, it's a life with no shadow.

While weaving taught me about manipulation, it also shared some beautiful lessons on colour and texture, and the way they interplay.

Did you know you can have the same lightwaves hitting different surfaces, and they will make different colours?

Why?

Because of texture... and texture is purely the grain of a surface that dictates what gets light and what gets shadow.

The bumps and troughs.

The highs and the lows and the in-betweens.

And all of a sudden there are infinite possibilities. We have nuance. A person can create a multi coloured weaving with just one colour, purely by incorporating different textures.

I love it. All of a sudden the world is huge, limitless in possibility, failure being one of them. Its edgy. Its ALIVE. And its very very real.

A bit like life.

A bit like the wild.

A bit like a human heart.

Wild nature is a wonderful teacher to learn about shadow. Most animals base their skin, scales or feathers on the play of light and shadow. They mimic it to keep them safe, or to stand out. It's beautiful.

Shadow, when in combination with light, is divine - a dance of endless potential.

A bit like healing.

So now, when I offer therapy, it's joyful and a big relief to be offering something honest.

A life that works! Your life.

A life that is not a lie.

And wild nature is my greatest teacher .. both the one I walk through and the one that lives inside.

I’m no longer an imposter - I’m just someone who cares. A lot.

Perhaps what we call healing is really just life. Moving.

Back into a state of wholeness - no banished parts.

Light and shadow. Dancing. Together.

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Check out the reel I made for instagram where I chat about this a little more:

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About the Writer - Michelle McCosker

Michelle is a therapist who knows that healing isn't about fixing what's broken - it's about learning to walk comfortably, gracefully and honestly with what's here.

With training in both Holistic Psychotherapy and Art Therapy, she brings a lifetime of her own walking-with to every session. She's been to the bottom of wells, knows the terrain and befriends it in others.

She works with compassion and awareness - the two ingredients that actually change everything.

With warmth and clarity she also celebrates the gold of those she holds, and is not only wound-focused.

Michelle doesn't dig into your pain or access your wisdom for you.

She walks alongside whatever you're carrying - the pain, the questions, the judgements, the shame, the parts that hurt, the grief - with awareness and compassion.

This is healing as a movement of life, not a solution to a problem. Your shadow gets to come too.

Learn more about Michelle

Book a Clinic session with Michelle

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