When The Going Gets Tough: Christine Mastello, founder of Southlake Marketplace

Ms Mastello is the founder and CEO of Southlake Marketplace, an organisation that helps the vulnerable, providing discounted or free food and other daily essentials.

At the organisation's hub in a community centre at Cooranbong, Ms Mastello and a team of volunteers have been creating Mother's Day packs for Mums who might otherwise miss out on Sunday.

She was worried that with few students attending school at the moment, and with no Mother's Day stalls in the playground offering cheap gifts, children might have nothing to give their Mum.

Yet Christine Mastello's team been doing more than assembling the Mother's Day packs, each with a little note that reads, "Because you're loved". The volunteers have also been fielding calls from women offering to pay the $15 for each pack, so that a little one who may be from a disadvantaged household has a present for their Mum.

"It's so beautiful," says Ms Mastello. "Women having each others' backs, Mums having each others' backs."

Christine Mastello is the mother of three sons, aged 27, 25 and 15. Her sons have planned a special present for their Mum once the COVID-19 restrictions on travel are lifted.

"My kids are taking me for my first overseas trip as soon as this all goes," she says. "So we're all going to Japan."

Not that Ms Mastello needs to be taken out into the world by her boys to know what they mean to her. As she says of her sons, "They're my world".

Christine Mastello's adoration of motherhood is galvanised by her own childhood. She says the memories she holds of her early life are traumatic and filled with pain. When she was a child, she felt very much alone.

It's a feeling that Christine Mastello has never forgotten. It has helped helped shape the person Ms Mastello has become, and it was a prime reason she began Southlake Marketplace in 2013.

"That's always motivated me, that no one should ever feel like they're alone, and they don't have somebody to care about them," she explains.

"If there's something I can do to help, I can't let people feel like they're on their own."

When the going gets tough, many in the southern Lake Macquarie area come to the hub Ms Mastello created. She understands how hard it can be to make ends meet. She has been a single mother for about 15 years.

Each week, Southlake Marketplace has more than 350 clients seeking low-cost food or free packs. But tough times have become tougher in the past couple of months.

This week alone, 32 essential food packs have been given out. Others who have suddenly lost their jobs are turning up to buy discounted food.

"The stories are all the same - 'I've worked all my life. I've always supported my children. This is horrible. I'm so embarrassed' - and I tell people we're no different to Aldi!," Christine Mastello says.

"We would have 40 per cent more people who we've never seen before. And they're repeats. So we're helping them every week.

"You'd never think you'd live through something like this, would you? It's like the Depression for these people, who have been so strong. Food insecurity."

Suddenly without paid work, some are offering to volunteer at Southlake Marketplace, helping with everything from stacking shelves to delivering essential food packages to those stuck at home.

Christine Mastello, who is effervescence personified, bounces from one room to the next in the community centre, answering volunteers' questions and coordinating the effort to assist others.

She is in awe of these volunteers, and for those reaching out for help. But she is aware that while many are coping with the changes foisted on their everyday lives by COVID-19, others aren't. And that breaks her heart.

"I can normally do more. We can hug them. I can get people into refuges, I can get tutors for children. There's always something we can do. And to have my hands locked and know people are suffering ...", Ms Mastello says, as she cries.

"It's horrible to know so many people are suffering. And really if we can feed them, that's all we can do.

"I just hope they all make it, and I can hug them on the other side."

Coronavirus may have stripped even more material items out of some lives, but it has given more time. And time, Christine Mastello says, can be converted into something positive, an expression of love.

"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much you give your kids; presents, holidays, it's nothing," she says. "What they're going to remember is how much you love them."

"I hope that out of this, on the other side, we retain a little bit of what we've got now. That we still stay home with the kids, that we go for that walk in the park, which is nothing. But to a kid to just run out in the park and go, 'Hey Mum, look at me on the swing', or go fishing, they're the memories kids are going to retain when they're adults, and that's what's going to shape them as parents."

For those who are struggling and questioning themselves and their life, Christine Mastello suggests trying something that she has done: Sit in front of a mirror and stare into it for half an hour.

She says that simple-sounding act is a hard thing to do, "because you really have to look at yourself".

When asked who and what she saw staring back at her, Ms Mastello replies, "I just saw a little girl who never gave up. And I don't think I realised that."

Through the years, Southlake Marketplace has grown to not only put food on the table of those in need, but to provide other services, from haircuts to helping find accommodation for the homeless. Through that journey, Christine Mastello has helped not just others but herself as well.

"It's given me a bigger capacity to love," she says, as the tears flow again. "I get to hug more people.

"That little girl would never have thought she could achieve this. So - Go me!"

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