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SPOTLIGHT ARTICLE
The Silent Hum on Wix: Building Gentle, Powerful Support for Families in Hard Times
Community Builder
12/1/25, 10:16 PM
Photographer Credit:
Augustus Greenslade
Founder
The Silent Hum Foundation
Bio
Gus is the founder of The Silent Hum Foundation, an Aotearoa-based charity supporting families facing childhood serious illness, end of life, and grief. A dad, researcher, and Master of Social Work student, he turns lived experience into clear, practical, culturally grounded resources that build grief literacy, uphold whānau dignity, and offer simple, humane support.
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SPOTLIGHT ARTICLE
The Silent Hum on Wix: Building Gentle, Powerful Support for Families in Hard Times
Building Gentle Websites for Hard Seasons
12/1/25, 10:16 PM
Before we dive into the fun details, give our readers a snapshot of your business: who you are, the work you do, and how your services help the clients you work with.
I’m Gus, founder of The Silent Hum Foundation, based in Aotearoa, and a dad who knows hospital life from the inside. The Silent Hum exists to support families living with childhood illness, end of life, and grief through clear, practical, and culturally safe resources shaped here in Aotearoa. Our small team of parents, clinicians, and community voices turns lived experience into tools, checklists, and gentle guidance that help whānau feel less alone and more prepared. Through our blog, workshops, and programmes, I focus on simple, humane, and useful support – from hospital bag checklists to language for hard conversations – so parents, siblings, and wider whānau can navigate hospital life and life after loss with more confidence and dignity.
We’d love to hear your Wix “origin story.” When did you start building, what made you stick with it, and in what ways have your offers changed from that first site to what you do now?
I first started building on Wix when I was trying to turn a very raw season of hospital life and grief into something steady and useful for other families, without needing a big budget or a tech team. Wix gave me a way to experiment and get The Silent Hum online quickly, with a space that felt calm, simple, and easy to navigate for tired parents and whānau. That first site was basically a blog and a few core pages, but over time it has grown into a home for checklists, guides, and programme updates, and now the wider work of The Silent Hum Foundation in Aotearoa. As my skills and confidence on the platform have grown, my offerings have shifted from “just sharing my story” to building a clearer pathway of resources, speaking, workshops, and advocacy that help families and the professionals who walk alongside the
Everybody brings something different to their work — what’s your differentiator? And how do you address those misconceptions about Wix being “too simple” or “not professional enough”?
What makes my work with The Silent Hum different is that everything starts from lived experience of childhood cancer, hospital life, and grief, and is then translated into really practical, plain-language tools that tired parents and whānau can actually use. The site is designed to feel calm, culturally aware, and uncluttered, so families can find what they need quickly – not overwhelmed by pop-ups or jargon – while still holding the emotional weight of what they are going through. When people say Wix is “just templates,” I explain that the platform gives me a solid, secure backbone plus serious flexibility: I can customise layouts, build structured resource libraries, run a blog, add forms, and grow into things like events, donations, or multilingual pages as the foundation evolves, all without a full-time developer. For a small, mission-driven organisation in Aotearoa, that combination of ease-of-use, accessibility features, and room to scale means I can focus more on crafting good support for whānau and less on fighting with the tech.
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Tell us more about your core services. Do you have any projects that were especially challenging or rewarding? What did they teach you?
Right now my core services sit in three areas: creating practical online resources for whānau (checklists, guides, blog posts), offering workshops and kōrero for professionals and community groups about grief and hospital life, and slowly building a clearer pathway of programmes under The Silent Hum Foundation. One of the most meaningful “projects” has been shaping the Silent Hum website itself into a place that feels gentle enough for parents in shock, but structured enough that they can actually find what they need in a few clicks; that process has taught me to cut anything that feels like noise and to write and design with the most exhausted person in mind. Another standout has been developing resources in partnership with clinicians and other parents, which has reinforced how important it is to blend lived experience, clinical insight, and cultural safety so that what ends up online truly reflects Aotearoa whānau and the realities they face.
Are you comfortable designing for any type of client, or do you have a niche that really feels like home? What earns you credibility in that industry?
There’s a very clear niche that feels like home for me: families living with childhood serious illness, grief, and neurodiversity, and the hospitals, schools, and community organisations that walk alongside them. My “expertise” in this space comes from being both a dad who has lived through childhood cancer and bereavement, and a writer and advocate who now spends most days turning that lived experience into clear, practical, culturally grounded resources for whānau in Aotearoa. I understand how it feels to read a website in a hospital corridor or at 2am after bad news, so every page, form, and piece of copy is designed with that reality in mind: plain language, emotional safety, and easy navigation for people who are scared, exhausted, or grieving. That combination of personal experience, ongoing work with clinicians and community partners, and a focus on grief literacy and whānau-centred support is what anchors my niche and earns trust in this particular corner of the internet.
Thank you for such a rich conversation. To close out, what three pro tips would you offer our readers — and how can they reach you if they want to work with you?
My first tip is to design every page with your most exhausted visitor in mind: keep the layout clean, use clear headings, and make it obvious where to click next so people can find what they need in just a few seconds. Second, start small and real rather than chasing perfection — publish a simple, honest version of your site, then use Wix’s flexibility to refine your structure, content, and accessibility features as you see how people actually use it. Third, build for relationships, not just information: add gentle ways for people to connect, like contact forms, email sign-ups, or resource requests, and make sure your copy sounds like a human voice that understands what your visitors are going through
Augustus Greenslade
Founder
The Silent Hum Foundation
Bio
Gus is the founder of The Silent Hum Foundation, an Aotearoa-based charity supporting families facing childhood serious illness, end of life, and grief. A dad, researcher, and Master of Social Work student, he turns lived experience into clear, practical, culturally grounded resources that build grief literacy, uphold whānau dignity, and offer simple, humane support.
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