From Fight to Flight.

I painted From Fight to Flight during one of the hardest chapters of my life, but its story began many years before I ever picked up a paintbrush.

When I became a mother to my beautiful daughter, I found the transition was not the happy event I had dreamt of; it was traumatic. I’d love to say it was wholesome and beautiful, but for me, sadly, in the beginning, it was really tough. However, my experiences of pregnancy, labour and the beautiful bond that soon developed between myself and my daughter gave me a new sense of purpose. I felt a passionate pull to become a midwife because I wanted to give other women the positive start to motherhood I hadn’t experienced. And so, I left my career as a graphic designer to start again. 

 I was successful in my pursuit, qualifying in June 2018. Then, after longing for another baby for some time, we were incredibly fortunate to welcome our son in October 2019. I’m relieved to say that experience was one of the most positive and healing moments of my life.  

Seventeen months later, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Three surgeries to remove my thyroid, radioactive iodine (RAI) ablation, suppression therapy, and a lifetime of thyroid replacement medication followed. 

Over the next two years, my health continued to decline until I finally had to accept that I had ME/CFS. This was one of the hardest things I had ever had to admit. I had always been someone who was independent, who fought and persevered through things, but try as I might, I simply couldn’t this time. I couldn't dance anymore. I couldn’t play with my children in the way I wanted to, and I certainly couldn’t safely fulfil my role as a clinical midwife.

Then, in July 2024, I received the news that my cancer had returned and metastasised. Overnight, my future, aspirations and dreams seemed to fall into a dark void of uncertainty. I was devastated beyond words.

Ill health forced me into early retirement at 40, just as I was finally stepping fully into a career that felt like my calling. I had worked so hard to get there, and suddenly it had been taken away, just as I was really starting.

But I didn’t just lose my career. It affected my family, my independence, what I could do, and who I thought I was. Mentally and emotionally, I was spiralling. 

I realised I was grieving the loss of, well… me.

Then, one day, I started painting again. Just like that. 

It began with a small gift for my grandma, a painting to remember my papa, who died 3 weeks after my son was born. Around the same time, I started seeing adverts for the Milan Art Institute on social media, particularly Dimitra’s work. I connected deeply with her abstract realism and her idea of storytelling through art. It made me want to create again and tell my own story.

So I began From Fight to Flight.

At first, I was painting for an outlet and to make sense of my grief. The butterfly became a symbol of everything I was struggling with. The fight was the part of me desperately holding on to the life I had known and wanted back: wanting to be the mother I yearned to be, wanting to dance again, wanting my body back, wanting to carry on as before.

But I don’t actually want everything to go back to how it was. Since my cancer diagnosis, I have experienced some of the best moments that life and humanity have to offer. I've found love, kindness, connection, and a perspective on life I don’t think I would have found otherwise. And somewhere in the process of painting, something shifted.

I began to realise that perhaps I didn’t have to keep fighting to get my old life back. Perhaps I could let go of the person I thought I was supposed to be and make room for someone new.

It wasn’t a dramatic moment where everything suddenly became okay. It was much quieter and slower than that. It was learning to accept that my life had changed and, with that acceptance, I discovered there were still things waiting for me.

I had spent years being told that art couldn’t be a career. That there was no money or future in it. That it could only ever be a hobby. But perhaps the thing I had been putting to one side since I was a little girl was actually the thing waiting for me all along.

So, I enrolled on the Milan Art Institute Mastery Programme, determined to finally become the artist I had always wanted to be. Not because I had suddenly stopped caring about the life I lost, but because I had begun to understand that a different life could still be a meaningful one.

The butterfly’s flight isn’t about escaping what happened to me. It represents finding a way forward within it. There is freedom in accepting that I can’t go back to who I was, because I don’t have to.

Sometimes an ending isn’t the end of our story. Sometimes it is the point where we stop trying to become who we were and begin discovering who we can be. There is always another way.

I didn’t choose this new chapter of my life. But I am choosing what I do with it. And I am pleased to say my prognosis is looking more positive than initially feared, and I look forward to a colourful and enriching future, creating and immersing myself in the world of art.