Growing up with two alcoholic parents

As a young adult, knitting helped me feel calmer. The rhythm of the needles, the softness of the wool and the weight of a project in my lap felt reassuring and comforting.

Labelled as stupid at school

I didn't learn in the same way as everyone else. I struggled with rote learning and needed to understand how things worked in real life. The art room became my safe place. It was somewhere I felt capable, accepted and able to think differently.

Becoming a mother

I found the transition into motherhood much harder than I expected. Losing my freedom, time to myself, and the loss of sleep felt overwhelming. Whenever I could, I made things. Creativity became something that belonged just to me during a time when so much of my life revolved around everyone else.

Losing both my parents

My parents died just six months apart from alcohol-related illness. Afterwards, I found one of my mum's Open College of the Arts notebooks. It led to me begining a textiles degree. Very quickly, my work became personal. I explored my relationship with my body, grief and my fear of death that had lingered during grief.

Losing nearly seven stone

For years I had used food for comfort while coping with motherhood and my parents' alcoholism. After their deaths, and after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, PCOS and hypothyroidism, I decided things had to change. Over the next couple of years I lost nearly seven stone. Throughout that time I kept drawing and knitting. Creativity stayed with me as life changed around me.

Divorce

Living with an undiagnosed autistic husband eventually led to divorce and what is often described as Cassandra Syndrome. Throughout that time I constantly drew, knitted and wrote. My sketchbooks became somewhere to put my anger, confusion and grief, but they also became a record of my own resilience and growth.

Redundancy

While going through my divorce and the sale of our family home, I was made redundant from a job I loved at the homelessness charity Crisis. I had spent years running creative workshops and saw first-hand how making could help people reconnect with themselves. It made me realise that creativity hadn't just supported me. I'd watched it support countless other people too.

A new life in Margate

After living in Oxford all my life, I planned a move to Margate following my divorce. I couldn't afford to stay in Oxford, but I was also drawn by Margate's creative community. I found myself making again, knitting things for my new home and using creativity to help me imagine the life I wanted to build.

The beginning of Shifting States

Shifting States grew out of all of these experiences.

It comes from a simple belief that creativity can help us through life's difficult transitions. Working with our hands, connecting with materials and making meaningful objects can give us something to hold onto when everything else feels uncertain.

Everything I offer through Shifting States comes from lived experience. It is shaped by the lessons I have learned through making, through loss, through change and through discovering that creativity has never just been about making art. For me, it has always been a way of finding my footing again.