Parents & Families
Support for parents navigating the emotional, human and practical layers of the cleft journey, from diagnosis through childhood, surgery, identity, confidence and connection.
Support for Parents & Families
Parenting a child born with a cleft can bring so much love, pride and joy.
It can also bring feelings that are harder to speak about.
Shock.
Fear.
Guilt.
Grief.
Overthinking.
Decision fatigue.
Surgery anxiety.
The pressure to be strong.
The deep desire to get it right for your child.
My work with parents is here to support the emotional and human side of the cleft journey.
This is not medical advice, therapy or a replacement for the care you receive from your cleft team.
It is creative, lived-experience and trauma-informed support to help you understand what may be happening inside you as you move through your child’s cleft journey.
Because cleft is not only a medical pathway. It is a human one too.
And when parents feel more supported, more steady and more connected to themselves, they can often meet their child with empowered clarity and deep presence.
Below you will find the different ways I can support you.
Rooted & Resilient
Gentle first support for cleft parents
Rooted & Resilient is the gentle starting point.
It has been created for parents who are beginning to realise that the cleft journey has affected them emotionally, physically or mentally, and who want gentle reframing support.
This is for the parent who may be thinking:
“I know I need some support, but I do not know where to begin.”
Rooted & Resilient helps you begin to understand your nervous system, your emotional responses and the invisible weight you may have been carrying through diagnosis, feeding, surgery, appointments or the ongoing reality of parenting a child born with a cleft.
It is practical and accessible, featuring deliberately short guidance videos to follow.
A place to begin breathing again.
Best for
Parents who want a gentle introduction to the emotional and nervous-system side of cleft parenting.
Cleft Compass
Deeper guidance for the emotional journey
Cleft Compass is the next step for parents who want more depth, more understanding and a clearer map through the emotional layers of cleft parenting.
This programme explores some of the big feelings that can sit underneath the surface of the cleft journey, including guilt, grief, fear and anger.
Not because you are doing anything wrong.
Because you are human.
And because so many parents move through the cleft pathway being told what will happen medically, but are given very little space to understand what is happening inside them.
Cleft Compass helps parents build more self-trust, emotional awareness and nervous-system capacity so they can move from reacting through fear into responding with more clarity, connection and confidence at every stage.
Best for
Parents who know there is more to understand, process and gently untangle within themselves.
Cleft Crisis to Confidence
Deeper transformation and guided support
Cleft Crisis to Confidence is the deeper support pathway where we will work together for 6 months.
This is for parents who feel they are stuck in fear, guilt, overprotection, anxiety, control, comparison, disconnection or emotional overwhelm, and are ready for a more guided process.
This is not about becoming a perfect parent.
It is not about never feeling triggered again.
It is not about raking over the past, is it about empowering you to take back the driving seat in your life. It is about understanding your patterns, building capacity in your body, and learning how to support yourself and your child through the cleft journey with more steadiness, self-trust and confidence.
This programme is for the parent who is ready to stop carrying everything silently and begin shifting the way cleft lives inside their family story.
Best for
Parents who want deeper, more supported transformation and are ready to work with the emotional patterns that may be shaping how they show up in the cleft journey.
Born Whole Portraits
Artwork to honour your child, yourself or your family
Alongside my parent support programmes, I also create bespoke portraits for families affected by cleft.
These portraits are part of the same mission. They are about seeing the whole person.
Not the diagnosis.
Not the surgery.
Not the scar.
Not the before and after.
The person.
The child.
The adult.
The family.
The spirit.
The beauty.
The story.
A portrait can become part of the process of loving every version of your child, or yourself, through the cleft journey.
Before surgery.
After surgery.
During change.
Through growth & every chapter.
After the US tour, this collection will be known as Born Whole, because that is the message at the heart of the work.
Your child does not become whole at the end of the medical pathway.
They began that way.
Best for
Families who would like a meaningful, personal piece of artwork that celebrates their child, themselves or their cleft story.
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