For those born with a cleft
Your face is not a problem to be solved.
It holds history, expression, strength, tenderness, identity and story.
This creative space is for adults and young people born with a cleft who want to explore their relationship with their face through art - not through correction, comparison or the pressure to feel confident all the time, but through curiosity, creativity and genuine self-connection.
You may already love your face. You may still be learning how to look at it without judgement. You may feel proud, disconnected, protective, angry, grateful, self-conscious - or several of those things at once.
All of you is welcome here.
Choose the pathway that feels right for you.
Have your portrait created
See Yourself Through the Eyes of an Artist
This is more than commissioning a beautiful portrait.
It is an opportunity to be witnessed as a whole person - not reduced to your cleft, your scars, your surgeries or the opinions other people may have placed upon your face.
Through conversation, photographs and the creative process, I will create a deeply personal mixed-media portrait that reflects more than how you look. It can hold your energy, personality, story, strength, softness and the parts of you that may be ready to be seen differently.
The process may invite you to explore questions such as:
What do I see when I look at my face?
Whose voice has shaped the way I see myself?
What parts of me have felt hidden, criticised or misunderstood?
What would it feel like to meet those parts with love?
Your portrait does not have to represent a finished healing journey. There is no perfect destination where you finally love every photograph and never doubt yourself again. Instead, the artwork becomes a place to pause, reconnect and experience your face outside the medical gaze.
Not as something to assess.
Not as something to explain.
As art.
As identity.
As you.
This pathway may be for you if:
You would love to own a meaningful piece of artwork created from your story.
You want to explore your relationship with your face in a safe and compassionate way.
You are marking an important chapter, transition or moment in your life.
You want to reclaim how you are seen and represented.
You want a portrait that honours your cleft without allowing it to define your entire identity.
1:1 Coaching
Deeper guidance for the emotional journey
Being born with a cleft can shape so much more than your appearance.
Experiences with surgery, speech, hearing, medical care, other people’s reactions and feeling different may continue to affect your confidence, relationships and sense of identity long into adulthood.
Perhaps you’ve learned to hide how you feel, adapt to keep others comfortable or push through difficult moments without the support you needed. You may even find it hard to explain why certain experiences still affect you.
Whatever your story looks like, you deserve a safe and compassionate space where your whole experience is recognised, your feelings are valid and you don’t have to explain or minimise what you’ve been through.
My personalised, trauma-informed 1:1 coaching offers you that space.
Together, we’ll gently explore the experiences, beliefs and patterns that may be holding you back, while building greater self-awareness, emotional resilience and confidence.
Using a blend of coaching, positive psychology and body-based approaches tailored to you, I’ll help you understand yourself more deeply, feel safer expressing your needs and develop practical tools to support you in everyday life.
This is an opportunity to reconnect with who you are beyond your cleft, strengthen your voice and move forward with a greater sense of peace, freedom and possibility - honouring your story without allowing it to define the life you create.
Create your own Portrait - COMING SOON
Meet Yourself Through the Creative Process
You do not need to be “good at art” to create something powerful.
This pathway uses colour, mark-making, photography, collage, reflection and playful experimentation to help you explore your face and identity from the inside out.
Rather than trying to produce an accurate or conventionally beautiful self-portrait, you will be invited to notice what happens as you create.
Where do you become self-critical?
Where do you want to correct, hide or control?
Which colours feel like you?
Which marks express anger, joy, grief, pride, confusion or freedom?
Which younger parts of you may still be waiting to be heard?
The creative process allows us to move beyond words. It can help us meet experiences that have been difficult to explain, including being looked at, photographed, questioned, compared, operated on or made to feel different.
This is not about forcing yourself to love everything. It is about learning to stay present with yourself.
To replace judgement with curiosity.
To recognise the voices and expectations that never belonged to you.
To make space for your own truth.
Through guided creative exercises, you will begin to build a self-portrait that is layered, expressive and entirely your own. It may contain photographs, patterns, words, abstract marks, symbols, scars, colour, texture or fragments of your story.
There are no rules for what your portrait should look like. The process is the work.
This pathway may be for you if:
You want to explore your identity through creativity.
You feel disconnected from your face or find photographs and mirrors difficult.
You want to meet younger or more vulnerable parts of yourself with compassion.
You are curious about how art can support emotional processing and self-acceptance.
You want to create alongside others who understand the complexity of being born with a cleft.
No artistic experience is needed. You simply need a willingness to begin.
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