Cleft Warrior Woman

Something new is coming… but really, it’s been becoming for years. Growing, evolving, shifting and expanding all over the place 🥰

I am so excited that my new website is almost here.

What began with drawing portraits has grown into something much bigger art, cleft, nervous-system-informed support, lived experience, education, speaking, storytelling and a very deep commitment to changing how we understand everything cleft from@a human perspective.

Identity.
Belonging.
Parenthood.
Family.
Trauma.
Creativity.

The new website finally brings these different strands together in one place.

🌟A place for parents.
🌟A place for people born with a cleft.
🌟A place for professionals and educators.
🌟A place for art.
🌟A place for learning.

And, I hope, a place that makes the world look a little differently at cleft and all it can bring.

And after everything this work has become over the last few years, I cannot wait to see it online 🤍

New website incoming❤️

What if it is no accident or coincidence that you have been given the child you have?

I know I wasn’t quite the baby you imagined.

My arrival may have taken you into a world you never expected, cleft teams, feeding equipment, surgeries, waiting rooms, decisions and language you never thought you would need to understand.

And perhaps, for a while, you wondered how you were going to do all of this.

But what if I came to show you something?

What if I came to loosen your grip on everything you thought life was supposed to look like?

What if I came to ask you to question what you had been taught about beauty, perfection, difference and what makes a human being whole?

What if my face was never the problem?

What if some of the beliefs surrounding it were?

Children like me can be cycle breakers.

We can arrive into families and invite something different.

You can repeat what the world has taught you about difference.. or you can question it.

You can spend my childhood teaching me that my face is something to overcome, or you can teach me, from the beginning, that I was never less than anything simply because I arrived differently.

And while you are shaping me, I will be shaping you too.

I may call you towards courage you didn’t know you had. Towards deeper compassion. Towards a different relationship with uncertainty.

I may even ask you to heal parts of yourself that existed long before I arrived.

Because parenting was never simply about what you would teach me.

It was always going to be about what we would awaken in one another.

So perhaps instead of only asking,

“Why did this happen to my baby?”

We might sometimes dare to ask,

“What might this child be here to show me?”

What if your family is exactly the family this incredible soul has chosen?

What then?

Maybe this isn’t the parenting experience you imagined. But perhaps it becomes something far more expansive.

And maybe one day you realise that while you were wondering how you were going to guide your child through having a cleft…they were quietly changing the way you saw the world. 🤍

What then? ❤️

🌟 NORTH CAROLINA .. our family day is tomorrow!!!🌟

Perhaps your child with a cleft is now an adult, or you were born with a cleft yourself. Or perhaps you’re raising children to value and celebrate people for who they are, regardless of appearance.

This event is for everyone to enjoy 💛

Tonight for a formal reception and gala and tomorrow for arts, crafts and a lot of family fun, the 100 Cleft Portraits Tour arrives in North Carolina for a celebration of connection, creativity, education, empathy and kindness.

Come and experience-

💫 100 beautiful faces captured in one-of-a-kind works of art
💫 Creative workshops for the whole family

💫 Facebook painting and angel hair

💫 Bubbles and a bouncy castle

💫 A welcoming space to connect, laugh and have fun together

100 Cleft Portraits is about helping our community shift the narrative around cleft - from one rooted in fear and physical appearance to one filled with understanding, possibility and the freedom for everyone to find their own way.

This is about love, community, acceptance and celebrating our shared humanity.

Whether you come for the connection, the conversations, the art or simply for something fun to do - we would love to welcome you.

North Carolina, see you tomorrow! 🙌

🧡